Fade To Black (Into The Darkness Book 2)

by Doug Kelly

  Behind the building, Dylan looked around and noticed a gravel road lined with hedge trees that went away from the building. Near the edge of that road, he noticed a cherry tree and enticed Kevin to join him. They picked a few of the small fruits from the low branches. The cherries appeared almost too young to pick, but they did it anyway. The cherries were tart and it made their lips pucker. They left the remaining fruit for the robin and blue jay perched in the upper branches.

  They circled around the building and discussed going inside. Old pieces of chewing gum and fresh pigeon droppings covered the sidewalk. Through the glass, they could see a corkboard on the wall. There was a sign advertising nice puppies from a kid-friendly dog. From the outside appearance, the building looked like pillagers had already been here. With so much stuff packed into the two vehicles, there was little room for anything else, anyway, so they decided to leave. Daylight was also valuable, and they would need it to see their surroundings if they had to stop again, so there was no time to linger. It was better to travel during the day. Kevin had positioned the El Camino to take the lead out of the parking lot, but Dylan started his truck first. The belts squealed loudly as expected, but this time the prolonged scream of rubber against metal was cut short when a belt snapped. It was not the usual screech, so Dylan signaled for Kevin to come over as he popped the hood. Through the engine bay, they could see the deteriorated water-pump belt on the ground, broken, and the shiny metal of the water-pump pulley that was missing its belt. Their problem was obvious, so neither man said anything while they contemplated their options.

  “If it was a horse, we could just shoot the damn thing in the head,” said Dylan.

  “It’s not a horse. We can fix it,” said Kevin.

  “How do you figure on doing that?”

  “Get a belt off of one of these stalled vehicles and rig it. There’s a few trucks here. Maybe one of them would have a belt that fits.”

  “We’ll need to get out the tools. That means unpacking a lot of this stuff.” Dylan looked toward the highway and sighed. “We shouldn’t do all of this right here. Let’s move the vehicles around behind the building. You could take the El Camino down the gravel road in back. That would be the best place to camp for the night if we have to stay.”

  “Alright, I’ll round ‘em up and drive everybody a little way down that gravel road to see what’s down there.”

  “Hold on. Tell Ruth to come over here. I’ll have her sit in the truck and steer it while I push it around back. She doesn’t weigh much more than a sack of potatoes.”

  Kevin went back to his vehicle and tried to remember in which section he had packed the tools. He decided to drive around back and down the gravel road before he unloaded everything. Ruth put Dylan’s rifle into the cab of the truck and jumped in. The suspension barely moved. She was light and that would make pushing the truck around the building easier than if Kevin had sat in the truck. She shifted into neutral and turned the wheel. Dylan pushed the front bumper, and the truck rolled back far enough so that when she cranked the steering wheel the other direction, the slope of the parking lot brought the truck forward at an angle that would take them around the building where it would be hidden from the road. Dylan went to the back bumper and released a loud groan as he started to push.

  Chapter Thirty

  Michael nervously clenched the steering wheel of the truck as he sped down the highway. The speedometer indicated that he was going nearly ninety miles an hour. One eye was on the road looking for deer or anything else they might hit that could cause an accident and kill them, and the other eye was on Sam. Michael’s thoughts were busy trying to calculate a plan to kill Sam before Sam killed him. He thought about pulling over to relieve himself, and then sneaking up behind Sam to shoot him in the back. No one was around and he could make up any story he wanted. He was an adept liar. Michael was terrified of Sam and merely being in Sam’s presence made him nervous. He realized that if he was nervous, he might be clumsy and make a mistake. Any wrong or suspicious move, and he knew that Sam would not hesitate to kill him.

  Sam was holding the binoculars with his left hand and scanning the horizon looking for his intended victims. The other hand held his swagger stick, and he occasionally whipped the dashboard with it. The sun was getting closer to the western horizon and the bright sunlight shone on the right side of Sam’s face. He brought his right hand up to shade his eyes and lowered the binoculars to his lap. To escape the bright light, Sam turned his head farther to the left and stared at Michael as he sped down the road. Michael felt Sam’s cold stare and swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat.

  Silently studying Michael, Sam asked, “You look nervous, Michael. What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing.” He tapped the gas gauge and tried to ignore the chilling stare. Subconsciously, Michael’s hand went to his pistol and he continued steering with one hand. Sam was aware that Michael was not acting like himself. Michael usually wore a fake smile and presented his manic personality to everyone around him, but a man that has a fear for his life does act differently, and Sam sensed it.

  “You don’t plan to do anything stupid out here, do you? We’re in the middle of nowhere. This isn’t a good place for you to get weird on me. Are you getting weird on me, Michael?”

  Without realizing it, the tone and the accusation made Michael grip the pistol’s handle. Sam watched Michael’s fingers begin to wrap around the handgrip.

  “No, Boss. I’m just trying to get the job done and get back. It’s getting late.” Michael moved his hand back to the gas gauge, tapped it, and never realized how close Sam had come to shooting him. They came to a tight curve on the divided highway and Michael spotted the truck stop. When Michael yelled, “Look!” Sam finally took his beady eyes off the driver and focused back onto where they were heading. He put the binoculars up to his eyes and saw a man pushing on a pickup’s back bumper. He recognized the truck.

  “It’s Dylan!” screamed Sam.

  Michael saw the truck in the distance and the back of the man who was pushing against the bumper, but Michael was not paying attention to his speed. He was going too fast around the curve, and touched the brakes to make a quick left turn where the highway split, to cross the lanes and enter the truck stop’s parking lot. Although the truck was going too fast to make the turn, when Sam saw that Michael had taken his foot off the accelerator to press the brake pedal, he grabbed the steering wheel, cranked it hard to the left, and punched the gas pedal to the floorboard with his left foot. The tires squealed on the pavement and the truck began to tip. Afraid of wrecking, Michael pushed Sam’s hands away and cranked the wheel back to the right, but he overcorrected, and the truck went off the road. As the front tires hit the soft dirt, the truck flipped, and slid upside down across the opposite lanes onto the edge of the parking lot. On impact, the steering wheel killed Michael when he hit his head on it. The dog had jumped from the truck’s bed and landed in the soft dirt, alive. Sam’s head grazed the dashboard and he was dizzy, but the world came back into focus around him when he realized that he was hanging upside down in the cab of the truck. He saw Michael upside down, too, suspended by the seatbelt, his arms limp and over his head, as though he was surrendering. The gash across Michael’s head bled freely and his hair became blood-soaked, hanging like sanguine stalactites from his skull. Sam released his seatbelt and crawled out the open window and onto the warm pavement.

  Dylan had heard the speeding truck’s tires squeal on the road and stopped pushing his vehicle. It coasted to a halt and Ruth leaned out the window to see what the noise was. Dylan turned just in time to see the speeding truck go around the curve too fast, then jerk onto the soft dirt. He saw it flip in the air and slide to a stop on the edge of the pavement, with tires spinning and steam rising from the radiator like a white flag of surrender. Dylan took a quick look behind himself to check if Kevin had already driven away. He was gone, so it was just Dylan and Ruth left to help the crash victims. His second thought was
about the overturned truck. It looked much like the one Dylan had and he wondered if he could salvage a belt from it. Even if they could flip it back over, it was obvious that the crash had ruined the radiator, so there was no chance of that motor working. It was just a quick thought; his main concern was for the truck’s occupants. Leaving Ruth behind, he hurried toward the wreck and started to yell, “Are you alright? Is anybody hurt?” The image of a man crawling through the open passenger-side window answered his question. After crawling free of the crashed truck, the man went to his knees, intermittently shaking his head and calling for the whimpering German shepherd that was circling the wreckage. Dylan continued advancing, but slowed when the man appeared to have no critical injuries.

  Dylan cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Hey. Is anyone else hurt?” Dylan saw the kneeling man focus his eyes on him, but he did not see an expression of relief or joy from the survival of a motor vehicle accident. It was a cold stare that he caught, but he attributed it to trauma from being in an overturned vehicle. He continued toward the man and his dog, but stopped when he saw the man’s hand slide over a holstered pistol and draw it. Dylan got tunnel vision when he saw the weapon; he remembered leaving his rifle in the truck with Ruth. In a daze, he could not hear Ruth coming up behind him screaming, “It’s Sam. Run, Dylan, that’s Sam Deville!” Dylan had never thought about teaching Ruth how to shoot the rifle. All that he had was his knife. Sam raised the pistol higher and closed one eye to aim it at Dylan. They were close enough now that they could hear each other speak.

  “So you’re Dylan. I’m glad to finally meet you.”

  Dylan raised his hands. There was nothing else he could do.

  “You don’t look so tough to me.” Sam drew an outline of Dylan’s body in the air with the tip of the pistol as he pointed it at him. The corners of his mouth rose up and formed a sneer as he saw Ruth walking up behind Dylan.

  “Don’t shoot him, Sam. All we want to do is leave.”

  Sam raised his other hand and gestured for Ruth to come toward him. “Come here, Ruth. You don’t have to watch me do this.”

  “No. You don’t have to do this. You can’t get anything from killing him.”

  “Yes, I can. Satisfaction.” Sam pulled the trigger so violently that his body jerked and when he did, Dylan closed his eyes and winced; he heard Ruth scream, but did not hear the pistol discharge. He opened his eyes and saw Sam panicking with the pistol. It had not fired. Sam racked the slide and a cartridge ejected. He raised the pistol and pulled the trigger again. Dylan winced and Ruth screamed, but there was no bullet to bring death that afternoon. Clark had removed the firing pin from Sam’s pistol. It was useless. In his panic with the castrated pistol, Sam forgot about Michael’s gun, which was somewhere in the cab, and called on his attack dog that was meandering around the wreckage.

  Dylan recognized the dog as another weapon and decided not to run back to his truck to get the rifle. If he turned his back, or more certainly, if he ran, the dog would easily overtake him before he could make it there. He pulled his knife and braced for the attack.

  Sam yelled in German, “Hier!” to command the dog to come to his side. The dog did, but more so from his gesture than from being able to understand the word. Sam was not pronouncing it correctly, and Sam’s history of cruelty to the animal had also made it hesitate. When the dog came to Sam, he held its collar tight like it was a weapon and rubbed its neck. He looked menacingly at the couple in front of him. He whispered, “Sitz,” to make the dog sit by his side as he kneeled there, but the dog did not move, so he pressed down on the dog’s hindquarters and it sat, hesitantly. Sam was not a good handler. “Come to my side, Ruth. We are leaving together. You belong with me.” He had called Ruth as if she was not much more than another dog.

  “I would rather die.”

  “Have it your way. If I can’t have you, nobody will.” With a poor German accent, Sam yelled, “Achtung!” at the dog, but it looked confused, so Sam kicked it and the dog went to all fours.

  That was when Ruth realized that Sam was trying to speak German. His enunciation was poor, and she could see that the dog did not understand his commands.

  “This is your last chance, Ruth. What is it going to be?”

  She leaned into Dylan’s side and said, “Never!”

  Dylan raised his knife.

  Sam stood up and tried to yell. “Fass!” as the German command for the dog to attack, but instead yelled, “Fuss!” the command to heel. When he yelled the command, he pointed away, so the dog moved toward the couple hesitantly, growling. The dog did not understand what Sam was commanding. In German, Sam had told the dog to heel, but he had pointed at the couple aggressively. The confused dog slowly went toward the couple, but they were not running away. The dog did not understand, looking back at Sam, who incorrectly commanded, “Fuss!” again. The dog stopped. Sam screamed at the dog and stomped his feet in a rage as he did. The dog recognized that same rage from when Sam had beaten him before. The dog started to cower.

  Ruth saw the look on the dog’s face and went to her knee. She told Dylan to kneel, then she called for the dog and spoke in perfect German as she did. “Hier. Hier, braver hund.” She smiled at the dog as she told it in her kind voice that it was a good dog. The German shepherd heard her clear, gentle words and started to move toward her. “Braver hund,” she said again and the dog quickened its pace.

  “Ruth, what are you doing?” asked Dylan.

  “This dog understands German. I speak German. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

  The dog moved forward, head low, but as it got closer to Dylan and Ruth, it growled softly. Ruth commanded, “Nein,” with a stern German tone. The dog stopped growling and came to her side. She petted it softly and whispered repeatedly, with clearly spoken German, “Braver hund,” until she felt the dog relax. Dylan offered his hand and the dog sniffed it to take in his scent, then licked Dylan’s fingers.

  “Ruth, can you turn that dog and get him to attack?”

  Ruth stood up and told Dylan to do the same. Sam’s face appeared to be overwhelmed with fear, then he suddenly turned to dash for the cab of his truck and find Michael’s pistol.

  Ruth screamed, “Fass,” ordering the dog to attack, then yelled, “Voraus,” to urge the dog forward.

  Sam leapt into the cab’s open window, but only made it halfway inside. The dog clamped onto his leg and pulled him free of the cab. The dog could hear Ruth repeatedly yelling, “Fass,” and it graciously complied. The dog eviscerated his tormentor on the parking lot asphalt. Sam’s body went limp and Ruth called the dog away with the word, “Fuss.” The dog went to the soft grass by the road, licked the blood from its fur, and drank from a puddle of rainwater that had collected from a storm the previous day.

  Dylan put his knife back, sat down on the warm pavement, and watched his hands shake from the adrenalin. Dylan took a few moments to clear his head, then went to the cab of the overturned truck and looked inside. He saw Michael hanging from the seatbelt. Blood covered had his face, but Dylan could see the gap he had left in Michael’s front teeth after their first confrontation. Dylan reached in and grabbed Michael’s pistol. Releasing the hood, he positioned himself to look inside the engine bay. He saw a water-pump belt that he could try to salvage then stood up and saw Ruth gently petting the dog. Just behind Ruth was the road that was going to take them to a better place. Dylan smiled.

  Late that evening, an old truck and an El Camino drove toward the Ozark Mountains and into the expanding shadows of the trees that lined the roads. While the vehicles strained up the hills, the sun disappeared to reveal a moonless night, and the countryside faded to black.

  EPILOGUE

  On an autumn morning after the harvest, a cool breeze gently blew the leaves of a walnut tree that had grown tall and wide, near the rusted shell of an El Camino. The morning sun cast the tree’s shadow over the abandoned vehicle. Planted decades ago, the tree had spread its roots deep in front of the dead car, and
now stood like a tombstone with a long shadow grasping at the metal corpse in front of it.

  The car’s windows had long since shattered, and its body had dimpled during the many hailstorms that had pummeled it. The tires had collapsed, and its rims rested directly on the dirt. It slowly sank into the ground a little farther after each rainstorm. Its once mirrored finish had vanished as the sheet metal rusted underneath and bubbled away the paint. The rusting corpse had been the home to many rodents over the decades. Rats and field mice had drilled holes through the cushions to make nests. Over the years, the hundreds of rodents who had made it their abode left destruction and defecation as evidence of their presence and persistence.

  Under the green leaves of spring, walnut hulls in varying stages of decay lay scattered from each generation of squirrels that had inhabited the lone tree. Five squirrels occupied the tree this spring. From a low, sturdy branch projecting nearly parallel to the ground, two adult squirrels looked down at their offspring. The three young squirrels chased each other and further scattered the litter of walnuts, some with hulls and some without. The adult squirrels were encouraging the offspring to move on and build their own nests. Winter always comes too soon.

  A small dirt path led to the old car, and its tombstone cast a long shadow with every sunrise. It was a narrow footpath, defined by the tall grass surrounding it. Occasional visitors to the abandoned vehicle, those who gathered walnuts and those who hunted squirrels, had made the trodden path. Some of the older adults in the community had contributed to its creation by taking younger generations to the wreckage of a vehicle that had brought them to their new home, so long ago.