The Traveling Vampire Show Read Free Page A

don’t you want to see her?” I asked Rusty.
    “Jeez, guys, I was just screwing around.”
    “Let’s hope nobody heard you,” Slim said.
    “Nobody heard me. We’re miles from Janks Field.”
    “More like a few hundred yards,” I told him.
    “And sound really carries around here,” Slim added.
    “Okay, okay, I get the point.”
    The dirt road wasn’t as wide as Route 3, so we didn’t walk abreast. Slim took the lead. Rusty and I stayed pretty much beside each other.
    There was no sunlight. Of course, there hadn’t been any sunlight before we entered the woods—just a gray gloom. But now, with trees all around and above us, the gloom was deeper, darker. Things looked the way they do when you’re out after supper on a summer night and you can see just fine, so far, but you’ve only got maybe half an hour before it’ll be too dark for playing ball.
    “If it gets much darker,” I said, “Valeria won’t need her casket.”
    Rusty put a finger to his lips and went, “Shhhhh.”
    I gave him the finger.
    He smirked.
    After that, I kept my mouth shut.
    Our shoes were almost silent on the dirt road except for sometimes when one of us stepped on a twig. Rusty was breathing fairly hard. Every so often, he muttered stuff under his breath.
    A very quiet tune seemed to be coming from Slim. “De dum, de doo, de do-doo....” It blended in with the sounds all around us of buzzing flies and mosquitos and bees, bird tweets, and the endless flutters and rustling scurries of unseen creatures. “De-dum, de do, de doo.”
    Rusty made no attempt to shush her.
    But suddenly he said, “Wait up.”
    Slim halted.
    When we caught up to her, Rusty said in a hushed voice, “I gotta take a leak.”
    Slim nodded. “Pick a tree,” she said.
    He glanced from Slim to me. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?” “We’ll stay right here,” she told him.
    I nodded.
    “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He stepped off the dirt road and made his way into the trees.
    “Do you have to go?” Slim asked me.
    “Nah.”
    “Me neither.” She pursed her lips and blew softly through them. Then she said, “Sure is hot in here.”
    “Yeah,” I muttered. I was broiled and drenched and itchy, my clothes sticking to me.
    Slim’s short blond hair was matted down in coils against her scalp and forehead. Sweat ran down her face. As I watched, a drip gathered at the tip of her nose and fell. Her white T-shirt was clinging to her skin and I could see through it.
    “This vampire better be worth it,” she said.
    “Too bad we won’t get to see her.”
    Slim gave me half a smile. “If she’s in her casket, we’ll have to bust her out of it. We’re not gonna put ourselves through all this and not get a look at her.”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “Don’t know what?” she asked, and peeled her T-shirt off. In spite of her bikini top, she seemed to be mostly bare skin from the waist up. She wadded her T-shirt and mopped the sweat off her face.
    I looked the other way.
    “What don’t you know?” she asked.
    For a moment, I wasn’t sure what we’d been talking about. Then I remembered. I said, “She isn’t gonna be by herself. I don’t think so, anyway.”
    “You’re probably right.” Lowering the shirt away from her face, she smiled and said, “She needs casket-handlers.”
    “Right.”
    “Probably has a whole crew.” She wiped her chest, her arms.
    “And they might not be model citizens,” I said.
    Laughing softly, she lowered her head and began to wipe the sweat off her belly and sides. I sneaked a glance at her breasts. The thin pouches of her bikini top were stretched smooth with them. Around the edges of the fabric, I glimpsed pale slopes of skin.
    “We’ll have to be careful,” I said.
    “Yeah. If they look really scurvy, we’d better forget the whole thing.”
    Hearing footsteps, we both turned our heads and saw Rusty trudging toward us.
    Slim continued to rub at herself with the balled shirt. I