The Naked Face

by Jeffrey Greene

Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

conclusion

They were jarred awake at two in the morning by a blaring car horn. Rickard had been dreaming of walking past massive fish fillets rotting in the sun, and it took him a moment to collect his wits as he stumbled from the bed and peered through the window blinds.

Magda Sterns’ black Cutlass was parked behind Amber’s car. Fully awake now, blood pounding in his ears, he ducked low and dashed around the end of the bed, almost colliding with Ramón, who was up and agitated, went to Amber, whispered, “It’s her,” and signaled her to keep quiet, then got his pistol and fumblingly loaded it.

He looked again out the window and saw that the driver’s side door was open, and Sterns was struggling to get out of the car. She was yelling now. “Amber! Help me! I need you!”

Amber had thrown on a robe and was crouching beside him. “What do I do?” she whispered, her eyes wide with fright.

“She’s hurt,” he whispered back. “Don’t know how bad. And she can’t have seen my car. Go out and help her, try to see if she’s armed or not, then give me a nod one way or the other. I’ll be watching.”

“Bring her in the house?”

“Yes, but keep her in the main room.”

The woman’s voice was hoarse, breathless. “Babe, where are you?! I’ve been shot!”

Amber went down the hall to the front door.

Rickard dressed quickly and slipped on his shoes. He was shaking badly. After all these futile months, Magda Sterns had come to him. Apparently she’d been on the losing end of a fire fight. She couldn’t even stand up. Amber opened the front door and went quickly to her. The full moon was high and bright, yet he could barely see Sterns in her black clothes, and when Amber bent down and went out of sight behind the open door, his breath caught in his throat.

Then she came up with the tall woman clutching her around the neck with both arms, put her arm around her waist, and they staggered toward the house. He watched, then Amber looked toward his window and made an almost imperceptible shake of her head: no guns on her.

He heard the injured woman gasping and moaning, and the creak of the couch as Amber laid her out. He took the safety off the pistol, and holding it in front of with both hands, he walked carefully down the hall and stepped into the living room.

Sterns was sprawled on her back with two cushions under her head. She’d taken a bullet to the belly, and another had apparently passed through her left breast and into her right lung, and another must have grazed her scalp, the copious blood flowing down acting as a mask.

It was a second before he realized that her face was naked. It was the first time in his life that he’d seen another maskless face besides his own. Though it was bloody and wracked with pain, he was shocked by the lunar paleness of her skin and the way it almost glowed between the rivulets of blood. It was beautiful and grotesque.

Amber knelt beside her with a pan of water and many dish towels. In her agonized distress, Sterns scarcely noted his entrance, and after checking to make sure her holsters were empty, he saw that holding a gun on her was unnecessary. He put it on the kitchen table, well out of her reach.

Her eyes, so often described — even by himself — as cold and intense, were those of a terrified human being. Her gaze sought the ceiling, Amber, the dog nervously waiting by the front door, and finally, him. Her eyes came into focus, and remnants of her hard composure reappeared. “Who the hell are you?”

“It’s Evan, Magda. Julie’s husband.”

“I’ll be damned,” she gasped, her smile twisting into a grimace of pain. “If it isn’t Julie’s walking dildo. What’re you doing here? Oh, wait, I know. You want to kill me.” She had to stop and gasp between the words, gobbets of blood fouling her mouth.

“Looks like somebody beat me to it,” he said.

Amber knelt down and pressed the towel to the belly wound, and Magda screamed. “Evan, help me,” she said quietly. “Take a towel and keep it on the chest wound.”

He picked up a towel and applied it to her chest. There was so much blood, too much. He took another towel and tried to wipe the blood from her face. Magda tried to shake off his touch and made a weak grab at his hands.

“Hands off me, dick breath,” she said, spitting blood, then seemed to forget what she’d just said. “She’s sweet, isn’t she?” she said, reaching for Amber, her long fingers barely touching her face. “Sorry, baby. Shouldn’t have left you without... goodbye. Had to move fast. Get some miles ’tween me and Clifford.”

“Save it, Magda,” Amber said in a low, soothing voice. “We’ll get you to a hospital.”

“Bullshit. No hospital within a hundred miles of here. But even your lies are sweet.”

“What happened?” he asked. “Who shot you?”

She looked at him as if she’d forgotten his presence, then flinched as he wiped the blood dripping down her forehead. “Too many assholes after me, needed a hiding place, so I joined me a cult up north o’ here. The Church of God Unveiled. No masks allowed.” She pointed to her naked face. “Price of admission. The big swingin’ dick who ran the show, Rockwald Fisher Man, took one look at me and creamed his pants. Just had to add me to his harem. Told him no, more’n once, stick that ugly thing somewhere else. Gave him fair warning. But pricks like that never listen. They took my guns away for safekeeping, figured they’d solved what old Rockhead called my ‘misguided aggression.’”

Her blood-gargling laugh turned into a strangled choking. It was a minute or two before she could go on.

“Stole a boning knife from the kitchen, kept it under my pillow. When that fat piece o’ shit pushed me down on the bed and climbed on, I stuck it in as far as it’d go and opened him up from balls to breastbone. So there I am, wearin’ nothin’ but his blood and intestines. Washed off in the sink, got dressed. Wasted one of his bodyguards — nothin’ personal — and took the poor fucker’s AK and all his ammo. Found my car and the spare key I’d hidden, and crashed outa that nuthouse.

“’Course they came after me, two carloads worth. I’d crucified their messiah, and they wanted blood. Lucky head shot got the driver in the lead car, and he crashed and torched the whole bunch. I lost the other car on the straight road, then laid for it at a crossroads, but that didn’t go so well. Got a couple of ’em, and they got me. Used up my ammo blowing out their front tires and took off. This was the only place I could think of to get some help. Sorry, honey, for barge’n in on your new life.”

Amber shook her head, saying nothing, just wet a towel in the water, and without moving her hand from the blood-soaked belly compress, she wiped Magda’s face clean of blood and sweat.

Knowing she couldn’t last much longer, he said, “Just tell me why you killed Julie. That’s all I want to know.”

“That’s all, huh? Because I loved her, and she said she loved me.” Her breathing was ragged now. “Tough luck for you, boy. Love ain’t fair.”

“She told me she was scared of you. Wanted to come back. What kind of love is that?”

She smiled. “A good little liar. She broke my heart, your Julie did. Found out she was cheating on me, like she cheated on you, bucko, all the time you were married. She told me. You loved her, too, Evan, and that made us easy marks. When I saw her packed and ready to leave... guess I lost it. Never been sorrier about anything I’ve done. Been runnin’ from the sight of her on that bed ever since.”

“And I’ve been running after you,” he said, his voice trembling, because he knew she was telling the truth about Julie.

Her laugh ended in a choking fit. “Well, here I am, cowboy,” she said. “Unarmed and shot to hell. Put one right here,” she gasped, pointing a bloody finger between her eyes. “And there’s that price on my head, isn’t there? Easiest five grand you’ll ever make.”

“Evan, leave her in peace. Can’t you see that—”

“No, baby,” Magda said. “I got no right to peace. But you do. Those crazy fuckers back there are gonna track me here, and I don’t want ’em hurtin’ you. So just get me back in my car, drive out to the highway and leave me there. If I’m not dead yet, they’ll finish me off. Leave you and your boyfriend in the clear. Or he could do me now and put me in the car. Makes no difference to me.”

Amber looked at him, and he nodded. “All right.”

Magda smiled and closed her eyes. He stuck his pistol in his belt, then went outside and looked in the car. There were bullet holes on the driver’s side, and the rear and driver’s side windows were shattered. The front seat was a bloody mess, strewn with expelled cartridges. The AK was on the passenger seat. He threw it in the back seat went in the house.

She was still alive, Amber standing over her, grimly silent. Magda Sterns was a big woman, and it took both of them to carry her out to her car and put her in the passenger seat. The key was in the ignition. He got in and started the car, then turned it around and headed up the drive, Amber following in her car. They drove a mile or two up the two-lane highway, then he pulled the car off the road and left it at an awkward angle on the lip of a ditch. They got her into the driver’s seat and closed the door.

She was conscious, but wouldn’t be much longer, at the rate she was losing blood. They stood by the window. “Alright, then,” Magda whispered. “Good to see you again, babe. Made my day.”

“I’m sorry,” Amber said, touching her shoulder.

Magda shook her head. “It was my turn.”

He took out his pistol and handed it to her.

“Thanks. Now get Amber outa here.”

They left her, and when they got back to the house they set about cleaning up as much of the blood as they could, stripped down and put their bloody clothes in the washer, then took the briefest of showers together.

Naked and still silent over what had happened, Amber stepped back from Evan and did a strange thing. Not taking her eyes off him, she slowly gathered the flesh of her mask in both hands and pulled it off. He saw her true face: her skin puckered, sun-starved and phantom-pale, strange with the marks of feeder roots in her skin. But it was a good face, a beautiful face.

It took him longer to get his mask off and was more painful, because pulling out the deeper roots of the “vampire” mask left his skin dotted with droplets of blood. She got some alcohol and cotton pads, and coming close to him, she wiped away the blood, then stepped back to see him for the first time.

She smiled, came close and still closer, and he instinctively drew back in fear of the virus. But she shook her head and took his face in her hands, drew near and pressed her lips against his. He flinched, then put his arms around her and held her close.

Back in bed with the bedroom window closed against the evening chill, they didn’t hear what Ramón, curled up on his rug, pricked up his ears at: the distant sound of gunfire.

Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Greene