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CHAPTER 1

TAKE IT AS IT COMES

Tom Piccirilli

Rain slashing down, tires groaning hideously, the eighteen-wheeler pulled left at the bottom of the grade, hitting the flooded floor of the interstate doing seventy. The driver almost jackknifed, truck shimmying and aimed for the curved exit ramp that would roll him straight over LOUIE'S LAST EATS neon sign. Instead the driver regained control, straightened out and kept his momentum, never even hitting his brakes as he continued into the descended night.

"Jesus," Cole muttered, "crazy bastard must've been asleep."

Beth nodded without looking. Red lights reflected across the plate-glass window where she sat hunched over her cup of coffee. Out here, with nothing but I-90's asphalt leading twelve hundred miles back to New York, you saw murder on the road. Foreign jobs smashed out on the median, road kill everywhere.

Twelve hours ago they'd seen a flipped horse trailer, two mutilated nags screaming on the divide. "Are we safe yet?" she asked.

He reached and took her hand. "It's okay. We'll stay in town tonight and get an early jump in the morning."

The teenage waitress came around and refilled Beth's coffee, leaning forward silently but smiling as if she'd said something funny. Cole checked his watch, then opened the menu again.

"There's not much we're gonna make now," the girl said. "We usually close around two-thirty or three."

"Can't I even get a burger?" Cole asked warmly, hitching the lilt in his voice up a couple notches.

"I'll check," the girl said, letting her gaze wander over his lean Soloflex body. He didn't bother indulging her with an equally flirtatious look. She threw her chest out a bit farther, tightened her ass a few inches, going for the luscious shape. He figured she'd start sagging before she hit twenty-five, no bra, jeans too tight, trying hard to impress. She returned and said, "It's okay, Solly hasn't shut down the grill yet."

"Solly? Where's Louie?"

The girl grinned and said, "Louie's dead," as if it were the punch line to a joke he'd heard a thousand times. He looked at Beth and thought, We're on the border. Nebraska or Iowa? Where in the hell are we? Is she ever going to trust me?

The only other patrons of Louie's were seated in the back stall: two farmers, apparently father and son. The man was short and brawny, with a crew cut. The boy was no more than fifteen, but colossal, at least six-six, blubbering in his overalls and talking like Baby Huey, his words lost in his sobbing. Cole was thinking that everything he'd ever heard about Iowa farmers was true.

He did his damnedest to give Beth a reassuring gaze. Talking didn't help, twelve hundred miles did nothing. "At this rate, we'll be in Seattle tomorrow night,"

Beth started to say something but the words didn't come. She cleared her throat. "It's just that ..."

"You don't have to explain. We're gonna make it, we'll start a new life." He sounded so cliché he couldn't help wincing.

The burger came undercooked, gray and running; Solly the cook must be in a hurry to get home, Cole thought, took two bites and gave up. Beth eyed his plate, and he shoved it at her. What did that bastard husband of hers do? What did Danford feed her?

The farmers were buzzing, the giant boy keening as deeply as an infant. People had been making fun of him again, he said. His father reached out to put a hand on his son's shoulder, but Baby Huey was too large. The farmer patted the boy on the arm.

Cole was so tired he didn't quite feel it anymore. He'd been driving for twenty hours, and up until a few minutes ago had wanted nothing more than to eat and sleep. Seeing Louie'd changed his mind: now Cole wanted to have a quickie in the backseat, just to get off, and then ride straight into Seattle. Beth ate the burger, eyes shadowed, her features marred with the deep lines he hoped the North woods could help fade a little. She hadn't slept either, and looked weaker than when she'd thrown her suitcase in his trunk and told him to floor it over the Washington Bridge.

The door chimes rang as the farmer's son blew his nose, completely missing his napkin.

Cole glanced up and saw Danford smiling and thought, Aw, fuck! No time to move, no time to warn Beth as Danford came on, left hand in the pocket of his London Fog raincoat, right hand close to his side and holding the snub-nose .38 Beth feared would find her. Good Christ, how had he followed?

Staring out the window at the parking lot, Beth sighed once, scratching her chin, then sat up as she spotted Danford's Coup de Ville. Her eyes bulged. "Cole?" she said. "Oh my God, we —"

Danford approached, the smile stapled to his pale, gaunt face. Cole had only seen Ronald Danford twice, from a distance, both times smiling like this, joyously righteous. White tufts of hair sprawled over his ears, his bald pate laced with crawling veins like centipedes. Cole knew he should have killed Danford at the beginning, done it himself or hired somebody out; it was stupid to run. Cut his throat, poisoned him, anything but run.

Cole took the initiative, there was nothing else to do. "Fancy meeting you here, Ronnie," he said.

Danford shot him through the left knee.

Cole's shrieks brought the waitress and Solly running out from the kitchen. The farmer jumped from the booth; the boy didn't turn to look, but blew his nose again. Beth screamed but quit abruptly, as if understanding the uselessness of it.

Danford was moving to sit at the table. He stopped short and watched Cole writhing on the floor, trying to grip his shattered knee but unable to touch the exploded bone, the torn cartilage hanging. Blood spattered back and forth as he rolled.

"You've just taken your first step toward redemption, Mr. Winter," Danford said. Then he shot Cole through the other knee, confirming that he would never, in fact, take another step again.

Swimming in darkness, hearing Beth's pleas from a great distance, Cole rose twice toward the light and pain, but let the current take him back down. The third time, he broke the surface and managed to stay awake even though his brain was burning and his blood had already leaked into a horrifyingly large pool around him.

He took it all in, passed out once more but came immediately awake: Danford had handcuffed Beth spread-eagle across the table, her arms and legs bent far under her. She struggled without struggling, gently tugging at the shackles as they clinked metal on metal. He'd taken her panties but let her keep the skirt, opened her blouse and unsnapped the bra, but left them clinging and hanging from her shoulders, the old and fresh scars on her body dappled with sweat.

"Rejoining us, Mr. Winter?" Danford said. "Good. Bear witness."

"Ronnie," she begged, "don't, please." Her voice was nearly gone now, barely a frightened whisper. Cole wanted to tell her not to say anything more, she was only exciting her husband.

"You've already broken your promises to me, my dear," Danford replied sweetly, brushing her cheek with the .38.

She swallowed, and Cole thought he could see how she was — almost — relieved the moment had finally come, having waited for it a thousand miles, dreading his rage, hating his shining teeth, but waiting all the same, like an expectant mother. "I'm sorry, oh God, Ronnie, I'll ... I'll do whatever you want ..."

"Yes?"

"... just please ..."

"Mm-hmm? You'll what?"

She slipped back into the role of victim more easily than Cole would have thought possible; as simple as putting on broken-in, comfortable shoes. The brown, puckered scars along her ribs seemed to lengthen in anticipation. "I'll be a good girl. Just don't hurt me. I'll do anything. I'll be your good girl again."

"You fail to sway me, Bethany."

Nothing would, Cole thought; Danford not only had the sluice gates of his sadism open, but he was on the side of right. Unfaithful wife caught red-handed with her lover, on the run. Danford had twelve hundred miles of driving behind him to hone his hate through the windshield's glare, everything in his favor.

Cole whimpered and gnashed his teeth. The waitress came over with dish towels while Danford eyed her closely. The girl took quick, haphazard steps, afraid he'd put a bullet in her back. She attended to Cole's legs as well as she could, unable to press down on the mangled kneecaps without the agony rising in him like a wild animal clawing. Shivering uncontrollably, he threw up and fell over in it, icy sweat covering him.

Danford leaned back against the table and lit a cigarette, then directed the smoke out his nostrils and down over his wife. The more recent burn scars on Beth's breasts glistened.

"No, Ronnie," she said.

"I wouldn't dream of hurting you, Bethany." He added a low laugh, for effect, Cole thought — how he must've been rehearsing each dark mile, talking to himself the whole ride, chasing. How did he know they would come this way? Had he been behind them, almost in eyeshot, the entire time?

Solly looked like his own gray hamburger, greasy, half formed. He didn't know what the shooting was about and didn't care much, you could see it in his face. So long as he didn't get hurt and no real damage was done to his place, he wouldn't think twice about making a play or calling the police. The farmer, though, was torn, standing and boiling inside, unable to move in any direction because it would mean leaving his son behind. The boy did not understand what was going on. Traces of a frown flickered across his prominent brow. His head was in a perpetual tilt, eyes blank.

"You." Danford pointed to the idiot boy. "Young fellow, come here."

"Now, listen, mister —" the farmer said.

Casually, Danford shifted the gun to the farmer's chest. Solly grew agitated, realizing he was no longer completely safe. Danford raised his eyebrows in a friendly manner and cooed softly, as though communicating with a dog. He motioned with his hands. "Come come, boy. It's all right. Come stand by me."

The boy held onto his napkin, looked up at his father and blinked heavily. "Pa ..."

"Come come," Danford urged. Uncertain, the boy raised himself partway, still seeking a command from his father.

The farmer's knuckles crackled as his fists tightened. "Leave my son alone."

"Yes," Danford said. "Agreed. But if you don't allow him to come stand by me, I will shoot the retard through his somewhat misshapen head." He drew on his cigarette until the ash glowed, then waved it over his wife's breasts for a moment before driving it down against her left nipple. Beth wailed and wriggled, skin sizzling. The waitress fell back beside Cole and moaned, mopping the blood, afraid to look, afraid not to look.

"Once again, and for the last time," Danford said kindly. "Come here, my young man." The farmer gestured for his son to continue standing, and the boy rose to his full height and walked halfway toward them. "Yes, that's it. Here, by my side." The farmer followed his son, cautiously.

"Don't hurt him," the farmer said.

Danford made a quieting gesture. "I'm doing him a favor. I suspect your son's still a virgin. True? Yes, of course. Then, I believe, he ought to take her. In all likelihood he'll never find another woman quite as ... open to him."

"Pa, the lady's on the table." The boy grimaced. "Why's the lady on the table?"

"Don't be embarrassed," Danford said, arm outstretched, waiting to take the boy in under the wing. "My, what a big boy you are. You'll do quite nicely."

"Cole!" Beth wailed, and thankfully didn't add help me, as his mangled legs lay skewed.

His blood poured. "Baby ..."

Lips skinned back in a wolfish leer, the farmer growled. Cole damned Solly for hiding at the edge of the counter; if only he'd come out, just to pretend to look, distract Danford for a half second, the farmer would know what to do. Fat beads of sweat blinded him. He moved his hand and tapped the waitress's leg; she made a yeep sound, doing everything she could to haul in her tits now. Her nipples were hard.

The farmer inched forward. Danford talked like they were discussing a ball game over a beer. "Think about it. I'll shoot you through the heart and then where will your son be? Without a father, having to fend for himself in a cruel world that cares little enough for its handicapped."

"Pa ...?"

Front teeth clamped over his bottom lip, the farmer drew blood. "Listen, mister. I got no quarrel with you, really I don't. Far as I see it, you got a perfect right to shoot your wife and this man over here, and bury 'em both in the deep woods. If I was in your shoes, I'd put my woman out of my misery for sure. I ain't about to argue about that. But this here is my boy, and there ain't no reason for him —"

Danford had been nodding along, listening and agreeing, tufts of hair out at wacky angles. "There's a perfect reason," he interrupted, "for your son to aid me in my vendetta. Yes. Justice. Poetic justice. Surely you would not deny me that? Also because it will hurt her, I think. And right now, I wish more than anything else to hurt and humiliate her. Your son will help me accomplish this, I believe. Perhaps not. We shall see."

The farmer bit his tongue, wanting to bite anything, looking out the window at the interstate, at the occasional headlights skimming by in the rain. "Mister, I'll ... I'll do it. Please, let me do it instead. I'll do what you want." He looked twice as insane as Danford did, like he was ready to swallow glass, tear out his eyes, anything but be forced to deal with this, and in dealing with it, watch his son do this thing. Cole cursed and struggled to crawl, sending lightning bolts of pain shearing through his body as he watched the farmer unzip his fly, drop his pants, and shrug out of his shorts.

Danford sighed. "Inadequate. Sorry, friend, God chose not to bless us. Let's see the boy. Tell me no again and he dies."

Now they were down to it. Beth whispered, calmly, like a lover and wife, "Ronnie, no. No, not him. Leave him alone. Leave them all alone. Let Cole go. You. You come and do it. Come on." And then, to Cole's surprise, she laughed. "Just you and your raisin-sized prick."

That's all it took; Danford turned to her and slashed down at her with the butt of the gun, ripping her across her belly. Cole loved her more at that moment than ever, thinking, Perfect timing. Good girl. The farmer had his chance; Solly, the waitress, even the lumbering boy who could have torn Danford's bald head from his neck and shoved it up his ass for him. Cole shouted, "Now!"

The farmer still had his shorts down and couldn't move fast enough in the seconds he had. Hesitation halted him as he stooped to pull up his pants. Solly stood looking tough and uncertain of who he should fight, where he should be standing, if he'd be allowed to fuck Beth next. The boy looked at the wound on Beth's belly and approached another step.

Danford wheeled back, smiling at Cole, who drove his fists against the floor and choked on his cry. Good Christ, you bunch of hee-haw shit-kicking inbred fucks!

"Yes, young man," Danford said, "don't be embarrassed. She's told me what a handsome lad she thinks you are." Danford stroked Beth's wet thighs in small, slow circles, working his fingers up into her pubic thatch, opening her lips wider, wider, until she yelped, and still wider. "Let's see if you've inherited your father's curse."

"Pa ...?"

"Drop your pants, Harney," the farmer said.

"Pa, what's he doin'? The lady's bleedin' ..."

"Do as I say, Harney."

The boy had trouble with his belt at first, but his father helped him. Harney dropped his pants. He wore stained boxer shorts, and his hard-on jutted free from the hole.

"A horse cock!" Danford said, laughing. "My my. What a waste up to this point, eh? But not so tonight." Danford took Harney by the hand and led him to Beth, positioning the idiot boy in front of her, the tip of his erection nearly inserted already. Danford went behind Harney and gave him a powerful shove, driving the boy's hard-on viciously deep into Beth. She screeched. A puzzled smile broke on the boy's face, his tilted head tilting even farther. He looked around as though not entirely connected to the pleasure he was feeling; he grunted and leaned forward, aware of her now, bending, Beth's blood smearing his chin. He rode her harder, trying to gain purchase by yanking her legs up. Shackled as she was, her knees and elbows popped and she screamed again, sobbing, the boy's drool striking her face. She shook her head wildly.

Danford laughed. "Mr. Winter, are you watching?"

Cole was watching — the pain, the impotence, were flames riding him just as violently. Danford motioned for gray burger Solly to step forward, and when the cook came out from behind the counter, already undoing his pants with a sick smirk, Danford shot him in the head. The farmer spun and tried to move, but there was no cover. Danford shot him twice in the back. The waitress shrieked and a bullet took her high in the neck, ripping out her throat.

Cole should have expected it. Danford ran over, took careful aim from a foot away, said, "Thank you," and shot Cole's brains all over the waitress's corpse.

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Excerpted from "Stranger by Night"
by .
Copyright © 1995 Jeff Gelb.
Excerpted by permission of Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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