by Julie Hyzy
Giving a self-satisfied smile, Bruno looked over at Ro who shoved me, unceremoniously, into the back seat alongside Sophie. “Don’t bother trying to get out,” he said, “Child protection locks.”
I tried anyway. He was right.
Bruno went over details with Ro, Lisa listening from the open driver’s side door. I strained to hear, too. Sophie, clutching my arm, started again with soft mewls of panic. With her face so close to mine, she nearly drowned out Bruno’s words.
“Stop it,” I hissed at her, shaking my arm to disengage her grasp. I resisted the urge to shove her away, but my anger bubbled up, boiling over. I was wrong about Bruno’s position. While I’d harbored suspicions he wasn’t an unwitting participant, I hadn’t ever seen him as the mastermind. I’d never for a moment believed him capable of killing. What an idiot I’d been, thinking I could talk him into giving up information on Lisa and the organization. I’d been blinded from the start by my own priest preconceptions, and Sophie’s unwavering devotion to him.
“How could you do this, Sophie?” White hot lights flashed in my head as I whisper-shouted, but I knew I couldn’t stop the tumble of words as they spewed out my mouth. “You trusted him,” I pointed to Bruno, “and now what? Matthew’s dead and they’re going to kill us, too. How could you do this? Why did you go to him?”
A long, deep shudder racked through Sophie’s body. I watched grief and pain come over her face as she opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out. The poor girl stiffened, then shook, her wide eyes panicked and terrified.
Immediately regretting my outburst, I took a deep breath, trying to calm the demons of anger that shot through my unnerved body. Sophie stared as though she’d never seen me before. Ashamed of myself, I relented. I put my arm around her. “Shush now,” I said. “We’ll get away. I know we will. Trust me.”
She nodded, taking ragged breaths.
I turned my attention back outside.
“… fatal accident,” Bruno had said to Ro. With a look I could only call a smirk, he glanced up—caught me watching them. Bruno’s voice cut the heartbeat of silence. “And make sure it burns.”
* * * * *
Now, the SUV bounced hard on the uneven road, with a powerful jolt that knocked me against the door. My face bumped the side window and I felt my cut sting and stretch as it reopened. A warm welling of blood dripped down my cheek. It pulled my attention back to the present in a hurry.
Ro looked out the back, over my head. He muttered an expletive, then pulled out a two-way walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket. He pressed a button and a feedback screech echoed through the car.
Lisa jumped, then glared at him. “For crying out loud, Ro, I’ve got mine on, too. Get closer to the window before you use that thing.”
He moved, but the gun never wavered.
“Emil, you there?”
Answering static, then, “Yeah.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Just turned off, uh, the main road, uh …”
“Shit, forget it. I see you.”
Sophie rested heavy against my left side. She’d fallen asleep. I shook my head in disbelief. Exhausted from panic and long crying jag she’d been through during the day, her body had simply given up. There’s no way I could have slept at this point, not with the constant shivers of dread ripping through my mind. If these were indeed my last hours on the planet, I wanted to face them wide awake. But then again, Sophie was a different animal than I was, and maybe sleeping worked as her most effective coping mechanism. It must be a strong one, I thought, since the vehicle’s continued bouncing didn’t even faze her. I wanted to wake her up, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Let her remain unaware, for as long as possible.
Ro took his eyes off of us long enough to take in the surrounding area. “This is the right road,” he said.
Lisa shot him a sidelong glance, then rolled her eyes. “That’s why I pulled off here.”
Ro missed the sarcasm. “Couple miles down that way, now,” he offered, gesturing with the barrel of the gun.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
I turned to watch my car’s headlights behind us. Emil drove, but he remained invisible to me over the bright glare.
An accident, Bruno had said.
In my faithful little car.
A sudden anger welled up in me, so fast and so furious that I wanted to kick the gun from Ro’s hand. Instead I took a deep breath through clenched teeth, and told myself to wait. My body tingled with anticipation, knowing that whenever the moment came, whatever it was, I’d fight before I’d go down easy.
We crossed over unmarked railroad tracks, then passed under a canopy of trees, their branches still holding onto enough leaves to block my view of the night sky. The car bounced repeatedly in the rough terrain. Lisa kept her headlights on till we reached a clearing. When she cut the motor and cut the lights, Sophie sat up, blinking, looking every direction at once. My body began to shake, reacting to the situation with a terror of the unknown. And yet, I kept a peculiar detached calm. As though I watched all this happening to someone else.
Ro opened one of the back doors and ordered us out. I heard Sophie’s shallow breaths, and knew without looking that her abrupt awakening only served to disorient her further.
“Grab your stuff. You’re taking it with you,” he said.
I reached in for my purse, trying to think if there was anything in it I could use. Yeah, I thought, maybe I could tie them up with my dental floss.
Outside, Sophie clutched me again, wrapping her hands around my left arm, like a terrified two-year-old clinging to mom. “It’s okay,” I said, knowing it was anything but. “We’ll be okay.”
She didn’t answer except to whimper.
We stood at the edge of a meadow, lit brightly by the shining moon. The wind brought the smell of burning leaves to waft by, its familiar, comforting scent hitting me with a punch of melancholy. A forested area, dense and expansive, sprawled to our immediate right. In the distance, about three football fields away, a pattern of pinkish sodium vapor lights lined a collection of industrial buildings. And right before us, a wide vastness of black, a gaping hole in the ground. So wide that its edges faded into the darkness and I couldn’t see to its far side.
And then I knew exactly where we were.
The quarry.
I’d passed it hundreds of times, from the safe vantage point of the expressway above, watching the diggers and loaders and dump trucks as they worked the inside of the limestone pit, so far below they looked like toys. No one in the sporadic traffic above would be paying attention to the dark ground below, and even if they did casually glance out their window, no one would be able to see us. We were too small, too insignificant.
“Get in,” Ro said, pointing to my car.
Emil left it running. Now he sidled up to us. “I’m sorry, Sophie. But I can’t … I can’t …” He reached out to stroke her hair, close enough that I smelled the booze on his body.
Were they going to kill us gangland style? Shoot us in the head in my car?
“Ro,” I said, facing the big man, knowing I was grasping at straws. “You’re not going to get away with this. Look. You left your tire tracks and …” I heard my voice shake, to match the tremors of my body, “… footprints. With all the technology nowadays, they’ll find you.”
Ro shook his head. “You think we picked this place out of a hat?” He tilted his head toward the forest. “This is burn-out heaven. Kids come here to smoke dope and drink. Around midnight, there’s plenty of cars, plenty of footprints. And when the drunken idiots see the fire in the pit, they’ll trample all over the place. We’re covered.”
“Listen,” I said, trying again. “Let us go. I’ll nail Bruno, so he can’t touch any of you, but I’ll leave you out of it. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
Lisa turned away. “Just get it over with, Ro.”
He directed Emil to shift my car into neutral. Then had him open the rear hatch
of Lisa’s car, where two plastic jugs of gasoline waited. “Did she have a full tank in that little shit car?” He asked.
Emil shook his head. “Only about half.”
Without shifting his aim, Ro muttered instructions for how to add the accelerant to the car in such a way that it would look like a spontaneous blaze. While he spoke I whispered to Sophie in Polish, “If I move, follow me.”
“No!” she whispered back. “They’ll kill us if we try to get away.”
“For the love of God, Sophie, they’re going to kill us anyway. If I go, you better be behind me. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Good,” I said, gently removing her hands from my arm. “Keep your eye on me.”
“Shut up, you two,” Ro said, then he raised his voice slightly to Emil, “How much you got left in the jugs?”
“About half, each.”
“Put one of ‘em in her trunk. With the lid loose. Make it look like she kept spare gas in her trunk. For emergencies.” He grinned at us.
“Which one?” Emil asked, holding the two jugs aloft.
“Get in,” Ro said to us again. We stood on the passenger side of my car, about ten feet away from where Emil had poured the gasoline. “You two are gonna take a trip down to the bottom of the quarry.”
“But there’s gas all over the ground,” I said. “Somebody’s bound to notice that.”
“You know what? You talk too much.”
He started to push us forward, but Emil had come around the back of the car, holding out both red plastic jugs for Ro’s inspection. “Which one?” he asked again.
“That one,” I shouted. Dropping my purse, I grabbed the right one from his hand. I spun, splashing the open jug at the general vicinity of Ro’s face, turning to run without waiting for his reaction. Praying Sophie was behind me.
I heard Lisa shout, Ro swear, and when I turned to be sure that Sophie followed, I thought I saw Emil step in front of a stumbling Ro, knocking them both off balance. It gave us precious seconds for a head start, and even as I headed for the trees with Sophie panting behind me, I had to wonder if he’d done that deliberately.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The traitorous moon illuminated the meadow like a bright spotlight, making me feel vulnerable, obvious. I felt the skin prickle on my back, knowing Ro might be aiming to shoot, even as I concentrated on the slosh-pounding of my feet on the ground through the damp grass. Keeping my eyes on the line of trees just about a hundred yards away, I listened for sounds of Sophie, but my heartbeat slamming in my ears, and my own open-mouthed panting, drowned out noises behind me.
Fearful of losing my balance, or twisting an ankle, I didn’t want to turn, again. I knew it could slow me down, but I had to be sure.
Quick, I looked.
She was right behind me, her hair streaking backward, intensity on her face, and in that split-second glance, behind her, I saw Ro moving our direction, at a rapid clip. Lisa following. The man had long legs and power on his side. Even if we could make it to the tree line before he caught up, we’d still have problems getting away. We’d never be able to outrun him.
He shouted something, but I couldn’t make out what it was.
Nearer now, the trees were mere steps away, but I felt every stride in slow motion. Wind rushed at my face, howling through the trees, smarting my cheeks. My lungs burned, my eyes watered; I blinked to clear my vision, moving forward.
A loud noise, sharp, like a firecracker. But I couldn’t tell if it came from behind or before us.
I ducked between two enormous trees, Sophie three steps behind.
“What now?” she asked, panicked and breathless.
I grabbed her arm and ran. I had no thought in my mind other than to keep moving.
We did, at as fast a pace as we could, through the labyrinth of trees. My eyes hadn’t had a chance to adjust to the scant light. Despite the fact that the trees were nearly all bare, their dense overhead branches intertwined to allow only tiny snatches of moonlight filter through. I led the way, avoiding those bright spots, wanting to keep from becoming an easy target.
I heard another noise, faint, but steady. Ahead of us.
A combination of adrenaline, and elation that others might be in the forest, propelled me forward. We slowed down, and I tried to zigzag through the growth, quiet enough that Ro wouldn’t be able to hear our movements. I tried to keep wide, shielding trees behind us, as much as possible.
Crashing sounds from where we’d just been.
Another shot.
It had to be Ro.
The faint noise ahead grew louder, more rhythmic. I still couldn’t decide what it was but I headed toward it, my mind on nothing but escape.
Then I made it out. Chanting.
Coming from our far right, I changed direction and headed that way. Far, through the pattern of tall barren trees, the smell of burnt leaves got stronger and I thought I caught the flickering glow of a campfire.
I held my breath and stopped long enough to clamp my hand over Sophie’s mouth to quiet her breathing, so I could listen.
I heard him behind us. Too close.
Dropping my hand from Sophie’s face, I pulled her forward again.
We moved stealthily, but quickly, toward the fire, toward the sounds.
There.
Silhouetted before an enormous blaze stretching nearly ten feet in the air, were more than a dozen figures. Male, female, I couldn’t discern at this distance, but a couple of them seemed to sway, though not with the rhythm of the chanting.
Louder now, I could make out the combination of voices, repeating rote sayings, like prayers.
They sounded like devil-worshippers. Out in the forest offering animal sacrifices. If so, our presence here wouldn’t be welcome, of that I was sure. But I remembered where my recent experiences with the church had gotten me and I decided to take my chances.
“Please, God,” I whispered to the heavens, “keep us safe.”
Tents sat at the far end of their camp. They’d chosen a small clearing, and as we broke into their midst, I saw at once they were all college-age students, mostly male, but with a couple of females sitting near the fire. Nearly everyone held a beer.
I tripped over something in the grass, falling face first, my hands hitting metal as I broke my fall. Sophie helped me up and we moved forward again. Train tracks. Stretching from the ones we’d crossed earlier, no doubt. I stepped gingerly over a second set. These were much easier to see. No weeds obscured them. Both sets flush with the ground. No wonder I’d missed them.
Our emergence startled a few of the partiers, and it took a second for me to realize that the ones who didn’t react were too drunk to realize there were strangers present. Not devil-worshippers, thank God. The smell of burning marijuana permeated the immediate area and I shouted that we needed help.
The chanting didn’t stop.
In fact, it got louder.
A guy with red hair, wearing a knitted ski cap and hooded jacket, bent in half as he screamed, “I can’t hear you!” to a group of about four blindfolded young men, who raised their voices at his cry.
I could make out only a few of the words as we sidled past them. Bird, clang, cow, chalk. Didn’t make sense. Another group of blindfolded boys sang a song to a familiar tune, but with very different words than I remembered. I searched to find someone sober. Someone who might have a car nearby. I headed for the girls by the fire. One of them, wearing a short brown and orange jacket, was gesturing as she spoke. She looked lucid enough. I could only hope.
There was background music drifting from a boom box. A skinny guy with long curly blond hair intercepted us with slurred words and unfocused eyes. “Hey, we got this place staked out tonight ladies, but you’re welcome to have a beer.”
Drawing closer, I made an instant reassessment. There had to be twenty young people gathered, in small groups. Sitting, standing, swaying, singing. Noise and movement everywhere.
“A man with a gun,” I sai
d, loud enough to be heard over the cacophony, “Do you—”
“A cop?” the blond guy asked, his face taking on that vacuous look that people get when they’re drunk, but are still trying to comprehend. His brow furrowed. “Cops never come by here. You a cop?”
“No,” I said, wanting to push past him to head toward the girls by the fire. Two of other guys who’d been working near the tents came to join the blond one.
“What’s goin’ on, Framp?” one of them asked. The three of them barricaded us from moving forward. “Who are you?” he asked us. Shorter than the blond guy, he carried a little more weight, and a cocky look on his face. He took us in with shrewd eyes from behind wire-rimmed glasses. When he saw the cut on my face, he glanced behind us.
In that second I knew this guy wasn’t as drunk as the rest. I spoke as fast as I could.
“Do you have a cell phone? Please, call for help. Call 9-1-1.” I said, my words breathless. “A man … trying to kill us.”
I don’t know if it was the open wound or the fear in my voice that made him believe me, but he blinked once in comprehension, gave me and Sophie a once-over assessment and called out behind him. “Brothers! Trouble.”
Drunk and sober alike, they mobilized, fast.
“I’m Eddie,” the guy said to me, over his shoulder. “We’ll take care of him.”
Shit, just what I needed. Beer muscles. They’d be no match for Ro—these kids would get themselves slaughtered. “No,” I shouted, but he was already taking charge of the group.
“Karen, you’re in charge of the pledges till we get back. Bob, Jerry, Wayne, you’re in charge of the camp. Frankie, get the fire extinguishers.”
An oriental guy pulled up the metal container next to him. “Here.”
“Han, that ain’t no fire extinguisher,” Eddie said, ripping it from his grasp. “That’s a goddamn propane tank.”
Han squinted at the tank by his feet, and shrugged.
The group silenced—quiet enough that I could make out the Bee Gees warbling one of their seventies’ hits.
I grabbed Eddie’s arm. “The guy has a gun.”