Crawl(8)

Airbag. Why hadn’t the airbag saved her from her seat belt or, at the very least, the vision of the ginger flying toward her? Her eyes focused on the key slot on the dash beside the radio. Three words hovered above the slot: Airbag On/Off. The nail of her index finger slid into the opening, and she picked at it absently. The slot had been lined up with Off. But why? Why would Colton turn off the passenger side airbag?

“Turn that thing off,” a younger version of Juliet had said once upon a time. “Have you seen what those things do to people’s faces? They peel them. Airbags peel people’s faces like oranges.”

Colton had laughed. Why had he thought her face being scalped was an amusing concept?

“Sure thing,” he’d said, not entirely done laughing. “Because you’d rather be dead than disfigured. Good job, honey. Way to be shallow.”

But he’d done as she’d asked. That meant something, hadn’t it?

Right now it meant fuck all, because she was alive, not disfigured in the least, and there was a bloody bunny lurking in the corner of her vision. All these things were far more important than Colton’s acquiescence to her shallow pleas.

Colton came fully awake. At first, his face was placid, seemingly drunk, as it rose from the airbag. Then he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. And screaming his head off.

Why was he screaming?

His strained voice finally formed words. “My legs!”

She pushed the airbag away to reveal the messy amalgamation of plastic and flesh and steel and bone underneath. Was that the engine resting between Colt’s legs?

Oh, Juliet thought, that’s not pretty. Fat lot of good that airbag did.

She should have been more concerned. Somewhere in the depths of her mind, she knew this, but was still punch-drunk from the accident. Not really all there, was she? No. Not at all. For some reason, that bunny still bothered her. Sure, Colton screamed. He wailed and wailed, but that bunny was louder. Where had the artist gotten off to?

Juliet shoved her door open, not surprised in the least when it gave no resistance. After all, the majority of the damage had been on Colton’s side. It was he who’d been trapped, not her. She spilled out into grass, her hands and jeans becoming instantly dew-damp. Crawled two feet forward before pushing herself up. Shuffled out into the road. Spun languidly, assessing the scene.

The truck with the smashed in rear panel lay right-side-up in the culvert just beyond the breakdown lane. A vaguely human shape was hunched over behind the steering wheel.

The Subaru sat at an angle in the median. The front of the car was nonexistent, looking like a cab-over big rig.

No, she thought, that’s not right. It looks like an accordion that’s been put away for the night. Collapsed. It looks collapsed.

Like the red bunny before it, something new sat in the corner of her eye. This time, to her left. She turned, numb all over.

The ginger was approaching, head down, shuffling like—

Dawn of the Dead. Colt hadn’t wanted to see it. He had strep. I wouldn’t kiss him.

—a drunk after last call.

“Hey,” she said, without much tone to her voice at all. “You… you all right?”

The ginger stumbled forward, went sprawling, and pushed himself back to his feet. As he rose so did his head, and Juliet was allowed to look upon his face. Or what was left of it.

The entire left side of his face had been crushed in; it looked as if he’d been punched with a flatiron. Juliet recalled the red bunny. Didn’t the ginger’s squashed face resemble that strange ruddy hare in the backward way a stamp will look before being dipped in ink? She thought so.

The ginger reached for her, and she saw that two of the fingers on his right hand had been torn off—the pinkie and ring finger. She shuddered and was sick on the pavement. Wiping her gorge from her mouth, she glanced back up at the shuffling dead man. But he wasn’t dead. Dead men don’t bleed. And this poor boy was still bleeding. Fat drops of crimson spilled out of the mangled nubs where his fingers used to be and splashed down onto the street.

The teenager glowed. Brilliant light enveloped him. Juliet tried to step right, to get a better look at the source of the illumination behind him, but stumbled and went to her knees. She relaxed back on her haunches, watching in stunned disbelief as the Mercury pulled to a stop behind the boy with the shattered face. The red priest stepped out into the fog, and the moisture in the air seemed to part before him, giving him free passage to the teenager.

“Help,” Juliet asked quite calmly. “Help us.”

“Jesus saves,” the red priest said. “I do not.”

And Juliet had one thought before she passed out. A rational thought. A thought so unlike the ones she’d had up until then that it seemed ludicrous. That thought was: Why is he smiling?





5.


The first thing she felt upon waking was a piercing cold. Her arms were above her head, and her shoulders ached, as if she’d been sleeping in that position for some time. But she was upright, not stretched out on her bed, at home. A chilly wind blew against her exposed midriff and she shuddered under its touch. She looked down, finding that she still had on her blue blouse, but that it had pulled up because of her posture. She tried to reach for the fabric, to pull it back down, but realized she couldn’t feel her hands. Glancing up, she screamed.

Everything came rushing back in a tidal wave of reality. The accident. The engine in Colton’s lap. That poor teenager with a face like a kicked-in watermelon. The Mercury—