Chapter Five
Trouble in Paradise
“I’m telling you, you turned right on Humpty Dumpty Drive when you should have turned left!” Lindsey barked. She folded up her map, the pages crinkling and wrinkling noisily. Derrick looked scathingly at her from the driver’s seat. Both were bundled in two layers of winter clothing and hats. Their breath hovered like little clouds in front of their faces. Light stuttered through the windows as massive oaks flanking the country road grew further apart. Snow was falling lightly. The visible sky was a curtain of coiling grey. Mounds of the white stuff flanked the roads and rested on the tops of trees.
The heater inside the car was broken but the mood was scorching. Eight hours in a car will do that to a couple. On top of that both were responsible for taking at least four wrong turns each and an hour earlier the right front tire decided to blow forcing them to use the spare. It was a miracle that neither Derrick nor Lindsey had killed the other.
“To name a street Humpty Dumpty Drive is fucking ridiculous,” Derrick muttered. “And look at that,” he pointed at an approaching sign. “Mickey Mouse Lane… what the hell is wrong with these assholes? You’d think we were lost in a Walt Disney wet dream.”
“Humpty Dumpty came before Walt Disney,” Lindsey said, as she stuffed her map in the glove compartment.
Derrick pointed at the now closed glove compartment. “What are you doing?”
Lindsey fished her phone from her pocket and wiggled it sarcastically.
“That won’t work,” Derrick reminded her. “We’re in the sticks. You’re going to have to use the map if we’re going to find my mother’s house anytime soon.”
“We should be fine now.” Lindsey motioned to the scant trees. The tall oaks, pines, and maples had given way to rolling hills and sprawling fields packed with snow. “We shouldn’t hit another dead zone for a few miles.” Lindsey turned on her phones GPS and 4G, opened up Google Maps, and punched in Derrick’s mothers address. “Holy hell!”
“What?” Derrick’s eyes darted everywhere, thinking perhaps she had spotted a deer. His foot was micro-inches above the break, ready to stomp on it.
“We’re four fucking hours away!” Lindsey replied. She tossed her phone on the dash and growled, fists clenched. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
“Relax,” Derrick said, though he looked just as angry as Lindsey. “We’ll be there in no…” his words trailed from his lips as up ahead a substantial man had stepped onto the road. He was nude and dragging a body behind him.
Derrick hit the brakes. The car fish tailed to a stop, tires chomping snow. The man and his victim were twenty maybe thirty feet away. He shook his head roughly, mouth opened as he sucked in air. The body he was holding shifted in the snow as he strengthened his grip. Her skin, what could be seen beneath the blood, had gone the color of milk. Her eyes were glassy. Her hair was matted with mud and blood.
“Reverse!” Lindsey yelled, slapping her husband’s leg. “Reverse the goddamn car!”
Derrick did, and her cellphone slid off the dash onto the floorboard. But he was too slow. The beast of a man was a step ahead. In one fluid motion he spun and shot-putted his victim halfway through his turn. She smashed through the windshield head first. Glass shattered and the woman cut through Derrick with the ease of a knife through butter. Lindsey froze in shock, her mouth comically slack as blood began to geyser from Derrick’s lower half. She started to scream. Then her window smashed and two large hands were grasping her head. Those hands twisted sharply and pulled. Lindsey’s neck broke with a sickening crunch and her head rose. Her spine followed, rising and rising like streamers from the mouth of a clown, blood pouring as if from a smashed fire hydrant. The beast of a man tucked Lindy’s head beneath his arm like a ball and ambled from the car as though he hadn’t done anything more than give two lost travelers directions.