Dexter Is Delicious

EIGHT

Traffic was heavy as I drove south on old Cutler Road to pick up Cody and Astor, but for some reason everyone seemed to be very polite in this part of town tonight. A man driving a large red Hummer even paused to let me in when the lanes merged and I had to get over, which I had never seen before. It made me wonder if perhaps terrorists had slipped something into the Miami water system to make us all soft and lovable. First I had resolved to quit my Dark Ways; then Debs had thrown a fit of near-weeping-and now a Hummer driver in rush hour was polite and thoughtful. Could this be the Apocalypse?

But I saw no flaming angels on the remainder of the drive to the park where Cody and Astor were interred, and once again I got there just before six o'clock. The same young woman was waiting by the door with Cody and Astor, jiggling her keys and practically dancing with impatience. She very nearly flung the children at me and then, with a mechanical smile that was not in the same league as one of my fakes, she vaulted for her car at the far end of the parking lot.

I loaded Cody and Astor into the backseat of my car and climbed behind the wheel. They were relatively silent, even Astor, and so, in my role of new human father I decided I should open them up a little bit. "Did everybody have a good day?" I said with immense synthetic good cheer.

"Anthony is such an asshole," Astor said.

"Astor, you shouldn't use that word," I told her, mildly shocked.

"Even Mom says that word when she's driving," she said. "And anyway, I heard it on the radio in her car."

"Well, you still shouldn't use it," I said. "It's a bad word."

"You don't have to talk me to like that," she said. "I'm ten years old."

"That's not old enough to use that word," I said. "No matter how I talk to you."

"So you don't care what Anthony did?" she said. "You just want to make sure I don't use that word?"

I took a deep breath and made a special effort not to ram the car in front of me. "What did Anthony do?" I said.

"He said I wasn't hot," Astor said. "Because I don't have any boobs."

I felt my mouth open and close a few times, all by itself, and just in time I remembered that I still needed to breathe. I was clearly in far over my head, but just as clearly I had to say something. "Well, I-I, um, ah," I said, quite distinctly. "I mean, very few of us do have boobs at ten."

"He's such a butt-head," she said darkly, and then, in a very syrupy-sweet tone, she added, "Can I say butt-head, Dexter?"

I opened my mouth again to stammer something or other but before I could utter a single meaningless syllable Cody spoke up. "Somebody's following us," he said.

Out of reflex I glanced in the rearview mirror. In this traffic, it was impossible for me to tell if somebody was, in fact, following us. "Why do you say that, Cody?" I asked. "How can you tell?"

In the mirror I could see him shrug. "Shadow Guy," he said.

I sighed again. First Astor with her barrage of forbidden language, and now Cody with his Shadow Guy. Obviously, I was in for one of those memorable evenings parents have now and then. "Cody, the Shadow Guy can be wrong sometimes," I said.

He shook his head. "Same car," he said.

"Same as what?"

"It's the car from the hospital parking lot," Astor interpreted. "The red one, where you said the guy wasn't looking at us but he really was. And now he's following us even though you think he isn't."

I like to think I am a reasonable man, even in unreasonable situations, like most of those involving kids. But at this point, I felt I had let unreality intrude just a little too far, and a small lesson was called for. Besides, if I was going to follow my resolve to cross over to the sunny side of the street, I had to start weaning them away from their dark imaginations at some point, and this was as good a time as any.

"All right," I said. "Let's see if he really is following us."

I moved into the left lane and signaled for a turn. Nobody followed us. "Do you see anybody?" I said.

"No," Astor said, very grumpily.

I turned left down a street beside a strip mall. "Is anybody following us now?"

"No," said Astor.

I accelerated down the street and turned right. "How about now?" I called cheerfully. "Anybody behind us?"

"Dexter," Astor grumbled.

I pulled over in front of a small and ordinary house much like ours, putting two wheels on the grass and my foot on the brake. "And now? Anybody following us?" I said, trying not to gloat audibly at making my point so dramatically.

"No," Astor hissed.

"Yes," Cody said.

I turned around in the seat to scold him, and stopped dead. Because through the rear window of the car I could see that a few hundred feet away, a car was nosing slowly toward us. There was just enough light from the setting sun to see a quick flash of red color from the small car, and then it was crawling toward us through the shadows of the tree-lined street. And as if awakened by those shadows, the Dark Passenger carefully uncoiled and spread out its wings and hissed a warning.

Without thinking I stepped down hard on the gas, even before I turned back around to face front, and I left a small patch of torn grass behind me and narrowly missed plowing into a mailbox as I looked forward again. The car skidded slightly as it regained the pavement. "Hold on," I told the kids, and with some something far too close to panic I raced down the street and turned right, back toward US 1.

I could see the other car behind me, but I was well ahead by the time I got back to the highway, and I turned right quickly into heavy traffic. I began to breathe again, just once or twice, as I powered across three lanes of rapidly moving cars and into the far left lane. I gunned it through a light just as it changed to red, and sped up the street for a half mile before I saw an opening in the oncoming traffic and screeched through a left-hand turn and down another quiet residential street. I drove through two intersections and then turned left again so that I was now running parallel to US 1. The street was dark and quiet and there was no sign of anything at all behind us now, not even a bicycle.

"All right," I said. "I think we lost him."

In the mirror I saw Cody staring out the back window, and he turned around and caught my eye, and nodded.

"But who was it, Dexter?" Astor said.

"Just some random lunatic," I said, with more reassurance in my voice than I actually felt. "Some people get off on scaring people they don't even know."

Cody frowned. "Same guy," he said. "From the hospital."

"You can't know that," I said.

"Can," he said.

"It's just a coincidence. Two different crazy people," I told him.

"Same," he said dismissively.

"Cody," I said. But I could feel the adrenaline draining out of me and I really didn't want an argument, so I let it go at that. He would learn as he grew that the greater Miami area was filled with a varied and impressive collection of wackos and predators, and many that were half of each. There was no way to know why someone had followed us, and it didn't really matter. Whoever it was, they were gone now.

Just to play it safe I continued to drive on the side streets all the way home, in case our follower was watching the highway. Besides, with the sun going down it was easier to see somebody behind us in darker house-lined streets, away from the bright orange glow of the lights along US 1. And there was nobody to see; once or twice headlights flared in the rearview mirror, and each time it was simply a homeward-bound commuter, turning down his own street and parking in his driveway.

We came finally to the cross street that took us to our own little bungalow. I turned onto it and edged up to US 1 carefully, looking in all directions. There was nothing to see but traffic, and none of it looked sinister, and when the light finally changed to green I crossed the highway and drove through the two more turns that took us to our street.

"All right," I said, as our little patch of heaven heaved into sight. "Let's not say anything about this to your mom. She'll just worry. Okay?"

"Dexter," Astor said, and she leaned forward against the back of the front seat, pointing ahead to our house. I slid my gaze along her outstretched arm and hit the brakes hard enough to rattle my teeth.

A small red car was parked directly in front of the house, nose pointed at us. The lights were on and the motor was running and I could not see inside it, but I did not need to see in order to feel the rapid beat of dark leathery wings and the angry hiss of a wide-awake Passenger.

"Stay here, doors locked," I told the kids, and I handed Astor my cell phone. "If anything happens call nine-one-one."

"Can I drive away if you're dead?" Astor said.

"Just stay here," I said, and I took a deep breath, gathering the darkness "I can drive," Astor said, unsnapping her seat belt and lurching forward.

"Astor," I said sharply, and there was an echo of the other voice, the cold commander, in my own. "Stay put," I said, and she settled back into her own seat almost meekly.

I got out slowly and faced the other car. There was no way to see inside, and no sign of anything dangerous; just a small red car with the lights on and the engine running. I felt the equivalent of a long drumroll from the Passenger-ready for action but no hint of what; it could be flaming chain saws; it could be a pie in the face.

I stepped toward the car, trying to plan what to do, which was impossible because I did not know what they wanted, or even who they were. It was no longer believable that it was merely a random crazy-not if he knew where I lived. But who was it? Who had any reason to act like this? Among the living, I mean, because there were plenty of former victims who might have loved to come after me, but they were all far beyond any sort of action at all, other than decomposition.

I walked forward trying to be ready for everything, another impossibility. Still no sign of life in the other car, and nothing at all from the Passenger except a puzzled and cautious flutter of wings.

And when I was about ten feet away the driver's window slithered down and I stopped in my tracks. For a long moment nothing happened, and then a face came out the window, a familiar face, wearing a bright fake smile.

"Wasn't that fun?" the face said. "When were you going to tell me I'm an uncle?"

It was my brother, Brian.