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Lucille's Long Night

Garnett Elliott

She came in around two A.M., a dead time, the freeway silent and my thoughts hovering over the register like ghosts.

The door chimed. A young blond wearing a silver rain poncho stumbled in, breathing hard like she'd been running. She looked over the aisle of soda and chips. Then her bright, wild eyes met my sleepy ones. She saw right past the beef jerky and the glazed donuts, the burnt hot dogs turning on their metal tray, the pots of coffee brewing sludge-thick and saw me, Emmett Turley, and we were the only two people left in the world.

She marched straight for me. She was beautiful now, and I was getting a panicked, free-fall feeling in my gut. She looked lost. I had to fight to keep from reaching over the counter and wrapping my arms around her. And then--Mother of God--she reached for me. Grabbed the collar of my sweaty shirt and hauled me close.

She kissed me. I had two days of facial growth and the reek of chili dog with onions still thick in my mouth, but damn, that wasn't stopping her. After a couple seconds she drew back and put her finger on my chin. "Look," she said, "I'm in some trouble here. Can you help me?"

Said it like I could somehow refuse. Me? I'd spent my life helping women when I could. Changing tires, backing down drunk husbands who'd gotten violent--and it didn't matter if they were fat, ugly, or crippled. So don't go thinking this was just about my dick.

I nodded.

"Do you have a car?" she said.

"A truck. Doesn't run so good, but--"

"Good enough." She pressed her warm hand against my cheek. "Are there police anywhere around?"

"Valesdale. Half an hour away."

"Can you take me to them?"

"I can, lady, but it's just as easy to call."

Her gray eyes went wild again. "No. The time it'd take--"

Outside an engine roared and tires spewed gravel. A car pulling up, fast. The chunk of doors opening. I glanced through the service window. A couple had just gotten out of a battered Honda Civic, parked at a skewed angle next to the pumps. A man and a woman. They were arguing. The woman wore a silver poncho just like my mystery lady, hers with the hood pulled up. The guy wore a t-shirt and shorts. Both were porkers; I put them at two-sixty apiece, easy. They didn't look dangerous at all.

She grabbed my wrist while I was watching. Her fingers closed vise-tight. "Do you have a gun?" she said.

I had a Mossberg twelve gauge with a walnut stock, just beneath the register. But I didn't see the point of taking it out. "Lady, are those two the trouble you were telling me about?"

"There's more than two."

"Okay, but how about I just talk to them for a bit, see what the problem is. I'm sure--"

"They're killers," she said, her voice flat.

"You're pulling my leg."

But what she started pulling was my hand, drawing me around the counter to stand next to her. "Trust me," she said. "If you're going out there, you'll need a weapon."

I drew the Mossberg from under the counter. She let out a little breath when she saw it. "Okay," I said, checking the safety. "I'll ask them what they want. You stay put. There's a phone right there, next to the fan."

"Uh-uh. I'm coming with you."

"You said they were dangerous."

"I'm coming with you."

Stubborn, this one. I liked it. "What's your name?"

"Lucille."

"Can I ask you a question, Lucille?"

"We don't really have time--"

"Just a small question."

"Okay."

"Why are you wearing a rain poncho, here? We're only an hour or so from Death Valley, and it's the middle of summer."

"That isn't a small question," she said, giving me a look. "Or the answer isn't, anyways."

I shrugged and pushed open the doors.

The fat couple stood about ten feet away, and when they got a look at my companion both of them jerked into motion. The broad whipped out a cell phone and started jabbing buttons. The guy lurched towards us. His eyes sort of hazed over. I could swear he wanted to say something, but the spit must've been rising to choke his words. All my life I'd never seen someone flash to anger that fast, and my father had been a moody bastard who'd hit the bottle almost as often as he'd hit my mom.

So much for trying to talk.

I waited until fatso got close and shifted my grip on the Mossberg. Swung. The gun-butt caught his cheek. I felt a bone give. He whirled around, clutching his face. I raised the stock and hit the back of his head. Not too hard, because I wasn't trying to kill him. He wobbled to the concrete.

The fat woman screamed into her phone: "She's here! We found her!" Lucille lunged forward and swatted the cell from her hands. The woman's eyes hazed over too, went blank. She stood there and stared at her friend, husband, whoever he was down on all fours and groaning.

Lucille squeezed my shoulder. "We've got to go."

There was something about the fat woman's face. Her expression. It reminded me of terrorists, wrapped in ski-masks and barking threats on the Fox News channel.

"Please," Lucille said.

A couple minutes earlier I might have argued about leaving my shift, abandoning the store and the pumps in the middle of the night. Not now. My boss could go fuck himself. We didn't have what you would call an amiable relationship, anyways.

I locked the front door and marched Lucille for the side lot where my Dodge was parked. We had to circle around the Honda, and when I glanced over I saw it had a bumper sticker on the back. One of those space aliens, the kind with the big head and almond-shaped eyes. Faded letters read: R WE ALONE?

That got things clicking in my mind.

I unlocked the truck. Lucille couldn't scurry inside fast enough. The engine turned over and Toby Keith came blaring out of the speakers, singing about how he was going to put a boot up someone's ass. I turned it down and gave Lucille an embarrassed smile. She didn't seem to care.

"Is there another way to Valesdale," she said, "besides the highway?"

"There's the frontage road. It'll be deserted, this time of night."

"Good. Let's take that. Please."

She nudged the shotgun closer to me, on the seat. Jesus, she was jumpy.

I told her my name as we rolled away.

***

The frontage road stretched out before us like a dark corridor. I'd pushed the engine to sixty-five, but Lucille made it known through anxious glances she'd prefer a faster pace. She didn't stop glancing until I had the needle close to eighty.

I wanted to ask her a bunch of questions, of course. I'd have some explaining to do when we got to the police. But she seemed too scared to talk. She leaned her head against the passenger window and didn't say anything. I figured I might loosen her up by talking first, so I told her the story of my short-haul trucking career. How it ended one night when I jackknifed and rolled the cab on a mountain road. With no money, I wound up back in Valesdale selling coffee and donuts to other truckers. On the graveyard shift, no less.

She listened to me. Usually, when you talk to someone about your problems they just tune you out, maybe offer some stupid advice. Not Lucille. She soaked up everything I had to say and her eyes turned soulful in the dashboard's glow. Frown lines appeared around her mouth. I haven't had anyone listen to me like that since high school. Shit, maybe never.

She waited until I was finished. Then her voice dropped so low I could barely hear her over the engine's roar. "Emmett," she said, "do you believe in UFO's?"

I chuckled. "I'm an ex-trucker, remember? I've spent entire afternoons on the CB talking about area Fifty-One."

"So you do believe?"

"Of course."

She looked relieved. "And do you think the world is coming to an end? Soon?"

"Well, yeah. Anybody with sense can see we're living in End Times. You've got gas prices going up, for one thing. Global warming. All that crap in the Middle East."

"Right."

I started to see where this was going. "Wait . . . you're with those people, aren't you? That UFO cult camped by Levy's Crater."

She blinked. "How did--?"

"I'm smarter than I look, Lucy. It explains your weird clothes and the bumper sticker on that car."

Her face crinkled up. She started crying, right there in my truck. Jesus, I would've rather watched a baby bird getting crushed to death. I took a hand off the wheel and put it on her knee. A fatherly gesture, mind you.

"When you called it a 'cult' just now," she said, sniffling, "I got defensive. But I guess that's what it is, isn't it? A cult. My God, Emmett, they sucked me in."

"Just relax."

"I had a life--" sniff, "--well kind of, it wasn't like I was on the streets or anything. Studying music. Waiting tables out in West Covina. And they found me, they've got people who do that. 'Scouts,' we--they--call them. Looking for weaklings, I suppose."

"It's alright," I said, squeezing her knee. "You got away from them. That's what you were doing, right? Escaping."

She nodded.

"You know what's funny?" I said. "People thinking a space ship crashed at Levy's Crater. It is a crash site. A C-130 cargo plane went down there years ago, loaded with fuel. Burned so hot it fused the sand into a ring of glass."

Her eyebrows arched in disbelief. "Really?"

"Really. My father saw the plane go down."

"We--the Gathering, I mean--believe the crater is sacred. It's been marked. Another ship is going to land on the same spot and take us away before the world ends. Which was--" she paused. "Which was supposed to happen yesterday, but it didn't. Nothing happened. No ship."

"That's when you decided to leave?"

"Yes," she said, closing her eyes. "But no one leaves the Gathering. You join for life. They've killed people who've tried to run before." 

I sensed another crying jag coming on, so I tapped at the windshield. A small grid of lights had appeared in the distance. "That's Valesdale, honey. Civilization. I'll have you at the police station in less than fifteen minutes. And I swear, anyone tries to hurt you I'll hurt them first."

It sounded like a boast, but I meant it. Hell, I'd already proven it. Lucille was the kind of woman worth messing with a dangerous cult. I hoped she felt something for me. And maybe she did, because she smiled and slipped her hand over mine, the one still gripping her knee. My fingers locked on her like they'd been welded in place.

Which was unfortunate, when the tire blew out seconds later.

I'd seen something in the road--a faint sparkle. But before I could swerve the whole cab started shaking, the tire making that throbbing sound. I tore my hand off Lucille's knee. The Dodge jerked right and jumped the shoulder, faster than I could correct. An ironwood bush swooshed under the grill. I stomped the brakes and brought the truck to a scudding halt. Lucy and I flew forward, my seat belt going taut at the last moment to stop me from slamming against the wheel.

I heard groaning. Lucy, next to me, looking dazed but otherwise alright. She had an angry welt darkening on her forehead.

Dust clouds roiled outside the cab. I leaned for the door to open it, but Lucille clawed my arm, frantic. "Don't go out there," she said. "I saw a shadow by the road, just before we went over."

I squinted at the windows. I couldn't see a damn thing. "If there's someone out there, we're going to have to handle it. I can't change the tire from in here."

She didn't say anything. I wrapped my hand around the Mossberg. The metal felt comforting, something to put between me and the night. I opened the door and slid out into dusty air. My shoes touched loose sand. To the right the truck's headlights stabbed into a clump of ironwood. To the left ran the frontage road. My gaze stopped there. The pavement sparkled like it had just before the blowout, and I saw why. Moonlight, reflecting off a sea of broken glass. And not little pieces either, but big, tire-killing shards.

"Lucy," I said, "you better get out here."

I heard her fumble through the driver's side door and come up behind me, breathing hard. Her breath stopped short.

Someone was laughing.

I whipped my head around, trying to find the source. A figure stepped out onto the road. He must've been hiding behind a bush, because he couldn't have been more than a couple feet away. My shotgun reared up and pointed at him. He carried a plastic cooler in one hand, the lid gone. His other hand reached up behind his back. In another time, another situation I wouldn't have found him intimidating. Like the two fatties back at the store, he wasn't much to look at. Skinny. Clown-length tufts of hair jutting from his scalp. His cooler rattled with empty bottles; Coca Cola and Dos Equis, ready to shatter against the pavement.

He shuffled towards us. His right hand was still behind his back.

"You can stop right there, buddy," I said.

He seemed to become aware of the shotgun pointing at his kneecaps. He stopped. A smile crept across his face.

Lucille's voice cracked. "Go away, Vern. Go back to the camp."

He shook his head. A gust of desert wind sprang up and blew his tufts back. We stood there, me and him, eyes flicking back and forth from each other like gunslingers in an old Eastwood movie. You'd think he might be more wary, seeing as how I could make him a cripple with only a jerk of my index finger. But he wasn't.

"Figured I'd find you here," he said, nodding towards Lucille. "The others're up along the highway, but I know you better. Sneaky."

"Shut up, Vern."

"You're coming back with me," he said. And made as if to set down the cooler.

It was a move I'd been waiting for. He stooped, but at the last moment his right hand flashed out from behind his back, something in it, something heavy he lofted into the night sky. A big piece of steel bent at a right angle.

I went to squeeze the trigger and take out his knees. In the same moment Lucille's hand reached out and guided the shotgun barrel up, gently, pointing it at Vernon's stomach.

I could've resisted.

I could've forced the barrel back down.

I could've not pulled the trigger and just kicked the guy in the nuts.

I didn't. Shotgun versus tire-iron. Jesus, what was he thinking?

The Mossberg spat thunder and Vernon jerked as double-aught shot tore a bloody hole in his abdomen, dead center. Punched his spine in two. I could tell by the nerveless way his legs flopped when he hit the pavement. The plastic cooler crashed alongside, bottles tinkling. Followed by the dull thunk of the tire-iron.

I lowered the gun.

What happened next I can still remember, but the memory plays on a black and white TV at the far end of a long hallway, the sound turned down. I remember Lucille vomiting. I remember joining her. I remember watching the glassy road wink at me while Lucille stuffed her hands in Vernon's jeans pockets, searching, her face going pale in the moonlight, saying something about keys, and then I remember the outline of a Toyota pickup parked farther down the road, Lucille tugging me towards it, strapping me in. Her profile as she drove. I still had the shotgun with me but I didn't want to touch it. I never wanted to touch a gun again. And I remember saying over and over "I killed him, I cut him in two," and Lucille patting at my shoulder while I stuck my face out of the dead man's truck, wanting the warm air to dry my eyes but there was no end, no end to what came welling out.

***

At some point I came to.

I found myself sitting on a folding chair in what looked like a waiting room. I had a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand. Both my feet were propped up on a low table covered with men's magazines; titles with subjects like off-road vehicles and hunting. The far wall had a sliding window and a space beyond where a receptionist might sit, though the space was darkened now.

I turned and saw a storefront window behind me, the words "VALESDALE P.D." stenciled backwards in gold and black lettering. The shadow of the Toyota huddled in the lot outside. It was still night, which prompted me to wonder about the time. I got up and walked over to a lit hallway next to the receptionist's window. A Skilcraft clock hung on the wall there. Three-thirty five. Christ. Lucille had come stumbling into the store a little after two. So many things had been squeezed between now and that moment it seemed like days had passed, not minutes.

Where was she?

Voices echoed down the hallway. I recognized Lucille's among them. That got me moving, pulled me past a bulletin board tacked with wanted posters and an open space that could've been the booking room. I had to see her. I had to know she was safe.

A doorway opened to my left and a deputy came walking out, round-faced and chubby, his uniform half-pulled from his slacks. He looked familiar. "Emmett?" he said, noticing me. "Emmett Turley? You're the one that came in with her, then. Took me a second to recognize you with that beard."

I said something unintelligible.

"Emmett, it's me, Mitch." He braced a plump hand against my shoulder. "Are you alright?"

I leaned past him, bending his arm back a little so I could look through the doorway. Lucille sat on the other side of a desk, talking to another deputy whose face I recalled from high school and whose name went sliding past my consciousness. I'd played ball with him, I remembered that. He had a legal pad and seemed to be scribbling down everything Lucille was saying.

"Lady told us you'd had some trouble getting her here," Mitch said. "That cult business."

I nodded. Looked down at my hands. There were tiny flecks of blood on my fingers. Probably the front of my shirt, too. How much had Lucille told them? I closed my eyes and saw the hole gaping in Vernon's stomach. My eyelids snapped back up.

"Good thing she ran into you," Mitch said.

"Yeah." My voice was a croak.

"Those cult people wanted to kill her. Not that I blame them, really."

He smiled a little when he said that. I felt the confusion spreading across my face. Mitch said: "She didn't tell you, did she? That's Lucille Stykes. We've got a file on her. She's their leader. Get this--she took those poor losers for all the money they had, marched them out to the desert and told them the world was going to end. Yesterday. So when it didn't, you can imagine they were pissed off."

Oh Lord.

The hallway floor seemed to warp and buck under my feet. Mitch steadied me. I stared up into his face. I wanted to tell him I'd just killed someone, left the corpse lying in a mess of broken glass along the frontage road. I couldn't make my mouth work.

I turned to look back in the office. Lucille was leaning across the desk with her hand on the other deputy's cheek. Whispering. Not kissing him, like she'd done with me, but damn near close. I didn't like it. I didn't like how the deputy was beginning to smile, the look that was dawning on his stubbled face.

Like they were the only two people left in the world.

Copyright(c) 2007 by Garnett Elliott

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