Desperate Measures

by David R. Morrell

  Not while men were shooting at him.

  Not while he was on the run, which he immediately began doing, scurrying uphill through the murky forest. Several times he bumped painfully against trees. In the darkness, he failed to see deadfalls and stumps and tripped, losing his balance, hitting the ground. Each time, he ignored his pain and surged upward, moving faster, harder, spurred by the noises of gunmen chasing him. Flashlights blazed. Men shouted.

  Pittman strained to figure out where he was. He had entered on this side of the valley—that much he was sure of. But there the trees had stopped on a ridge, giving way to grassland that sloped toward the meadow. Here the trees were at the bottom of the slope. In which direction was the grassy hill? He had to find it. He had to get to that ridge. Because past the trees and the fence beyond it, Jill was waiting with the car.

  “I hear him!”

  “Over there!”

  “Spread out!”

  Pittman raised his right arm to shield his eyes from needled branches. Enveloped by darkness, he climbed with less energy, his legs weary, his lungs protesting. He kept angling to the right, choosing that direction arbitrarily, needing some direction, hoping to reach the grassy slope.

  Without warning he broke free, nearly falling on the open hill. Hurry. Got to reach the top before they’re out of the trees, before they see me. His only advantage was that he was no longer making noise, snapping branches, crashing through bushes, scraping past trees. But the gunmen were definitely making noise. Pittman could hear them charging through the underbrush behind him, and responding to an intense flood of adrenaline, he braced his legs, took a deep breath, then struggled up the slope, its incline becoming steeper, its wet grass slippery.

  Briefly his senses failed him. The next thing he realized, he was lumbering over the top of the ridge, men were yelling below him, their flashlights silhouetting him, and then he was past the ridgeline, entering more trees, colliding with the fence, clutching it, gasping.

  “Here!” a man yelled behind him, flashlight bobbing.

  Pittman strained to climb the wooden fence, dropped to the other side, and staggered ahead, enveloped again by trees.

  “Jill!” His voice was hoarse, his words forced. “Jill, it’s me! It’s Matt!”

  “He’s not far ahead!” a man yelled.

  “Jill! Where are you? I can’t see you! It’s me! It’s Matt!”

  Flashlights reached the fence, their beams stabbing into the darkness, revealing Pittman among the trees.

  A bullet nicked his jacket. Another singed his hair.

  Gunshots roared among the trees. Pittman didn’t understand. His pursuers had been using silencers. Why would they have taken them off? Why would they want to make noise?

  They didn’t. They hadn’t. The gunshots came from ahead of him. The men were sprawling on the ground behind the fence, yelling to one another to turn off their flashlights, to stop making themselves targets. Bullets struck the fence. The shots continued from ahead of Pittman.

  “I’m here!” Jill screamed.

  Pittman saw the muzzle flashes from the pistol she fired.

  “I see you!”

  “Stay down!” she yelled.

  Pittman dropped to his hands and knees, scurrying among bushes, reaching her.

  “Hurry! Get in the car!”

  He opened the passenger door and flinched as the interior light came on, revealing him. After diving in, he slammed the door shut and watched in amazement as Jill—who was already in the car and had been firing through her open window—turned the ignition key, stomped the accelerator, and rocketed from a gap in the trees onto the narrow, winding country road.

  14

  “Thank God, thank God,” was all he could say. The words came out between his urgent attempts to breathe, his chest heaving, falling, his body shaking as sweat streamed off his face and soaked his clothes.

  The Duster skidded around a sharp corner. Expertly controlling the car, Jill immediately increased speed. The car’s headlights revealed the twists and turns of the tree-flanked two-lane road.

  Quickly Pittman turned to see if headlights followed them.

  “Not yet,” Jill said. “They have to go back and use the lane from the school. The gate’s two miles away. By the time they get onto this road…”

  She reached another straightaway and again increased speed.

  “Thank God,” Pittman continued to murmur. “When I didn’t see you, when I yelled but you didn’t answer…”

  “I didn’t know what to do. I heard shooting from the school, then something that sounded like fire alarms.”

  “Yes.” Pittman caught his breath, explaining.

  “I heard car engines,” Jill said. “Then there was shooting among the trees, and suddenly you came over the fence, stumbling toward me, yelling. The flashlights behind you, those men chasing you… All I could think of was that I had to distract them. You told me that to fire the pistol I didn’t need to cock it. I only had to pull the trigger. I didn’t bother trying to aim. I just leaned out the car window, pointed the gun up, and started shooting. My God, it holds a lot of bullets.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “And it jerks, and my ears are ringing from the noise.… When I saw where you were, I pointed the gun away from you and aimed toward the fence.”

  She braked, steered sharply around a curve, and pressed harder on the accelerator.

  Pittman shook his head in amazement. “Where did you learn to drive like…?”

  “My father’s a nut about Porsches. One of the few father-daughter things he ever did was teach me about racing. If this car had a clutch and a standard shift, I could really show you about gaining speed around curves.”

  Pittman’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

  “And you’re bleeding,” Jill said.

  “What?”

  “There’s blood smeared on your face, your hands, and your clothes. You must have scraped yourself on that wall or running through those trees. Or else…”

  “Say it.”

  “I hope you weren’t hit.”

  “No. I don’t feel any pain.”

  Jill stared ahead, speeding under a covered bridge.

  “I said, I don’t feel any pain.”

  “That’s not always a good sign.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes a wound traumatizes nerves in the area and stops them from sending messages.”

  Shaking worse, Pittman felt along his legs, his torso, his arms. “Everything seems to be all right.” Surprising himself, he yawned and realized that he’d been doing so for quite a while. “What’s wrong with me? I’m worried I might have been shot and yet I can’t stop yawning.”

  “Shock. The adrenaline’s wearing off. Your body’s telling you it needs a long rest.”

  “But I don’t feel sleepy.”

  “Right.” Jill turned on the car’s heater.

  Pittman yawned again.

  “Just to humor me,” Jill said, “why don’t you crawl in the backseat, stretch out as best you can, and close your eyes for a while?”

  “The backseat. That reminds me.” With difficulty, Pittman squirmed into the darkness of the backseat and zipped open his gym bag.

  “What are you doing?” Jill asked.

  “Reloading. Hand me your pistol. I’ve got other magazines from the gunmen who were at your apartment. I’d better reload yours, too.”

  Jill muttered something.

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Guns. I swore I’d never touch one of the damned things. Now here I…”

  The Duster’s slant-six engine roared as Jill drove faster.

  15

  The silence woke him. Pittman blinked, disoriented, realized that he was slumped in the car’s backseat, and squinted ahead toward Jill behind the steering wheel. The sky was gray with false dawn. The car was stopped.

  “Where are we?” Groggy, he sat up and winced from stiffness.

  “A motel in Greenfield
, Massachusetts. That’s about ten miles south of Vermont and a hundred and fifty miles from the school. That ought to be far enough to keep them from finding us.” Jill hesitated. “For now.”

  “You must be exhausted.”

  “I shouldn’t be. Normally I’d be getting off my shift at the hospital in an hour. I’d work out, eat a light dinner, watch something I taped on the VCR, and go to sleep around noon.”

  “But this isn’t ‘normally.’”

  “No kidding. You’d better stay in the car while I see if the desk clerk will accept cash to rent a room. With that dried blood on you, you’re not exactly presentable. I’ll tell the clerk we were visiting relatives in Waterford, Connecticut. We thought we could drive all night and get home, but finally we’re exhausted.”

  Jill got out of the car, went into the motel’s office, and returned with a key.

  The room was on the bottom level, in back of the motel, a location Jill had requested, telling the clerk they didn’t want to be disturbed by morning traffic.

  No one was around when she unlocked the door and Pittman followed her in. They set the gym bag and small suitcase on the floor, assessing the unit. It was plain but clean, its air stale but not offensive.

  “I asked for a nonsmoker’s room.” Jill locked the door. “The clerk assured me the television works. There’s no one in the rooms on either side of us, so we won’t be disturbed that way, either.”

  “Twin beds,” Pittman said.

  “Lucky.”

  “Yeah.” Sex was the last thing on Pittman’s mind. Nonetheless, he felt self-conscious.

  “You’d better get in the bathroom and take your clothes off. We have to find out how badly you were injured.” Jill reached into Pittman’s gym bag and pulled out a first-aid kit that they’d bought, along with the flashlight and Pittman’s wool coat, the day before.

  “I bet you were a drill sergeant on the ward.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to get modest on me.” Jill looked amused. “I didn’t say I was going into the bathroom with you. Close the door, undress, rinse the blood off, and after you get a towel around you, I’ll check you out. For sure, I’ll have to change the bandage on your hand.”

  “I bet you loved poking big needles into your patients.”

  Pittman went into the bathroom and, feeling a strain on his right side, removed his clothes.

  “And you’d better not use the shower.” Jill’s voice came muffled from the opposite side of the door. “You might get weak and lose your balance. Sit in the tub.”

  He examined himself. “I can tell you right now, there aren’t any holes in me. But I’ve got a nasty bruise along my right ribs.”

  “Soak in the tub. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “There’s an all-night convenience store across the street. I’m going to see what they’ve got to eat.”

  Orange juice, doughnuts, and skim milk, Pittman discovered when he finished his second bath (the first had been pink from the dried blood he’d rinsed off). He came out of the steaming bathroom, feeling awkward, knowing he looked embarrassed, holding a towel around his hips.

  “I’m surprised,” Jill said. “Given everything you’ve been doing—sleeping on park benches, pretending to be a policeman—you didn’t strike me as the bashful type.”

  Pittman saw a blanket on a metal shelf outside the bathroom and pulled it down.

  “Before you cover yourself, I need to look at that bruise on your ribs.” Jill drew a finger along it.

  “Ouch.”

  “Ouch? Grown-ups don’t say ouch. Little kids say ouch. Does this rib hurt?”

  “For Christ sake, yes.”

  “Now that’s what big kids say. Inhale. Exhale. Does the pain get worse? No?” She thought about it. “An X ray would tell for sure, but I doubt any ribs are broken. Not that it matters.”

  “Why?”

  “The treatment for broken ribs is the same as for bruised ones—nothing. You don’t put on a cast for broken ribs. These days, you don’t even get taped. What you get is a warning not to exert yourself and not to bump your ribs against anything.”

  “Swell.”

  “The miracles of modern medicine. The cut on your hand, those scratches and scrapes, those I can do something about.” After putting on antibiotic cream and rebandaging Pittman’s left hand, Jill began applying disinfectant to portions of his face. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, but I wish you’d brought some coffee along with the doughnuts, orange juice, and milk.”

  “After the adrenaline rush you just went through? Haven’t you had enough chemical stimulation for a while?”

  “I get the feeling you don’t do much without thinking of the chemical effect on your body,” Pittman said.

  “Better living through proper diet.”

  “In that case, I’m surprised you bought doughnuts.”

  “It’s the only thing remotely acceptable the store had. Beef jerky was out of the question.”

  “I hate skim milk.”

  “Give it a chance. You’ll learn to like it. Then even two percent tastes awfully rich.”

  “If we stay together, I suppose I’m going to have to learn to like it.”

  Jill looked strangely at him.

  “What’s the matter?” Pittman asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me. What is it?”

  “You were talking about if we stay together. Under better circumstances, I’d like that,” Jill said.

  Pittman felt himself blush.

  “It’s my turn for that bath.” Looking as self-conscious as Pittman had earlier, Jill picked up her suitcase and went inside. “Turn on CNN,” she suggested before closing the door. “See if there’s anything about us.”

  Pittman didn’t move for a moment, thinking about what she had said… about staying together. Six days ago, he’d been eager to die.

  16

  Jill finished a glass of orange juice and pointed toward the news report on CNN. “Nothing about what happened at the school.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “You think they didn’t link it to us?”

  “No, I’m sure they did,” Pittman said.

  “Then…?”

  “I’m also sure that some very powerful people squashed the story. They don’t want any attention whatsoever directed toward that school.”

  “Yes,” Jill said. “I see what you mean. All those Establishment parents, they don’t want anything to sully the reputation of the prep school their sons graduate from. For that matter, the alumni don’t want Grollier to be associated with break-ins and shooting, either. Far too vulgar.”

  “Maybe more than that,” Pittman said. “Maybe what we’re trying to learn is serious enough to destroy the school.”

  Jill turned quickly toward him, her gaze intense. “Yes, that would explain a lot.”

  “Duncan Kline. One of the men who taught the grand counselors. And Derrick Meecham, the student who dropped his class with them.”

  “Or got sick and had to leave school,” Jill said.

  “But never came back to Grollier the following year, the year he would have graduated. I wonder, how do we find out about Duncan Kline and Derrick Meecham? I’m sure as hell not going back to Grollier.”

  After a moment, Jill said, “I have an idea. A minute ago, we were talking about Grollier’s alumni.”

  “Yes?”

  “Grollier’s students are all targeted for Ivy League colleges. In particular, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. If we assume that Derrick Meecham finally graduated from a prep school similar to Grollier, then it’s also logical to assume that he went to one of the Ivy League colleges,” Jill said. “The registrar’s office for each school can tell us if Meecham went to any of them. But that won’t help us. What we really want to know is where Meecham is now.”

  “The university organizations that keep track of the current addresses of graduates are the alumni foundatio
ns,” Pittman said.

  “Exactly. The groups that are always asking graduates for big bucks to support their alma mater. My father graduated from Yale. He’s one of the biggest donators to its athletic program. The alumni foundation is on the phone to him all the time, sucking up to him, offering special tickets, inviting him to exclusive athletic banquets, wanting more money. Believe me, for his daughter, they’ll do whatever I want. And if Derrick Meecham didn’t go to Yale, I’ll ask them to contact the alumni foundations at the other Ivy League colleges.”

  17

  “Fine, Ray, fine,” Jill said to the telephone. Her blue eyes gleamed with intensity. “Yes, my father’s feeling well, too. Oh, that. Sure, we have disagreements from time to time. We always patch them up. We’re getting along fine.” Concentrating, she drew a hand through her long, straight blond hair. “As a matter of fact, I think I might drive up and see him this weekend.”

  From one of the twin beds, Pittman watched her. She was wrapped in a blanket, sitting on the desk that supported the phone. A digital clock next to her showed 11:38 A.M. He and Jill had gotten four hours sleep, which wasn’t nearly enough, his sore body and raw eyes told him, but there wasn’t time to rest longer. The call had to be made. They had to keep moving.

  “The reason I’m calling, Ray, is I’d appreciate it if you did me a favor,” Jill said to the telephone. “It’s easy, and it won’t cost you money.” She laughed. “Great. I knew you’d feel that way. I’ll be sure to tell my father that you helped me out. What I’d like you to do is check your computer files for an alumnus named Derrick Meecham. What class? I’m not sure. Some time in the thirties. Yes, that does go a way back. Is it a problem? One of my elderly patients is terminal. He wants to tie up some loose ends, and evidently there’s something he wants to tell this Derrick Meecham. I guess they haven’t seen each other in fifty years. Don’t ask me why it’s important to him, but I feel sorry for the old guy and I’d like to do him a favor. Yeah, I’m a softy. On the ward, they’re always kidding me about—What? You must have a hell of a computer system. Just a minute while I write down that address. The phone number. Wonderful. I’ve got it. Thanks, Ray. I really appreciate this. I’ll be sure to tell my father. You bet, and you take care of yourself, too.”