Chapter Fifteen

They searched for Dredd over the next two days, combing vacant lots and abandoned houses, hoping to see his truck. Mick crashed at Vent’s house but they both had to leave in the morning for school. Vent’s parents didn’t trust him enough to leave him alone in the house and besides, he should be going to class. Chuck agreed. At least school was a place to stay during the day, especially Monday when it rained from sunup till sundown. Mick explained that he didn’t want to have to face being berated by all of his teachers for not being around the past few weeks. He was old enough to quit and that was that.

There was no point in arguing with him. Not now. The guy had enough on his plate. Like Chuck, Mick was having a hard time sleeping. So was Vent. By Tuesday, they were bleary-eyed. Everyone just assumed they were high. Hell, they should have been getting high just to calm their nerves. But Chuck had a big advanced chem test he needed to be straight for. On top of that, they were all worried about the Melon Heads finding them. They needed to be on alert. It was uncomfortable sleeping with a knife under your pillow. Chuck kept worrying he’d stab himself in his sleep. He almost did the night before when he’d heard something moving outside his window. Jumping out of bed, he slipped his hand under his pillow and just missed slicing the web of flesh between his thumb and index finger. Turns out, it was only a raccoon bumping into the metal garbage pails. It took an hour for Chuck to settle down and fall back to sleep.

Heidi and Marnie hadn’t been in class and they weren’t answering their phones. That prompted a quick visit to their houses on Monday. Chuck and Mick looked in all the windows, searching for signs of a break-in or struggle. All looked fine. They were just empty.

“I’m worried about Marnie,” Chuck said.

Mick tugged at his hair, lost in thought. He gnawed on the end of a Slim Jim. His mind had been elsewhere much of the time lately. “Yeah, me too.”

They had no way of finding out where their friends had gone. Chalk that up to one more thing eating away at them.

At lunch on Tuesday, Chuck and Vent walked across the field to the Losers’ Lair in the trees. Being in the woods was not the brightest move at this point, but there was a main road just twenty yards beyond the trees. It didn’t seem like a prime Melon Head hiding spot.

“Want one?” Chuck asked, offering Vent a Marlboro. He took one and lit it, inhaling deeply.

“How’d you do in chem?” Vent asked.

Chuck exhaled a funnel of deep, rich smoke. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I passed, but that’s not gonna be enough.”

“I fell asleep in social studies. Mr. Mahon threw an eraser at me to wake me up. Whole class thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.” He bent his head toward Chuck. “Did I get all the chalk out?”

Chuck swatted away the clinging bits of chalk dust. “That’s not too bad. He once had me do pushups in front of the class while he taught. Guy’s a world-class schmuck. I hear he came from a Catholic school in Florida where he got in trouble for being too handsy with the students.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

They leaned against neighboring trees and smoked in silence. There was so much to say. Exhaustion and an undercurrent of fear had sapped them of their strength. Besides, it was nice to just smoke and not talk about Dredd, Melon Heads or their concern about Marnie and Heidi. Being in a constant state of fight or flight sucked big time.

A twig cracked behind them. Chuck pulled a kitchen knife from the inner pocket of his denim jacket. Vent grabbed a hammer he’d secreted in his boot, hiding the business end under his jeans.

“Jeez, it’s only me.”

Mick stepped out from behind a thick-trunked pine. Actually, it was a pair of pine trees that had somehow fused together over the decades.

Chuck felt his whole body deflate. “Thanks for the heart attack.”

Mick saw the pack of cigarettes in Chuck’s shirt pocket and helped himself to one. “You’re welcome. Heidi or Marnie come to class today?”

“Nope,” Vent said.

“I was just by Marnie’s house. Still nothing. It’s like they went on vacation or something.”

“It’s the something I’m worried about,” Chuck said.

Mick toed a rock buried under the leaves. “I also did some recon by my trailer. Saw Dwight and my mom. So, I guess that means the Melon Heads aren’t hanging around.”

“They could have been there and just left. It’s you they’re after, not them,” Vent said.

“It still seems weird that we’re talking about the Melon Heads, knowing they’re real,” Chuck said.

“I liked them a lot better when they were just a stupid story,” Vent said.

Chuck took note that Mick said nothing.

“I think they took the rabbits, though,” Mick said.

“What rabbits?” Chuck asked.

“The day my mother came home, I was out hunting. I figured if the Melon Heads came around, I’d have something waiting for them. If they liked it, they’d leave me alone. Maybe leave all of us alone.” He took a drag on his cigarette, staring across the field. Chuck felt he was leaving something out. With Mick, if he didn’t want to tell you, there was no way to drag it out of him. You either had to wait or just forget about it.

“Maybe another animal got them,” Vent said.

Mick flicked the cigarette butt in a high arc toward the field. “Nah. I had them in this bag. The bag was fine. If an animal had gotten into it, it would have been all messed up. It might be a good idea to find something else for them. Something bigger.”

“Like what?” Vent asked.

“I don’t know. A deer, maybe.”

“You can’t take down a deer with a BB gun,” Chuck reminded him.

Mick turned to Vent. Vent put up his hands. “Oh no, I’m not lending you my dad’s rifle.”

“Come on, man.”

“I got away with taking it out once. If I get caught, I’m dead. No way.”

“I’m doing this to save our asses. You heard Dredd. They’ll find us in their own sweet time. Dredd’s not around anymore to feed them and whatever other shit he did for them. Someone needs to take his place. If not, we’ll always be in danger. What happens when we start to get comfortable? When we start to forget?”

“There’s not a chance I’m ever going to forget that night,” Chuck said.

Mick tapped his own temple. “But it won’t always be the first thing you think about. Sooner or later, your main concern is going to be filling out college applications. Your guard is gonna come down. That’s exactly when they’ll come.”

“What makes you the Melon Head expert?” Chuck said. “I saw them with you. They’re crazy. They’re more like animals than people. I don’t see them thinking that far ahead.”

“I don’t care what they look like or acted like that night. They’re still people. And people are born predators.”

“Sounded to me more like the Melon Heads picked Dredd to be their helper, not the other way around,” Chuck said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “Lord knows why or how they even think. You can’t just take Dredd’s place and keep them from getting us just because you want to.”

Peeling off the bark of a tree, Vent said, “Maybe we should be the ones hunting them.”

Mick was staring at Chuck as if he wanted to say more about his plan to take Dredd’s place. Instead, he turned to Vent and said, “Trust me, I thought of it. We don’t have enough man- or firepower. There’s too many of them.”

“And who knows how many we didn’t see?” Chuck said. The more they talked about the Melon Heads, the more uneasy he felt about being within the trees. He started walking toward the field. Mick and Vent followed. A couple of jocks were tossing a football down by the visitor goal post. Pretty soon the bell would ring and it would be back to struggling to pretend it was just another school day. What he wanted to do was go home, pack, and drive to the other side of the country, someplace where the Melon Heads could never find him. What was the point of doing well in school if he might not survive long enough to graduate?

“Fucking Dredd,” Mick said. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Yeah, run like hell,” Vent said. “Notice how he didn’t stick around.”

“He’s somewhere close. I just have a feeling.”

“His Spidey senses are tingling,” Vent said.

Chuck smiled for the first time in days. “We could use Spider-Man right about now.”

“You two are idiots,” Mick said. He turned back into the tree line.

“Hey, where are you going?” Chuck called after him.

“To do something. Better than taking notes and waiting to die.”

He disappeared into the gloom within the trees. They could still hear his heavy footsteps crunching through the underbrush.

“You think he’ll figure out how to get us out of this?” Vent asked as they walked back to the main building.

Chuck scratched at his beard and sighed. “Knowing Mick, he’ll accidentally find a way to get us killed sooner.”

* * *

Marnie rang for the nurse. She felt like she had to go to the bathroom. The urge to pee was downright painful. She thought she was going to lose her mind.

Helen, the nice day nurse with the freckles, came to her room a few minutes later. She looked at Marnie with pity. They all did once they knew what had happened to her. What had been taken from her. “You okay, hon? How’s the pain?”

“I have to pee real bad. You think you can help me to the bathroom?” She tried pushing herself up in the uncomfortable hospital bed, the over-starched sheets crinkling. Her head spun and she sagged back into the bed.

Helen tugged the sheet up to her chest. “You have a catheter, hon. It could be you’re feeling pain from somewhere else.”

Somewhere else. Marnie knew what that meant. The place they dare not speak of, unless it was in medical terms telling her the damage Harold Dunwoody – whom she hadn’t named – had wrought.

“I know what it feels like when your bladder is about to burst,” Marnie said. “If I don’t get to the bathroom, I’m going to wet the bed, and then you’ll have to change it. I don’t want you to have to do that.”

With a sweeter-than-candy smile, Helen said, “That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about. First, you can’t wet the bed when you have a catheter. And two, I’ve changed more dirty sheets than I can count. What’s one more?”

Marnie fidgeted. It felt like her pee had backed up to her molars. Any second now she was going to start crying, and she thought she’d run out of tears days ago.

“Then something’s wrong,” Marnie said.

“You know, a lot of people will still feel like they have to go. That’s perfectly normal.”

Marnie talked through gritted teeth. “It’s not that. Can you please help me get to the bathroom?”

The nurse gave her an okay-if-you-say-so look and lifted the sheet back. Marnie looked away as she tugged her hospital gown up to inspect the catheter. “Oh my,” Helen said.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“It looks like there’s a blockage in the catheter. Let me get a bedpan.”

No sooner had Helen walked out than Heidi strode in, her arms laden with magazines. She took one look at Marnie and dropped them on the wide windowsill. “Are you okay? I saw a nurse run out of your room.”

Marnie smiled through the pain. “I gotta pee so bad. She said my catheter is clogged or something.”

“Here, hold my hand.” Heidi cast a quick glance at the open door. “Ow!”

“Sorry.”

Nurse Helen came shuffling in with a metal bedpan and medical supplies sealed in a plastic bag. “We’re going to get you all fixed up in no time.” When she saw Heidi, she said, “I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“No, I want her to stay,” Marnie said. Her parents had come to see her when they first heard the news. They’d stayed for a couple of hours, conferring with the doctor and promising they’d be back tomorrow. That had been two days ago. Heidi’s parents had been nice enough to let her take a few days off from school, shuttling her between Milbury and New Haven every day. Heidi was really the only family she had up here.

“Fine. Whatever makes you comfortable.”

“This catheter sure doesn’t.”

Heidi politely looked away as Helen worked the catheter out. The moment it slipped free, a hard stream of urine tinged with blood burst from Marnie. Helen got the brunt of it, not the bedpan. When it was done, Marnie’s eyes rolled up. If this kind of ecstasy was what sex was really supposed to be like, she vowed to find someone who knew how to do it right.

Heidi couldn’t keep from giggling. She buried her head beside Marnie’s on the pillow when Helen, her uniform dripping, threw a highly agitated look their way. It took her a few moments to compose herself, and then a smile touched the corners of her own mouth.

“Wow, you really had to go,” she said. “Looks like I have my work cut out for me. Be right back.”

The moment she left, Marnie and Heidi broke out into hysterical laughter. They laughed until they cried, holding on to one another, ignoring the heady aroma of urine that filled the room.

Marnie thought she would never smile, much less laugh again. She wiped a tear from Heidi’s cheek. “Aren’t you glad I asked you to stay?”

“It’s the grossest, funniest thing I ever saw. Oh my god, her face!”

The laughter continued. It was the strangest yet most perfect distraction she could have received. It stopped her from fixating on the fact that Harold Dunwoody had forever robbed her of the ability to have children.