Fiction: THAT’S ALL RIGHT By Nate Southard

THAT’S ALL RIGHT

By Nate Southard

For my father. She’s road ready.

 

            “Eddie, you have to go faster.”

            “I’m trying.”

            “Well try harder!  I don’t wanna die!”

            “C’mon, Sally.”  Eddie shoved the ’49 Mercury’s pedal to the floor as both lanes of midnight blacktop straightened out in front of her.  The souped up flathead V8 roared, and the chop-topped hotrod surged down the country highway.  Chrome and painted flames sliced the night down the middle and left it to bleed.

            Behind the wheel, Eddie kept an eye on the speedometer.  The needle edged past eighty-five and continued to climb.  He felt Sally thrum with power all around him, steel and rubber and fuel working together to chew up the asphalt.  He hadn’t opened her up like this in a long time, and he had to admit it felt good.  Hell, it almost made him forget the promise of a horrible death that was hot on their heels.

            “They’re gaining,” Johnny said.  His voice trembled, betraying the cool look his slicked hair and upturned collar gave him.  “Mother of shit, Eddie, they’re still gaining!”

            “I’m concentrating.”  He tightened his fingers around the wheel, and his knuckles flashed white.  He checked the sideview and saw a pale figure sprinting down the hardtop about twenty yards back, arms whipping with each maniac stride.  He guessed the other two were back there with him.  Yeah, they were gaining.  How on earth was that even possible?

            “How can anything run like that?”  Apparently Johnny had the same question racing through his head.

            “We get through this,” Eddie told his little brother, “I’m gonna beat you until you can’t walk.”

#

            “Holy shit, that was a good show!”  Johnny pounded a fist against Sally’s roof twice and stuck his face out the window to howl at the Texas night.

            Eddie laughed at his brother, even if some of the kid’s words had been lost behind the ringing in his ears.  He didn’t care if he never heard right again.  At that moment, leaving the Lubbock City Limits, he knew he’d already heard the best music the world had to offer.  He didn’t need his ears to work right anymore.

            They’d driven all the way from Austin to see Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis tear down the house as part of Captain Ricky’s Rocking Roadshow.  They’d pounded beers the whole way out, tossing the empties to shatter on the baking Texas pavement.  By the time they reached the Lubbock Music Hall, they’d convinced each other there would never be a better show.  Johnny and Jerry would shake and rattle the entire world with their chugging mix of rhythm, blues, country and boogie.

            But then that guy had come out on stage with his guitar and black greaser hair, and Captain Ricky told the crowd to put their hands together for a Mr. Elvis Presley.  The band launched into a jumping beat, and Elvis started moving like he had the devil shoved deep down in his gut.  They played a rendition of “That’s All Right” that hit Eddie in the chest and knocked the breath right out of him.  Presley followed with “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and a song called “Mystery Train.”

            Bang.  Eddie had found his favorite singer.

            “Damn,” Johnny said.  “That Jerry Lee really lets it rip, don’t he?”  He pounded his fingers on the dash, thumping out an imaginary piano line.  He finished with a one finger drag from the high notes to the low.  “Just tears it up!”

            “Guy’s got nothing on that Elvis fella.”

            “What?  You joking me, Eddie?  Are you feeding me bullshit?  I mean, were we even at the same show?”

            “No way.  I’m telling you now, that Elvis Presley is gonna be something big.”

            “Maybe if he gets real lucky.  Guy ain’t got enough talent to land in jail.”

            “I saw you dancing during his set.”

            “Yeah!  You see the girl next to me?  Woulda danced with her ‘til the sun came up.”

            “Well, too bad.  I gotta be at the feed lot by eleven, and I’m not going on no sleep.”

            “Right, right.  Whatever.”  Johnny went back to pounding boogie blues into the dashboard.  He only paused long enough to snicker.  “Elvis.  Bullshit.”

#

            Another look at the speedometer showed Sally was inching toward one hundred miles per.  Eddie ground his teeth.  He thought the girl could take it, but he just didn’t know.  He’d only taken her past eighty a time or two.

            Beside him, Johnny sat low in his seat, one hand on the dash like it was a lifeline.  He whipped his head back and forth, checking the road behind them.  His eyes burned wide and white in the car’s dark interior.

            “You gotta do something.  We ain’t losing them.”

            “I’m trying.”  Eddie’s voice was flat and even despite the butterflies that had filled his gut and threatened to spread out through the rest of his body.  “You think I’m not trying?”

            “I think it don’t matter!  They’re right on top of us!”

            Eddie wanted to check, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the road.  The two-lane continued on like a line, but they’d find a curve sooner or later.  He didn’t know what the hell he’d do when that happened.  He just knew he wasn’t risking a glance in the mirror.  When something squealed like a rusty nail against Sally’s trunk, he figured he didn’t need to bother.

            He put more weight on his right foot, but the pedal had nowhere else to go.  Sally had given him all she could.  Somewhere past the angry growl of her engine, he heard the rasping cries of their pursuers.  They sounded like taunts and laughter filtered through a broken speaker.  The scrape of their claws over Sally’s paint was just a little bonus.

            “They’re trying to scare us.”

            Johnny let out something that was either a laugh or a shriek.  “Great job!”

            Something thumped against the trunk, and Sally swerved the slightest bit, her rear fishtailing fast and loose.  Eddie’s belly jumped with sudden terror.  He dropped off the gas a fraction and corrected her course.  He wondered how close they’d come to rolling, and then the back window shattered inward like it had taken a round of buckshot.

#

            “Hey, fried chicken!  Pull over, big brother.”

            “What?”  Eddie checked his watch.  Almost two in the morning, and they were still more than five hours from home.  “You’re not serious.”

            “Like a heart attack.  I’m starving in this seat.”

            “No way.”

            “C’mon, Eddie!  I’ve gotta sit in this car all night so you can get home in time for work.  Least you can do is let me eat something.”

            He shot Johnny a glare, but the cross between a pout and a beaming smile on his brother’s face chased away any anger.  And maybe Johnny’s idea wasn’t such a bad one.  His own stomach gurgled with hunger, had been doing so for more than an hour.  The vacuum left in the wake of a day’s worth of beer worked on him something fierce, and the blinking sign on the right that read Freda’s Truck Stop and Fried Chicken, Open 24 Hours looked about as inviting as a cool blonde.

            “Fine, but we’re getting it to go.”

            “All right!”  Johnny howled into the night once again and did a little Jerry Lee jive in his seat.  “My name is Jerry Lee Lewis, come from Lousiana.  I’m gonna do a little boogie on this here pian-ah!”

            Eddie laughed.  “I’ll buy your food if you promise not to sing anymore.”

            “Got yourself a deal, big brother.”

            He pulled Sally into the gravel lot outside Freda’s place.  He jacked the brake a little to send a nice spray of rocks into the air, and then he killed the engine.

            A handful of Fords, Lincolns and Chevies filled the lot, but not one of them matched Sally’s pure beauty.  Eddie sneered at the other vehicles, cars meant to get from one place to another, nothing more.  He’d changed Sally from a car into an experience.  You didn’t forget riding in her.  Besides, he was willing to bet she’d blast the doors off any hunk of junk sitting out front of Freda’s.

            Music from a bouncing juke bled a rockabilly beat from the truck stop into the night.  It got Eddie’s head bopping, got Johnny moving all over the place.  A part of his brain asked why it was so loud in a truck stop of all places, but he dismissed the question.  Maybe Freda’s was a place the local farm kids came on Saturday nights.  He imagined kids dancing on tables and sucking down milkshakes.  Maybe they could stay awhile?  He’d already given some thought to calling in sick once they reached Austin.  He’d earned a day off, right?

            “Should we just get a bucket?” Johnny asked.

            He pushed open the door, and the music crashed over him.  “Let’s see what—”

            A thick, hot smell stopped him dead in the doorway.  It rocked his head like a snap jab and turned him away from his little brother to find its source.  When he found it, a scream to rival one of Jerry Lee’s tore loose from his throat.

            Somebody had turned Freda’s Truck Stop and Chicken Stand into a killing floor.  Blood painted the dining room.  The red stuff streaked the tile and dripped from the lunch counter in long, stretching lines.  It coated the walls in splatters and smears.  He took a step backward and  heard the thick fluid squelch beneath the sole of his sneaker.

            The bodies of teenagers and working men lay throughout the room as if tossed aside by a spoiled brat.  A boy and girl twisted together in a booth, their heads lolling as if their spines had been removed.  Their throats bore ragged wounds the size of fists.  A thick man in mechanic’s overalls lay facedown on the filthy floor.  One of his arms had been tossed a few feet away, curled up like a spider’s leg.  Others decorated the floor and tables.  A waitress Eddie guessed might be Freda was splayed out on the lunch counter like a terrible science experiment.

            The music was suddenly too loud.  It shoved at his ears like a pissed off cop.  With the heat and the smell and all the blood, it became too much. 

            A dry rasp reached through it all and snapped Eddie’s attention to the room’s far corner.  He looked and saw a trio of blood-soaked figures hunched over yet another limp body, a pretty girl no older than sixteen.  One of them latched onto each arm.  They’d sunk their teeth into the crooks of her elbows, and blood dribbled past their lips to patter on the floor.  The third had been working her neck, leaving a torn wound there.

            But he wasn’t biting her neck anymore.  Instead he was looking at Eddie and hissing through an open mouth slathered with blood.  Eddie saw hate burning in the man’s red eyes.  He saw a glint of light off the fangs that filled the man’s mouth.  He put two and two together and realized the three figures wearing bloody, tattered clothes weren’t men at all.  As the others tore loose from the girl’s arms and turned to look at him, he decided he had to grab Johnny and run like hell.

            “Eddie?” Johnny’s voice was a weak croaking sound beneath the punishing juke and promising hiss.

            “Run!”

#

            Eddie screamed as glass peppered the back of his head, frosting his hair and biting into his scalp.  Sally fishtailed, tires shrieking over hardtop and sending smoke into the night.  He released the brake and fought for some illusion of control.  Sally righted herself like a champ, and he punched the gas again as something scraped across his door with a sound like a braking train.

            A screeching cry hit his ears like the peal of a tea kettle.  He knew it wasn’t Johnny.  It was the thing that had busted out Sally’s rear window.  It was coming in to get them.

            “Eddie!”

            “I know!”  He jerked the wheel back and forth, dragging Sally’s rump from side to side.  He hoped to throw the creature off, but it held on like a rodeo cowboy.  He chanced a look in the rearview mirror, and something fell out of the bottom of his stomach.

            The thing smiled at him.  White teeth gleamed behind red lips.  The expression almost made the monster look human.  If Eddie hadn’t already seen its real face—if the thing wasn’t coming in through the back window—he might even believe it was a man.

            “Hey there, fella.  Peach of a ride y’got here.”  And then it started wriggling through the narrow rear window into the back seat.  Its face melted into a hungry monster’s sneer, and it filled Sally with its angry hiss.

            Eddie yelled something even he couldn’t understand as Johnny spun in his seat and cocked a fist.  His little brother had gone crazy or suicidal, maybe both.  Either way, the sixteen year old kid threw his fist and knocked the monstrosity right in the kisser.  The thing howled in sudden pain, and Johnny punched him square a second time.

            “Get the hell out of our car!”

            Somewhere beneath his churning terror, Eddie felt a flash of pride for his bother.  Leave it to Johnny to pop a monster in the mush.  The kid might not be a genius, but he sure was brave.

            Johnny kept attacking, pounding on the squealing beast.  Any thoughts of victory vanished, however, when a second monster wrenched open Eddie’s door and growled at him.  Eddie tried to lunge away from the thing, but it grabbed the wheel and jerked hard to the left.  Sally’s tires shrieked, and Eddie pumped the brake to keep them from rolling.  The Mercury spun to a stop in the middle of the two-lane, and her engine died in a single choke.

            Eddie burst into motion.  His hands left the wheel; his feet forgot the pedals.  Everything went into attacking the creature that still looked vaguely human.  Punches and kicks collided with flesh hard as American Steel.  The thing laughed off his attacks with a mouth full of razor teeth.  Its hands grabbed at him.  Eddie tried to jerk free of its cold grip, but the thing’s clawed fingers held him like cuffs.

            The passenger door squealed open, and Johnny screamed.

            “Johnny!”  Eddie tried to crane his neck to see what was happening to his brother, but the thing that had hold of him—Jesus, it smelled like road kill on a hot day—leaned in to roar in his face.  Breath thick with blood and dirt hit Eddie like a bucket of boiling water.  He shrank away from it and grit his teeth to keep from screaming again.

            The monsters dragged them thrashing from Sally.  Eddie called out to his brother and heard frantic words of anger in reply.  The kid was still fighting, still determined to stomp these bastards into the dirt so they could continue on their way.  Eddie felt love and terror for his brother.  He knew the monsters wouldn’t appreciate his struggles.  The fight in Johnny would only anger them further.

            “Johnny, stop!”

            “Yeah, Johnny.  Stop!”

            The voice caught Eddie off guard.  It came from one of the two bloodied creatures that now had his brother by the arms, jerking him back and forth like a tug of war rope.  Their faces had gone human again, and the one that had spoken waggled its tongue at Johnny.  It had spoken with all the venom and false sugar of a bully in the instant before he knocks the stack of school books from your hands.

            That settled it.  Eddie knew this couldn’t possibly end well.  He knew what these things were.  He’d seen Dracula and Bride of Dracula and every other movie about bloodsuckers to land at the Paramount on Congress Street.  He knew a vampire when he saw one.  He didn’t know they came in a bully assortment, though.  The slaughter back at Freda’s, the running down of Sally—all of it was just Saturday night fun to these bastards.  Eddie and Johnny were just the next good time.

            He wrestled with his captor, but the cold thing had his arms pinned behind his back, had a hand curled tight in his hair.  Just to rub his helplessness in, the creature whispered into his ear, “I don’t think so, tough guy.  You ain’t going nowhere until I say.”

            “I’ll drop your ass in the dirt, you hurt my brother.”

            “Hear that, fellas?  Tough guy here doesn’t want us to hurt his brother.”

            The two holding Johnny laughed like it was the greatest joke ever told.  “That so?” one of them asked through their guffaws.

            “What he says.  Ain’t that right, tough guy?”

            Eddie tried once again to wrench himself free.  The hands on him could not be budged, though.

            “He probably ain’t gonna like this, then.”  It was the one from the backseat, grinning like an evil clown with his red and white face.  He reached toward Johnny with one taloned hand.

            “Johnny!”

            “Eddie?” 

            The toughness had left his little brother’s face.  All that remained was cold fear.

            In the next instant, the vampire tore out Johnny’s throat in a violent, wet jerk.  Eddie heard the plopping sound of his brother’s flesh landing on the pavement and the sudden surge in laughter from the trio of monsters, but he couldn’t drag his gaze away from Johnny’s wide, frightened eyes.  He watched them as they slowly glazed over and became blank with death.

            The vampires let go of Johnny, and he collapsed like a house of cards.

            Eddie felt a growl vibrate in his throat.  His vision flashed red, and strength flooded his limbs.  In the same instant, the vampire holding him let go and gave him a shove on the back.  The bastards thought it was time to shove the human around.  Eddie decided to show them their mistake.

            He launched himself at the monster that had killed Johnny.  Maybe the thing expected him to throw a punch or tackle him.  It probably never even considered Eddie might grab its jaw in both hands and shove his thumbs past its teeth.  Eddie never saw the shock in the awful thing’s eyes.  He only saw blood course through his vision as he jerked downward with every ounce of strength he could muster.

            The vampire bawled with pain as bone snapped and tendons tore.  It tried to escape in a mass of flailing limbs, but Eddie held on tight, now shouting furious nonsense words in the monster’s face.  The creature shoved at him, and its pained sounds turned into something like a kicked dog’s.

            “I’ll kill you!”  He barely recognized his voice.  The sound belonged to a beast, not a man.

            Something that might have been a fist or a wrecking ball crashed into the back of his skull.  Stars erupted in his vision, blinding him.  They cleared for an instant, and he saw Johnny pounding out piano rhythms on Sally’s dash.  Then the fist struck again and everything went dark.

#

            Eddie awoke in Sally’s driver seat, slumped over the wheel.  He felt heavy and pained, like he’d spent the night pounding Lone Stars and then topped it off by running face-first into a brick wall.  He felt cold, and it took him a second to realize Sally’s door was open and the night air was caressing him.

            With his next breath he remembered Johnny slumping to the pavement.

            “No!” 

            His voice was a broken croak, but he didn’t care.  He sprang from the Mercury in a frenzy of terror and concern.  His clumsy limbs distracted each other, and he crashed to the hardtop.  His chin bounced off the white line.

            He cast a glance behind him as he scrambled back to his feet.  They’d moved Sally onto the shoulder, propped him up behind the wheel.  Why would they do something like that?

            He staggered across the darkened highway.  The vampires had gone, and they’d taken Johnny with them.  A smear of blood and his brother’s tattered shirt were all that remained.

            He remembered watching Johnny die.  He couldn’t have saved him.  All he could do now was mourn.  He grabbed up the torn shirt and held it to his face, smelling his brother and wishing he hadn’t taken the kid to Lubbock.

            Eddie was just beginning to wonder why the monsters had left him alive when he caught the scent of blood on his brother’s shirt and his mouth watered.  His stomach gurgled for sustenance, and he gasped as he tossed the shirt away and brought his hands to his throat.

            He sank to his knees as he felt the ragged puncture wounds.  He knew what they meant.  They’d changed him, turned him.  He concentrated, and he almost cried when he felt his teeth elongate into daggers. 

            He clamped his eyes shut and screeched.  He balled his hands into fists and smashed them into the pavement.  This was another of their bully games.  We’ve killed your brother and taken his body.  You’re one of us now, so come get him.  Don’t you act licked, now.  We got all the time in the world to make your life miserable, son.  They were somewhere laughing now, joking about the Austin boy they’d turned into a monster.

            When he opened his eyes, the sky had lightened some.  He checked his watch—amazed it was still attached to his wrist—and saw he’d slept for hours.  It was past six.  The sun would be on its way soon, rising from the east to wash away the night.

            “Hell with it,” Eddie said as he climbed to his feet once more.  He scooped up Johnny’s shirt and stuffed its tail into his pocket.  It was all he had of his boogie-loving brother to take with him.  “Sorry, Johnny.  I tried.”

            He climbed back into Sally and shut the door.  The engine started right up, purring beneath the hood.  Pebbles of glass coated the back seat, but otherwise the interior remained spotless.

            He threw the Mercury into drive and started for Austin.

            He wouldn’t play their game, to be a sucker goaded on by some bully’s cat calls.  Instead, he’d drive home, east.  He knew he wouldn’t make it, but he’d go as far as he could.

            In the back of his mind, he wondered if Johnny would understand.  The kid had looked up to him since they were both brats terrorizing the neighborhood.  Was his refusal to play the game a betrayal?

            He shook his head.  Johnny had loved him, sure.  That was before he’d become a monster, though.  Before vampires had ripped Johnny’s throat out and tossed it onto the hardtop.  As much as Johnny had loved him, he knew the kid had spent his last moments hating those creatures.  He wouldn’t want them spending the rest of time dancing and laughing over their little game.

            So Eddie would end the game.  Just like that.  Case closed.

            He gave Sally some more gas.  She cooed.  He turned to the right and thought he saw Johnny howling out the window, thrilled to have seen the greatest rhythm and blues show in history.

            Eddie nodded and then tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. 

            “Well that’s all right, mama.  That’s all right with me.”

            It wasn’t, but he wouldn’t need to pretend very long.

 

 

Nate Southard writes the horror. His work includes the books JUST LIKE HELL and BROKEN SKIN, and the graphic novels DRIVE, A TRIP TO RUNDBERG, and Brian Keene’s FEAR. You can find some of his short stories in various horror mags and webzines. He lives in Austin, where it rains burning sunshine.