Chapter 5
South of Carlsbad in southeastern New Mexico on a stretch of near-forgotten backroad, a collection of trailer houses hunkered on the desert floor, anchored to the ground by rust. The youngest of them was at least twenty years old, and all had taken on the color of the earth. A tomato-red Camaro sat alongside them, paint job new and shiny and glinting in the thin winter sunlight, but with a frame already gashed and dented by the carelessness of its current owners.
Rita and her entourage pulled into the yard in a hail of dust, spilling from their cars, laughing, happy to be home. One of the trailer doors opened and a young woman stepped out and approached the group solemnly as they cavorted. "Where've you been?" she asked Rita in a low voice. "You said you'd only be gone a couple of days, and the electric bill's due."
Rita squealed triumphantly and pulled a dull-eyed little boy forward. "Oh, SHIT, we had so much fun! We're goin' to Mexico next, I swear to God. An' see what I found; this is Bobby. He's gonna live with us!" She aimed the boy at one of the trailers and gave him a little push. "Go on in and git you sumpin' to eat." "Bobby" walked mechanically to the metal building without uttering a sound.
The young woman stared at Rita, flabbergasted. "Where'd you get him? You can't just kidnap a kid!"
"I didn't, we found him when the moon was full. He's one of us! He ran away from his old home, and now he's ours. God, El, don't be such an asshole. Look, I brought a Christmas tree, too!" Filling her arms with bundles, she brushed past the girl, who stared after her helplessly.
If it was possible, the trailer was even smellier than the car. Its living room had a big slippery couch and a big TV and a bunch of boxes, and that was all. Jordy sat down on the couch and tried to make himself invisible. He could see into a bedroom; there was a mattress on the floor and piles and piles of clothes. He wondered if he would have to sleep there.
MamaRita and Jeep and Richard and Toni and Barry went in and out of the trailer. Someone turned on the TV, and someone else started fiddling around in the kitchen. The girl from the other trailer came inside and watched them all, not saying anything. She looked a little like Rita, but she wasn't as old, and her boobs and her bottom weren't as big as Rita's (Rita's a big hog and I wish she'd explode) and she didn't have titty-pink lipstick smeared all over her mouth like Rita and Toni always did. She stood with her arms crossed tight, and they stayed crossed when she walked over to him.
"Hi." She didn't smile, but she sounded friendly. Her forehead looked worried. "Where you from?"
"Shut up," Jeep told her. "Quit fuckin' with him."
"I was just-"
Jeep grabbed her elbow and squeezed it hard. "Said shut UP." The girl looked mad and scared and clamped her mouth shut, and Jordy could guess what she was thinking.
I hate him too, New Girl. I wish I was big enough to tie him up and call the police right in front of him, and he'd have to just sit there and watch me do it.
Jeep sat down on the other end of the couch and began flipping channels on the TV, and the new girl went to help in the kitchen. From the corner of his eye Jordy could see that she was still looking at him.
"Hey. It's me. I'm back in Roswell. How are things there?...Yeah...I'm gonna try south tomorrow; see if I can pick up anything...I will; you take care, too. Merry Christmas."
Oz hung up the payphone receiver and crossed the convenience store parking lot to his car. It was early afternoon now, Christmas Day, and already the sun was slipping, laying out long thin shadows as it dropped toward the horizon. Oz barely took notice of the holiday, but the celestial events weighed heavily on his mind.
Tonight was the first full moon.
The motels along the route out of Roswell looked tempting - the evening air would be chilly and he was weary to the point of exhaustion - but he couldn't risk being near people tonight, not when the emotional stress of losing Jordy might weaken his control. He drove for miles, searching for a suitable location. When he found it, an isolated area off a pig trail of a road with a lump of hill to serve as a screen, he parked the car and slid over into the passenger seat. He opened the door on that side, just a crack, so that the seal maintained contact (already he could feel the temperature dropping) but also so that the door would swing open easily should something heavy and frenzied bump against it. Earlier in the day he had considered the merits of locking himself up in the car, leaving the keys and some clothes outside where they wouldn't be lost or damaged if the change came. The car's interior would probably be destroyed, though, including essentials like the gearshift and steering wheel, and he doubted that the windowglass would be strong enough to contain him anyway. He also mulled over the tranquilizers, but past experiments had revealed that the after-effects made him dopey and useless for days. (Jordy'd begun to have that problem with them, too, Uncle Ken had reported in September, adding with grim humor, "Our little boy's growing up.")
Oz removed the lid from the Styrofoam ice chest in the back seat, allowing easy access to the butcher's bones and pounds of uncooked hamburger inside. He reached overhead and switched off the dome light to prevent the car's battery from draining. Then as the last of the sun's rays faded he reclined his seat, pulled a couple of blankets over himself, and began the meditation process by which the condition of Lycanthropy could sometimes be brought to bay.
It was going to be a hella long night.
Elsie D's night began as she watched her older half-sister, her brother-in-law, his three friends, and the little boy drop to their knees in the front yard.
The adults had been drinking and doping since late yesterday, and Rita in her semi-stoned state had forgotten to do anything more than set the plastic tree up and play with the buttons on the string of chaser lights, but Bobby hadn't seemed interested in Christmas, anyway. That came as a relief to Elsie D, because she was certain that the boy was not there of his own accord, and it would have been even worse if he'd been expecting Santa Claus to visit.
Santa hadn't arrived, but the moon had, full and fat, and Elsie sat on the bathroom countertop and watched through a tiny window as the six people gasped and lolled their heads and dug their fingers into the soil. Their joints creaked audibly, bones and tendons stretching, hair follicles kicking into overdrive. One of the trailers had been emptied once upon a time and holes drilled through the floor, the better to attach chains to the axles and shackle us up, my dear, but the wolves had long since stopped worrying about corralling themselves. ("We just RUN, El, that's all; there's nothin' wrong with running. God, what do you think we do, chase people down the street and eat them? We're in the middle of fuckin' NOWHERE; where would we even FIND anyone to chase?") Elsie D had sat this way in some fashion every month for as long as she could remember, watching the change take place, and every month she grew a little more tired and sick at heart. When everyone outside had galloped off into the darkness, she searched the trailers for phones and car keys, but Jeep had hidden both.
On December 27th Oz picked up the trail again. It lead south, as he suspected it would, and on a road outside of Carlsbad he caught Jordy's scent full and strong. It seemed to be everywhere, zigzagging all over the countryside, but there was no automobile exhaust smell with it and Oz had a good idea that his cousin had been on foot. The scent of the others was there, too; he hoped to God that Jordy hadn't been pursuing them. In the distance he could make out a cluster of mobile homes, and he drove toward them, dreading the carnage that he might find there.
He drew a breath of relief when he spotted people moving about between the houses - and then he saw that one of them was Jordy.
With very great effort he kept his car at the same speed, in the same direction, staring straight ahead as though his business lay well up the road. It was almost twenty minutes before he found a turnoff that took him back to town.
Richard burst into Rita's trailer so suddenly that Elsie D dropped the glass she was rinsing, shattering it in the sink. He'd been working on one of the car engines and his face and hands were smeared with Quaker State motor oil. "Cops comin' up the road. Shit."
"Noooooooo!" Rita wailed. She ran into one of the bedrooms and snatched up Jordy with surprising strength, and he instinctively began to struggle. "We got to hide, Baby, we got to hide, we got to hide, we got to hide," Rita babbled, her eyes bright with panic.
Richard caught Jordy's face in his hand. "Don't you make a sound, goddamnit," he hissed. He wheeled and grabbed at the air behind him and shouted, "ELSIE!" but the girl had already dodged him and shot out the front door, and was standing in the yard when the two law enforcement vehicles pulled up.
From the back seat of one of the cruisers, Oz sized up the houses' visible occupants: tall, scrawny, fortyish guy trying desperately to look like a Doobie Brother; shorter guy, younger, beefier, but somehow not as dangerous-looking as the scrawny one; thin young woman with a doleful face; older woman who'd apparently eroded her looks with hard partying and tried to trowel them back on with cosmetics.
The women looked scared. The men looked defiant. There was no sign of Jordy.
" 'Afternoon. We're from the sheriff's department," the lead officer announced as he approached them. "We've received a report that a missing child might have been spotted near here. Do you mind if we look around?"
The scrawny man shrugged. "Naw; go ahead."
"You have any children living here, sir?"
"Naw."
"Mind if we look inside the house?"
Another shrug. "Okay."
The officers fanned out, taking names, searching the cars and buildings. A knot of alarm began to grow in the pit of Oz's stomach. They've stashed him someplace. Did they kill him? I don't smell any blood; did they choke him to death to keep him quiet?
One by one the officers returned, shaking their heads at the sheriff, empty-handed. They glanced back at Oz with "we've done all we can, sir" expressions. The sheriff gave the suspects another appraising sweep, and then his body stiffened almost imperceptibly. Standing a step or two behind the others, the younger woman was tipping her head and cutting her eyes ever so slightly in the direction of the plastic skirting panels surrounding the underside of one of the trailers. There, her face told them, You need to look under there.
The sheriff clicked his flashlight back on and walked quietly around to the trailer's back door. There was a scraping sound of plastic being torn back, and then a screech of despair and a feminine voice howling, "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, he's MIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!"
The older woman and two men in the front yard made as if to bolt, and Oz grabbed the door handle. He was on the verge of leaping from the car and pouncing on the nearest suspect (take out the scrawny guy; if he's down the others will give up) when the deputies drew their guns and their handcuffs and convinced the three to change their minds. A man crawled out from under the trailer and lay on the ground obediently, but yowls and sobs continued to erupt from the hidden woman. The younger girl bit her lip, agonized, and called out, "For God's sake, Rita, let him go!"
A panel on the front side of the trailer suddenly bulged outward, and a child's hands popped out from under it and scrabbled frantically for a hold. Oz flung the car door open and hurled himself at the trailer. He got the panel off with one quick yank, exposing a small brown head and flailing arms. Jordy looked up at him and screamed. Something underneath the trailer began to drag him backward, and he screamed again. Oz hooked his arms around the boy's chest and gave another powerful yank, and pulled into view both his cousin and the lunatic clinging to his legs.
It took all four of the officers to peel Rita's hands from him.
When he was finally pried loose, Jordy lurched to his feet and began to run toward the road, as he'd imagined doing for weeks now: sneaking away while they weren't looking; running and running and running and running until he'd run all the way home. He made it as far as the end of the driveway.
He's so small. He's still just a baby. Man, he can run like a rabbit! Oz hurried down the drive after the little boy and called out to him, "Jordan!"
Jordy staggered a few steps more, on leaden, aimless feet. He turned at the familiar voice, recognized the face (DANNYDANNYDANNY); made a freakish inhuman noise in his throat and then he was scooped up into the safe, wiry arms of his older cousin. He wrapped his arms and legs around him like a human leech and mashed his face into his shoulder.
The little guy was filthy, sticky with dirt and reeking of pot and piss and shit and garbage and unwashed body.
Oz thought it was the sweetest smell in the world.