“You pointed east,” Harris says. “So I headed east. I chased you. Except nobody was there. Old farts start slow, and I didn’t see you after the first mile, so I figured you changed your minds.”
The kid is angry but smiling, proud of his cleverness.
“I thought about going north. But then I realized . . .” Harris stops talking. “Hey, Carlie. What are you doing with this crew?”
Nobody speaks.
Something odd is happening here. That fact is obvious enough to sink into Harris’ brain. The smirk softens, blue eyes blink, and again he says, “What are you doing with these guys, Carl?”
Jaeger turns and runs.
Harris is wearing long shorts and a heavy yellow top, his black headband streaked with salt. His glasses are the same as Masters, only newer. His shoes look like they came out of the box this morning. “You should see your faces,” he says. “You guys look sick.”
Pete steps away from Lucas.
“Anyway,” Harris says, “I didn’t know where you were, but I knew somebody who’d know. So I called Wade. He pointed me in the right direction, and I ran the train tracks to cut distance. I nearly missed seeing you, but I heard shouting.”
“Shut up,” Pete says.
“What do we do?” says Gatlin.
“Follow him,” Varner says.
Jaeger is crossing a meadow, the black cap bobbing too much.
Pete looks at Lucas, big hands closing into fists.
And Lucas breaks into a full sprint, cutting between bodies.
Harris smiles and says, “Pepper.” Then for fun, he sets his feet and throws out an arm. “What’s the password?”
They collide.
The young body is wiry-strong and tough. But Lucas has momentum, and they fall together. Lucas’ sore hand ends up inside the kid’s smile. Bony knuckles smack teeth and lips, and with a hard grunt Harris is down, the split upper lip dripping blood.
A wet voice curses.
Lucas is up and running.
Harris pokes at his aching mouth, and after careful consideration he says, “Screw you, asshole.”
Lucas charges past the oak and across the meadow. The black cap is gone. Lucas holds to the main trail, following it back into the woods where it turns cozy with the stream. A wild sprint puts him near a five-minute pace. Then he slows, feeding oxygen to his soggy head. Roots and holes want to trip him. Voices call out from behind, and he surges again. Somebody hollers his name. Lucas holds the pace. He has little extra to give, but his stride stays smooth and furious. A half-grown ash tree is dead on the trail, and his legs lift, carrying him over what is barely an obstacle. The stream is straight ahead, the bank cut into a long ugly ramp, rocks and concrete slabs creating shallow water where horses can ford. Lucas turns left, following a narrower trail, and the trail splits, the right branch blocked by a “CLOSED” sign.
Jaeger went left, gravel showing where a runner churned up the little slope. Lucas runs right on the badly undermined trail. Holes need to be leaped. Last year’s grass licks at his legs. The trail ends where the bank collapsed, probably in the last few weeks, and he pushes sideways and up through the grass, popping out on the wide rail bed.
Jaeger is close. Seeing Lucas, he surges, and where the trail drops back into the woods, he accelerates. But his head dips too much. Long arms look sloppy, tight to the body and not in sync. Lucas throws in his own surge, and catching Jaeger, he dips his head, delivering one hard shove.
Jaeger stays up but drifts into the brush, and his right leg jumps out. Both men trip and fall, bony arms flinging at each other, trading blows until they are down, scrapped and panting.
Lucas is first to his feet.
Cursing, he tries kicking Jaeger’s ribs and beats his toes into the frozen ground by mistake. Then Jaeger grabs the foot and tries to break it, twisting as hard as he can, doing nothing but forcing Lucas to fall on his ass again.
Lucas breathes in long gulps. “This is no fun,” he says.
“Better than jail,” Jaeger says.
“Not much.”
Up on the rail bed, Gatlin says, “I see them.”
Harris says, “He’s mine, mine.”
Jaeger finds his feet first. Then after a moment’s consideration, he reaches down and offers a hand to Lucas.
Pete emerged from the locker room, walking ahead of Gatlin. “Are you standing or running?” he said.
“I can do both,” Lucas said.
The men laughed and left him looking at pictures.
Audrey was taking another turn. She wasn’t talking to anybody now. Harris had come from somewhere, trotting next to her, chatty and happy. As if he had a chance with her. He said something and laughed for both of them, and Audrey did her best not to notice.
Lucas had no fire. He didn’t want to run, and that’s why he kept delaying. Walking the wall, he studied volleyball pictures and wrestling pictures and a big plaque commemorating Harold Farquet, dead thirty years but still looking plush in that suit and tie. Then he reached a bare spot. A rectangular piece of the wall seemed too bright, holes showing where bolts had held up something heavy. Curious to a point, he tried remembering what used to be there. He couldn’t. The adjacent hallway led to the offices, and someone was moving inside Able’s office. On a whim, Lucas knocked, and the coach came out smiling.
“What’s up, Pepper?”
“I like that stuff about Wade,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, we thought it was good to do. Glad you like it.”
“And you took down Carl.”
Able grimaced. “Yeah, we did.”
“There’s something else down,” Lucas said. “There used to be a plaque around the corner. About Carl?”
“No,” the coach said. “A few years back, we had an alum give the athletic department some money. We thanked him with a banquet and a big plaque in his honor.”
“So what happened?”
“Jared Wails. Remember him?”
“I don’t do names,” Lucas said.
“He was a slow runner, a businessman. Had that big title company up until last year.” Blood showed in the round face. “You saw him at races, probably. The rich boy who drove Corvettes.”
“The ’73 Stingray.”
“That’s him.”
“I remember. The guy was kiting checks.” Lucas nodded, pieces of the story coming back. “He told people he inherited his money, but he didn’t. And when it caught up to him, he drove out to the woods and blew his brains out.”
“And we pulled down his plaque.”
“Yeah, I knew him. I even talked to him a few times.” Lucas nodded, saying, “I liked the man’s cars. I told him so. He was the nicest rich guy in the world, so long as we were yabbering about Corvettes.”
“He wasn’t that nice,” the coach said.
“That’s what I’m saying.” Lucas wiped at his mouth. “We always had the same conversation: Cars and how much fun it was to drive fast, but gas was scarce, even for somebody with money. It was a nice conversation. Except he always changed subjects. He always ended up making big noise about hiring me.”
“You?”
“I was going to be his personal trainer. I was going to coach him to where he could run a sub-three-hour marathon, or some such crap. And he was going to pay me. He always gave me numbers, and each time, the numbers got fatter. Wilder. Plus he was going to drop ten pounds, or twenty, and then thirty. And I was going to run ultra-marathons with him, crossing Colorado or charging up that mountain in Africa. Kilimanjaro?”
“Lucas Pepper, personal trainer,” Able said, laughing.
“Yeah, Mr. Discipline. Me.” Lucas shook his head. “Of course Wails didn’t mean it. Anybody could tell. He always smiled when he talked that way. It was a smart bossy smile. The main message was that he had enough money to buy my ass. Whenever he wanted. And I needed to know it.”
The coach nodded. Waiting.
“The Program’s full of people like him,” Lucas said. “AA, I mean. It�
��s drunks and drawerheads who spend their lives lying about a thousand things to keep their drinking secret. That’s the feel I got off the Stingray man. The shiny smile. The way his eyes danced, not quite looking at me when he was telling his stories. Any story.”
“The man was a compulsive liar.”
“I guess.”
“No, after the suicide. Jared Wails had this big life story, but most of it was made up.”
“A lot of people try doing that,” Lucas said.
“But you saw through him.”
Lucas shrugged.
“So? You ever mention your intuition to anybody?”
“Yeah, I did.” Lucas nodded, looking out at the track. Ready to run now. “Once, I told somebody what I saw in that guy.”
What matters is the trail. Trees and brush and the wide sunny gash of the stream slide past, but they are nothing. What is real is the wet black strip of hard-packed earth that twists and folds back on itself. What matters is what’s under the foot and what waits for the next foot. A signpost streaks past – a yellow S sprouting an arrow pointing southwest. The trail narrows and drops and widens again, forming an apron of water-washed earth that feels tacky for the next two strides. The runners slow, barely. Lucas leads. Then the trail lifts and yanks left, and the pace quickens and quickens again, and a guttural little voice from behind tries to say something clever, but there isn’t enough air for clever. Jaeger settles for a muttered, plaintive curse.
Two strides ahead, Lucas’ clean gait skips over roots and a mound of stubborn dirt. His blue windbreaker is unzipped, cracking and popping as the air shoves past. Every sleeve is pushed over his elbows. The stocking cap and hair are full of sweat, but the face is perfectly relaxed. Except for little glimpses, his eyes point down, and he listens carefully to the footfalls behind him.
Jaeger slows, dropping back another stride.
Ash Creek takes a hard bend, and then it straightens, pointing due east. The water is wide and shallow, filled with downed timber and busy bubbling water heading in the opposite direction, and the trail hangs beside it, smooth and straight. Lucas pushes, and somewhere the water sounds vanish. The endless wind still blows, but he can’t hear it pushing at the trees and he can’t hear Jaeger’s feet getting sloppy, starting to scrape at the earth. Coming from nowhere is a great long throb, and the ground shakes. Lucas dips his head and turns it, and Jaeger says one word with a question mark chasing. Then Lucas slows enough to shout the word back at him. “Train,” he says.
The stream bends right, slicing close to the old rail bed. Last year’s floods endangered the tracks, and the railroad responded with black boulders dropped over the trail and bank. A big two-legged sign blocks the way onto the bed, stern words warning those foolish enough to trespass on railroad property. Lucas lifts his knees and drives, a few stones rolling, and he glances downstream, seeing sunlight dancing on the bright skin of the morning Amtrak.
The big diesel throbs, pushing against the steady grade. Then the driver sees runners and hits the horn, and every living organism within a mile hears the piercing furious white roar.
Lucas turns south and sprints.
One set of tracks fills the bed. Jaeger says a word and another word and then gives up shouting. Adrenaline gives him life. He follows near enough to be felt, and Lucas looks back just once more, judging the train’s speed. Some visceral calculation is made, and he believes he has time and enough speed. But the horn sounds again, shaking his body, and he can’t be sure. Arms pump and he drives off the balls of his feet, reclaiming the two-stride lead. Then the engine grudgingly throttles back, and knowing that he won’t have to leap onto the big black rocks, Lucas falls back into the sprint he would use on a hot summer track.
The trail dips between boulders, down into the trees again.
He rides the slope, Jaeger still chasing, and Lucas stops and Jaeger runs into his back as the Amtrak roars past. Neither man falls. The horn blares once more, for emphasis, and an angry face in the engine’s window glares down at them. Sleek old cars follow, and after them, new cars cobbled together in some crash program. Empty windows and one little boy stare at the world. The boy waves at them and smiles, utterly thrilled with a life jammed with spectacle and adventure.
Lucas waves back.
Jaeger collapses to a squat, unable to find his breath. The air is full of diesel fumes. He tries cursing and can’t. He wants to stand and can’t. All those weeks in jail have eaten at his legs, and for athletes in their forties lay-offs are crippling. Jaeger won’t win another important race in his life. He knows this, and Lucas sees it, and then the beaten man stands, his entire body shaking.
The train is far enough gone that the forest sounds are returning.
“So did you kill him?” says Jaeger.
Lucas shakes his head.
Jaeger nods. If he does or doesn’t believe that answer isn’t important. Looking straight at Lucas, he says, “Now what?”
“I’m going,” Lucas says. “Wait here for the others.”
“And then?”
Downstream from them, climbing out of the trees, the rest of the group is cautiously running next to the still-humming rails. “I don’t know who killed Wade,” he says.
“Too bad,” Jaeger says.
“But I know who paid to have it done.”
That earns a long, long stare.
“Keep that face,” Lucas says. “Tell everybody what I just told you. And we’ll see what happens next.”
Nine
“Jingle Bells,” the voice said.
“Merry Christmas to you.”
“No, I’m talking about the race. The 5K. If you don’t win this year, you aren’t trying. That’s what I think.”
Lucas poured a cup, not talking.
“I’m seeing improvement, Lucas. Every week, with your splits and overall times, you’re finding fire.”
“Thanks for caring.”
“Just want to help.” Then the voice went away.
Lucas sat on a kitchen stool, sipping. Outside it was cold and wet, and it was chill and damp in the house. The television had been showing an old Stallone movie, but the network interrupted with news about a big dam in China getting washed away. Serious stuff, and Lucas reached across the counter, turning it off.
The voice returned. “You there?”
“Still. Where did you go?”
“Another call. But I’m back.”
“You’re busy.”
“Always,” Wade said. “Have you entered?”
“The Jingle Bells? It’s not till next month.”
“I’ll do it for you. My treat.”
Lucas set the cup down, saying nothing.
“Okay, it’s done.”
“Like that?”
“Like that.”
“Thanks, I guess.” A long breath seemed necessary. Then Lucas said, “You probably heard, but they let him out. A couple days ago.”
“Yeah, Sarah called when it happened. And I read every story, too.”
“What do you think?”
“They don’t have enough evidence, I think.”
“The DNA tests didn’t work,” Lucas said. “That’s what I’m hearing. Not enough material, even with the fanciest labs helping.”
“That big rain screwed everything.”
“Lucky for Carl,” said Lucas.
Silence.
“Ever meet Crouse’s sister-in-law?”
“The cop with the jiggly ass?” Wade laughed. “Yeah, she’s a pretty one.”
“Well, she says the detectives can’t see anybody but Jaeger. He has to be the guy. But it’s the Wild West around here anymore, and there’s not enough manpower to throw at one case. So they let Jaeger go, hoping for something to break later.”
“I’ve studied the statistics, Lucas. Even in good times, a lot of murders never get solved.”
“Who else is there?”
The silence ended with fake breathing and an exasperated voice. “You know, I can hope it�
��s Carl. Because if this was a random thing, like some hobo riding the rails or something, then nobody’s ever going to find out what happened.”
Lucas tried silence.
After a while, Wade said, “You don’t have any excuses. I’m looking at the race’s roster. Your only competition is Harris, and he can’t hang with you.”
“It’s just the Jingle Bells,” said Lucas. “A nothing run.”
Another pause.
Another long sip of coffee.
Then the dead man said, “Win a race, Lucas. Just one race. Then you can talk all you want about nothings.”
Trees surrender to flattened grass and little stands of sumac. The sky hasn’t changed, but the scattered clouds seem higher than before and the polished blue above the world is bright enough to make eyes water and blink. Diving into the grass, the twisting trail decides to narrow, and then like a man regaining his concentration, it straightens – a tidy little gully etched into the native black sod. Lucas runs into the meadow, out where he can see and be seen, and that’s where he stops. Nobody follows. Certain teeth ache when he stares into the wind, and he pulls down his sleeves and kneels slightly, listening and waiting. He soon becomes an expert in the sound of wind. It isn’t just one noise, but instead wind is endless overlapping noises, each coming from some different place, each hurrying to find ears that want to hear voices and words and sad cries that were never there.
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24 Page 110