arm and split open his chin against his knee. When Cleavon came back from the doctor’s with a cast on his arm and stitches in his chin, Earl had been profusely apologetic, said he hadn’t meant to hurt him, wouldn’t do it again. Since then he had lost his temper only a few other times. This wasn’t due to discipline on his part as much as everybody else having the good sense not to provoke him. You could call Earl a shithead all you wanted, but you didn’t go kicking him in the nuts, no matter how much he was smarting off, not if you wanted to be walking the next day.
“Shut your yabbering and listen to me, Earl,” Cleavon said, feeling as though time was getting away from them all too fast. “You, Floyd, and Weasel are going to take those three there back to the house. Then you come back here with the wrecker and get what’s left of the bimmer to the garage. You got that?”
“Sure, Cleave. That’s easy. And back at the house, can I, I mean, I’ve been thinking, and I’m wondering, I know you’re gonna say no—”
“Spit it out, man!”
“Can I give the bucks to Toad and Trapper.”
Cleavon stared at him. “To your snakes?”
“Can I, Cleave, please? They just shed, they’re real hungry—”
“Judas Priest! You must be dumber than you look! There ain’t no way those snakes can eat a full-grown man.”
“Sure they can, Cleave, they can easy. Trapper’s twenty-six feet now. Toad’s only a bit shorter, I just measured them last month. They can eat the bucks easy.”
Cleavon frowned, thinking about that. They were damn big snakes. Monsters. If they could eat fully grown humans, well, that would be two less graves to dig.
“Also,” Earl went on, “it’d mean they don’t need to eat no rabbits for a couple months, and more rabbits equals more money for us, that’s what you always say—”
“All right, all right, enough yabbering, for fuck’s sake! You wanna feed baldy and the cripple to your snakes, feed them to your snakes. Just don’t lay a hand on the girl. That means no ‘playing’ with her either. I swear to God, Earl, I find one mark on her when I get back, I don’t know, but I’ll tell Spence it was you this time, no more covering, and he’ll kick you out of the club forever. You got that, Earl?”
Earl nodded solemnly. “I won’t touch her, Cleave. I promise.”
“Your promise ain’t worth shit,” Cleavon said. “You just remember, you touch her, no more does, never.” He turned to Jesse. “C’mon.”
They climbed in the cab of the El Camino just as a light rain began to fall, and within moments they were speeding north along Stanford Road, on their way to Lonnie’s place.
CHAPTER 13
“Be afraid… Be very afraid.”
The Fly (1986)
When Jenny came around on the back seat of Noah’s Jeep, she couldn’t make out whether what she was hearing was animal or human. It took her a good fuzzy three or four seconds to realize it was the latter—the warbling, forlorn cries of a man suffering great anguish. Thinking of Jeff, his broken back, she sat up quickly and cried out herself as a bomb seemed to go off inside her head. She moaned and sank back in the seat, afraid to move for fear of setting off another bomb. She remained like this, stationary, until the pain receded and her vision cleared.
The horrible wails, she noticed, had ceased. She leaned forward gingerly and peered through the rain-specked windshield. Steve stood next to Noah on the veranda of some house. A grimy little man pushed between them and stomped down the porch steps. Jenny barely had time to wonder who he was before he reached into the car parked next to the Jeep, retrieved a rifle, and aimed it at Noah.
Jenny didn’t scream a warning, didn’t jump out of the Jeep and tackle the man from behind. She didn’t do any of this because everything inside her had ceased to work. Fear and confusion and disbelief had shut her down, made her a spectator in what was about to play out.
The man fired the rifle. The report was a toneless bang, like a firecracker. Noah collapsed. Steve shouted his name. The man started toward them.
Jenny broke her paralysis and fumbled with the door handle. She thrust the door open and fell out of the vehicle, landing on her hands and knees on the damp gravel driveway. The air reeked of