The only sound it made was a very soft thud. With an effort of sheer will to stop her blubbing with pain Pamela returned the tray to its hook. Then she hobbled to the end of the room. There she checked for damage.
An angry red line ran across the top of her foot just below the ankle. It felt like red-hot pincers were crimping the flesh. Luckily it wasn’t bleeding. Probably nothing was fractured.
But that mother would swell.
‘Come on,’ Pamela hissed. ‘Finish this.’
She opened the refrigerator marked with the word Dairy. That sign didn’t lie. Inside she found a respectable stock of butter, cheese, milk, cream and yogurt, along with a tub of guacamole.
Of course, if there were going to be any butchered people here they were going to be in the refrigerator labeled Meat. Its door was as big as a house’s. Someone had welded a couple of steel loops where its edge met the appliance’s frame.
The kind of loops that would hold a hefty padlock.
Lauren liked to keep this refrigerator locked.
Only it was open now. Pamela’s gaze roved to the left. On a steel shelf full of pans she spied an open padlock.
Saves having to gnaw the thing off, she thought, trying to mask her anxiety with flippancy.
‘Okay, here goes . . .’
Door opens.
Chill mist rolls out.
Pamela stared until it felt as though the desert heat had sucked the moisture from her eyes.
‘Okay: inventory,’ she murmured.
The interior of the appliance was pristine aluminum. Stacked on its shelves was meat galore, from T-bone steaks to burgers to pork chops.
Severed human hands?
Eyeballs in cut-glass bowls?
Face-meat kebabs?
Nope.
Not a sign.
Sheesh. Just paranoia on her part. Stoked a little by some kid who’d been fooling around with an old diary. Pamela checked the deep freeze. A moment’s perusal revealed that this contained frozen foods that you’d find in any diner food-store.
Still, there was a cut of meat suggestive of a human thigh. Gingerly, she lifted it out.
The cold was biting. She saw the bloody marrow in the sawn-through bone at the joint’s end. The whole thing was wrapped in clear plastic with a mass-printed label attached that read PORK. DEFROST AND COOKING INSTRUCTIONS.
This definitely wasn’t the curly-haired guy’s upper leg. This came from a beast with four legs and snout.
Voices. She heard a clamor from the kitchen area. Someone was hurrying this way.
Someone knows I’m here, Pamela thought, panicking.
Any moment now they were going to burst through the door from the kitchen. Find her standing here by the open deep freeze with a good fifteen inches of frozen swine leg in her hands.
They’d dismiss her as a nut.
Or a thief.
She shut the appliance door. Great, you idiot, you were supposed to put the frozen meat back first.
Voices – louder and louder.
The door to the kitchen banged open. Gasping, Pamela wedged herself in the gap between the deep freeze and the shelves where two walls of the room met.
Fine. The shelves were piled so high with packs of flour, sugar and dried pulses that no one would be able to see her.
Unless they’ve come to grab something from the freezer.
Explain your way out of this one, Pamela.
Suddenly there seemed to be a lot of movement in the utility room, even though she could see nothing from where she was crouching. Voices. Loud ones. Feet scuffing the floor.
Lauren’s voice first: ‘Just leave her here with us! She’s not going to say anything.’
Talking about me?
But then: ‘I’m not coming back with you, Zak.’
‘The fuck you are!’ A man’s voice she didn’t recognize. Rough-sounding.
Violent-sounding.
The man bellowed again. ‘Think you can just run out on me, Nicki? Didn’t ya think I wouldn’t find ya? Ya dumb bitch.’
Sound of a smack. Nicki cried out.
So they’re not talking about me.
Pamela raised her head a little to peep out through a crack between two giant packs of dried rice. In the harsh light of the fluorescent strips she saw Nicki and Lauren standing side-by-side with their backs to the kitchen door. Fear blazed in their eyes.
And standing with his back to Pamela was a youngish guy in leather pants and a hide jacket that gleamed with metal studs. He wore a red bandanna. The biker. She remembered the Honda she’d seen parked outside the cafe.
Most of all she saw what was in his hand. A revolver. He was pointing it in Nicki’s face.
‘You’re my bitch, ya don’t walk out on me,’ he snarled. ‘So ya get two choices. Ride back with me. Or kneel down and start prayin’.’
Chapter Thirty-three
Pamela watched in horror from behind the shelves. The guy pulled back the hammer of the handgun with his thumb. He pointed the muzzle at the center of Nicki’s face.
Both Lauren and Nicki stared transfixed. Eyes wide open.
‘Nicki was my best whore,’ the leather-clad guy said. ‘Earned five hundred bucks a trick.’
‘I’m not going back to do that again, Zak,’ she whispered. ‘It nearly killed me.’
‘I gave you grade-A smack, ya bitch. Ya could be fucked by a mule on that stuff and not feel squat.’
‘I’m clean now, Zak.’
‘You’ll never be clean. Not as long as ya live.’
‘She’s not going back, mister.’ Lauren faced him, defiant. ‘She lives here now.’
‘With you bums? Shit . . . Pits? What a dump.’
‘It’s her home. We’re her family now. Nicki’s not going back with you.’
‘Okay.’ The pimp nodded as if this didn’t faze him. ‘Her decision. But I’m just going to deliver her severance pay.’
Even from here Pamela could see the guy’s posture alter when he tensed as a prelude to shooting Nicki.
‘I’m popping you, too, sweetheart,’ he told Lauren. ‘Ya’ve seen too much of my face. Okay, Nicki, say a little prayer . . .’
Pamela looked down at her hand. It had stopped hurting from the cold now. The ten-pound hunk of frozen pork had numbed it.
The hunk of meat. Hard as concrete.
Then she stepped silently from behind the shelves. With all her strength she swung the frozen joint.
Down on the punk’s red bandanna. The ice-bound meat made a soft clunking sound as it struck punk head-bone.
‘Uh.’ He dropped down to his knees.
Still kept a grip on the pistol. Began to raise it to shoot Nicki.
This time Pamela wielded the frozen pig leg like an executioner’s axe. Gripping it with both hands, she swung down.
This time no thudding sound.
A sharp snap instead. Bone had broken. Pamela doubted that it was the pig’s leg bone that had just busted.
Nope.
The pimp lay sprawled on the concrete floor. Blood seeped out of one his ears. His eyes were open but they were darting round like he was trying to lock onto a dancing hornet. His breathing sounded funny, too.
Sort of snorting. Irregular.
Pamela let the frozen pork joint slip from her fingers to the floor.
She looked up at Lauren and Nicki.
And swallowed. ‘I think we ought to get an ambulance.’
‘Forget that,’ Lauren said firmly. ‘Nicki, get me the meat cleaver.’
Pamela stared at Lauren who returned her gaze coolly.
‘Pamela. Once I’m through here we need to talk.’
Lauren closed the diner early that day. She told Pamela that she had work to do in the kitchen. Probably something centering on the big old butcher’s block on the table. Hank, Wes and Terry helped out, too. She guessed that Sharpe would have worked alongside them as well if he hadn’t been out on the road in his bus.
Nicki asked Pamela to sit with her in her
trailer.
Pamela obliged. She felt kinship with these people.
As Nicki showered Pamela fixed her a sandwich and a cold drink.
Nicki emerged, toweling dry her long blonde hair. Despite the shit that she’d been through today she still looked like a Viking goddess. A Viking goddess in a white cotton nightshirt, that was.
‘Oh, tuna and tomato,’ she said, beaming as she sat on the sofa. ‘I love that combination. Cool and refreshing. And soda. Thanks.’
Pamela set the tray bearing the plate and soda on the girl’s lap. ‘Don’t mention it. After what you’ve done for me the last few days it’s the least I could do.’ Pamela didn’t mention what had happened earlier. About Zak. About the frozen pork knocking the daylights out of him.
Nicki talked freely, though.
‘And thanks for what you did earlier.’ She sipped her drink and said ‘Hmm’ appreciatively. Then she looked Pamela in the eye. ‘He really would have killed me, you know.’
‘He looked the type.’
‘Once I saw him cut the throat of one of his girls because she kept back some money to buy her baby some formula.’
‘Gee. The guy’s a little shit.’
‘Yeah.’ Nicki nodded, her eyes misting. ‘Shittiest guy I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a few.’
‘Was Zak your . . .’
‘Pimp? Yeah.’ Nicki took a bite of her sandwich. There was a look of recollection in her eyes as she chewed. ‘I was at college, and I went and fell for a bad boy. I thought it was so cool that he’d pick me up on the motorcycle. The leathers were a turn-on too. A real turn-on. Shoot . . . he was my first real love, you know? The first guy who I let . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Well, I thought he loved me for myself, only then he started to spin this line that he owed some gang members money and that they’d kill him if he didn’t repay it.’
‘So he asked you to help him out?’
Nicki delicately nibbled a slice of tomato. ‘Yeah . . . I thought I was helping the guy I loved. And I was convinced that Zak loved me. But he spun the same line to lots of different girls. He didn’t owe any money, he was just preying on our naiveté to earn himself some easy cash.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘He fixed me up with a room. Painted purple it was, with purple drapes and purple sheets on the bed. I’d turn up at nine in the morning and guys would come to the room to fuck me until midnight, then I’d go home.’
‘Oh, Nicki.’ Pamela felt a lump in her throat. ‘That has to be the worst thing.’
‘Oh, there are worse things. Like you saw today. Anyway, I stuck it for fifteen months. During that time I learned that Zak had other girls doing the same thing in other rooms in the building. Guys screwed us girls for cash, and Zak collected at the door.’ She grimaced. ‘He beat up girls when they didn’t perform like they should. And he supplied the heroin. The drugs kept us going.’ Nicki blinked as if the mental images had gotten too vivid. ‘Stopped the hurt, too.’
‘But you got away in the end.’
‘Sure. One morning Zak gave me the address of a hotel and told me I was going into corporate entertainment. A Peruvian sales team was in town. They wanted to pass round a blonde for the morning before they went to the conference in the afternoon.’
‘The guy was a monster.’
‘Anyway, he gave me enough money for a cab to the hotel. Only I walked to the bus station. I didn’t have a destination in mind so I bought a Greyhound ticket that would get me the furthest away from Zak.’
‘And wound up here.’
Nicki smoothed back her still-damp blonde hair. ‘Yeah. After another five weeks’ worth of adventures.’
‘Sharpe found you?’
‘Yeah. I was renting out old pussy here to a bunch of soldiers who’d gone AWOL down in Victorville. They’d taken some bad acid and were planning to drag me behind their truck on a wire. They said they wanted to see how fast I could run. Even took bets on what speed I’d reach before I lost my balance.’
‘And he showed up just in time.’
‘That’s Sharpe’s trademark.’ Nicki sipped her drink. ‘It’s uncanny, but he’s always there just at the right time.’
‘Like an angel.’
‘I’ll say. Anyway . . . Sharpe took care of the guys.’
‘And you rode back on his bus full of mannequins.’
‘Absolutely.’ Nicki smiled. ‘That was two years ago this spring. They welcomed me here in Pits like a long-lost daughter. For a spell I did a lot of cold turkey; the heroin addiction took some shifting. But Lauren and the rest were there for me. Night and day.’
‘Sounds like you went through hell, Nicki.’
‘And then some.’ Nicki smiled warmly. ‘But I’m in heaven right now.’
‘That explains a lot,’ Pamela said. ‘But when I knocked Zak cold Lauren had no plans to turn him over to the cops, had she?’
‘You popped a blood vessel in his brain anyway.’
Pamela recoiled. ‘You mean I killed him?’
‘He deserved it. The rat.’
‘But the police will accuse me of homicide.’
Nicki shook her head. ‘Pamela, listen to me. The cops will never know.’
‘They’re gonna get rid of the body? Just like Sharpe did with Rodney, the guy who tried to kill me?’
‘Oh, they’ll dispose of it properly. He’ll even make a valuable contribution to our little town’s economy.’
‘You’re going to eat him, aren’t you?’
‘You’d best wait until you hear what Lauren has to say.’ Nicki took another bite of her tuna sandwich.
Lauren turned up at the trailer at eleven o’clock. Outside there was that perfect desert darkness. Plus absolute silence. Beautifully cool, too. Lauren looked exhausted.
But she looked satisfied as well.
‘A job well done,’ she told the other two girls as she eased herself down into one of the trailer’s armchairs in the lounge. She gave a huge sigh that came all the way from the straps of her sandals.
Pamela asked, ‘Could you use a cold beer?’
Lauren nodded. ‘Oh, yes, please, that’d be wonderful.’
When Pamela returned with a bottle, white with refrigerator frost, Lauren gave a little moan of pleasure. ‘Oh, that looks good.’
Nicki smiled. ‘As you always say, on nights such as these God lives in a cold drink.’
‘Hear, hear.’ After Lauren had taken a good, deep swallow of amber liquid she nodded to Pamela as she stood by the doorway. ‘Best rest your bones. I’ve got a story to tell.’
Pamela sat down beside Nicki on the couch.
Okay, she thought. Lauren has hippie looks, but she does things no hippie ever would. Something tells me she’s going to tell me that Pits is a cannibal town after all.
Pamela had a sense that her world would change once again as she sat there in the trailer with Lauren and Nicki.
‘Well,’ Lauren began. ‘The first news is that we’re going to have some new specials on the cafe menu. We’ll be featuring the Pitsburger Largesse, that’s a double meat patty in a bun. We’ll also be offering double pork steak for the price of a single.’
‘Zak?’ Pamela ventured.
‘After using Nicki here for so long, we get to use bad boy Zak for at least the next few days.’
Pamela couldn’t believe her ears. ‘You mean we’re eating the guy?’
‘It’s not compulsory for us,’ Lauren said in a no-nonsense way. ‘But we’re serving him to the cafe’s customers.’
‘Although Hank likes to make his own-recipe blood sausage,’ Nicki said. ‘He calls it his vampire bait. Sorry, Pamela. This is all a bit new to you, isn’t it?’
Pamela gulped. ‘Just a tad.’
I’m glad it isn’t suppertime. And I don’t want to even think how the old-timer makes blood sausage . . .
‘Okay.’ Lauren set her beer bottle on the table. ‘Let’s begin at the beginning. Back in the 1960s Pits was a ghost town. Years ago they used to
mine borax here. It was a rootin’-tootin’ son-of-a-gun kind of place.’ Lauren smiled. ‘A real Wild West town with shoot-outs at the saloon. There was a population of more than five hundred. Then by 1920 the borax was all mined out; people drifted away. Soon it was deserted. Then in 1970 a man settled here. They called him Priest.’
‘He was the town’s only inhabitant?’ Pamela asked. ‘Sounds more like a hermit than a priest.’
‘I guess you could say his was a spiritual calling,’ Lauren continued. ‘You see, he’d come from a family that was rich in money but poor in love. He believed that building a society where people cared for one another was more important than owning lots of possessions. Priest had drifted round the hippie communes of San Francisco – summer of love and all that. Only he was anti-drug, so the communes weren’t for him. Also they – the people who claimed they were dropping out of society – still wanted to live in the big cities. Priest hankered for wilderness country.’
‘So he found Pits.’
‘Indeed he did,’ Lauren said. ‘He moved into the big house near the cemetery. Of course, it was long abandoned by then. First he fixed it up. Then he went out on the road, looking for society’s casualties. The men and women who’d fallen through the cracks due either to drink, drugs, poverty or mental illness. One by one, he started bringing them in. Some left after a while, some stayed on and found a healing in this place.’
‘Hank must have been one of the first,’ Pamela said. ‘He told me he came here in 1972.’
Lauren nodded. ‘Hank was the ninth person that Priest saved.’
‘Just like Sharpe saves people now?’
‘Sharpe stepped into Priest’s shoes when Priest couldn’t continue anymore.’
‘What’s Hank’s story?’
‘That’s for Hank to tell. If he chooses. But it’s enough to say that modern life didn’t suit Hank. He opted for something that suits his nature.’
‘I see.’
‘Here in Pits we’re all refugees from the modern world – in some shape or form.’
Nicki added, ‘Pamela knows what happened to me. And about Zak.’
‘And good riddance to him,’ Lauren said with feeling. ‘At least he’s going to bring some money into the neighborhood. And as for me . . . I suffered anxiety attacks. It got so I couldn’t ride a bus or walk down a street. Never mind visit a store. I just got it into my head one day four years ago that if I camped out in the desert by myself everything would be fine. Of course, city girls don’t come to a place like the Mojave and pitch their tent under a cactus and everything turns out hunky-dory. I got sunstroke, drank bad water from a spring, got dehydrated, delirious – then, to round off a hell of a month, a snake bit me. I was laid on a sand dune waiting to die when I saw a bus on the road way in the distance.’