Crawl(7)

“Oh,” Colton said, meeting her eyes in the mirror, “did you see that dude in the priest getup? Is that what freaked you out? I think he’s the one driving the Mercury I passed earlier.”

They had passed the Merc with the vanity plate, hadn’t they? Juliet fought to remember whether or not the car had overtaken them again. The interstate had been empty, though, and she would have recalled the return of the red priest, if he was the Merc’s driver after all.

JXSAVES… I DO NOT

Colton finished washing his hands and faced her. “You look like shit. You feel all right?”

“Are you done? Can we leave?”

“Lemme tell the lady to put my coffee in a to-go cup, and, sure, we can go.”

“Hurry up.”

“She had to put on a new pot. It might be a—”

“Just hurry. Please.”

Juliet spun on her heel and exited the men’s room. As she passed the booths and then the bar/grill area, she noticed the small-framed, greasy-looking woman who had joined the big-breasted cook behind the counter. The new lady flashed Juliet a yellow smile and waggled nicotine-stained fingers at her as Juliet pushed through the exit. As the door swung shut, she thought she heard DKT call her a bitch.

The Mercury was nowhere to be found. And neither was the red priest. She sighed in relief as she popped open her door and slid back into the passenger seat of the Subaru.

Five minutes passed before Colton, blowing into the suck-hole of his coffee cup, rejoined her in the car.

“Ready?” He shot her a smile through the steam rising from the Styrofoam mug.

“Very funny. Drive. Now.”

“I be honking, Miss Daisy.”

“Shut up. That’s racist.”

“Really?” Colton started the engine. “I had no idea. I’ll have to write my congressman to have that film stricken from public record.”

She ignored him. He might have thought she’d momentarily misplaced the memory of his indiscretions, but they were still in the forefront of her mind, only now they were accompanied by a red priest piloting a black Mercury.

JXSAVES …

And I do not.





4.


The accident occurred on Highway 96, just outside of Fort Valley, Georgia, at two-fifty-three in the morning, between mile marker eight and a cross bearing the name of a girl who’d been killed by a drunk driver. A layer of thick fog covered the road, and a light drizzle made windshield wipers a necessary evil. The rubber smeared the mist instead of removing it, but to go without the wipers was to be blind, eaten up by an all-consuming gray scale maw. Colton left them squeaking.

Juliet had her hand up, in the middle of a diatribe about something she would not remember later, when she saw the pinpricks of the headlights coming from the opposite direction. A grass median separated the eastbound lane from the westbound, and it was that fact that caused Juliet to pause. This stretch of Highway 96 was bolt straight for a good ten miles, curving only once, somewhere in the middle, and they’d already passed that. The pinpricks expanded quickly, as if someone were throwing two flashlight-tipped spears directly at her. Colton raised his arm, presumably to point at the oddity, and his lips set to work, forming words that he never had the chance to birth.

The bodiless lights broke eye contact and seemed to look to their left. The fog acted as if it were a curtain slowly being pulled away to reveal the surprise waiting onstage. That’s when Juliet first saw the truck careening toward them, sideways, and the wide-eyed teenager clinging to the railing on the bed. The boy was redheaded and covered in freckles. She saw all this in terribly high definition because the Subaru was colliding with the truck’s passenger side rear panel and the teen was flying out of the bed, toward the windshield. The teen’s face connected with the upper right corner of the windshield as Juliet’s seatbelt caught, slinging her forward.

The rest was a blur. When they finally came to a rest, Juliet noticed someone had painted a red bunny in the upper corner of her vision. She glanced up, and saw that the painting was dripping. The red bunny was hurt. It was all hurt. Nothing but hurt. She hurt. Her chest was on fire. No, not just her chest. A column of flame had been set down upon her—across her abdomen, between her breasts, up across her right collarbone. Even though her agony was a powerful drug, willing her to run away from the world, that red bunny seemed a more pressing issue. The painter had been important. Hadn’t he? A ginger teen with freckles as big as manhole covers flickered across her eyes, and Juliet was able to match his face with the shape of the bunny. Because it wasn’t a bunny. My God, it’s not a fucking bunny.

“Colton?” she rasped, as she pulled the seat belt away from her abraded chest. “Colt?”

Her neck worked on a rusty ball bearing, swiveling and creaking with solid effort. She could smell antifreeze and gasoline now. Neither odor bothered her; she simply noted them.

Colton’s face rested in a pillow made of airbag. She watched her hand move of its own accord, pushing down the material, trying to find her husband’s face. Colton groaned as she unmasked him.

“Wha-happen?” He coughed, sending up a white cloud of what looked like flour.

“We hit someone.” She said it just like that. Not, that they’d hit something, but someone. The ginger’s face had painted that red bunny in her periphery, she was sure of it.