Chapter Twenty-Four

Mick drove Marnie’s stepfather’s van. She’d given him the keys wordlessly when they left Dredd’s house. She hadn’t spoken much since leaving Dredd’s childhood home. In fact, the only thing she’s said was, “Where did you get those?” when he took the silver handcuffs from his pocket and chained Dredd up to an exposed pipe in the kitchen. “Dwight was into some kinky shit,” he’d said, shivering at a slew of bad memories. “Now you know why I spent so much time out of that damn trailer.”

He had to find Chuck, Vent and Heidi. He’d called Vent’s house from a pay phone and hung up when his mother answered. He wasn’t in the mood to talk to any parents.

“You hungry?” he asked Marnie.

She turned to him with red, puffy eyes. She didn’t look good, but she looked a hell of a lot better than she had before she’d gone to the hospital. “Not really.”

“I’m starving. I’m gonna stop at a 7-Eleven. I’ll get you anything you want.”

“I don’t think I could eat a thing.”

“You have to eat. I can’t have you passing out from hunger on me.”

“If I pass out, it’ll be from something much worse.”

He turned down Main and stopped in front of the twenty-four-hour 7-Eleven. There was only one other person inside, an old guy buying lottery tickets, a coffee and a buttered roll. Mick’s pocket bulged with the cash he’d taken from Dwight’s wallet. It wasn’t like he was going to need it anymore. Not much to buy in the belly of a Melon Head. He’d stopped short of going through his mother’s purse.

He filled up two Big Gulp cups, one with Mountain Dew, Marnie’s favorite, the other with a little bit of every soda on tap. The combination was a sugar and caffeine bomb with an indescribable taste. Two beef and bean burritos got a couple of minutes in the microwave. While they were cooking, he grabbed a bag of chips, can of peanuts and a handful of Slim Jims. He dropped a ten on the counter and told the clerk to keep the change. That was a first.

Back in the van, he handed Marnie the Big Gulp.

“Thanks.”

She drew on the straw, literally gulping until half of it was gone. While she drank, he unwrapped a burrito and went to town. His stomach quivered at the first morsel of frozen, less-than-stellar Mexican fare. He came up for air long enough to take a sip of soda, opened a stick of beef jerky with his teeth and took a huge bite. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.

“That smells good,” Marnie said.

“I got one for you.”

She happily took it, savoring each bite rather than appearing to go for a competitive eating record. He was done with his before she got a quarter of the way through hers. He alternated between chips, jerky and soda while she finished. When Marnie burped, they both grinned, though there was no joy in it. The town was starting to come alive around them. The doors to the 7-Eleven opened and closed every minute or so. Cars were starting to fill the street.

“Now what?” she asked.

“You want to bring the van back before your old man reports it stolen?”

“He’s not my old man.” She said it as if he’d accused her of killing the Pope.

“I take that as a no?”

“Let’s go to Heidi’s.”

Mick started the van. “You mind if we swing by Chuck’s first?”

Marnie hesitated, and then said, “No. Probably a good idea.”

Chuck had always been the smartest and most level-headed of them. Right now, they needed a combination of Chuck’s brain and caution with Mick’s emotion and impulsivity.

When they got there, Mick said, “Keep your head down.”

He accelerated as they passed Chuck’s house. The place was a wreck and wreathed in crime-scene tape. Black smoke billowed in an almost mushroom cloud a few blocks behind it. Mick tried to take in as much as he could in as little time as it took to zoom past the house. “What the fuck happened here?”

Nothing good, that was for sure. The only positive thing was that Chuck’s shit-heap of a car wasn’t in the driveway. Maybe he’d gotten away from whatever had gone down. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who had been there.

“Go by my house,” Marnie said as she straightened up in her seat. She was worrying at a nub of a fingernail with her teeth.

“Why?”

“Just go.”

She exhaled so loudly when they cruised past her house that Mick wondered if she’d been holding her breath the entire drive. He reached over and grabbed her hand. It was such a foreign gesture for him that she stiffened at first.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, looking as if she were holding back tears. He understood. Even though her house and parents were equally shitty, she still didn’t want to lose them. Not like this. Mick wondered if Chuck and his parents were all right…or even alive.

“Heidi’s next?”

“Please.”

They had to backtrack to get to Heidi’s. Mick wished to hell there was an easier way to get in touch with Chuck. Not just Chuck, but all of them. He dreaded seeing what was next.

Thankfully, Heidi’s house was still intact, no police to be seen. He had just started to slow down when Marnie jumped out of the van and hobbled onto Heidi’s porch. The van rocked when he hit the brakes. He slammed the gearshift into park and ran after her. Her finger was about to press the doorbell when the door flew open. Heidi was crying and wasn’t watching where she was going. She crashed into Marnie. Mick was there in time to catch them both.

“What happened?” he said to Vent, who was hurrying out behind her. He looked like death. As they got closer to one another, Mick’s nose crinkled. He smelled like it, too.

“Heidi, come back here.” Her father’s voice boomed from somewhere deep in the house.

“Let’s go,” Heidi said, wiping at her nose with her sleeve and heading for the van.

Vent shared a look with Mick that said there was a ton to talk about. Marnie and Heidi had their arms interlocked as they went to the van. Mick got back in the driver’s seat. The girls went in the back, sitting on milk crates, while Vent took shotgun.

“Chuck,” Heidi said worriedly. “If he calls and I’m not there, he won’t know where to find us.”

“Where is Chuck?” Marnie asked.

“He said he was going back to get his car.”

Mick sagged with relief. At least Chuck was still with them. “What happened at his house?”

“They came for us,” Heidi said with steel in her voice. “They killed his parents right in front of him. He’s hurt pretty bad, too. We have to find him.”

That was easier said than done. For all Mick knew, they could be driving circles around one another, never intersecting.

While the girls talked in hushed voices with a lot of pausing to sniff back tears, Mick asked Vent, “How bad was it?”

His friend stared straight ahead with haunted eyes. “We had to kill two of them.”

“Shit. You and Heidi?”

“And Chuck. There was so much blood.” Mick got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about what spilled from the dead Melon Heads. “We’re all fucked, man. We’re all fucked.”

Mick had to stomp on the brakes to miss hitting a cat that darted out from between two parked cars. “At least it wasn’t black,” he half joked. They were way past bad luck via black cats or walking under ladders.

He checked all of their normal hang-out places. Neither Chuck nor his car were anywhere to be seen. The morning rush had given way to lunchtime. By listening in on Heidi’s conversation with Marnie, he learned that she and Vent had gone to her parents and told them blow by blow what had happened at Chuck’s. Mick wished he’d been there to help them. It didn’t surprise him that her parents didn’t believe a word of it. When the TV news showed a reporter standing outside Chuck’s house, they got mad, asking her what really happened. They’d been worried sick all night and accusing her of getting high with Vent and making this story up to avoid being punished. They asked her what kind of person used a tragedy to cover up their own actions. Heidi had screamed and cried to no avail. They asked her if she was still high and threatened to call the cops on Vent for ‘kidnapping’ their daughter. Heidi had begged them to believe her, because their lives depended on it. Nothing worked, and when her father picked up the phone to call the police, they ran out of the house and into Marnie and Mick.

“You talk to your parents yet?” Mick asked Vent.

“Nope. I’m not even close to ready to face them now. They’re going to kill me.”

“Better them than the Melon Heads.”

Mick’s frustration grew with every block he drove without seeing Chuck. At this rate, it would be nightfall before they even caught a glimpse of the gentle giant. There was something else to worry about. Odds are, Marnie’s stepfather had reported the van stolen. They had to keep an eye out for cops. The one shred of luck on their side was that the crime scene at Chuck’s seemed to have marshaled the small town’s even smaller police force. They didn’t see a single car at a speed trap.

At two, Mick had to get some gas. After that, he went to the McDonald’s drive-thru and ordered Big Macs, fries and Cokes for everyone. Marnie and Heidi ate in relative silence while he drove. His jeans were splattered with salmon-colored special sauce in no time. Two hours later, his foot was leaning on the accelerator pretty hard. Everyone in the van but him was asleep. He turned hard down Willow Avenue and swerved hard right to miss an oncoming car. The jolt woke everyone up. Mick stopped the car and rolled down his window, cursing, “Watch where the hell you’re going, asshole!”

A pale and bedraggled Chuck looked across the road at him, his car belching black smoke as it idled. “Nice to see you, too.”