by Nick Petrie
A pair of pale headlights floated up the ribbon below. An odd, elongated vehicle.
Rotating yellow lights on the roof of the vehicle, brightening up the night.
The red wrecker, towing Henry’s truck.
The last hijacker. Coming directly toward them.
Peter said, “You still have that shotgun?” He’d tucked the weapon under the gurney’s straps in the first moments of their reckless ride downhill from the ambulance.
The wrecker was getting closer by the second. Over the buzzing vibration of the gurney, Peter could hear the sound of its powerful diesel engine echoing off the granite.
Henry’s eyes rolled up in his head as he tried to peer down the road. “Tell me that ain’t what I think it is.”
“Oh, it is.” Peter didn’t know how he would do this. He shifted his weight and felt his toe brush the asphalt. He jerked his foot back, knowing the thin leather would wear away quickly, but not before hearing the scrape of metal.
Steel toes. He’d forgotten. His boots had steel toes.
He had another wear surface. Maybe they would last longer than the soles. Or maybe they wouldn’t have as much friction as the good Vibram rubber. Only one way to find out.
He perched on both knees between Henry’s big feet. Then dropped his own feet down until his toes made contact with the blacktop, and slowly increased the pressure.
Once the leather wore off, the metal made an ugly grinding sound. His balance was precarious, so he kept one hand on the side rail. By varying the pressure from foot to foot, he could even steer a little, although not as well as he had before. But now one hand was free.
The red wrecker came closer still. Peter could see the shape of it now in ghostly flashes under the rotating yellow hazard lights. The heavy steel grille at the front. The big black pickup truck reared up on the tow bar behind.
Henry had worked his good arm free of the gurney’s straps and was extracting the shotgun, his face a dim mask of pain.
“Hold on, Henry, I can get it.” Part of Peter was afraid the man would drop it, injured as he was.
Henry’s breathing was labored. “I ain’t dead yet,” he said. “Might as well be useful.”
“Little late for that, old man.” Peter slid the gun the rest of the way free. “Why start now?”
“Was you always such a wiseass?”
The pale ribbon of the road was getting darker now, and harder to see. The big red tow truck was a few bends away, pulling its heavy load uphill. Not exactly flying, but going plenty fast.
Peter let go of the rail and managed to ride hands-free for a long moment, just long enough to rack the slide of the shotgun. The empty shell flew away into the night, and the last remaining shell popped up into the chamber. He fell forward again and grabbed the rail with his right hand and laid the shotgun down with his left.
“Tell me you got a plan,” Henry said.
“Send in the Marines,” Peter said. “Isn’t that always the plan?”
He wanted the gurney closer to the mountain. He wanted to be in the opposite lane. Unexpected, and harder to see. It wouldn’t be an instinctive reaction for the driver, to pull into the oncoming lane. Any advantage might be decisive.
The steel of his boots ground away against the asphalt as he maneuvered. The gurney bucked and shimmied, the movement more violent now. He wasn’t getting any slower. If anything, he was speeding up.
Peter told himself that would help when the time came.
He laughed softly.
Yeah. Go ahead and tell yourself that.
Glancing down, he saw a trail of sparks from each steel toe where it met the road. The gurney was really shaking. He didn’t have much steering left. It wouldn’t be long, either way.
He’d lived an interesting life, hadn’t he?
June. He wanted to see June. He wanted to kiss her freckles one last time. He wanted to tell her he loved her. Had he ever told her that? God, he hoped he had.
The wrecker was broadside-on now, coming around the last bend. Its headlights lit up the mountainside and the pale ribbon of the road. As it made the turn, he saw a flash of brightness against the rock, an open space there. Maybe a stream coming down the rocks, which would be no help at all. But maybe a few parking spaces for a trailhead, or a slow-vehicle pullout.
Then the wrecker completed its arc and the road ran straight between them.
Headlights bright in Peter’s eyes, the gurney vibrating like a failing chain saw, Henry’s strong hands gripping the straps.
Peter let go of the rail and straightened up, riding no-handed, barely balanced.
Alive, alive. I am fucking alive.
The gap closed, the road smooth for just a moment. Peter could just see over the top of the wrecker’s heavy grille, a broad rectangle of steel slats, edge-on to the world with a wide rubber push bar at the bottom.
Closer now, and the outline of the hijacker’s head and neck were just visible over the open half-round of the steering wheel.
Closer still, Peter could see that the man had removed his mask. The pale skin of his face glowed faintly green in the light from the dash.
Peter raised the shotgun and seated it against his shoulder. The weight of it was reassuring, although he did wish it was a little heavier. He was down to a single shell.
Time, ticking.
He fit his finger inside the trigger guard. His stomach muscles flexed, keeping his balance. The gun barrel wove a circular pattern with the erratic movement of the gurney.
He waited for some kind of equilibrium. The shot pattern would get wider over distance, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Peter wasn’t in a stable firing position, and his target wasn’t large. If he hit the man with only one round of buckshot, that was a plus. If Peter could hit with three or four, he could cross the man off his list of troubles.
The hijacker’s eyes widened now in some kind of recognition of the apparition on the highway. An EMT’s version of the Flying Dutchman.
Peter took up the pressure on the trigger.
The hijacker turned the wheel, veering into Peter’s lane.
The sights aligned. The barrel steadied.
Peter pressed the trigger.
The red wrecker’s windshield turned to splintered shards in a ragged circle on the driver’s side as the kick of the shotgun pushed Peter backward on his tenuous perch.
The gurney lurched. He felt his balance slip.
He put more pressure against the asphalt with his toes, but the gurney was going too fast. The bare steel toes were frictionless, a ballet dancer on bad ice.
He couldn’t catch himself.
He fell backward, flailing.
Until Henry’s big hand came up, wrapped tight around the barrel of the shotgun, and reeled him in.
“I got you.” That raspy voice now barely audible over the sound of the big diesel bearing down on them.
Peter fell forward onto Henry’s legs, dropped the shotgun, grabbed the rails with both hands, and set his boot soles down hard on the asphalt.
When the friction hit, it nearly hauled him off his feet, but he managed to drop his ass and keep both boots down and turn the gurney just enough to find the fine-graveled shoulder of the road as the wrecker roared past.
“Hang on,” he called out, and looked ahead to see what might be coming.
“Don’t roll this sled, I forgot my helmet.” Henry’s grin was ear to ear.
The shoulder flattened out and Peter’s boots slid across the small stones like so many spilled marbles. The road wound downhill to the left, but ahead of them was a narrow flat area, a lumpy gravel pullout. Henry gave a hard grunt as the gurney bucked like something alive, the rutted rocks bouncing them around, eating up their momentum, slowing them finally to a halt.
Peter took a deep breath, then patted Henry on the shin, looking back over his own shoulder the way they’d come. “Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
The red wrecker was slowing in the middle of the highway, red
roof lights flashing. But no brake lights. Maybe he’d hit the hijacker. Maybe the hijacker was reloading, figuring how to come at him.
Peter wanted that wrecker. It was their way off this mountain. Maybe their weapons were still in the back of Henry’s truck. Their phones.
He looked past the wrecker, but there was no sign of the trooper.
He might still be with the ambulance.
Or just around the curve of the mountain, heading their way.
Peter unkinked his legs and picked up the shotgun and ran, pumping his arms, half-shredded boots strange underfoot. He was out of shells but it would work as a club.
This is what we’ve come to, he thought.
Angry monkeys killing each other with sticks.
Over scraps of green paper.
The wrecker eased to a stop ahead of him. Still no brake lights, just the engine grumbling slow. He saw the rear window broken and splashed with something dark behind its steel-mesh grate. He ducked his head to peek into the side mirror. No movement in the cab, just a low slumped form aglow in the dashboard light.
He jerked open the driver’s door with one hand, the other ready to jab with the shotgun.
The hijacker didn’t move. One eye was a red ruin. His cheek was smashed bloody. The hollow of his throat held a soft wet hole.
Peter looked up the road. Still no trooper.
There was plenty of time for the trooper to have reached the wrecker, if he’d wanted to.
If he had stopped to check the ambulance, thought Peter, the carnage inside might have helped him make up his mind. Might have overcome his desire for the money.
Peter doubted it.
With one eye watching for the trooper, Peter reached in and threw the transmission into park.
Hauled the driver down to the highway and into the ditch.
Wiped the blood and broken glass from the seat with the hijacker’s mask.
Then he ran that wrecker and its tow load in reverse, three-quarters of a mile down the crooked highway to the gravel pull-off.
Once you learn to back a trailer, you never forget.
8
Henry.” Peter looked down at his friend, alarmed.
He was different from the big man Peter had worked with in the forest, the man who had swung the double-bladed ax with such skill, who had turned long logs into bridges with a block and tackle.
Something had changed. Henry’s grin was gone, and his face was oddly pale.
Maybe it was just the starlight. But he looked a lot worse than he had before the heavy jolts of the truck ramp. Peter thought of Henry’s spine.
Peter knelt beside his friend. “We’ll stay here awhile. I’ll call an ambulance.” He held up Henry’s phone, already found in the back of the pickup. He’d known the passcode since Memorial Day.
“Faster if you drive.” Henry’s hoarse voice was smoothed down to a soft rasp. He put his hand on Peter’s bicep. “Just haul me up on the back. Tie me down like any other load. Swedish Hospital is closest. And call my daughter. She needs to know.”
The big man’s eyes never left Peter’s face as he wrestled man and gurney up to the bed of the truck. The only way they would fit was with the tailgate down and Henry half-hanging off the back. Peter tucked a spare jacket around his friend for warmth, and checked the straps one last time.
“You good, Henry? We’re ready to go.”
Henry looked Peter in the eye. “Sorry about this.” The rasp of his voice down to a thin trickle of sand. “You were just being a friend. A good friend.”
“You’d have done the same for me.” Peter put his hand on Henry’s chest. “Just hang on, okay?”
But Henry had already turned his gaze to the cold glittering stars overhead.
Climbing into the wrecker, Peter caught sight of himself in the rearview. A diagonal smear of dried blood like war paint across his face.
He put it in drive, pointed downhill, and stepped on the gas.
By the time he pulled up at the Swedish Medical Center ER in Englewood, Henry was dead.
9
Peter had only met Elle Hansen once, three days before, when he went to the office to fill out the paperwork.
It was clearly a shoestring operation, the tiny second-floor office above a taco shop, barely big enough for three desks, faded paint, and stained carpet. Henry had told Peter that his daughter had three little kids and that the company had only been in business for eighteen months.
As Elle explained how things worked, it was evident that every decision was made with careful deliberation. The space was small and cheap because most of the employees never came into the office. The guys got their assignments on a secure website and used their personal vehicles instead of company cars, the best way to keep the protection profile inconspicuous, the overhead low, and her people happy and well paid.
Sitting at her computer, printing an application and permission for a background check, Elle had told Peter that she’d started Heavy Metal Protection with her husband, who was now nowhere to be found.
“It’s hard,” she’d said. She sat straight in her chair, her fingers fast on the keyboard, but her eyes were sunken with fatigue. “Randy is gone, along with Leonard Wallis, our head of operations. We need them, and we need that missing money. We don’t have deep pockets. The insurance company is being difficult about reimbursement.”
She took a deep breath and let it out, then gave Peter a brittle smile. “The police are investigating. My lawyer is talking to the insurance company. I’ve already done everything I can do. So I might as well get on to my next task. I have clients to protect and a business to run. Thirty men and their families are depending on me.”
Peter had never met her husband. Randy and Elle might have started the business together, but Peter figured Elle was the engine of the company, even though she still looked young enough to be cramming for finals at some college library.
Actually, she looked a lot like Henry, the same square head and strong chin, although not in a bad way. Barefoot in casual khakis and a feminine button-down shirt, she was built like her dad, too, tall and big-boned, oversized in the small room, but healthy, like a college athlete. When she’d turned to hand Peter the papers, she’d knocked a picture of her kids off her desk. She didn’t blush or apologize or comment in any way. She just shook her head and scooped up the plastic frame and set it someplace else.
Peter didn’t think she was clumsy. Just someone who’d outgrown her own skin, not to mention this tiny office.
That was three days ago, when her husband might just have been missing.
Now, standing in the tilted bed of Henry’s truck, watching her follow the gurney into the hospital—with the knowledge that her husband was not just missing but almost certainly dead—Peter thought she looked like someone who was holding on to herself for dear life.
Peter didn’t go with her. He couldn’t even speak to her, not right then.
Her father was dead.
What could Peter possibly say or do to make it better?
—
He was climbing down from the bed of Henry’s truck when his hands started to shake.
It was a chemical reaction, he’d been through it before. After the punishing rush of the day’s events and the harrowing drive back down the mountain in the wrecker, the adrenaline was only now starting to bleed from his system. He was crashing.
He felt empty, drained of all color and life. He knew the feeling would fade, but sometimes it was hard to convince himself.
He wanted to wash his face, to find a shower and some clean clothes, but that was a bad idea. His clothing was part of a crime scene. And somehow, Peter didn’t feel like he deserved to get clean.
Henry was still dead. With Deacon and Banjo.
He laid himself down on the bench outside the ER doors, closed his eyes, and waited for the police.
In the darkness, he saw again, as he knew he would, the man with the shotgun close up against him. He smelled the stink of the man’s sw
eat and fear. The long muscles of his arm twitched involuntarily as he felt the sweep and catch of his knife in the other man’s skin. The blood hot and viscous on his face, the slick feel of wiping it from his eye with a bloody hand.
It was him or me, Peter told himself.
As he had told himself before, more times than he cared to remember. Him or me.
He’d tried to save his friends, but he couldn’t.
He’d only managed to save himself.
He’d saved June last spring, though. He’d definitely done that.
Maybe she’d save him, too. He didn’t know just yet, but he was hoping.
He needed to call her. He was going to be late getting up to see her.
He had something to do first.
A few things, actually.
—
He heard the cars roll into the ambulance area, big engines thrumming, tires crunching on the pavement. Two heavy doors slammed shut, then footsteps and the creak and clink of equipment on heavy belts.
He opened his eyes and pushed himself to a sitting position. Two Denver cops approached in summer uniforms, one young and brown with the lean, lazy muscle of a trail runner, the other sun-pink and beefy, late thirties, sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve. They had the same cool, watchful eyes that took in everything around them, and stopped at the same careful distance.
Peter had asked the hospital security man to call the police.
The older cop peered at Peter’s face. “Sir, are you all right?” He spoke to the younger cop without looking away from Peter. “Go get someone to look at this guy.”
“I’m fine,” Peter said. “It’s not my blood.”
The older cop raised his eyebrows. “Sir, are you carrying a weapon?”
“No,” Peter said. “They’re in the back seat of the pickup.”
The younger cop surveyed Peter from top to bottom, until his eyes stuck on Peter’s boots. The steel toes ground down showing ragged holes, the soles worn thin from the friction on the asphalt.
“Look at his boots,” he said.