Chapter Seven

The Graveyard

Soon, I got tired of waiting and walked over to the van, peeking cautiously inside; Andy came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. "Poor Kemper, I mean, he ain't ever gonna get the stink out of this van." He remarked.

"Do you think we should try and clean it for him?" I asked. It just seemed like the right thing to do, after he had picked me up when I was hitching and was driving everyone to Dallas.

Morgan raised an eyebrow. "Be my guest." He grumbled. I glared at him and stepped into the van; the smell of the corpse still hung heavy inside and it slammed into my face as soon as I got inside. I backed up quickly, stepping out of the van and hurrying away, feeling like I was going to throw up again; luckily, there was nothing left to throw up and all I did was dry heave.

"Are you all right?" I hadn't noticed Erin arrive and her voice startled me. I looked up at her, holding my arms across my stomach, still bent over.

"It's too much, I'm gonna be sick." I groaned, but slowly the nausea passed and I sighed. I sat down on the bumper of the van and leaned against the back, shutting my eyes.

Erin looked around, looking confused. "Well, the sheriff's going to be here in about thirty minutes."

Now I was confused; hadn't Erin been the one to call Hoyt and send him up here in the first place? Something was just not right. "The sheriff already came." Andy told her.

"He took the body." I added. Erin peeked inside the van as though checking just to make sure.

Erin seemed somewhat contented with this news; she wanted to get out of here just as much as the rest of us did. "Great, so...where's Kemper?" She asked, looking around again.

"I thought he was with you." Andy said, raising an eyebrow. Had she and Kemper had another lover's quarrel and had Kemper left her all alone? It sure seemed that way.

Erin frowned, looking more worried now then upset. "No. He just disappeared; I figured he had come back here with you guys."

I sighed. Great, now we had another reason to stick around this hell-hole even longer. "Well, where could he have gone?" I questioned. There weren't a whole lot of places he could have gone, especially not with us seeing him.

"I don't know." Erin pursed her lips worriedly. "This isn't like him."

Suddenly, a noise sliced through the relative silence around us, a high pitched, continuously blaring sound. I jumped, startled, and stood up, walking over to the others. "What the hell is that?" Andy questioned.

"It could be Kemper." Erin pointed out, though it was highly doubtful. And I'm sure that she knew that too, put that didn't keep her from hoping. Something had happened to Kemper, we all knew that and I was certain it wasn't something pleasant.

Andy picked up a tire iron and started in the direction of the sound; I hurried after him with Erin in tow. Morgan grumbled something and then headed after us as well. Halfway to the copse of woods that the sound seemed to be emanating from, I realized that the noise was a car horn, being constantly pushed so that it continued to sound.

Andy batted at leafy tree branch and held it aside so that Erin and I didn't get bushwhacked; however, he didn't give Morgan any such courtesy and the branch whacked him in the face. "Andy, you asshole." Morgan grumbled as he retrieved his glasses from where they had been knocked to the ground.

The woods around us were dense, thick with trees, bushes and other foliage, and were much deeper then I had first thought at first glance. My too large cowboy boots twisted up in some of the gnarled roots and I crashed to the ground, a stick jabbing into my side. I felt tears prick my eyes but I blinked them away; I was sick and tired of falling every damn second.

Morgan chuckled. "Gee, Pepper, I think you'd better lay off the pot for a while." He remarked.

I glared at him as I slowly got to my feet, my side smarting where the stick had poked it. Because my halter top had no back, the stick had stabbed right into my skin and drop of blood were starting to drip from the scratch. I looked away. "It's these damn cowboy boots." I informed him. "They're hard to walk in." That only made Morgan laugh even more.

Erin shot him a look and said, "Can we just find Kemper and get the hell out of here?" Morgan muttered something that I couldn't hear but it seemed to appease Erin and we set off again. Andy took my hand and we walked side by side, with me staring down at my feet the entire time to make sure that I wasn't going to trip over anything again. When I had bought the boots -because the people I had gone down to Mexico with had gotten stoned one night and thought it would be the funniest thing in the world to throw my shoes into a very nasty canal- I hadn't really cared that they were too big because I hadn't been planning on hiking through the woods. Next time I bought a pair of shoes, I would consider anything I could possibly be doing later in the day.

The woods finally came to an end, spreading out into a wide field, with a lone tree; but the tree wasn't the only thing in the field. Cars of all shapes, sizes and models were spread across the open space, rusting and falling part, all missing their tires, and some missing more then that.

"Dude...what the hell?" Morgan muttered, looking out at all the cars.

Seeing the abandoned vehicles had sent a chill running along my spine. Where were all the people they had belonged to?

Andy headed toward the car where the sound was coming from; a stick had been positioned to keep the horn sounding and he wrenched it loose, tossing it aside. Silence fell across the field again and it was almost eerie.

Morgan poked around the cars, peering into the busted grille of a van that looked almost just like Kemper's. "This place is weird." I whispered to Erin, who nodded in agreement. "I don't think Kemper's here."

"Why are all of these cars here?" Erin muttered, ignoring what I had said about Kemper. I shrugged, studying them again; it was even stranger that they were all missing tires. I remembered the sign we had passed earlier, the one that had lead to the gas station, advertising BBQ and tires. Maybe it was just some weird coincidence.

Morgan stuck his hand into the grille -what a dumbass- and suddenly, cried out, slamming against the hood of the car. "Help!" He cried. Something inside of that car had grabbed hold of him.

"Morgan!" I shouted, and Erin leapt forward to help him. Before she could do anything, however, Morgan stopped struggling and turned to look at us with a huge smile on his face. Erin wrinkled her face in disgust and whacked Morgan on the shoulder.

"That was not funny." I snapped and Andy looked like he wanted to hit him with the tire iron.

Morgan continued to grin and I saw that he held something in his hands: a glass jar, filled with some sort of amber colored fluid and something else floating inside. "What is that?" I questioned, leaning closer to get a better look.

The other objects inside were photographs, glued together so that they were back to back. My eyes went wide as I realized who the photos were of. "Is that...the girl from our van?" I questioned tentatively.

One picture was just of the girl, smiling and happy, the complete opposite of the way she had seemed in the van earlier today. On the back side was a picture of the girl and her entire family, a little brother and sister, and parents. "And her family." Erin whispered and Morgan set the jar aside.

"What were they all doing here?" I questioned. "And what happened to them?" Though I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that one.

Morgan frowned. "They were probably looking for the sheriff." He remarked. His words seem to ring true; what if they had been looking for the sheriff but they hadn't come out of the encounter as well as we had.

Andy sighed and bent down, studying something in the ground; he picked the object up and I squinted my eyes to see what he held. He realized what the object was as soon as I did and tossed it back onto the ground with disgust. "That's somebody's fucking teeth isn't!" I cried, backing up and stumbling into Erin. We both went crashing to the ground and I found myself staring beneath one of the cars; looking right back at me was a round head with glassy eyes. I had already screamed and leapt to my feet again before I realized the head belonged to a doll, not a child.

"That's it, I'm getting the hell out of here! I happen to like my teeth right where they are." I looked at the others to see if they would follow. Erin looked over at me and I knew she was thinking about Kemper. "Find your goddamn boyfriend, Erin, it's time to go."

Erin sighed. "I know he's in that house where we called the sheriff." She muttered, more to herself then to anyone else. Andy nodded and picked up the tire iron again; they started walking away from the collection of cars.

"Where are you going?" I questioned, looking at Andy with wide eyes. He wasn't just going to leave was he?

"To find him." Erin answered, looking at me like I was stupid.

Morgan crossed his arms over his chest. "Where are the keys of the van?" He questioned and Erin pulled them out of the pocket of her jeans. He reached for them and she snatched them out his reach.

I narrowed my eyes; she was just going to leave us with a useless van. What if something came along, whatever had killed that poor girl's family, and we had no way of escaping? "Well, who put you in charge?" I asked, trying to sound as tough as I could. I liked Erin and I didn't particularly want to fight with her.

Erin sighed. "If you guys want to take off, that's fine but I am not leaving without him." She said and put the keys back in her pocket.

I looked at Andy, who met my stare but didn't say anything. "Maybe you shouldn't go." I said to him.

"Don't worry, Pepper, we're just going to find Kemp and then we're going to get the hell out of here." Andy assured me. "Erin and I will be back before you know it."

I wasn't so sure. "Just, be careful." I whispered, so low that I wasn't even sure that he heard what I had said. Andy just smiled and headed off after Erin. I watched them until they were too far away to really see anymore.

Great, now I was all alone with Morgan. I looked over at him and he offered me a crooked smile that suggested that some of the pot he had been smoking earlier was still circulating through his system. Without another word to him, I started back the way we had come, heading back toward the van. Walking through the woods was much better then staying in that car graveyard with only Morgan for company.

Anything was better then Morgan's company.