Highways to Hell Read Free Page A

the dead bitch again. Christ, that big bloody hole. His stomach knotted. “Didn’t think so, bro, but kinda had to ask.”
    Danny’s shoulders sagged, and he nodded wearily. “Yeah. Guess so. And I guess you didn’t kill her?”
    Rick thought about it. It didn’t seem likely. Brutal murder wasn’t his bag at all. He didn’t even like to step on insects, normally. And he sure didn’t remember killing anybody tonight. Then again...he searched his memory...what little of it was available to him from the last several hours. He remembered drinking at various bars in Nashvegas over the course of several hours. Hanging with those chicks they met at the Gold Rush. Pretty young things. College girls. The dead bitch hadn’t been one of them, he was pretty sure. Things from later in the evening got fuzzier. Flashing images of dancing girls and strobe lights. Standard nightclub activity. Then things got even fuzzier. More dancing girls, except this time they were naked and strutting across a stage. And after that, he could recall nothing else.
    He frowned.
    The dead bitch was kind of tall, maybe a few inches under six feet. She had long bottle-blond hair, plump red lips, heavily rouged cheeks, a slender but shapely build, and two buoyant breasts that looked unnaturally large. Those tits were really something else, the kind stand-up comics would make flotation device jokes about.
    Could the dead bitch have been a stripper?
    The fact that she wore only a G-string and heels that were several inches higher than strictly necessary struck him as a possible clue.
    “I can think of only one possibility.”
    Danny was nodding as he said this. “Already there. We hooked up with Gypsy Rose there at the Sin Den. Made some kind of private arrangement. She came out to the car to take care of us. We were kind of smashed by then.”
    Rick snorted. “Yeah. Kind of.”
    “So she comes out to the car. Sees we’re, I dunno, fucking passed out, and sees an opportunity. Might as well rip us off. How will we ever know? Who would we ever tell? Not the management. Not the cops. It would be the perfect petty fucking theft. But, while she’s in the process of ripping us off — ”
    “—some other dude comes along.”
    Rick nodded again. “Some fucking lowlife.”
    “That part of town, I can definitely see it.”
    “He sees what she’s doing. He’s another opportunist. He kills her. Takes our money. Slips away into the night.”
    Rick shook his head. “And leaves us with one dead fucking bitch.”
    They stared at the dead bitch in contemplative silence for a while.
    Then Rick said, “You really think that’s what happened?”
    Danny shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe one or both of us did it in the midst of an alcoholic blackout. But I think I’ll stick with theory number one, if you don’t mind.”
    Rick shivered. “Fine with me.”
    “But we’re left with the question of what to do about her.”
    “That I’ve already got figured out.”
    “Tell me.”

    PART THREE: DEAD BITCH RISING

    Getting her out of the car was not a pleasant task. Before they even attempted it, they argued heatedly over who would get the feet end and who would get the yucky throat-slit end. They settled the question by flipping a quarter. Danny called tails. He lost. They went for two out of three. He lost again. He wanted to go for three out of five, but Rick wasn’t having it.
    “I won, fair and square. Stop being a pussy about it.”
    Danny grimaced, but a look of grim acceptance settled into his features. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do this.”
    They spent a few last moments steeling themselves for the sickening task ahead by chugging the last of the beers from a twelve-pack they’d had to retrieve from beneath the dead stripper’s sprawled legs. Then they got on with it.
    They’d been clumsily negotiating their way through the dark woods for less than five minutes by the time something of crucial importance occurred to Rick. “Huh. Just thought of