Seventeen

Molly had always wondered about American women’s fascination with bad boys. There seemed to be some sort of logic-defying attraction to the guy who rode a motorcycle and had a tattoo, a gun in the glove compart-ment, or a snifter of cocaine on the coffee table. In her acting days, she’d even been involved with a couple of them herself, but this was the first one who actually, well, ate people. Women always felt that they could reform a guy. How else could you explain the numerous proposals of marriage received by captured serial killers? That one was a bit too much even for Molly, and she took comfort in the fact that no matter how crazy she had gotten, she’d never been tempted to marry a guy who made a habit of strangling his dates.

American mothers programmed their daughters to believe that they could make everything better. Why else was she leading a hundred-foot monster down a creek bed in broad daylight?

Fortunately, the creek bed was lined in most places by a heavy growth of willow trees, and as Steve moved over the rocks, his great body changed color and texture to match his surroundings until he looked like nothing more than a trick of the light, like heat rising off blacktop.

Molly made him stay under cover as they approached the Cypress Street bridge, then waited until there was no traffic and signaled him to go. Steve slithered under the bridge like a snake down its hole, his back knocking off great hunks of concrete, and he passed through.

In less than an hour they were out of town, into the ranchland that ran along the coast to the north, and Molly led Steve up through the trees to the edge of a pasture. “There you go, big guy,” Molly said, pointing to a herd of Holsteins that were grazing a hundred yards away. “Breakfast.”

Steve crouched at the edge of the forest like a cat ready to pounce. His tail twitched, splintering a cypress sapling in the process. Molly sat down beside him and cleaned mud from her sneakers with a stick as the cows slowly made their way toward them.

“This is it?” she asked. “You just sit here and they come over to be eaten? A girl could lose respect for you as a hunter watching this, you know that?”

Theo found himself trying to figure out why, exactly, he was driving to Molly Michon’s place, when his cell phone rang. Before he answered, he reminded himself not to sound stoned, when it occurred to him that he actually wasn’t stoned, and that was even more frightening.

“Crowe here,” he said.

“Crowe, this is Nailsworth, down at County. Are you nuts?”

Theo stalled while he tried to remember who Nailsworth was. “Is this a survey?”

“What did you do with that data I gave you?” Nailsworth said. Theo suddenly remembered that Nailsworth was the Spider’s real name. A second call was beeping on Theo’s line.

“Nothing. I mean, I conducted an interview. Can you hold? I’ve got another call.”

“No, I can’t hold. I know you’ve got another call. You didn’t hear anything from me, do you hear? I gave you nothing, understand?”

“‘Kay,” Theo said.

The Spider hung up and Theo connected to the other call.

“Crowe, are you fucking nuts!”

“Is this a survey?” Theo said, pretty sure that it wasn’t a survey, but also pretty sure that Sheriff Burton wouldn’t be happy with a truthful answer to the question, which was: “Yes, I probably am nuts.”

“I thought I told you to stay away from Leander. That case is closed and filed.”

Theo thought for a second. It hadn’t been five minutes since he’d left Joseph Leander’s house. How could Burton know already? No one got through to the sheriff that quickly.

“Some suspicious evidence popped up,” Theo said, trying to figure out how he was going to cover for the Spider if Burton pressed. “I just stopped by to see if there was anything to it.”

“You fucking pothead. If I tell you to let something lie, you let it lie, do you understand me? I’m not talking about your job now, Crowe, I’m talking about life as you know it. I hear another word out of North County and you are going to be getting your dance card punched by every AIDs-ridden convict in Soledad. Leave Leander alone.”

“But…”

“Say ‘Yes, sir,’ you bag of shit.”

“Yes, sir, you bag of shit,” Theo said.

“You are finished, Crowe, you—”

“Sorry, Sheriff. Battery’s going.” Theo disconnected and headed back to his cabin, shaking as he drove.

In Flesh Eaters of the Outland, Kendra was forced to watch while a new breed of mutants sprayed hapless villagers with a flesh-dissolving enzyme, then lapped up puddles of human protein with disgusting dubbed sucking sounds that the foley artists had obtained at Sea World, recording baby walruses being fed handfuls of shellfish. The special effects guys simulated the carnage with large quantities of rubber cement, paraffin body parts that conveniently melted under the Mexican desert sun, and transmission fluid instead of the usual Karo syrup fake blood. (The sugary stage blood tended to attract blowflies and the director didn’t want to get notice from the ASPCA for abuse.) Overall, the effect was so real that Molly insisted that all of Kendra’s reaction shots be done after the cleanup to avoid her gagging and going green on camera. Between the carrion scene and some salmonella tacos served up by the Nogales-based caterer, as well as repeated propositions by an Arab coproducer with halitosis that made her eyes water, Molly was sick for three days. But none of it, even the fetid falafel breath, produced the nausea she was experiencing upon watching Steve yack up four fully masticated, partially digested Holsteins.

Molly added the contents of her own stomach (three Pop Tarts and a Diet Coke) to the four pulverized piles of beefy goo that Steve had expelled onto the pasture.

“Lactose intolerant?” She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and glared at the Sea Beast. “You have no problem gulping down a paperboy and the closet perv from the hardware store, but you can’t eat dairy cows?”

Steve rolled onto his back and tried to look apologetic—streaks of purple played across his flanks, purple being his embarrassment color. Viscous tears the size of softballs welled up in the corner of his giant cat’s eyes.

“So I suppose you’re still hungry?”

Steve rolled back onto his feet and the earth rumbled beneath him.

“Maybe we can find you a horse or something,” Molly said. “Stay close to the tree line.” Using her broadsword as a walking stick, she led him over the hill. As they moved, his colors changed to match the surroundings, making it appear that Molly was being followed by a mirage.

For some reason, the words of Karl Marx kept running through Theo’s mind as he dug the machete out of the tool shed behind his cabin. “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” It follows, then, that “opium is the religion of the addict,” Theo thought. Which is why he was feeling the gut-wrenching remorse of the excommunicated as he took the machete to the first of the thick, fibrous stems in his marijuana patch. The bushy green weeds fell like martyred saints with each swing of the machete, and his hands picked up a film of sticky resin as he threw each plant onto a pile in the corner of the yard.

In five minutes his shirt was soaked with sweat and the pot patch looked like a miniature version of a clear-cut forest. Devastation. Stumps. He emptied a can of kerosene over the waste-high pile of cannabis, then pulled out his lighter and se the flame to a piece of paper. “Throw off the chains of your oppressors,” Marx had said. These plants, the habit that went with them, were Theo’s chains: the boot that Sheriff John Burton had kept pressed to his neck these last eight years, the threat that kept him from acting freely, from doing the right thing,