Dead Time

by Stephen White

  “Oh, darn, I think he’s slowing down,” Oden said. He waggled the gun. “Don’t you even…”

  He left the final caution unfinished. I was back on his radar.

  I was about to reach out with my bound hands and grab the wheel. My hastily assembled plan was to try to force the cop’s attention by swinging the Camry hard so it would weave into the other lane just before the cop’s arrival on our section of road.

  A split second before I lunged for the steering wheel Oden tapped the brakes and slowed the Camry onto the shoulder. We rolled to a stop.

  Shit!

  He returned his eyes to the mirror. He said, “Holy heck…It’s an ambulance. Not a cop. It’s stopping…It’s stopping…It’s…not stopping. Heck, heck, heck, and hell.”

  The siren’s squeal changed to a strident whoop, whoop, whoop.

  Five seconds later, the boxy shape of a rescue van rolled past us. It seemed to accelerate as it flew down the road.

  “Didn’t stop,” Oden said, in obvious relief as he stared at the departing truck. A moment later, he added, “Thing must be going ninety by now. You think?”

  “At least.” I watched my hope being consumed in the vortex of its wake.

  Amy moaned, “Noooooooooooooo.” It wasn’t a scream. It was a plaintive moan that made my protoplasm quiver.

  Amy, too, had heard opportunity come, and go.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Oden climbed out of the car and stepped in front of the hood. He pulled my cell from the side pocket of his cargo pants, did an exaggerated big-league windup, and tossed the phone fifty yards into the scrub. He repeated the motion with another phone. I assumed it was Amy’s. He’d wanted me to see the phones were gone.

  He got back in the car. “Hate cell phones, too,” he said. We waited there, parked by the side of the dusty road, for a good two minutes.

  Oden, I thought, was deciding when to shoot us. He hated computers and cell phones but had demonstrated some disconcerting comfort with guns.

  Amy was loud the whole time. Her gag was limiting her to vowels.

  “Eeeeeeaaaaaaeeeeeeeaaaaa. Eeeeeeaaaaaa, eeeeeeeaaaaa.”

  “Shut her up,” Oden said. “Or I will.”

  For the first time I heard irritation infiltrate his tone. I had to shut her up.

  “Eeeeeeeaaaaaaa.”

  “Hey,” I said as I turned to Amy. I didn’t want to use her name in front of him. She was struggling, writhing against the tape. Her eyes were frantic. She kept rolling them to the tops of their sockets. The position she was in left her contorted in the worst possible way. It would have been a painful pose for a rag doll to maintain.

  I tried to imagine her agony.

  “Hey,” I repeated softly. I waited until her eyes locked on mine. I fought to keep from blinking, fearing I could lose her again with a single blink. “It’s not helping,” I said in a monotone. “The yelling. The writhing. I know what’s going on is awful for you. The alternatives”—I paused so that she could fill in the blanks—“are worse.”

  She glared at me. In a tone that was almost conversational, she repeated her cry, “Eeeeeeaaaaaa.”

  “Do you ever do yoga? Meditate?”

  She glared some more. Then she dry swallowed. Narrowed her eyes. Nodded.

  I nodded back. I began to blink in a steady rhythm, every few seconds, adding a tiny head nod of a centimeter or so with each blink. I did it ten times, fifteen. When she started to mimic my movements, I did it twenty more times. I counted. In my mind, I did an inventory of the few things I knew about Amy’s loves. I would need them to guide the imagery.

  In my softest office voice, I said, “Look at me. My eyes. In your mind, go someplace you would love to do yoga. Imagine it all. Look at me. Good. A secluded beach. Yes? The salt air. A warm breeze. Birds are singing a melody that soothes you. The hillside is covered with flowers. Every last one is a bird-of-paradise…. The colors are deep green and that lovely orange…. The smells are heavenly…. Now imagine what you’re wearing…the texture of the sand on your bare feet. Pick a starting pose…. Perfect it…. Hold it…. Go ahead, pick one, your favorite.” She was staring at me with heavy, unblinking eyes. Reluctant eyes. “Your eyes are heavy…. They want to close…. So heavy.” Her breathing was slowing.

  Her eyes closed. “Find your center. Good. Ease into it. Now breathe…from your gut. You know how. Work your diaphragm. Listen to your body…. Imagine…Lead…Follow. Breathe…Good. Stay there…Hold the position. Breathe. In, out. In, out. In…out. In…out.”

  I timed my words to her breaths so she didn’t have to adjust her breathing to my words.

  I waited about ten seconds for my desperate soporifics to do their thing before I said, “Good. Relax. Breathe…stay right there. In that peaceful place.”

  I lifted my hands in front of my face and raised a solitary index finger to my mouth. I whispered, “Shhhh,” to Oden. I hooked a thumb in the direction of the road, and mouthed the words, “Let’s go.”

  “Thank God in heaven,” he mumbled. “Some quiet. You just hypnotize her?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Try it on me and I’ll shoot you in the face. I don’t care.” A white twin-cab pickup riding on oversize tires flashed by us at a healthy clip. Oden said, “Nice truck.” He pulled the Camry onto the road behind it. In no time the truck was swallowed by the horizon.

  Our speed leveled off at the legal limit. Oden said, “Something you should know? I used to care. More than most people.”

  Another chill skittered across the wide flesh on my back. It felt like a terrified cluster of semifrozen bugs running for their lives.

  “Since she left, I don’t care. I went all-in on her.”

  The gambling analogy gave me yet another chill. “She?” I asked.

  “She,” he said.

  I found my therapist voice. “Part of that thing,” I asked, “that crawled back out of the grave?”

  “Yeah. Part of the thing. Since then, I don’t care. I…just…don’t…care.”

  I’m already dead, I thought. Why not? I said, “You talking about Jaana?”

  I listened for the gunshot.

  “Whew,” he said. “What the heck do you know?”

  In the next ten minutes I twice returned my attention to Amy, trying to help her maintain her trance. I had her change poses, find her balance, readjust her breathing. She was hungry for my suggestions—desperate to be almost anywhere other than where she was.

  In between, I began to parcel out the Grand Canyon story to Oden, hoping to keep him calm, and buy us time.

  “Accident,” he said suddenly. “That’s what it was. That ambulance. See?” He pointed down the highway.

  Oden had eagle eyes. Above the thermal waves radiating off the road on the distant horizon I could spot the pickup that had passed us—its white paint was reflecting in the sun. Beyond it I could barely make out the blue and red pulses of the rescue vehicle’s flashing lights. From our distance, I couldn’t have identified it as an ambulance if my life had depended on it.

  It was possible that my life did depend on it. How odd is that? I thought.

  Oden slowed the Camry. We closed in on the accident at forty miles an hour. Then thirty. A quarter mile away we were going ten.

  The ambulance had stopped on the near side of a narrow bridge at a forty-five-degree angle, intentionally blocking our lane. An old Chevy Blazer was spun out in the other lane, completing the barricade. The old SUV was beat up—I wondered if it had rolled before returning to its wheels. A body seemed to be lying in the shade on the near side of the SUV, almost straddling the centerline of the road. One of the EMTs was squatting beside the injured person. Another EMT was standing in the open rear hatch of the Blazer. He or she was leaning in. I couldn’t tell if there was a second victim inside the Chevy.

  The white pickup rolled to a stop a few feet from the scene. The driver leaned across the cab and spoke to the paramedic who was working in the back of the Blazer. The para
medic poked his head out for just a second, said something back to the driver. The pickup driver straightened up behind the wheel, waved, and steered his truck off the road onto the dirt shoulder and then over the edge. The twin cab completely disappeared into a gully for five seconds before it popped up on the other side of the accident, climbed a steep embankment, and hopped back onto the road. The truck gained speed until it crested the hill behind the accident, vanishing from view.

  “No cops there yet,” Oden said. “That’s lucky. I’m going to go around too. Like that truck did. Before the cops get here.”

  I turned to Amy. “Breathe…Breathe.”

  She growled. Coughed. So much for her trance.

  When I turned back, the pistol was pointed at my head. “Don’t be a hero,” Oden said.

  “Don’t kill her,” I said.

  He seemed surprised. “I’m not going to kill her. Not yet.”

  My heart hiccupped at the thought of the alternative he had planned.

  He lowered the gun to my belly. “You don’t want to be gut-shot and left to die in the desert,” he said. “That’s my offer. Not if you die. How. You don’t want to be alive when the scavengers come. So be good. I don’t care.”

  We approached the ambulance at a crawl.

  The accident had taken place where the two-lane road crossed an arroyo at the base of a small hill. I could tell that the Camry sedan was going to have a difficult time doing what the twin cab pickup had just done—circling around the scene by dropping down onto the soft sand of the dry streambed before climbing the steep bank back to the highway on the other side.

  Oden recognized the predicament. With stunning understatement he said, “Darn.”

  He couldn’t risk the three of us getting stuck in the arroyo within sight of the paramedics. I was certain he’d turn around before he’d risk that. He checked the opposite side of the road. But it fell off too steeply to even consider using it as an alternative bypass. Someone was going to have to move the ambulance if we were going to get past the accident.

  Oden apparently reached the same conclusion. He stopped the Camry thirty yards from the ambulance. He ripped a long piece of duct tape from a roll he had on the floor in front of him. “Wrap your mouth,” he said. “All the way around your head.”

  I did. He ripped another piece. “Again.”

  I did. I immediately felt like I couldn’t get sufficient air through my nose.

  The paramedic tending the person on the road was preparing a backboard and neck brace. I couldn’t tell what the other paramedic was doing in the back of the Blazer. I assumed there was someone hurt inside the car.

  The man said, “You get out, hit the horn, do anything, everybody dies. Everybody. Got it?”

  I nodded. You don’t care.

  He ripped off another, longer piece of tape. He yanked my wrists over the GPS monitor and taped me to it. “Should hold you for a minute or two. Be right back.”

  He killed the engine but left the keys in place, prepared for a rapid getaway. When he got out of the car, he tugged at his shirt, reached into the front pocket of his jeans, and pulled out a handful of bullets. He dropped the ammunition into his shirt pocket. Then he stuck the revolver into his pants at the small of his back and started walking toward the accident.

  In my head, I sprinted through all the heroic scenarios I could imagine. Hit the horn. Roll out of the car. Try to remove Amy’s tape. Pull a David Blaine and escape my own binding. Try to drive the car with my hands and feet bound. Pull out the keys and toss them into the desert.

  The outcomes of all the fantasies were the same: Bleeding bodies all around. Mine, Amy’s. All the people at the accident scene.

  He doesn’t care. I believed him. The binding, the gag, the circumstances felt paralyzing. I felt certain I would die if I did nothing.

  I decided to die doing something. But what?

  The man walked only a few yards in front of the Camry before he stopped. He called out to the paramedics. I could hear him speak, but he was facing away from me and was speaking into a dry, hot wind. I wasn’t sure what he said.

  The paramedic on the ground was facing me. The wind was at his back. He replied, “No, thank you. We have it covered.”

  I lifted my bound ankles over the console. I strained and reached to get the toes of my left foot on the brake pedal. I felt the pedal give. With my wrists taped to Chloe I had to devise a way to push the button on the gearshift knob while pulling the knob toward me at the same time. I lowered my forehead to the knob and twisted my left elbow to the gearshift.

  Oden spoke again. Again, I couldn’t hear. The EMT couldn’t either. “Come closer, man. I can’t hear you. Don’t want to yell. My patient.”

  My kidnapper spoke again, louder. I froze at his voice. I still couldn’t understand him.

  The paramedic could. He said, “Don’t know. Few minutes, maybe more. Not now. Can’t leave her.”

  Oden said something else I couldn’t hear. I pushed down with my head, felt the button yield to the pressure. I pulled my elbow toward me. The shifter popped into neutral. I sat up and removed the pressure from the brake.

  The horizon offered no clues. I had no idea if the Camry would stay still, roll forward, or roll back. I prayed for back. I wanted to roll away.

  The EMT said, “Few minutes, sir. At least. Got our hands full. Help is coming.”

  The EMT’s tone had changed. He was losing patience. I leaned back as though I could goad the car into moving.

  Oden raised his voice even more. He said, “Maybe I’ll just move the darn thing myself.” He meant the ambulance. He hadn’t appreciated the “help is coming” admonition.

  The EMT said, “Come closer. I have a patient in shock here. I don’t want to yell. We’ll work something out. Don’t make this difficult, sir.”

  Oden clenched his fists. I had a bad feeling about how this was developing. I lowered my face down to my hands and used my fingers to peel the tape from my upper lip.

  When I looked up again, Oden was taking a solitary step back. He scratched at his neck below his ear with his left hand. I got hopeful for a second that he was going to find a way around a confrontation.

  He’d be furious to find the car in neutral. I thought, What the hell? I’m already dead.

  But Oden’s next step was deliberately forward. As he lowered his left hand from his neck, I watched with alarm as he curled the middle finger over the index finger.

  He had crossed his fingers. He was about to take his chances. Damn. He’s going to kill them all.

  He shifted his weight. He was up on his toes. One step, two, three.

  He’s all-in.

  By the third step Oden was solidly into the rhythm of his march. At step five he uncrossed his fingers and reached toward the small of his back.

  I saw a massacre coming. I yelled, “He has a gun!”

  FIFTY-NINE

  All at once, everything in the set piece in front of me changed.

  The EMT leaning over the person on the ground lifted the backboard off the asphalt. But it wasn’t a backboard. It was a riot shield. He raised it into position.

  The patient on the ground sat up as fluidly as if she were doing a crunch at the gym. Her back was fine. She came up wearing body armor, a pistol in a two-handed grip. In a blink, she had the weapon leveled at Oden from behind the shield.

  She immediately rolled behind the cab of the ambulance. The EMT followed her.

  The twin back doors at the rear of the ambulance flew open. Two more shields filled that space. Gun barrels protruded from above and below.

  The paramedic from the back of the Blazer disappeared from view, reappearing behind the hood, a rifle steady.

  Everyone was yelling. Someone screamed, “Highway Patrol! Drop it!”

  The guy behind the Blazer yelled, “Police! Drop your weapon!”

  Oden stopped his march. He had the .38 in his hand behind his back, out of view of the cops.

  I screamed, “He has a g
un! Left hand. Left…hand!”

  Oden’s head moved slowly side to side. He had to be assessing the massive firepower that was assembled in front of him. He had to realize he was too far from the Camry to regain control of his hostages.

  He had to realize he’d been set up.

  He had to feel the déjà vu of looking at the embodiment of the thing—the one that wouldn’t leave him alone—crawling back out of the grave. He had to know he wasn’t going to get away from it again.

  He had to be wondering what the hell had gone so wrong.

  He held the pistol so that it hovered just above the crack of his ass, its barrel pointed at the glistening macadam ten feet behind him.

  “Drop it!” three or four people continued to scream.

  I barely heard them. For me this had become all about the guns. The ones pointed at him. And the one in his hand. I realized that from their vantage, the cops couldn’t see his weapon. They had only my word for it.

  They wouldn’t make a move until Oden did.

  Time stopped. My adrenals were squirting hormones like my glands were fire hoses and my damn toes were ablaze.

  The yelling stopped. Standoff. Seconds passed.

  Without looking back, Oden rotated his left wrist. He slowly raised the barrel of the revolver until the gun was pointed at the Camry. He squeezed off two quick shots.

  I couldn’t have been more surprised.

  The fuck was shooting at us just to be vindictive. He had no chance to survive what he just did. Not that it would have done any good, but I was so flabbergasted I didn’t even have the presence of mind to duck.

  Oden may have squeezed off more than two shots at Amy and me. If he did, the fusillade that followed the first two shots prevented me from hearing any subsequent rounds.

  Oden’s body jerked as though he’d been shocked. Dark dots appeared on his lower back and on his upper back and high on his left buttock. Blood flowed down his neck on the right side. It came in pulses. Red splotches formed around the dark dots.

  He swung his left hand and the .38 forward, but the motion was more about balance than it was about threat. His arm stopped when it was parallel to his leg, the barrel pointed toward his feet. It was as though the revolver suddenly weighed too much. He couldn’t lift it any higher.