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  DOLL FACE

  Tim Curran

  First Edition

  Doll Face © 2015 by Tim Curran

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  Blackout

  Blood, Bones and Bullets

  Deadlock

  Long Black Coffin

  Nightcrawlers

  Sow

  Worm

  Check out the author’s official page at DarkFuse for a complete list:

  http://www.darkfuseshop.com/Tim-Curran/

  1

  It wasn’t until later that Ramona realized how neatly it all fit together. Like pieces of a die-cut puzzle, everything simply fit into place in that purely seamless and smooth sort of way that fate managed when it wanted something to happen. Or it wanted people to suffer.

  Chazz was too drunk to drive by the time they hit Highway 8, only no one was saying so because although he was a real mellow, easy sort of cat when he was sober, when he was drunk, he was mean as skunk piss and if you didn’t want that spraying into your eyes, you learned to keep your mouth shut and go with the flow like a turd being sucked down a toilet.

  Ramona knew all about that.

  “You missed the turn-off,” Creep pointed out, getting nervous because he had to cover the morning shift at Donut Den back in the city and five a.m. came real early once you passed the midnight hour.

  “I’m taking a shortcut,” Chazz told him, an edge to his voice cutting beneath his words like a razor. “So fuck off.”

  Lex giggled in the backseat and Soo-Lee did, too, because if Lex thought it was funny, then surely it was.

  Ramona reserved judgment. She was having trouble finding the humor in a situation where the drunken idiot behind the wheel didn’t have the good sense to hand over his keys or admit he was lost.

  “This’ll cut twenty minutes off the drive,” Chazz explained, taking the next right and almost putting the van in the ditch as the road curved sharply down a low hill. The rain was coming down in sheets and the pavement was greasy like it had been oiled with cooking spray.

  “You never mentioned a shortcut,” Ramona said.

  “I just thought of it.”

  “But you’ve taken it before?”

  “Of course I have.”

  Which was bullshit of course, Ramona knew. Chazz’s sense of direction was seriously challenged when he was sober let alone after ten beers and half-a-dozen Jager Bombs. He had no idea where he was going and with all that alcohol in his system, he couldn’t have pissed in a straight line let alone walked one. Any moment now, some hotshot sheriff’s deputy was going to come screaming out of the williwags with both flashers going and siren screaming.

  And I hope it happens soon, she thought, before he fucking kills us. Jail time and a suspended license is exactly what he deserves. Some time in a cage will do wonders for him.

  She lit a cigarette and mainly because she knew it would annoy Chazz, who was virulently anti-smoking inside his van. She could feel him tensing behind the wheel, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare because once he did, she was going to start riding him about the shortcut and exposing his inadequacies behind the wheel.

  “My old man’s gonna kill me if I lose another job,” Creep said.

  “You won’t lose your job,” Lex assured him. “The corporate gods of Donut Den will spare you because of your sheer wizardry with custard and powdered sugar.”

  “Piss off,” Creep said.

  Ramona sighed. Why Creep bothered opening his mouth at all was a mystery. Every time he did, Chazz got irritable and Lex got smart-assed. It was strictly a lose-lose situation.

  Chazz was leaning forward now, trying to see through the windshield as the rain fell harder and the wipers pumped back and forth almost manically.

  “Can’t see shit,” he said.

  In the back, Danielle said, “We were in this storm once and it was really bad and the next day my sister and I went looking around. The water was really deep and we saw this rat float by. And we were both like, OMG, that’s a rat, a fucking rat. Who knew we even had rats?”

  Ramona had to bite down on her lip because Danielle was such an incurable, inveterate airhead. She could almost hear everyone rolling their eyes.

  “Well, if we see any, we’ll let you know,” Lex said.

  Soo-Lee giggled.

  Ramona was leaning forward, too. She squinted her eyes as the van came down a hill and into a wooded valley. A green Day-Glo road sign passed in the murk. “Stokes,” she said. “We’re coming into some place called Stokes.” She turned to Chazz. “What sort of place is it? You must have visited it the last time you took this shortcut.”

  Chazz gritted his teeth. “I don’t know. There’s lots of little fucking towns out here.”

  She was getting worried about a little more than Chazz’s denial or inebriation by that point, because the twisting road leading down into the valley had an easy two inches of rain covering it and it seemed to be getting deeper. Chazz brought them across a bridge that spanned a swollen river, cut down another curving hill, and the town opened up before them.

  Things happened in rapid succession then.

  They came in way too fast. It seemed like one moment the town was not even there and the next it opened like a flower, spreading its petals and engulfing them. Chazz hit the brakes and the van skidded on the greasy pavement. It went to the left, then to the right as he fought the wheel and worked the brake pedal.

  About the time it seemed like maybe he was going to get it under control, a shape stepped out in front.

  Ramona only saw it for a split second: a vague, man-like shape with raised arms.

  Then the van hit it.

  They were only doing about thirty miles an hour. Under ordinary circumstances, it was hardly a deadly speed, but certainly enough to break bones and cause concussions and all manner of nasty injuries. Purely from the sound of the impact—something that made Danielle scream like a little girl—Ramona was certain it was going to be ugly.

  And particularly when they rolled right over what they had hit with both sets of tires. Thump-thump, thump-thump.

  2

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Chazz was saying, bumping his head repeatedly against the steering wheel. “I just killed a guy…I just fucking killed a guy.”

  In the back of his mind, he supposed he was waiting for one of them to disagree with him, but nobody was saying a thing. That made it worse. That made him practically want to scream.

  You could have listened to Ramona. Just for once you could have listened to her and let her drive.

  But he hadn’t.

  Hell, something in him just couldn’t. Admitting he couldn’t drive just because he was fucked-up was like admitting he wasn’t a man. It would have been like handing her his balls. Here, you take these. I’m no good with them. And there was a dark, macho truth to that, he knew, and one that now sounded unbelievably childish and unbelievably stupid. They wouldn’t much
care for it in court.

  Because he would be going to court.

  Drunk driving. Manslaughter. It meant doing time. If he only got five years, he’d be lucky. Five years in a goddamn state hole filled with animals that would all want something from him, if it wasn’t his ass, it would be money.

  “Maybe you should just drive away before someone comes,” Creep said.

  Which was exactly the sort of dumbass thing you expected Creep to say…but it was exactly what Chazz was thinking. Drive off, pretend it didn’t happen. He was actually considering it. As dangerous and reckless as it was, it made a certain amount of sense.

  He looked out through the windshield.

  Stokes was dead. He didn’t see so much as a single light on. Apparently, they were all sleeping. Nobody had been roused and that was a good thing. If he just drove off now, who’d be the wiser?

  “There’s no other way,” he said.

  The van had died when it skidded to a halt. He turned it over and the starter whined, but it did not catch. He tried it again and that’s when Ramona grabbed his hand. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked him.

  God, he could feel her dark eyes boring into him.

  “I’m saving my ass,” he told her, trying to turn over the van again. “I’m trying to save all our asses.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” she said.

  He knocked her hand aside. “Oh yes, we are.”

  She just stared at him. “You’re going to leave the scene of an accident? Aren’t you in enough trouble as it is?”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “You might want to listen to her,” Soo-Lee said. “If you leave the scene of an accident—”

  “Zip it,” Chazz told her.

  Lex sighed. “He won’t listen to reason. It’s like trying to get a monkey to stop eating its own shit.”

  “Oh God,” Danielle moaned.

  “All of you shut the fuck up!” Chazz told them.

  “Please, Chazz,” Ramona said. “Please, just listen for once, okay? Don’t make matters worse.”

  “Shut up, Ramona. I won’t tell you again.”

  “You won’t have to,” she said, opening her door and stepping out.

  “FUCK ARE YOU DOING, YOU STUPID BITCH?”

  “Here we go,” Creep said.

  Chazz beat his fists against the dashboard. “GET THE FUCK BACK IN HERE OR YOU’RE STAYING BEHIND!”

  Ramona didn’t bother justifying that with a reply, she just slammed her door shut.

  Chazz unrolled his window. “Ramona! Get back in here! We have to go.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Get in here or I’ll leave you behind! I swear to God I will!”

  “Then go,” she said. “And when the cops arrive, I’ll give them your name and address and the license of your van. Go ahead, Chazz, run from your fucking mistakes like you always do. Just see how far you get.”

  His jaw hung open. “I can’t believe you. After all we’ve been through.”

  The truth was, he did believe her. This is exactly what he’d expected her to do when he needed her to stand with him. It wasn’t that she had high morals or steadfast ethics. No, it wasn’t that at all. She had been waiting for something like this. Waiting for a time when he needed her like never before so she could shit all over his parade.

  I told her I loved her, too. I actually told the bitch that.

  “Fuck you then,” he said.

  Even though he knew that she had him, he kept trying to start the van but it wasn’t happening. The distributor must have gotten wet and all he was doing now was wearing down the battery. The only thing to do was wait, but he couldn’t do that. He didn’t have the time to wait.

  He heard the side door of the van slide open.

  He whipped his head around. “What the fuck are you people doing?”

  What they were doing was apparent: they were getting out. Lex got out followed by Soo-Lee, Creep and Danielle right behind her. Fucking herd mentality. They were all just like Ramona; they couldn’t wait to hang him out to dry. Well, that was fine. They would need him, too, some day. That’s what he was going to wait for.

  As Creep walked by the open window, Chazz seized him by the arm. “I said, what the fuck are you doing?”

  Creep, with uncharacteristic defiance, yanked his arm away. “You ran somebody down. Don’t you think we should check and see if that somebody’s all right?”

  But the idea of that made Chazz practically deflate inside.

  3

  As he followed Ramona over to where the body lay in a crumpled heap, Lex knew that was what he loved about guys like Chazz: the bigger the muscles, the smaller the balls. He was a real force of nature out on the field—Christ, the guy had rushed for three touchdowns against those animals from Cardinal Sprague and that was beyond belief—but when it came down to it, he was a gutless coward. Things had always been too easy for him. He got by on his natural prowess, his athleticism and dark good looks. But none of that was going to buy him beans this time.

  Not that Lex was going to tell him that.

  Chazz was big. Chazz was powerful. Maybe he had a peanut for a brain, but he could kick serious ass and Lex had no interest in being on the wrong side of that. There would be no physical contest between them, because Chazz would have stomped him flat. Mentally, Lex knew he could have pared him down to shavings in a matter of moments, but physically, hah, forget it.

  Chazz was back by the van, grumbling.

  Soo-Lee was right behind Lex. Creep and Danielle were following her, but hesitantly like they weren’t moving of their own volition but being towed along by a string.

  When they got to the body, Lex said, “Is he…is he alive?”

  Ramona shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, is he breathing?” Creep asked.

  But nobody could really say.

  It appeared to be a man and he was facedown in the wet street. One arm was stretched out, the other tucked beneath him. One of his legs looked like it was broken at the knee, the foot turned nearly around on the ankle. If he was alive, then he was pretty broken up.

  Ramona jogged off and, after a few seconds of arguing with Chazz, returned with a flashlight.

  She shined it on the body.

  And immediately gasped.

  The guy was wearing a dark coat, gray woolen pants, and dirty brown shoes. He was hardly a fashion plate. Lex figured from the way he was dressed he might be a bum or a homeless person or something. His clothes were ragged, his shoes badly scuffed. It looked like he’d grabbed what he could find from a dumpster out back of St. Vinnie’s.

  Beyond that, he didn’t look so good.

  His body was terribly distorted—hips twisted, back hunched, head bent to the side at an unnatural angle. There was a rut in his lower back where he had been run over. One of his hands was smashed, marked by a clear tire tread.

  Lex didn’t know much about medicine, but even he knew that if this guy survived this, he would never walk right again or even stand up.

  “Well?” Creep said. “Aren’t you going to check him?”

  The tone of his voice suggested that Lex would have to do it because there was no way in hell he was going to. The revulsion was thick under his words. Danielle wasn’t much better. She was mumbling nonsensical things and Lex was almost certain they were a jumbled version of the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Is he fucking dead or what?” Chazz said, coming up behind them.

  He was looking around nervously to see if any of the good folks of Stokes had come out to investigate yet. Lex figured that he was still planning on running.

  “Let’s just get out of here. I ain’t going to prison over this guy. No fucking way.”

  “Just calm down, you idiot,” Ramona told him. “I’ll tell them I was driving.”

  “You…hey, that might work,” Chazz said, brightening considerably. “It just might.”

  “Good idea,” Lex said. “Let your girlfriend do the time
for you.”

  “You better shut up,” Chazz told him.

  Lex shrugged. “I wonder if it’s true what they say.”

  Chazz narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  “All that stuff about prison rape.”

  “You motherfucker—”

  Lex knew he’d pushed it too far with that one. Chazz came right at him and he would have had him, too, if Ramona hadn’t gotten between them and told them both to knock it the fuck off. She was a petite thing, but when she got pissed, she was filled with black, seeping venom.

  “Lex?” she said. “Check his pulse.”

  He kneeled down next to the body. In the beam of the flashlight he couldn’t see any blood or other fluids leaking from it. The pavement was wet but only with rain. The others were all watching him, pressing in, eyes wide, mouths hanging open. Christ, he felt like he was about to be lynched.

  They trust me to do this. An engineering major for chrissake. Why not Danielle? She’s studying nursing.

  But he knew the answer to that.

  Danielle was a basket case on a good day and today was not a good day. Sighing, he reached down toward the guy’s extended, smashed hand. It looked like a withered funeral lily. Very pale, almost white like it was fake or something. Remembering how they did such things on TV, Lex placed his fore- and middle fingers together and reached them beneath the guy’s wrist.

  And yanked them back.

  “What?” Chazz said.

  But he wasn’t even sure himself. The guy’s wrist did not feel like skin at all, more like rubber. Cool rubber. It wasn’t right. Lex had never touched a corpse before, but he had a pretty good idea that they did not feel like that.