LIFERS Chapter Fifteen

Dane Benton and Sam Newell had left Martinsville not long before the storm hit and were now headed East on the 460 in a blue Ford with a red replacement trunk-lid..

‘Stop goin’ so fast, Sam, it ain’t no race.’

‘Jesus, I’m only doin’ sixty.’

‘This car’s hot enough without you drawin’ more attention to it, so slow down.’

‘S‘bout time we dumped this and got us a newun, anyways.’

‘This heap o’ shit’s goin’ soon enough,’ Dane told him. ‘We got a real sweet one waitin’ up ahead.’

‘And where is this “up ahead” huh? You been sittin’ there since we left town tellin’ me to turn here, turn there. And how come Ella done told you ‘bout all this but not me?’

‘There’s things ya don’t need to know about, Sam, so leave it at that. Okay?’

‘Tain’t right,’ Sam complained, easing off the gas. ‘You an me’s a team, what you know I know, it’s always been that way.’

‘Zippit, Sam, you’ll find out soon enough.’

As the Ford dropped to fifty; Dane noticed someone farther along the road with his thumb out.

‘Well lookee what we got here,’ he said.

Sam pushed on the brake pedal as he past the hitcher and pulled in twenty yards ahead of him.

Dane stuck his head and chest from the window. ‘Hey, where ya headed, boy?’

The boy, who looked no older than seventeen, carried a guitar case in his right hand and had his arms pushed through the handles of a black holdall, strapping it to his back. He wore a blue denim jacket over a light-coloured T-shirt, fashionably faded and torn jeans, and a pair of white training shoes.

He picked-up the pace. ‘Nashville Tennessee,’ he said, reaching the car. ‘Gonna get me a record deal.’

Dane climbed out. ‘Well ain’t you the lucky one, sonny. Tennessee’s where we’re headed, too.’ He took the guitar case and holdall from the boy and opened the rear door for him to get in. ‘You just hop right on in there, Elvis; an I’ll put y’gear away.’

After he climbed in, Dane moved behind the car and opened the trunk. He picked up the guitar case and tossed it into a ditch at the side of the road and did the same with the holdall. He then closed the trunk and climbed in the front.
‘Well,’ the kid said. ‘I don’t know how to thank you fellas. Truly I don’t.’

Sam started to pull away. ‘Say, how old are you, son?’

‘Seventeen a week last Tuesday. Pa got me that gee-tar for ma present, said it cost him nearly a month’s pay an’all.’

Dane twisted in his seat. ‘So, Elvis,’ he said. ‘Have you ever wished you hadn’t done something just after you went right ahead and did it anyway? You know what I mean, boy?’

The kid’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t understand what you─’

A vicious punch from Dane knocked the boy back against the seat.

‘Hey, lookee here, Sam,’ Dane said, landing a punch to the side of the kid’s head. ‘Elvis has left the buildin'.’

About a hundred yards farther along, Sam pulled-up behind a bill-board and he and Dane climbed out. Dane opened the rear door and reached in for the kid, then, gripping his blonde curls, dragged him from the car. The kid put up a fight as best he could, but had no hope of stopping what was about to happen to him. Dane hauled him away from the car as he repeatedly screamed for his “Mammy”, his noise fading into the vast empty plane that stretched for endless miles behind the billboard.

Dane landed another punch, this time to the boy’s stomach which knocked all the fight out of him, and then Sam took a two step run and kicked his head so hard it loosened the front portion of his scalp.

‘Hey,’ Dane said. ‘Not so fuckin’ hard ya moron, ya kill him we gotta pump it out ourselves.’

Sam felt the kid’s chest, looked up, smiled. ‘Beatin’ like his girlie’s pa just put a shotgun to his head.’

‘Then time’s a wastin’,’ said Dane.

They sat back to back on the kid’s upper body with an arm each pulled between their legs and bit into the boy’s wrists, and as they emptied the contents of his veins, they made nasal sounds of pure satisfied enjoyment.

Just fifteen minutes later the kid had pumped his last.

They stood.

‘Woohoo,’ Sam shouted. ‘Just seventeen a week last Tuesday, huh? Fuckin’ great year.’

Dane said nothing as he slung the boy’s drained corpse over his shoulder and headed for the car.

‘Whatya doin’, Dane?’

‘When we get there we’re gonna need this.’

‘Get where?’

‘Cain’t say.’

‘I’m getting’ just a bit pissed at you, Dane.’

‘Will you just trust me, Sam, please?’ Dane said as he opened the trunk and dropped in the body. ‘When we get there we gotta job to do, but I cain’t say what, not yet at least, not till I know for sure that we can pull it off.’

Sam got behind the wheel. ‘Well if you cain’t say then we ain’t goin’ nowhere.’

Dane climbed in the other side, took a gun from the glove-box and held it to Sam’s head. ‘Get out, Sam, right now.’

‘What the fuck are you playin’ at, Dane?’

‘Out, Sam,’ he said. ‘Or I’m gonna shoot you, I don’t wanna shoot you, but I will.’

Sam twisted in his seat. ‘What the fuck’s up with you?’

‘Nothin, just followin orders, is all. Now, move over because I’m drivin’ from here.’

Sam climbed out. ‘Whose orders? What orders?’

Dane slid over and put the gun in the doorwell beside his leg. ‘Who or what don’t matter none. So just leave it, huh?’

Sam climbed in the passenger side. ‘So where we goin’?’ Or is that still a big fuckin’ secret, too?’

Dane sighed. ‘We’re goin’ to Lynchburg, okay?’

‘Lynchburg? What the hell we goin’ there for?’

‘We got somethin’ to pick up. Somethin’ Ella said was mighty important.’

‘So why you takin’ the dead kid if we got somethin’ that’s so darned important to do?’

‘We might need him to help get a message across to a certain old lady.’

‘What message? And who’s this certain old lady?’

Dane either ignored or didn’t hear the question; it was a pair of headlights in the rearview that had his full attention. He waited until the car passed in front of the billboard before he pulled out.

‘Ain’t seen one of them for some time,’ he said, pointing to a red Triumph Spitfire hitting about seventy-five.

The small car crested a rise in the road and dipped out of sight, a minute later, Dane and Sam continued on to Lynchburg.