Part 1 (1/2)

The Collected Stories.

Robert McCammon.

NIGHTCRAWLERS.

I.

”Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement.

Through the diner's plate-gla.s.s windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob's with a force that made the gla.s.s rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB'S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl's baby-blue Volkswagen.

”Well,” I said, ”I suppose that storm'll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight-with tornado warnings in the weather forecast-I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. ”Tell you what,” I said. ”If we're empty at nine, we skedaddle. 'Kay?”

”No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly-washed coffee cups, saucers and plates away on the stainless steel shelves.

Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner's lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we've had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in '82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm.

”You got any Love-Ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her, too.

She was in her late-thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could've pa.s.sed for a kid. ”Wouldn't you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong-and I know that couldn't have been her real name-was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn't care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who'd ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine-even us rednecks. That's what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy, I've raised my two boys to pray to G.o.d and to salute the flag, and if anybody don't like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton.

Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late 'sixties, and that she went to Love-Ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was nineteen eighty-four and Ronnie Reagan was president, she'd look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she'd start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head.

Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a s.h.i.+ne to Cheryl, but I'm a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago. Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, ”Wow! Look at that light-show!”

”Light-show, my a.s.s,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn't too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob's was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization-though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer-a trucker on his way to Texas-had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Quik-Mart in Mobile and had been killed by the police in a shootout; cops were investigating a ma.s.sacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we'd show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon. The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking-lot.

II.

The headlights were attached to an Alabama State Trooper car.

”Half alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat.

When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. ”Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rainslicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash-register. ”Cup of black coffee and a rare--” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. ”Ya'll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it.

”Kinda wild out there, ain't it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over.

”Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin' a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set, light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a wallet-full of their pictures.

”Don't reckon I'll be chasin' any speeders tonight, but there'll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin'.”

”Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she'd come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. ”Any trucks moving?”

”Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain't fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. ”Lordy, that's strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin'!” I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries and served it. ”Bobby, how's the wife treatin' you?” he asked.

”No complaints.”

”Good to hear. I'll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How'd you like a handsome young man for a husband?”

Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. ”The man I'm looking for hasn't been made yet.”

”Yeah, but you ain't met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin' him I'm doin' every thing I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis' brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealers.h.i.+p in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. ”You'd like him,” Dennis promised. ”He's got a lot of my qualities.”

”Well, that's different. In that case, I'm certain I don't want to meet him.” Dennis winced. ”Oh, you're a cruel woman! That's what smokin' banana peels does to you-turns you mean. Anybody readin' this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper.

”Waitin' here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once... then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap.

Dennis read and ate his hamburger. ”Boy,” he said after a few minutes, ”the world's in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin' for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. ”This I can't figure.”

”What's that?”

”Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinderblock houses in the area, and n.o.body heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?”

”A UFO,” Cheryl offered. Maybe he saw a UFO.”

”Yeah, and I'm a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. ”I'm serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead-even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin' was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. ”Two bodies were out in the parkin' lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn't seem to help 'em any, though.”

I grunted. ”Guess not.”

”No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin' the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac-or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. ”If I ever got hold of him-or them-he'd find out not to mess with a 'Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. ”Probably some crazy hippie who'd been smokin' his tennis shoes.”

”Don't knock it,” she said sweetly, ”until you've tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm.

”Car's pullin' in, Bobby.”

Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station-wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis' trooper car. On the front b.u.mper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy . The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and a woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain.

All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who'd been on the road a long time. The man wore gla.s.ses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break.

”Come on in and take a seat,” I said.

”Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. ”We saw your sign from the interstate.”

”Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. ”Tornado warnings are out all over the place.”

”We heard it on the radio,” the woman-Lindy, if the license was right-said. ”We're on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should've stopped at that Holiday Inn we pa.s.sed about fifteen miles ago.”

”That would've been smart,” Dennis agreed. ”No sense in pus.h.i.+n' your luck.” He returned to his stool. The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries and c.o.kes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner's lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, ”Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I'll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?”

”Fine,” Ray said gratefully. ”I don't think we could've gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food.

”Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, ”I don't guess we get home early, do we?”

”I guess not. Sorry.”

She shrugged. ”Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.” I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the payphone to call her I dropped a quarter in - and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat-scream continued. ”d.a.m.n!” I muttered. ”Lines must be screwed up.”