Dez listened for the sound of moans threaded into the wind and the rain. Listened. Listened. She heard absolutely nothing except the storm.
Why?
She lay there, waiting—aching, needing—for JT to come. Not as a rescue. She did not see it that way, not even now. Dez did not need anyone to come and rescue her ass. Not even JT, who was the only man who had never let her down, the only man who didn’t have his head shoved all the way up his ass. Backup, though … that would be great. Cop to cop … and now would be a good time.
“Come on, Hoss,” she whispered. “L’il help here. ”
But JT did not come. No matter how many times she asked.
Dez even thought about Billy Trout. God, what a pansy-ass jerk. Even so, she wished that he were here. Dez could make a long, long list of Billy’s faults—too much emotion for one thing, that was top of the list—but if he opened that car door right now, she’d drag his ass to the nearest chapel. If Billy could figure out how to pick the lock on a pair of cuffs, she’d bang him blind, maybe even squeeze out a kid or two, just like he wanted. She promised it to Jesus and the saints as she lay there in the wet and cold.
She closed her eyes and remembered how warm he always was. His skin always felt like sunlight was shining on it, even when they made love in the dead of winter. Dez remembered doing that. Clinging naked to him as snow fell outside, her arms and legs wrapped around Billy’s suntanned limbs, the heat of their breath as they gasped and panted into each other’s mouths. The heat at the core of her as Billy moved his hips and she moved hers, creating a friction as old as the world and as fragile as a snowflake. She remembered the heat as he came inside of her, crying out her name as if it was the single word that would buy his way into heaven. And the heat after, as he held her close, stroking her hair, whispering promises to her deep into the night as all around them the world froze into perfect whiteness.
Then she remembered the heat in his eyes on that last day. When he’d come into her trailer with the flowers and the ring, and Big Ted was there. Billy’s eyes had filled with blue fire, and Dez imagined that she could feel the flare of heat as the furnace of his heart burst apart.
Billy. He was the last heat in the world that she could remember.
“Billy,” Dez called out, her lips tasting the shape of his name. “Billy … I’m so sorry. ”
But Billy Trout did not come either.
“Damn you,” Dez said to the storm, pretending that her tears were rainwater.
No one came for her. No one at all. Not JT, not Billy. Not the state police.
But …
Dez’s eyes snapped open.
Why?
Why had no one come?
Why had the dead not come?
She wanted to move, needed to move, but Dez needed to understand that even more. Saunders had left her and they had torn him to pieces. Dez had screamed, and the dead had come shambling toward the car. Toward her.
Only … they hadn’t done that. The front door of the car was wide open.
Dez took the risk. She knew before she moved that it was the most dangerous thing she had ever done. The most foolish, which was saying a lot.
She straightened her left leg.
The muscles began to cry out in a long, slow voice of pain as she flexed her thigh and straightened her knee. Then she froze as a new and awful terror struck her.
Her right leg was dead. She couldn’t even feel it.
Oh God! Her thoughts rang inside her head like a scream. They did get me. I’m dead … like them. I’m dying.
These thoughts collided and cracked apart like billiard balls, all logic gone. She rocked sideways, trying insanely to get away from the dead side of her body.
Then there was a sudden and intense flare of pain all along the dead leg and hip—and that fast she realized that panic was making her stupid. Nerve endings burst awake with scattershot pins and needles as blood flowed into muscles that had been crushed to numbness by a hour laying on her side in the cold.
“You stupid bitch,” she told herself, keeping her voice almost silent but loading it with enough scorn and venom to strip the bluing off a gun barrel. “You stupid pussy-ass fucking idiot. ”
Scorn was a good lash for Dez. It made her angry, and for her, anger was the only thing that could outfight fear. Anger was an old friend. An ally since she was in the second grade. It made her want to hurt something. Herself, or the first thing she could find that would scream.
Even so, she moved cautiously. Slowly. Unfolding her cramped limbs, even smiling with the rictus grin athletes often wear during physical therapy. Loving the pain. Hating the weakness. Forcing strength back into the body. At the same time listening for changes in the ambient noise. Listening for the moans.