Highways to Hell Read online

  “Are we out of beer?”

  Danny shrugged. “Might still be some in the back.” He frowned. “Any idea where we are?”

  “Nope.”

  “Huh. Guess I’ll just keep going this way then.”

  “Whatever.”

  Rick twisted in his seat and peered into the back, looking for beer.

  And that’s when he saw her.

  The dead bitch.

  Rick’s second scream that night was louder than the one that woke Danny.

  PART TWO: THE DEAD BITCH

  The revelation that they were riding with a non-breathing extra passenger caused Rick to fall backward and crack his back against the dashboard. He pointed at the back seat and gibbered unintelligibly for several moments.

  Danny looked at him, his expression remarkably similar to the look you sometimes saw on the faces of tourists upon being accosted by deranged street people. Wary and with a hint of pity. “Um...could you maybe stop whining like a bitch for a minute and tell me what the fuck your damage is?”

  One last squeal caught in Rick’s throat, died there. He cleared phlegm from his throat and turned his pale face toward Danny. “You’re going to want to pull over. Right now would be a good time.”

  Danny frowned. “Yeah? Why?”

  “Because you’re probably gonna want to get rid of the fucking gorgeous but also very fucking dead woman in the back of your car.”

  Danny didn’t reply immediately.

  He locked eyes with Rick, took a moment to appraise the subterfuge-free look of somber sobriety, saw that his friend wasn’t pulling his leg, and promptly freaked the fuck out, unleashing an impressive scream of his own as he wrenched the Chevelle’s steering wheel hard to the right and slammed on the brakes. They came to a skidding stop on the road’s shoulder. Danny shifted in his seat and peered into the back.

  He screamed again.

  Rick and Danny locked gazes again.

  They screamed some more.

  “Oh, shit!”

  “Oh, fuck!”

  “What are we gonna do? What’re we fucking gonna do?”

  Rick stared at the dead woman. It was real obvious she was totally fucking dead. No pulse check was necessary. Nor was the administration of CPR, or a desperate search for the nearest emergency room. The giant, ragged gash in her throat made that abundantly clear. She was dead. Lights out, sayonara, see ya fuckin’ later. But that left a bigger mystery to consider. Several of them, actually.

  Including.

  Who the fuck was this dead fucking bitch?

  Who the fuck killed her?

  And why was she in Danny’s fucking car?

  For starters.

  Rick looked at his friend. “Danny, man...you didn’t kill this chick, did you?”

  Danny managed to sneer and look hurt at the same time. “What the fuck kind of monster do you think I am?”

  Rick nodded. “Yeah.” He heaved a big breath and reluctantly looked at the dead bitch again. Christ, that big bloody hole. His stomach knotted. “Didn’t think so, bro, but kinda had to ask.”

  Danny’s shoulders sagged, and he nodded wearily. “Yeah. Guess so. And I guess you didn’t kill her?”

  Rick thought about it. It didn’t seem likely. Brutal murder wasn’t his bag at all. He didn’t even like to step on insects, normally. And he sure didn’t remember killing anybody tonight. Then again...he searched his memory...what little of it was available to him from the last several hours. He remembered drinking at various bars in Nashvegas over the course of several hours. Hanging with those chicks they met at the Gold Rush. Pretty young things. College girls. The dead bitch hadn’t been one of them, he was pretty sure. Things from later in the evening got fuzzier. Flashing images of dancing girls and strobe lights. Standard nightclub activity. Then things got even fuzzier. More dancing girls, except this time they were naked and strutting across a stage. And after that, he could recall nothing else.

  He frowned.

  The dead bitch was kind of tall, maybe a few inches under six feet. She had long bottle-blond hair, plump red lips, heavily rouged cheeks, a slender but shapely build, and two buoyant breasts that looked unnaturally large. Those tits were really something else, the kind stand-up comics would make flotation device jokes about.

  Could the dead bitch have been a stripper?

  The fact that she wore only a G-string and heels that were several inches higher than strictly necessary struck him as a possible clue.

  “I can think of only one possibility.”

  Danny was nodding as he said this. “Already there. We hooked up with Gypsy Rose there at the Sin Den. Made some kind of private arrangement. She came out to the car to take care of us. We were kind of smashed by then.”

  Rick snorted. “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “So she comes out to the car. Sees we’re, I dunno, fucking passed out, and sees an opportunity. Might as well rip us off. How will we ever know? Who would we ever tell? Not the management. Not the cops. It would be the perfect petty fucking theft. But, while she’s in the process of ripping us off—”

  “—some other dude comes along.”

  Rick nodded again. “Some fucking lowlife.”

  “That part of town, I can definitely see it.”

  “He sees what she’s doing. He’s another opportunist. He kills her. Takes our money. Slips away into the night.”

  Rick shook his head. “And leaves us with one dead fucking bitch.”

  They stared at the dead bitch in contemplative silence for a while.

  Then Rick said, “You really think that’s what happened?”

  Danny shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe one or both of us did it in the midst of an alcoholic blackout. But I think I’ll stick with theory number one, if you don’t mind.”

  Rick shivered. “Fine with me.”

  “But we’re left with the question of what to do about her.”

  “That I’ve already got figured out.”

  “Tell me.”

  PART THREE: DEAD BITCH RISING

  Getting her out of the car was not a pleasant task. Before they even attempted it, they argued heatedly over who would get the feet end and who would get the yucky throat-slit end. They settled the question by flipping a quarter. Danny called tails. He lost. They went for two out of three. He lost again. He wanted to go for three out of five, but Rick wasn’t having it.

  “I won, fair and square. Stop being a pussy about it.”

  Danny grimaced, but a look of grim acceptance settled into his features. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do this.”

  They spent a few last moments steeling themselves for the sickening task ahead by chugging the last of the beers from a twelve-pack they’d had to retrieve from beneath the dead stripper’s sprawled legs. Then they got on with it.

  They’d been clumsily negotiating their way through the dark woods for less than five minutes by the time something of crucial importance occurred to Rick. “Huh. Just thought of something.”

  Danny cursed as he stumbled over a rock. The dead woman’s limp wrists slithered free of his sweaty palms and the back of her head thumped on the forest floor. He cursed again, knelt over the body, and cringed as he again was forced to touch the dead flesh. He stood up, lifting her by the wrists again.

  He looked at Rick. “What were you saying?”

  Rick smiled, a strange expression for a man gripping the thin ankles of a dead stripper in the middle of a dark and unfamiliar landscape. “I’m not covered in blood. Neither are you.”

  Danny squinted at him, his expression conveying non-comprehension for a space of several seconds. Then his eyes slowly widened. “Motherfucker.” The quiet epithet was invested with an odd combination of disbelief and dawning awe. He let go of the stripper’s wrists again and looked down at himself. The dead woman’s head cracked against a rock, but Danny was too busy patting his clothes to be disturbed by the grisly sound. He finished his self-inspection and lit up the forest with a radiant grin. “By God, you’re right.” He sh
ook a clenched fist at the sky and let out an exultant cry. “YEAH! FUCK YEAH!” Then he laughed and, still grinning, looked at Rick again. “We didn’t do it, man! We really didn’t.”

  Rick was grinning, too, but now there were tears in his eyes. Until this moment, he hadn’t realized how much doubt some secret compartment in his psyche had harbored regarding his potential guilt. But now that was gone, as was the potentially permanent stain on his soul. He still had no idea what had really happened to the dead bitch. Maybe their original theory was closer to the truth than they knew. But it didn’t really matter. All he cared about was this incontrovertible proof that he and his friend weren’t mad dog killers.

  He let go of the dead stripper’s ankles and did a wild dance of unrestrained jubilation. Danny performed a similar dance. They whooped and thrust their fists toward the sky. Their behavior was much like that of very devoted sports fan who have just watched their favorite team score the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl. They had bucked the odds and come out on top, snagging victory from the jaws of defeat just when things looked their darkest. They were going to fucking Disneyworld!

  The mood didn’t sour until Danny tripped over an unseen vine and fell at an awkward angle. His left ankle came down with too much momentum behind it and too much weight coming down on top of it. There was an audible snap of bone and Danny hit the ground hard, his mouth tasting leaves and dirt before he rolled onto his back and howled in agony. He sat up and clutched at his left leg, looked at Rick, and howled again.

  Rick’s stomach did a slow roll. Bile touched the back of his throat. The joy consuming him only a moment ago died, displaced by a sick fear that left him shaking and on the verge of expelling the contents of his upset stomach. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t right. How could something so fucked up have happened so quickly and so unexpectedly? They’d been so close to being free of this inexplicable nightmare situation, and here suddenly was this fresh layer of hell, a fucking mundane injury.

  Danny managed to speak between quick, panting gasps. “Aw...fuck...dude. I broke...the fuck out of...my ankle. It looks...” Here he let out a whimper and grimaced. “Oh fuck. It looks like...like my foot’s hanging by a fucking hinge. Oh, sweet Jesus.” Another whimper as he rocked and clutched at his leg. “Oh. It hurts, Rick. Oh fuck, it hurts. Please...help me...”

  Rick mentally berated himself.

  Get your shit together! Help the man!

  Rick nodded silent agreement with the inner voice, which sounded more than a little like the growling voice of his dead father. He took a few steps toward his friend, cringing as he eyed the injured limb. His stomach rolled again. Sweat broke on his brow. His throat bulged and he had to swallow bile again. The foot really did look as if it were hanging from a hinge. Christ. Looking at it was bad enough. He’d hate to be Danny right now.

  “Look, man. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll help you up. You’ll throw an arm around my shoulder, and we’ll just sort of—”

  Rick came to a dead stop.

  His heart nearly did the same.

  Something had grabbed his ankle, was holding it fast in a grip of steel. It was like being held in place by Superman.

  This just can’t be.

  I mean, come on. No fucking way.

  He glanced down, saw the dead bitch snarling at him, her teeth bared and glinting in the sliver of moonlight just visible through the canopy of trees.

  “Oh...shit.”

  A rumbling, garbled sound emerged from the dead woman’s mouth. Maybe she was trying to tell him something. But her vocal cords had been too damaged by whatever had been used to slit her throat for it to be intelligible.

  Danny whimpered again. “What the fuck’s going on over there?”

  Rick swallowed a lump in his throat and felt his stomach flutter yet again. “I, uh...well...”

  “Spit it out, man!”

  “The thing is, you’re not going to believe it.”

  “Fuck! Will you just tell me already?”

  Rick swallowed hard again. The reanimated stripper’s hand was moving up his leg now, cold fingers sliding inside his pants leg and slithering up his calf. He let out a whimper of his own. “We have a sort of...zombie situation.”

  A silent moment elapsed.

  Then Danny said, “What?”

  “I said, we have—”

  The dead bitch sat up and growled at him.

  Rick screamed.

  Seeing the zombie, Danny screamed, too.

  Rick tried to move away from her again, but she held him in place with astonishing ease and bared her teeth at him again, her milky-white eyes flashing in the moonlight. Her giant breasts trembled and jiggled as she got to her feet and pulled him into a clinch that was a mockery of a lovers’ embrace. Her hands snaked around his back and moved up to his shoulders as she pressed tight against him. The crush of her ginormous breasts against his chest made it hard for him to breathe. Her fetid breath made him gag, and this time he was unable to hold back the bile that came rushing up his throat.

  She bared her teeth again.

  Her mouth dipped toward the beating pulse visible at his throat, hungrily seeking the tender flesh there.

  Then Rick puked in her face.

  PART FOUR: THE FINAL FUCKING CHAPTER

  A spew of hot vomit splattered against the zombie stripper’s face. The dead bitch’s reaction was akin to that of a vampire being struck by holy water. She screeched and released him, reeling backward and stumbling awkwardly in her high heels. The thing lost its footing and landed hard on its ass. But this development provided only a brief respite. The dead bitch bounced back to her feet with a preternatural speed and grace, and stood hunched over and snarling at him, hands extended toward him like claws. She shook her blood-flecked blond hair, flipping it like a supermodel turning at the end of a catwalk.

  Rick was struck by the way the moonlight made all that bare skin shimmer.

  Fuck.

  She looked sexy as hell—if you could get past the gaping hole in her throat, that is.

  Danny said, “Are you just gonna fuckin’ stand there and let her kill us both?”

  Rick kept his gaze on the dead bitch and said, “She’s a zombie, dude. And you wouldn’t believe how strong. So I’m kind of lost here. I’m open to suggestions, though.”

  Danny whined. “Christ, the fucking pain. Look, there’s a gun in my trunk. A loaded .38. Its in my gym bag. Get it and shoot her in the fucking head, the way they do it in the movies.”

  Rick frowned. “Why do you have a gun in your gym bag?”

  “WILL YOU JUST FOR CHRIST’S FUCKING SAKE GET THE FUCKING GUN!”

  The seething exasperation in his friend’s pain-seared voice provided the spur to action he needed. He spun on his heel and ran back toward the road. And as he ran, he tried not to think about how vulnerable turning his back on the dead bitch made him feel. Of course, it could be worse. He could be Danny. Ankle broken, lying helpless on the forest floor with a flesh-hungry zombie stripper only a few feet away. But he didn’t want to think about that either. Not yet. Because Danny was right. This was their only chance. He had to be fast. Super fucking fast.

  Within moments he burst through the line of trees at the side of the road, spotted the Chevelle some ten yards to his left, and streaked toward it. He grabbed the driver’s side door handle, yanked, and screamed. Locked. He hurried to the other side. Same thing. He peered inside and saw Danny’s keys dangling from the ignition. Frustration roiled inside him, a fire spreading to every nerve-ending. It was useless to wonder how they could have been so stupid. There wasn’t time. A shrill scream from the woods emphasized that point. Rick scanned the ground next to the car, spied a large rock in the ditch beyond the road’s shoulder, and quickly retrieved it. He hurled the rock through the driver’s side window, and his hand was slipping inside even as the rain of glittering safety glass fragments was settling on the seat. Another scream, this one a pulsing ululation of pain, exploded from the woods as his fingers foun
d the trunk latch. Rick popped the trunk, found the gun exactly where Danny said it would be, and hurried back into the woods.

  It wasn’t as dark as it had been only minutes ago. The first violet tinge of dawn had begun to brighten the sky. Rick experienced a few moments of hopeless, heart-pounding frustration as he thought he’d gone the wrong way.

  Until he tripped over Danny and fell to the ground.

  The .38 flew from his hand.

  An open palm scraped against a rock as he smacked the ground, drawing blood. He rolled onto his back and stared at Danny.

  Stared at his slack features.

  At the terribly still eyes.

  And at the open cavity that had once contained his intestines, half-devoured fragments of which were arrayed around the body of his dead friend.

  Danny gaped in disbelief at the body for a moment.

  Then the grief hit him, a welling of intense emotion that rocked him backward, sent him scooting away from the body until his back met the base of a thick tree. He sat there and stared in helpless, sick fascination at his deceased friend for a brief time. Then it occurred to him to wonder what had become of the dead bitch. She was nowhere in sight. Where had she gone?

  He didn’t have to wonder about it long.

  Behind me!

  That graveyard breath was unmistakable.

  Rick surged to his feet, but before he could flee the dead bitch emerged from the shadows behind the tree and seized him by an arm. She pulled him close and wrapped him up in that same faux-lovers’ embrace, only this time it was more exuberant. She hooked a leg around him and writhed against him. The push of her titanic breasts forced the air from him again and he struggled to breathe.

  Fuck, he thought. I’m being molested by a fucking zombie dead bitch!