David Wisehart - Blood Alley

She squealed in surprise—and, he noted, delight.

They hadn’t had sex in five days. Dakota would be feisty tonight. The image of a Cedarview hotel room, destroyed in a rock-and-roll frenzy of wild debauchery, flashed through Ethan’s mind.

Never had sex in a hotel before.

Tonight was the night. If they ever got there.

We’ll get there , Ethan told himself, then said to Dakota, “I’ll get the mechanic.”

Trevor caught up with Claire on the porch of Dinah’s Diner. “Would you please wait! ”

The front door was dirty glass. Claire yanked it opened. A small bell on the door chimed a welcome.

Oh no you don’t, Trevor thought, and grabbed Claire’s elbow. The bell banged an alarm against the glass. Trevor shut the door and blocked Claire’s entrance. “Just wait.”

She wrenched her arm free. “Wait? Of course I’m going to wait. We’re all going to wait because you don’t plan ahead.”

“We planned this trip together.”

“I planned this trip,” she said. “Who booked the hotel? Packed the bags? Printed the map? I did your laundry, Trevor. What did you do?”

“Homework, swim practice—”

“Video games. But you didn’t get the car checked, did you? Did you even listen to what I said?”

It was an old argument. Trevor was tired of it. “Let’s not fight.”

“Let’s.”

The look in her eyes could start a brushfire.

This is going to be a long trip.

Trevor sighed. He raised his open hands to calm her. “It’s probably just a broken hose or something. It’ll be fixed in no time. A couple of hours at the most. Time enough for us to grab some food, cool off inside, and then we can get back on the road.”

Her left eyelid trembled. Never a good sign.

“Broken hose?” she said. “Right. Like you even know what you’re talking about.”

Trevor felt a flash of anger. “At least I know how to drive.”

A look of hurt washed over her. The spark of anger left her eyes. Her lower lip quivered. Claire dropped her gaze, shoved him aside, and rushed into the diner alone.

Ethan stepped into the garage.

It was dark and empty, smelling of grease and sweat and burnt coffee. Something stirred in a far corner. A scratching sound.

He called out, “Hello?”

The only answer was the echo of his own voice.

He glanced around. As his eyes adjusted, he saw tools and supplies, cars on jacks, tires leaning against a wall. A soft blue light spilled from under a closed door. A computer monitor, probably.

Ethan knocked on the door.

“Hello? Anyone here?”

He opened it and peaked inside.

The office was lit by the dim light of a flashing screensaver. No one was in the office, but it was clear that someone worked here. Paperwork hid the desktop. On the wall hung a calendar of buxom girls in cop uniforms. A baseball trophy sat on a shelf. The room had filing cabinets and a coffee pot that wanted cleaning.

Ethan stepped back and closed the office door. He found the back door and opened it, then glanced outside.

Behind the garage was an auto graveyard with hundreds of wrecked cars. The desert wind sighed and moaned through the grim yard. Ethan saw the twisted, tortured bodies of classic Chevies, Fords, Cadillacs, and Studebakers. Some ripped apart. Others crushed beyond recognition. Flies buzzed over metal skeletons. Ravens pecked at car bodies as if they were corpses. A snake curled around a steering wheel. A lizard sunned on a dashboard—

A voice behind him said: “That your Hummer out there?”

Ethan jumped, then recovered.

He turned to the man, who stood too close behind him. The mechanic was a large, imposing figure with leathery skin and smears of grease on his face.

Ethan said, “Uh, no, it’s—”

Trevor stepped into the garage, his frame silhouetted in the open front door. “It’s mine.”

The mechanic addressed the newcomer. “What’s wrong with it?”

Trevor shrugged. “Broke a hose or a belt or maybe a gasket.”

“You have no idea, do you?”

“Not a clue.”

Dakota stared at the pay phone outside Dinah’s Diner. She had promised to call her mom, but there was no signal on her cell phone. If she didn’t call, her mom would totally freak.

Why do I always regret my promises?

She frowned at the ancient pay phone. It was dirty and rusty and didn’t look like it would even work. Dakota had seen people use pay phones, of course, in the movies, but she’d never actually used one before.

Opening her wallet, she found the secured credit card her mom gave her for emergencies. There was supposed to be three hundred dollars on it. More than enough for a few long distance phone calls.

Dakota didn’t like to carry coins. She hated change, the way it clinked around her makeup and dirtied everything inside her purse. Her bag was a jumble, but at least it was mostly clean. She hated dirt.

Now here I am in the middle of the fucking desert.

Out here, dirt got in her hair and clothes and eyes. She could taste it in her mouth and feel it grating in her nostrils.

She hated everything about this trip. But she had no choice. The funeral was tomorrow morning. At least they would spend tonight in that Cedarview hotel, where she could wash the desert out of her hair. In the morning they would all go to the funeral, pay their final respects to an uncle she hardly knew, fulfill their family obligations, then head back home on Sunday.

Of course now, with the car trouble, they would probably get in late to the hotel.

Which meant she had to call her mom.

Sooner the better.

Mom would worry. She always worried. It drove Dakota crazy, made her feel like she wasn’t trusted to do anything .

Why couldn’t Mom just let things happen? They were going to happen anyway. That’s what Ethan said.

Dakota had been reading all about Zen. Ethan had given her a book about it, and she’d been practicing, meditating, changing her outlook on life to be less like her mother’s. But it was harder than it seemed.

I’m Zen, I’m Zen, I’m totally Zen.

The car, though. That was a problem. Hard to be Zen about that. At first Trevor thought there was a hose broken or a cooling problem, or maybe a battery thing. Ethan thought it was the transmission.

Claire, of course, thought it was a curse.

She was a weird one, Claire. She was crazy about ghosts, claimed she always wanted to meet one, and she watched all of the ghost hunter shows on TV. And horror stories. Those were Claire’s favorites, curses and legends and things that screamed in the night.

For a natural blonde, that girl has a dark soul.

It had something to do with Claire being adopted or something. And something to do with that couple she lived with years ago, the ones who got hit by that car. Somehow, for Claire, it was all tied in with ghosts and spirits and dead things come to life.

Dakota didn’t like to think about those things.

Zen, I’m totally Zen.

Credit card in hand, Dakota stepped up to the pay phone, but couldn’t see where the card was supposed to go. There was no card slot or anything. She thought these phones all took credit cards, but maybe this phone was, like, really, really old.

It only takes change?

What was this, the wild west?

Dakota stuck her finger in the change return slot. No coins. Her finger came out dirty.

Gross!

Feeling icky, she took a tissue from her purse and wiped her finger clean. If she needed change, she could probably get some from Ethan or Trevor.

Or she could call the operator—call collect. She’d never done that before, either, but she knew it could be done.