In Laymon's Terms

Regina Mitchell

HE DIRTY NAKED boy ran down the street sniffing the air.

Mother?

But he had never known a mother, not really. Just Kylie and the memory of a scent, a woman scent fresh in the stale desert air, similar to what he smelled now, reminding him of soft, pink flesh.

Flesh he still tasted in his dreams.

Alison got out of the car and stretched her legs, grateful to be outside despite the heat. She twisted her blonde hair into a ponytail as she spoke. “So, this is your ghost town.”

A stretch of broken road surrounded by six or seven wood frame buildings bleached by sun and the blowing desert sand. A cluster of shacklike dwellings was visible a few miles away; even further were the mountains.

“Yep. Isn’t she a beaut?” Steve looked around proudly, as if he had built it with his own hands.

Alison nodded, thinking, not really. The town looked like a tornado hit it and nobody bothered to clean up afterward. Glass from broken windows glittered in the dust. Broken boards were strewn here and there. Most of the signs were long gone, but a few remained. The word “Groceries” was faintly visible on one, the word “Clark” on another. But what did I expect a ghost town to look like? she asked herself. Deserted places weren’t supposed to be pretty—that was part of their charm, part of the reason she’d agreed to spend the night here. It would be something different.

“I’m glad you came out here with me, Al.” He put his arms around her waist. Rested his head on her shoulder. “Much nicer than camping with the guys.”

“You think?” She laughed.

They stayed that way for a while, looking at the landscape. It was so quiet here, so...desolate. She thought of the tagline from a movie she’d seen: In space no one can hear you scream.

“Do you want to put up the tent?” Steve asked.

“Isn’t that what we brought it for?”

“Well, we could sleep in one of the buildings.”

“In one of them?” They had originally planned to camp in the desert beside the town, but the thought of staying in one of these places was sort of intriguing. And then she thought of the downside. “But what about scorpions and spiders? And snakes? At least we know they aren’t in the tent to begin with.”

“It was just a thought,” he said. “No big deal.”

“No, I think I want to. But...let’s look around first, see how bad it is.”

Alison grabbed a flashlight from the back seat and patted her rear to make sure her pocket knife was still there. It was an old Swiss army knife, not much in the way of defense, but having it close somehow made her feel safe.

“You know,” Steve said as they approached the steps, “I read a story once where these people found an old body with a stake in it in a ghost town like this.”

“This is supposed to make me want to sleep in here?” Alison stopped to tie her shoe while Steve went off to peek in what remained of the window.

“No.” He adjusted his sunglasses. “Just saying we might find something cool.”

The boy ran off the pavement and into the desert, loping on hands and feet, oblivious to the heat of the ground, the prickly plants he trampled, the rocks he kicked. He ran toward Kylie and the others, nose still full of that delicious scent.

Inside was slightly cooler but full of stale air. A counter ran the length of the side wall. It was hard to tell what color it originally was but it was now faded to the same nothing as the rest of the place. Broken pieces of furniture were strewn on the floor along with shards of glass.

“We’re gonna have some clean up,” Alison said. “I vote we just pitch the tent.”

Steve nodded. “Agreed.”

“I’ve gotta pee. Will you be all right without me for a few minutes?”

“You want me to go with you?”

“You want to watch me pee? That’s disgusting!”

“No, dufus, I just don’t know if we should split up.”

“Why, is someone going to watch me—like the people in that car?” She pointed out the back window to an old red car leaning heavily to the right. It was missing the driver’s door and the front seat. From the dirt and muck covering it, it looked like it had been there quite a while.

“All right, smart ass. You want to go, then go. But hurry up. I want to check out the rest of this place before we make camp.”

She kissed him on the cheek and said in her best Arnold voice, “I’ll be back.”

Despite what she had said to Steve, she looked around before going around the side of the building and lowering her pants. Should have gone to the car for toilet paper first, she thought. Her pockets held nothing except a few dollars and her ATM card, and the knife. Maybe she’d go back to the car, anyway, and grab a couple of sodas. They could sit on the porch and drink them. The thought of cool carbonation was too much to resist. She pulled up her pants and turned.

Someone was at the car.

At first she thought it was a shadow, dark and low to the ground, but then it moved.

Alison remained completely still, watching as it made its way around the back of the vehicle, then she ran as quietly as she could inside to get Steve.

He was upstairs and she hurried, sticking to the sides of the rickety steps in hopes they didn’t collapse. “Steve,” she whispered loudly. “Steve, do you have the keys?”

He walked out of one of the rooms and jangled the pocket of his baggy shorts. “Sure, they’re right here. But, didn’t we leave it open? What’s up?”

“Shh! There’s someone at the car.”

“What do you mean there’s someone at the car?”

“Someone’s at the car. I saw them slinking around the back.”

He stepped past her and went down the stairs, grabbing a table leg from the floor on his way out. She followed.

Alison waited on the porch steps as Steve approached the car, table leg held behind his back. There was a noise behind her and then she was falling off of the porch and onto her right knee. Pain shot up and she rolled to the side clutching her bent knee.

“Alison!” Steve turned to come back to her but a naked man crawled out from under the car. He was at least six inches taller than Steve, who stood a stocky five-eight, and wiry. He seemed composed entirely of thin muscle. He growled deep in his throat, and as Steve looked up he saw that the guy’s eyes were red. They glinted in the reflecting sun.

“Steve?” Alison was worried. She sat up, cradling her knee and tried to rise. She wanted to go over to Steve and put her arms around him, pull him away from the crazy man.

The boy ran excited circles in the street, tongue hanging out, as Alison struggled to her feet.

The man lunged at Steve.

The pair fell in a mass of flailing limbs. Steve struck out against the man’s side with his makeshift club, but it didn’t seem to affect him. The man scratched with surprisingly long nails, tearing trails down Steve’s side. Steve pushed forward in a panic, feeling with surprise that the fight was exciting the man. He pushed up at the man’s chest, dropping the useless table leg, and was surprised when his hand slipped. The man’s chest was now covered in fine, oily black fur.

Alison limped over and plunged the tiny blade of her knife into the sun-browned skin. She pulled it out and struck down again but was knocked backwards by the boy who jumped her from the side.

Steve grabbed the man’s face and pushed, hoping to break or at least damage something enough to make the man back off. Instead he looked at Steve with something like a smile. His smile was distorted, teeth impossibly long, eyes glaring red and angry.

He bit down on the hollow of his neck.

Steve screamed in agony as the man, now a wolf, chomped. Again and again.

Alison screamed, struggling with the boy. She had lost her knife during the fight with the man, the bloody black creature that stood over Steve’s still body licking blood from the open wound.

Darkness.

She opened her eyes to dim light. She was inside now, breathing stale, musty air, the tangy scent of fresh meat. Her head rested on someone’s lap. The person’s fingers smoothed her hair in a soothing motion.

“Steve?” But the legs were too small, skinny and soft, not the firmness she was used to. “Steve, what happened?” She turned her head and looked up.

The girl smiled, breathing foulness onto Alison’s face. “It’s okay.” She spoke slowly. Her face was a mottled pink mass of scar tissue. Long, thin scars that had healed poorly leaving bubbled white masses on the tender flesh. Her left eye was lower than the right and half closed; the other was a bright blue and it stared at Alison. “Kylie’s here.” Her hands kept patting Alison’s hair, moving the blonde strands off of her face. She repeated her name over and over. “I’m Kylie. Kylie, Kylie. That’s me. Kylie. Kylie is here to help.”

Alison pulled herself into a sitting position, Kylie’s hands still stroking her hair. She pushed them off.

“Kylie, where’s Steve?”

Kylie shook her head. “No—Kylie. Kylie here. Kylie, Kylie,” she sang like a child.

Alison made out movement on the opposite end of the room and moved to see better. A pack of men—man-beasts—were gathered around something on the floor. Alison knew it was Steve, knew it but would not believe it, because if that was Steve, what was going to happen to her? She looked around for a window, a door, but she couldn’t leave without Steve. She had to make sure he was alive...and get the car keys from his pocket, presuming they hadn’t fallen out.

All of them were hunched over on hands and feet, covered in slick, black hair. The boy was still smooth and brown; he had not changed. One of the man-beasts let out a howl and padded over to Alison, tongue hanging out. His erect penis swayed with the movement. The leer on his face told Alison everything she needed to know

Oh God, Alison thought. Oh, no. Her gorge rose but she held it, swallowing hard, as the man sniffed at her. She kicked him in the face, ignoring the pain that flared in her knee, smiling at the crunch. Maybe she’d knocked out a few of those sharp teeth. He wasn’t the one who had mangled Steve, but she’d take revenge on this one, oh yes. She kicked again as hard as she could, pummeled his head with her fists.

He came back snarling and raked her face. She grunted and pushed, punched, trying to remember what she had learned at the self-defense course she took three years ago. The boy ran up, yipping, and stopped between them. He stood on his hind legs and looked at the beast. The beast snapped at the boy’s face but walked slowly back to the pack.

The boy dropped back to all fours, nudging his head against Alison’s side, lifting her shirt and placing his cheek on her belly. She found herself petting the boy’s head, much as Kylie had patted hers.

He padded back across the room. Alison stood, shaking, as tears ran down her face. What was she going to do now? There were so many of them. If she dared to make an escape, to run out the window behind her, would she be quick enough? She looked at Kylie, sitting cross-legged and humming. How did she fit in? Would she stop Alison from making a break for it? Alison reached up to her cheek and winced, wondering if someday her skin would look like Kylie’s. The scratches burned. I should be scared, she thought. But this isn’t happening.

The boy scampered in front of the beasts and they moved aside to let him in. Alison got a glimpse of Steve’s gored body. He was naked, arms and legs bloodied, stomach flayed open. The boy bent his head down, took a bite of something, and shook his head as he fought to free it. There was a loud sucking noise and he rolled onto his back eliciting yelps of laughter from the others. He took the prize in his mouth and trotted away with it, pulling when it got stuck. One of the elders leaned forward and snapped the intestine with his teeth.

Alison sank to the floor, blanking the scene out. She should be crying, she knew, but she couldn’t. This wasn’t real. A snippet of song came to her, “I’m not here, this isn’t happening.” She sang it in her head to drown out the chewing sounds as the pack began to eat.

One of them buried his head in Steve’s torso, shifting his body. His hand flopped onto the ground, the hand she had held earlier in the day, the one she had expected would caress her tonight.

“Oh, Steve.” She concentrated on the song, singing first in her head and then out loud.

The boy dropped his earlier prize and went back to lap at a pool of blood on the floor.

Tears came, and Alison wondered if they were as salty as Steve’s blood. Hands stroked her hair again and she heard Kylie’s sing-song voice. She let her head fall back.

Slurping sounds as the boy finished up and then went back to the corner to chew some more. A beast broke from the pack and slunk over to the girls. Alison cringed, allowing Kylie to hold her. I’m not here...this isn’t happening.

“Kylie,” Alison said. “Kylie, Kylie, Kylie.”

But Kylie couldn’t help her. The beast had taken hold of her upper arm with his teeth and dragged her away. Others noticed and joined him. One bit into her cheek with a sickening pop as another chewed into her stomach.

Alison tried to get up but slipped and fell on her stomach. She clawed at the floor, scooting away as something heavy pounced on her back. Claws raked her clothes, peeling them off. The little boy watched with a smile as the beast entered her.

“Kylie,” he said pointing at Alison. “Kylie, Kylie, Kylie.”