C. Box: The Highway

He reached for the door handle with his left hand and cracked his door a few inches. With his right he reached down and touched the plastic grip on the stun gun with the tips of his fingers.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Are you looking for a little company tonight?” she asked. He could see one eye through the crack. Too much dark eyeliner, as usual. The collar of her coat was faux fur and it sparkled with flakes of snow.

“I am,” he said.

“Are you alone or do you have a partner, too?”

“Just me.”

“Then,” she said, drawing out the word, “why don’t you open your door and let me inside so we can party?” She gestured toward the slightly open door: “I’m skinny but I ain’t this skinny, dude.” Her laugh was rough-a cackle.

He shot a quick look through the windshield. No one appeared to be watching, but with those Bible-thumpers one never knew. He looked across. The driver in the Mack had apparently settled into his sleeper for the night. The Lizard King could see bands of light blue from a television under drawn curtains.

He opened the door and could see her in full. She was older than he’d hoped. Her eyes peered from dark hollows, like a raccoon. Her face was angular, emaciated, with a gash of bright red lipstick. She didn’t part her lips when she smiled up at him. Probably ashamed of her teeth, he thought. As he reached down for her hand she hesitated for a moment, looking up at him. She seemed taken aback by the white Tyvek jumpsuit, and when she saw his face she recoiled.

“Are you coming in or not?” he asked, annoyed.

Although she seemed to be reconsidering, she extended her hand. He grasped it and pulled her up into the cab. As she wriggled over and sat on his lap he shut the door and the dome light went out. He could feel her bony hips through his suit. There wasn’t much meat on her. And she could no doubt feel how hard he was beneath her.

“You’re ready for me, ain’t you, cowboy?” she said.

He grunted. Her coat and hair smelled of damp and stale cigarette smoke.

“So how do you like it, sugar?”

He said, “Rough.”

She froze, but before she could reply he reached up and plunged the twin prods of the stun gun into her bare neck beneath her jawbone. There was the angry snapping sound of electricity and she arched her back with more strength than he thought possible for a meth head.

He took the stun gun away and could smell burned flesh and hair in the cab as her body went limp. He roughly pushed her off him and she fell away and thumped on the bare metal floor at his feet.

Then, as he reached down to pull her back into the sleeper cab, she started to convulse. Her arms and legs jerked spasmodically and her head turned to show a gaping mouth. Teeth missing, he thought. He was right about her. He shrunk back, alarmed and angry. What was happening ? One of her feet twitched so rapidly her shoe came off and bounced off the door. She’d struck back wildly with her fist and hit his ankle.

She made an “uunnh” sound and stopped moving. Her head was still twisted to the side and a long thin breath clattered out of her. He knew she was dead.

He cursed aloud and kicked the body hard. Nothing. This had never happened before. Was she so strung out the voltage triggered cardiac arrest? He didn’t know and didn’t care.

He just knew he was angry and not at all satisfied. He hated that bitch for dying on him so soon.

He bellowed, “Goddamn it!” and thumped the steering wheel hard with the heel of his hand.

And he heard the laughter and looked up. Chamois, Muttonchops, and the other Bible-thumpers had once again assembled between two trucks in the front row. They weren’t looking at him, but they were laughing and gesticulating over some private joke. It was like they were mocking him.

The Lizard King rolled her body over. There was blood everywhere, rivulets coursing through steel channels on the floorboard and pooling in dents where the metal was screwed to the frame. Then he saw the curved bone handle of the knife sticking out from her breast. Right into her heart. Her ratty purse fell away as he rolled her to her back.

So she’d packed a knife of her own, he thought. A cheap hunting knife hidden in her soft cloth purse. Without a sheath. And when she fell to the floor the blade pierced through the purse and her own weight sunk the blade into her chest.

Stupid, stupid bitch, he thought.

5:55 P.M., Tuesday, November 20

In Helena, Montana, eighteen-year-old Justin Hoyt scooted his chair back from the table and the laptop and listened again to the voice mail. He held up his hand to his friend Christian to shush him while he called. Christian hovered behind the sofa in the family room off the kitchen, watching ESPN Sportscenter with the sound off and making comments along with the two other guys and two girls crammed onto the couch. The coffee table in front of them was littered with empty beer bottles, an open laptop showing YouTube videos, and an iPad.

Christian, who was a tall and wide-shouldered linebacker for the Helena high school football team and who’d volunteered his home for the party because his parents were in Great Falls, rolled his eyes and lowered the volume on his iHome with a remote. He was pale-featured and wore his hair in a semi-buzz cut that looked like a beige carpet sample. A couple of other boys, who were pounding beer after beer in the kitchen and were also on the football team, howled in protest that they liked that song.

“Just a minute,” Christian said to them with mock seriousness, “Justin is listening to something really important .”

“I hope it’s not his dad coming over,” one of the girls said. “That dude scares me.”

“Thanks,” Justin said. Like his friends, he wore a gray BENGALS FOOTBALL hoodie, jeans, and a baseball cap. He had borrowed Christian’s laptop to try and track Danielle and Gracie and it sat open in front of him. Justin hadn’t drunk any beer and had made a promise to himself to hold off until his guests arrived. And then maybe just one. He had no natural attraction to alcohol, maybe because his life had been shaped by it-courtesy of his father.

“Guess who is driving right now to Helena to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend? Call me.”

He felt his insides contract and he looked up.

“What is it, man?” Christian asked.

“Remember Danielle?”

Christian rolled his eyes. “The crazy bitch?”

“I never said that,” Justin said quickly.

“But you thought it, man. What about her?”

Justin gestured toward his phone. “She left me a message saying she’s coming to see me. Tonight.”

Christian’s eyes got big and he looked around before he burst out laughing.

“For Thanksgiving,” Justin said. “She’s coming here. ”

Christian leaned in close to Justin. “Didn’t you say you dumped her finally?”

Justin felt his face blanch.

Christian leaned back and grinned. “You didn’t pull the trigger on it, did you? You wussed out.”

How could he explain? Justin thought. Danielle was relentless. She didn’t take hints. And she blew right past any mention he made about his new life in Montana, the new friends he’d met, the football team, the new friends he’d met …

He didn’t hate her, he thought. He just didn’t like her anymore. She was too much-dominating every conversation, telling him what he should think, what bands he should like, how he should apply to Colorado State University because that’s where she would likely go.

They’d been through such a trauma together two years ago in Yellowstone they’d emerged extremely close. They’d been through a trauma that would have ended badly if Justin’s dad Cody hadn’t intervened and saved them. But afterward, after Justin moved to Montana with his mom and Danielle returned to Colorado, the separation made him realize she drove him crazy. He’d asked himself if he would even want to be around her at all if she didn’t look like that. And his answer was no.