Dirty Secrets

Part 82

"You can't do her in my car, hear me?" Denny grumbled, his frustration palpable.

With her face drawn in agony, Rose forced open the heavy door and began slithering out of the car.

Lyla fought to wriggle away, but Denny was unmovable.

"You want we should bury them here?" he asked.

"This is Ames soil," Rose grunted. "We'll dump their bodies on the way back to town."

While thrashing in desperation to break free of Denny's grip, Lyla snaked her hand into her pocket, feeling for the Mace.

"Hold her still!" Rose snarled, one unsteady foot on the ground.

The startling roar of a powerful engine turned their heads. Bursting from the treeline shadows, a heavy-duty truck bounced up the hill, throwing clods of turf as it climbed. Lyla recognized the familiar full-size landscaping truck. The snowplow attachment vibrated violently as the vehicle thundered up the mountainous terrain.

Watching it hurtle toward the summit, still accelerating, she gasped, "What the?"

BANG! The plow crashed headlong into the fence.

The mammoth truck backed up then made another hard charge. BLAM! The hellacious impact shook the ground like a freight train colliding with a metal dumpster. The fence virtually exploded, peeling back like two deformed, wrought iron gates.

"No!" Rose howled, her lips twisting. "Stop that son-of-a-bitch!"

The truck reversed then made another furious run at the fence, the engine screaming. Upon impact, the posts ripped from their cement moorings, sections of the heavy iron fence splayed like an open book.

"Go!" Denny huffed.

"And shoot the boy on your way up!" Rose said with chilling indifference.

"No!" Lyla wailed.

Junebug drew his gun and started up the hill with an ungainly stride, all knees and elbows.

A sudden motion just beyond Jack's car attracted Lyla's attention. Jack lurched to his feet and, as though he were throwing a 40-yard football pass, he ripped a grapefruit-sized rock like a missile with all his might. His aim was impeccable, striking Junebug in the forehead. His white-framed sunglasses shattered. In a geyser of blood, Junebug stiffened, rocked back on his heels, then crumpled to the turf.

With Denny momentarily distracted, Lyla rammed her knee against the car door, dislodging the razor from Rose's tattooed hand. Frantically, she spun toward Denny, Mace in hand. Before he could react, she blasted him with a scorching faceful of chemical Mace. He gagged, choked, and backpedaled, his red eyes swelling and flooding with tears.

Blindly, he grabbed her arm, wrestling for possession of the weapon. She sprayed him again for good measure. He collapsed to his knees, fighting for air.

Rose managed to push open the door, falling out of the Cadillac onto the gravel. Her single opened eye glued to the mayhem at the top of the hill.

Lyla kicked the razor beneath the car then raced up the grassy incline toward Jack.

Denny was no longer a threat, supporting himself against the Cadillac's rear fender, swollen eyes running, snot dripping from his nostrils as his throat constricted.

Together, Lyla and Jack sprinted toward the top of the hill, past Junebug who writhed on the turf, clutching his gashed forehead and cursing.

Jack and Lyla climbed past a fallen tree, driving themselves forward.

Behind them, crippled Rose began crawling up the hillside on her hands and knees howling like a wounded wolf, hungry for one last kill before it drew its final breath.

At the summit, they took cover behind the oak tree, watching the truck plowing up the hard, rocky turf. 

Lyla covered her ears against the deafening screeching of wooden coffins against the steel blade of the plow as they resisted excavation. She squinted, unable to identify the driver through the clouds of airborne debris in the last scraps of daylight. 

"Is that Packer's friend?" She wondered aloud.

"Who?" Jack asked.

"How would he even know..." Her thought fizzled out.

The truck retreated once more, revved its engine, lowered the plow, then went after Keenan's coffin, forcibly unearthing it. The casket's pine lid splintered, exposing the grisly remains, the turgid blackened corpse's lips drawn back in a silent scream. The stench of death and decay overpowered the odor of the truck's exhaust, the hot engine, and the smell of tires at war with the topography.

Lyla turned her back on the gruesome sight and covered her nose.

When the vehicle came to rest atop the opened coffin, the driver engaged the salt spreader. The truck idled while the spreader rhythmically dispensed road salt, covering the grave in a thick layer of blue-green crystals. 

Lyla and Jack crept out from behind the cover of the oak and cautiously approached the pickup. Just beyond the patch of grass where the blackbird cadavers lay, the ground was littered with chunks of cement and broken grave markers. Within the remains of the fence, a tangle of metal spikes, they stepped over and around divots and thick ribbons of curled sod. 

Jack rapped on the driver's door, looking up toward the window.

"Hello?" Lyla called.

No answer from the driver in the cab.

Jack reached up, grabbed the door handle, and slowly pulled open the door. He and Lyla climbed up onto the step board, peering into the dark cab. The motionless driver was slumped over the steering wheel, his face turned away. Something was strapped to his leg, something mechanical and familiar.

Lyla's eyes widened.

The exoskeleton!

She screamed, "Packer!"