Friday walked forward too, but Pubes grabbed her arm. "Not you. I need you."
Dylan stopped.
Pubes aimed the gun at him. "What're you doing, boy? I said sit."
Friday nodded at Dylan, her scar twisting her face like barbwire. He sat on the stool next to Latina.
Keeping the gun on them, Pubes edged toward a cabinet by the door. He retrieved a yellow rope and handed it to Friday. "Drop the briefcase," he said. "Then tie them. Back to back. And then to the stools."
Friday went to do as he asked, but he stopped her.
"Have them take off their shirts first."
Dylan complied; he didn't want anything to happen to Friday. He tossed his flannel and shirt on the floor and caught another glimpse of the ashes and shriveled skull. Goosebumps broke out over his arms and chest. The house was too damn cold.
"What're you going to do?" Latina asked, crossing her arms. She had not taken off her top. "What're you going to do to us?"
Pubes frowned. His gun hand was shaking, but only slightly, as if he were trying to control it. "I'm going to shoot you if you don't take off your goddamn shirt."
Latina finally did it. She crossed her arms over her breasts.
"No," Pubes said. "Hands behind your back. Both of you."
Friday tied their hands together, then cinched their bodies close by wrapping the rope around their bellies and chests. Pubes told her how to form the knots and how to tie off each end on the stool supports. Her hair swished across Dylan's chest as she bent to secure his end. More goosebumps prickled his arms, and Friday offered an apologetic look, her eyebrows arched.
Pubes caught Dylan glancing at the ashes and the shrunken skull. "She was doing dishes," he explained. "My wife. She was doing the breakfast dishes, and she just started screaming. I-I watched her burn. The TV . . . before it went off air, it said it might be contagious."
He stepped forward to test the rope, pulling on the different knots. "Good," he said, stepping back. "It said it might be contagious, and I . . . I had just kissed my wife. She was doing dishes. We had eggs." Tears started to well in his eyes. He blinked them back and flexed his jaw. Then he nodded at Friday. "All right," he said, clearing his throat. "Throw those ashes on them."
Friday gawked at him.
"Do it."
She shook her head.
Pubes jabbed the gun barrel against her temple. He was weeping, scowling, grimacing. "Do it," he said, clenching his teeth. "Do it, or I'll spoil your pretty hair."
Friday scooped up some ashes, shaking so badly some sifted from her hands. Her knuckles brushed the skull; it disintegrated with a little puff.
"Now throw it on them," Pubes said, nudging her with the gun toward Dylan and Latina.
Friday stood over them, full of earthquakes, fault lines in both knees. She held out her hand, ready to throw the ashes. Tears trembled in her eyes.
"Do it," Pubes said. "I need to know if it's contagious."
Friday hesitated. Finally, she shook her head. "No."
Pubes growled and slapped her hand from underneath. The ashes billowed from her fist and floated down. Dylan tried to dodge the cloud, but the dust blanketed him. It stung his eyes and caught in his throat. Latina started to scream as the remains polluted her as well.
Eighteen.
Pubes watched, and Friday slumped against the counter, clean hand clamped over her mouth, blue eyes wide. Latina kept screaming, and her back grew hot and sweaty against Dylan's. He coughed, vomited, and cried, trying to cleanse his system. The ashes left grit between his teeth. He spit and shook his hair.
Thrashing, Latina began to smoke. Her first blister splattered against Dylan and trickled into his pants, down the cleft of his buttocks. More blisters swelled and popped. They burst against him like hot water balloons.
He wriggled, trying to loosen the rope. "Untie me! I'm not burning, I'm not burning!"
Friday stepped forward to help, but Pubes pistol-whipped her upside the head. Dylan didn't care. He was too busy squirming, trying to avoid Latina's feverish flesh and the sick splash of her blisters. He gagged on her smoke and winced as she wailed, louder than a fire alarm.
God, he couldn't die like this. He had to get loose. He had to find Minnie, had to get away from the infection.
The first few flames erupted on Latina's arm and curled the downy hair. More flared up her back and singed Dylan.
Pubes wept and shook.
Dylan tried to get his attention. "Please-it's hot!"
The man put his hands over his ears, clamping the gun flat against his head. He refused to meet Dylan's eyes.
"Oh, God," Pubes said, "forgive me!"
Then Shadow snuck in and brained him with a metal pipe.
Nineteen.
Pubes crumpled to the floor, bleeding from his head. Shadow stepped over him and whipped out his butterfly knife, coming toward Dylan and Latina. She was screaming and rocking and burning. Dylan had started to scream too; the fire blazed against his back. He could smell himself cooking.
Shadow cut the ropes and booted Latina's stool out from under her. She toppled and writhed, but not for long. Her skin peeled back from the muscle, and the muscle blackened against bone, until her whole skeleton glowed red hot and there was nothing left but ash. The house reeked like a bad barbeque.
Dylan coughed, cried, and touched his back. He winced and pulled away. He wasn't burned badly, but he had blisters. One popped beneath his fingers, and his testicles shriveled.
Friday touched his arm.
"Don't," he said, shrugging her off. He spit out more ash. Any minute, he would burst into flame.
"We're dead," Pubes declared. He was sitting up, bleeding and dazed. "We're all dead." He jammed the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Shadow barely sidestepped the party popper of scalp, skull, and brain matter. Bits of hair and bloody pulp splattered his black pants and naked shin. "Christ!"
Pubes slumped to the ground, dumping slop out the back of his head. A meaty, humid stink mingled with the smoke.
Dylan vomited, nothing but bile. He choked on the acids and bent over, hands resting on his knees.
Shadow patted Pubes' pockets and found keys. He picked up the gun and held Friday hostage. He looked very white; his smile was gone. "Let's go."
Dylan shook his head and trembled. He squeezed his eyes shut, and tears chilled his lashes. He tried to find his cubicle, groping through the dark for its doorknob. "I'm sick. I'm dead."
"Bullshit." Shadow grabbed a handful of Mrs. Pubes' ashes. "The shit's not contagious; see?" He tossed it in the air, and it snowed on the broken spikes of his mohawk and on the shoulders of his leather jacket. He smeared the residue on his cheek. "Nothing, nada, not contagious. Now let's roll."
Dylan shook his head again. He didn't say anything, afraid he would gag.
With his knife, Shadow cut Friday under the eyelid. She yelped. Shadow kept the blade near her eye and the gun near her temple. "Come on, Dylan Bradley, it's life or death."
Friday was scared rigid. She had touched the ashes, yet her skin wasn't smoking. Maybe she was immune. If so, he couldn't gamble her life.
He held up one hand. "Fine, fine. Just-stop." He shuffled toward the door, avoiding the ashes, slipping in the brains, feeling sick all over again. He forgot his shirt and flannel.
Shadow shoved him forward. "Andale, andale." He let Friday grab Geoffrey's briefcase before they exited; Dylan would never know why.
Outside, Shadow prodded him toward the Impala. "You drive," he said, holding out the keys.
Dylan felt carsick, too dizzy and hot to operate a vehicle. And what if he ignited? He would crash and kill them all. But Shadow was granting him control; he couldn't refuse it. The keys were nice and cool in his palm.
"Good," Shadow said. His smile returned, though he still had the complexion of a ghost. "Now take me to your girl."
Shadow and Friday sat in back, and Dylan got behind the wheel. He took a deep breath and swallowed his nausea. As long as he didn't breathe through his nose, through the residue of smoke and blood, he would be okay. His fever had already begun to wane. Maybe the blisters were normal second-degree burns.
Dylan started the car and headed down the driveway. Part of him hoped he would burn and wreck the car into a tree. Shadow might live, but at least then the punk would have no hope of finding Minnie on his own.
Twenty.
As Dylan steered down Hugo Road, Shadow leaned between the front seats and opened the glove box. He found a stack of napkins and sat back to scrub the gray matter and blood off his pants. Friday stared straight ahead, her face white, sagging, and corpse-like. Her eyes had glazed, as if she were completely devoid of thought.
Dylan related. He was driving on autopilot, which he had done several times before, arriving at his destination with a vague dream-memory of the journey there, always surprised he hadn't wrecked.
He pulled across the small bridge into Merlin and slowed for the stop sign at the end; the intersecting road was desolate. Across the street, a few cars and trucks were parked at The Hideaway Bar and Grille.
In some far cobweb of his brain, Dylan wondered how many barflies were still alive, pouring their own drinks. He wondered if they would meet the same fate as Dickens' Krook, the alcoholic in Bleak House who died of spontaneous combustion.
At the intersection, Dylan turned onto Merlin Galice without stopping. In the creek to his right, a blue van lay on its back, submerged in a foot of rushing water. Dylan ignored it and approached a left turn onto Azalea Drive, which meandered through the hills to Upper River Road. Merlin Galice continued toward the Rogue River and Hellsgate Canyon, out into nothing.
Before Shadow wrecked, Dylan had been directing him toward Upper River Road, which led straight into downtown Grants Pass; this route would bypass uptown traffic jams. Minnie lived in an apartment on A Street, past two of the busiest thoroughfares, 6th and 7th. Dylan had figured that if gridlock was too bad on the main streets, they could walk to Minnie's.
Without much thought, he passed Azalea and continued on Merlin Galice toward the river. He tried to tell himself he did it on accident-he hadn't been paying attention-but he knew he'd planned it. He peeked at Shadow in the rearview. The punk was still cleaning his pants, his lips pressed in a grim line. He was oblivious. But for how long?
"Hey," Shadow said, looking up. "You missed the turn."
Fear struck Dylan like a lightning bolt. "Huh?"
"You're too smart to play dumb, Dylan. You missed our turn."
"No. This is the back way."
Shadow threw bloody napkins at him. "I fooled you before: I know these parts. I just wanted to see if you'd steer me straight."
Dylan stared at him in the rearview. The punk raised his eyebrows and waved the gun. Dylan finally looked away. His stomach sank. He used the next turnaround and headed back toward Azalea.
"Atta boy," Shadow said, patting Dylan's shoulder. He sat back and put his arm around Friday. He kissed her cheek and licked her scar as if pleasuring a vulva. "Let's me and you have some fun," he said, lips close to her ear. "Autoerotica."
He sliced open her t-shirt with the knife and cut her bra. Dylan glimpsed her breasts in the rearview, two mounds of snow nippled with ash. Shadow suckled one and smashed the other with the flat of his blade. Friday stared at Dylan in the mirror. Her eyes drooped, looking worried and sad, but she was biting her lip as if aroused.
Dylan clenched the wheel and glared at the road. He didn't want to see Shadow's tongue, obscene and pink against Friday's pallor, just like her scar. But more than anything, he didn't want to see Friday bite her lower lip.
He concentrated on Minnie, tried to remember the cool push of her kiss, but even she was no sanctuary. After high school, she had enrolled in Southern Oregon University in Ashland, a town near Grants Pass; she commuted between the two cities. Minnie had asked Dylan to enroll with her and share her apartment, but he chose a college upstate. He needed space, he needed solace. So he ran away. If Minnie were dead, he would never forgive himself for that cowardice.
In the back seat, Friday moaned. She was still staring at Dylan in the rearview, breathing heavier now. Shadow chuckled and made suckling noises.
Dylan had only one refuge: the engine's hum, a little pocket of white noise. He crawled inside and drove, on autopilot once more, everything blurred. The only cars he saw were wrecks.
Twenty-one.
Downtown Grants Pass was in riots.
After the fields of beanpoles and grapevines, after the cattle ranches and a graveyard, Upper River Road became G Street, which led through the suburbs into historical downtown, a strip of old brick buildings that housed shops for beads, hemp clothes, water pipes, and other local wares. Old fluted green lampposts flanked the sidewalk, and baskets of pink and purple blooms hung from their arms. It was the cultural center of the town, where Friday-night art walks were held, the streets humming with live music and chatter.
Looters had shattered the store windows and were stripping outfits off mannequins or stealing jewelry from display cases. Vandals were bashing cars and spray-painting storefronts. Some had started fistfights.
In front of a pawnshop, two men fought over an electric guitar, a Stratocaster. Finally, the bigger man used the instrument as an axe-he chopped his opponent in the neck.
Car accidents clogged the street, and people scattered between them, arms full of shoes, jewelry, and clothes. Some of them stopped to burst into flame; part of their spoils burned with them.
Dylan stopped just outside the war zone. He didn't know what he had expected-a ghost town maybe, or just normal Grants Pass, people window-shopping and doing the work commute-but he definitely hadn't expected this. It was like watching a movie; the car was his theater.
In the back, Shadow and Friday had stopped fooling around. She was shirtless, but the punk had managed to stay dressed. For most the ride Dylan had ignored their foreplay, ignorant to what they had done. In a way, he wanted to know. He wanted to know exactly how Friday had been stained, but that would only anger and dishearten him.