Swerve

by Vicki Pettersson

  I expect Malthus to be there, and my muscles brace for a charge that will knock me to my back. I ready a breath, anticipating the air whooshing from my chest, but what I’m not prepared for is how empty an ambulance can be. Even when washed in liters of fresh blood.

  It looks like someone has hosed down the walls with a gushing vein. I’d seen a carotid artery burst before, only on video, but it could happen. A big artery like that? It could explode.

  The glass on the supply compartment is streaked, and splatter marks festoon the ceiling. There’s enough for it to have pooled at the corners, and rivulets drip over the plastic cabinetry. The emergency fittings—cot, medic’s chair—have been removed, but a long bench remains, blood browning over the sides but still pooling crimson on the seat.

  Above it hang rugged restraints that shouldn’t be there. It’s a custom-fit, meant to stretch a chest high and lay a person wide, and the leather buckles have gone stiff beneath the layers of blood. I look down, vision spotted red, and see a fresh smear along the bumper and a dark pool blotting that ground near my feet.

  The sight sears my mind. It’s a red Polaroid flashing, and it finds a home in the gray folds of my memory, wedging in next to two other crimson snapshots: my father, falling to his back in a field that smells of gunpowder and manure, and my mother, convulsing with mad laughter as she disappears around a rocky corner of feldspar and trachyte.

  I whirl from the blood and the memories just as the figure rushes me from the right. My vision is scrambled, my irises not yet shrunken from staring into the blazing lights, so all I see is shape—man-shape. Something hard thwacks my cheek to send me spinning, and I careen back into the ambulance’s open doors. My forehead smacks the bumper and my knees buckle as a snarl crackles like fire in the hot air. I’m blinded by pain and squinting against the light, but a surprised yelp helps me pinpoint my attacker. Left.

  I swing out into the void with the iron bar I’ve somehow managed to keep hold of, adrenaline sizzling in my ears, momentarily overtaking the throb of the blow. I am thrown off balance when I hit nothing, then flail the other way, my movements both stiff and wild. I’m still blinded, but I don’t dare hold still. I’m backlit like a Vegas headliner, and I can imagine Malthus grinning as he circles me, timing his next attack.

  Another wild growl saws at the night—my little terrier friend has grown teeth!—and I am emboldened, until the first gunshot sounds. My cringe is pure instinct, knees up, head down as I brace for the white-hot flash of pain indicating I’m hit, that I’m already dead.

  Instead, another shot rings out, spitting gravel over my ankles. A pained yip sounds near my feet, and then the rig jostles behind me. The dog has run for cover. Good idea. And so I lunge for the most immediate protection, leaping up and yanking the ambulance doors shut behind me.

  I lock myself inside the blood-soaked box, alone.

  And then there is laughter.

  I avoid darkness for a reason, did I mention that yet? I can’t remember. But I always have some sort of light to round out the gloomy corners of my home, even in the daytime, which used to be the only time I slept. I stopped taking the graveyard shift after Daniel and I started dating, at his request, which surprised and thrilled Abby. She’d never had me home in the evenings before.

  I woke in the middle of every night those first few months. My restlessness roused Daniel too, a light sleeper since med school, and that’s when I finally told him about the mines. I explained that where some people see the boogeyman, I see jagged walls with chopped, empty veins. I smell the hot tin of blasting caps. I taste the dust that haunts the old gap-toothed drifts. I didn’t say exactly what happened down there, but I told him enough that he came home with night-lights for every room the very next day, and between those and the comforting circle of his arms, I began sleeping again.

  With Daniel next to me, the darkness just receded.

  But now I need it back.

  My feet slap and stick to the floor as I rush the passageway separating the ambulance’s cab from the MICU. Reaching across the bucket seats, I slap down the locks, then snap off the dome light before Malthus can circle round. I twirl the wiper handle’s end cap and extinguish the headlights too, then grab the keys from the ignition and pocket them.

  But the knowledge that Malthus has a gun forces me back into the rig’s shell, where I huddle, shaking, and trying not to touch anything. My face stings where Malthus hit me and where I’d smacked my forehead against the bumper. I can hear the dog whimpering somewhere beneath the chassis, and I want to shush it or say it will be okay, but I can’t even tell myself that. We are both small, hunted things.

  The silence outside is front-loaded and full. I feel like it’s going to pop, and I drop the rebar and place my hands over my ears to block out all that nothing. Poised in darkness and stillness and blood, the world closes in around me. I am so disoriented that I actually fall on all fours, my hands bracing against the sticky floor before making a sucking sound as I yank them away. I need to gain my balance, I am off-kilter, pitched over on the inside, but then I realize that, no, that’s not it.

  Instead, the ambulance is rocking.

  My hip slams into a built-in shelf, and I have to brace against the wall to right myself. Turning, I grip the bucket seat up front and angle my eyes in the direction of the side mirror. The optics take shape after a moment, and then I spot it: a silhouette outlined in the night, shoulders bunched high, head low. A man using his full body weight to shift the rig from side to side.

  I whirl again, fumbling in the sticky darkness for the rebar. I bang it against the side of the vehicle where I saw Malthus, imagining it hurtling through the steel and directly into his skull. The shaking stops abruptly, and I peer again out front. I see that Malthus’s shadow is gone just as a scraping sound rises behind me. It’s a serrated shimmy, a metallic slice that goes on and on until it reaches inside of me to spindle at the top of my spine. Movement flashes in the driver’s side mirror, and I catch a shadow inching forward in a troll’s crouch, one hand trailing the quarter panel in a caress that narrows into an unnaturally sharp point.

  Malthus pauses . . . then unexpectedly dodges from sight.

  One of us has fallen into a gap.

  I stare out the windshield at a yawning maw of darkness that rings with stars, the pinpricks of bright light a raucous and white-hot chorus accompanying the heartbeat drumming in my ears. My veins pulse beneath my skin, threatening to break through. Suddenly, bramble, brush, and stunted cacti jut from the ground like startled corpses, and the deserted park floods with light. The flat terrain turns whitewashed, as if bleached.

  Where’s the light coming from, and where the hell is he?

  I fight my instinct to back away, but it feels like I’m extending my neck for him as I scan the sharp angles and steel bones of the playground. It feels like I’m just asking for a blow. Yet, outside of wind-rustled debris, nothing moves.

  Studying the angle of the shadows, I realize the light source is slanted and I’ll have to climb into the front seat if I want to see the topmost part of the hunchbacked hill.

  It’s the shirt that I recognize first. I’m not even settled in the passenger’s seat when the realization hits, sizzled. The blue-and-white checkerboard is a festive reminder of the holiday weekend, and I see it and feel stars burst behind my eyes. I’m not religious, so maybe that’s why I fixate on the shirt, and nothing else, for a too-long moment. Or maybe my mind just won’t let me process the sight of a body hanging from a cross, pinned to a hillside. Or maybe I’m drawn to the checkered shirt because I’m the one who bought it.

  “Daniel.”

  I leap from the ambulance, tumble into the night, and start clawing up that bright, bramble-wracked hillside. I don’t look around me, I don’t look behind. I fall twice on the rocky slope, and both times I expect to feel strong hands encircling my waist to yank me back. Instead I hear anoth
er gunshot, the report of it pinballing off the entrails of the park. Two more follow, but I keep running, sharp rocks slicing new lines into my palms when I fall, bottle shards skewering my fingertips and cutting into my knees. I rise as if drawn up by strings, stumbling past the concrete girders and tripping over chip-toothed stairs.

  I pass a portable generator, its rumble deafening. I keep climbing, and suddenly I am what’s featured in all that light, caught in a blaze meant for movie premieres and screen sirens. Blinded, I barrel up and up, keeping my mind off what’s behind me, what will happen if I stop, and focus only on what’s in front of me. Same way I did the last time I was fleeing upward, long ago in the Mizpah mine.

  I risk one sky-bound glance that costs me a much-needed breath, but I have to be sure my eyes didn’t deceive me back in the rig. No, the figure is still there, enshrined in the spotlight, sprawled across a backdrop of stars, hanging like Jesus on the cross.

  Hanging for my sins.

  Then I spot a loafer on the jagged slope and a strange keening sound sails from my body. Loafer in hand, I reach flat ground on hands and knees and have to strain my neck to look up at the bare bloody feet dangling from the steel cross. The world flips, and suddenly all the scary silence is inside of me, and outside the wind whistles by and a crow caws in the distance and Daniel makes a gurgling sound in the back of his throat.

  He is still alive.

  I reach for him without thinking and have to press my body against his, which is so cold in the hot night, icy under that burning light. I have to lift to my toes in order to unhook the nail buried in his spine. A sound wheezes from him, then warmth pools over my shoulder as his head flops onto my neck. I collapse, knees hitting first as I topple under Daniel’s weight. The crossbar falls with him, still binding his arms and spreading them eagle-wide, and it pins me flat too. Then there is silence.

  And then there is laughter.

  Forced and far off, it rises over the battered park, all the way up the spiny hill. I twist my head and immediately sight Malthus. After all, he is illuminated too, blazing in the distant headlights of Daniel’s car. Lifting one arm, he gives me a little wave. With the other, he holds up the tiny terrier. I can’t see the expression on either of their faces—the dog is black, Malthus wears a cap—but I can’t miss the exaggerated windup as he rears back, and then uncoils and punches the little dog right in its muzzle.

  Maybe I only imagine the crack. Maybe the sound comes from inside of me.

  Before I can figure it out, Malthus tosses the dog into the BMW and climbs in behind it. He starts the car and the tires spit gravel as he reverses through the immense lot. I feel another wail rise inside of me but push it back down as he speeds away.

  Hurting is what I do.

  And there’s one more thing I have to do. Turning my face, I untangle my limbs from Daniel’s at the same time I push away. Flipping him over, I brace myself to stare down into his lifeless, destroyed, and beloved face.

  And that’s when I see it’s not Daniel at all.

  They look like they’ve been

  dipped in red wax.

  I know this man. This not-Daniel.

  It takes a moment because the light is blinding me, and the blood is drying on my neck slowly, as if his last breath lingers there. His eyes are also unfocused, like they’ve been slightly unscrewed in their sockets. It’s a sharp contrast to the last time I’d seen them, when they’d been lit from within, a matching smile right below it. That is now off-kilter too.

  But it’s definitely Henry. The guy who followed me from the diner in Baker, the one who handed me the map and dismissed my dirty language and behavior with nothing more than a wave. The one who disappeared into the middle of the sagging motel to meet an online friend and look for ghosts. I push back to my knees, wondering if Henry was forced into Daniel’s clothes in that motel room—me just outside, obliviously changing my tire—or if Malthus dressed him in the ambulance before trussing him up and brushing the walls with his blood.

  I lift the hem of Daniel’s shirt, already stiff with dried blood. I’ve cut open bodies before—I know what it’s like to slice through the skin and fatty tissue and muscle of a living, breathing man. I’ve dug past the raw nerves and twangy tendons to get at a distressed organ. Using precision, study, and a hell of a lot of nerve, I’ve saved a body from itself.

  Yet I am transfixed by this sight. There’s no precision here. Malthus might know where to find the largest arteries, but he has the finesse of an angry toddler. I’d wonder what exactly he used to slice Henry wide, but I think I already know that answer by now: whatever he thinks will best set me up.

  I’ll fucking kill you if I can’t have you inside of me.

  I flash on an image of Lacy, dark eyes flashing at me above the frilled collar of her apron. Daniel’s phone crackling with laughter at my side.

  Pushing to my feet, I stumble downhill and back to the blazing spotlight. The klieg lights whitewash the tan from my arms when I reach out, causing my stained hands to pop. They look like they’ve been dipped in red wax. I’m sweating by the time I find the switch, eyes stinging from the beam, and when I snap it off its abrupt absence makes the night actually feel cool. My limbs go slack, and a sharp rock pierces my left butt cheek as I fall back. It keeps me keen in the dark.

  But I can’t stave it off anymore. I am too deep in the desert and it’s too damn dark and the Coal Man’s voice is what throbs brightly now, pulsing through me unchecked.

  You don’t know who you are, Krissy-Girl. Not until you been pushed to the edge.

  Who I am? Perched on a hill in an abandoned water park, covered in a dead man’s blood, I am prey. With no way of fleeing this place, no change of clothes even if I did, and no money or ID, I am a stooge. Having sat by and watched as another man was run down while my own fiancé was missing, I am a woman stripped to nothing.

  I rise, slow and heavy-boned, to pick my way back up the hillside. My eyes have adjusted to the dark, and I can see by the light of the piercing stars, but I keep an even pace. There’s nothing else out here in this swollen darkness. There’s no hurry now. The absence of danger is as round as the night itself.

  It’s easier to look at Henry in the dark. It eats up his features and allows me to pretend he’s just another John Doe in need of my help. Someone who will be moved from the OR long before I learn his name. Still, I apologize as I place one stabilizing hand on his chest, and then yank on the giant spike nailed to his rib cage. His chest heaves upward as I pull, and his body expels the death rattle, one final exhalation shaken free. Henry finally has his answer about ghosts.

  I wipe my hands on the khakis that’ve taken the place of his cargo shorts, the ones Daniel was wearing when he disappeared. I flash on him chained in some van, naked and red, and have to make myself stop. That’s another problem with darkness. You can superimpose whatever your imagination can conjure upon it, and when day turns to night? My imagination is bold.

  Once my hands are dry, if not clean, I finally pick up the map Malthus left nailed to Henry’s chest. I don’t look at it, but tuck it between my shorts and shirt instead. I can’t leave Henry out here for the crows and coyotes to find, and I need both hands to carry him back down the hillside. I owe him that much.

  Angling myself at the head of his body, I bend my knees and lift him beneath the shoulders like I learned in the OR. Gravel slips beneath my feet as I begin backing away, pebbles spurting downhill in tiny landslides. Pulling Henry behind me, I make good progress and am halfway down when my ankle suddenly twists in my stupid leopard flat. I instinctively hop to keep my weight from rolling over, and gravity gives Henry a great push and flips him off the narrow trail. I have to let go in order to keep from pitching over too, and guilt twists my gut as he disappears down the steep hillside. It’s like he’s running from me, and each dull thump makes me wince. Arms empty, I pant in the silence, then force myself to move
again.

  I locate Henry again at the hill’s bottom, facedown, like he’s refusing to look at me. His neck is bent at an odd angle, which makes me feel for a second like I’m falling too, and I back up a step to make sure I’m not about to empty out cherries and bile and regret on top of the dead man’s broken neck. Then I grab his feet. There is no best way to pick him up, so I just pull.

  The flat drag to the ambulance has sweat popping along my hairline, but it’s an easy trek compared to the hillside. I leave the lights off as I heft Henry back into the MICU, and finally, even though he can’t hear me, I apologize softly as I shut the doors behind him.

  Malthus blew out the tires. That explains the gunshots that rang out behind me as I rushed the hill, thinking that I’d killed Daniel, and that I was about to be killed too. It doesn’t matter. I lost the keys to the ambulance somewhere on the saw-toothed hillside.

  I climb into the driver’s seat anyway, locking myself away from the wilds outside before dropping my head back to the seat. I wait to cry. Surely witnessing a crucifixion is enough to convince my body it’s time for tears. After a full minute, I open my dry eyes, flip on the overhead light, and stare into the rearview mirror instead.

  My eyes are black holes, sunken ravines above the rise of blood-specked cheeks. I want to wipe those red freckles away—maybe I can wipe myself blank—but my hands are even worse. There’s blood all over them now, and as three images flash in quick succession—Henry’s open smile, the security guard flattened in a burning parking lot, the little dog going limp in Malthus’s outstretched hand—my palms itch. If I still had the spike Malthus hammered into Henry’s side, I would scrape the blood from my hands. I would slice off my tingling skin. Tearing my gaze away from the destructive force reflected back at me in that mirror, I look around for something to clean them with instead.

  And spot Daniel’s phone propped on the passenger’s seat.

  For a moment, I just stare. Then I reach for it, but I have been whipped from glaring light to near darkness and my vision is scrambled, hot and runny like eggs. My hand goes wide and I have to redirect it.