Swerve

by Vicki Pettersson

  I cross the street quickly and skitter past the large hamburger boy to enter the vestibule of the diner where Malthus sent me earlier, yesterday, to eat pie. It’s open twenty-four hours, but I’m not going in. I just need a safe place from which to view Baker Boulevard, but I know I can’t stay long. Malthus could still call the police.

  For now, I’m betting it’s enough that he’s watching. That he’ll drink in the sight of me, knees bent inward, looking unsure, just making his deadline. He’ll devour the way my gaze scrabbles for purchase like a roach. He’ll think I’m searching for him . . . but I already know where he is. He’s lurking in the infinite darkness that I avoid. My awareness of its depth makes him easy to visualize within it.

  A lone motorcyclist finally pulls up at the gas station down the street. The pump lanes are exuberantly lit, and I wait until the cyclist has removed his helmet before rushing from the diner, my dirtied flats slapping against the pavement and causing the man to turn while I listen for the sound of an engine gunning behind me. Nothing.

  I cry out and let the sound ignite real terror in me. It’s not hard. “Help . . . dog . . . found . . . I don’t know . . . please!”

  The rider looks down at the towels, then back up into my face. I can tell by the way his jaw drops that he’s a dog lover. He simply opens his arms as I push the little terrier toward him. The knife I’m carrying disappears behind my back before he can see it, and, along with it, so do his keys. The fumbled exchange for dog and towels—fingertips scrabbling—has made it shamefully easy.

  Go on and git that six-pack off the Martin’s tailgate for me,­ ­Krissy-Girl. They got two coolers, that fancy portable grill. They’ll never miss it. ’Sides, why should they get so much when we have so little?

  I follow the man into the service station, wondering what Malthus is thinking as I disappear inside. He’s probably picking through inventive new ways to kill the cyclist, likely considering doing it in front of me, and nodding as he tells himself it’ll be both lesson and entertainment, a way to whittle another horror into the folds of my heart.

  After all, hurting is what he does.

  I wait until the cyclist and the cashier have gone into the back office with the dog, then whirl and hit the front door with both hands, palms stinging as I flee. If Malthus is watching from where I think he is, then the pump blocks me from view as I dump the knife in the saddlebag and strap on the helmet. The roar of the cycle’s engine splits open the night, I can’t do anything about that, but I’m hoping he’s so surprised by my ability to even operate the bike that he’s the one left flat-footed and gape-jawed for a change.

  The rider pushes open the doors to the station just as I swerve from the pump lane, his face tinged red by the taillights as I shoot into the night. I’d feel bad, except that I’ve just assured his well-being. He’s worth more to Malthus alive now that I’ve stolen his ride. It’s one more person to implicate me in all the wrongdoings in Baker.

  My back is exposed, the white of my clean T-shirt as taunting as a red cape, but when I dare to look, I find the road behind me is clear. I relax, but not much. Malthus knows exactly where I’m going, of course. The map he shoved in Crystal’s mouth has a big red X where Victorville was supposed to be. My goal is to get there first, to be the one lying in wait for him for a change. I want Malthus to be the one who totters uncertainly into sight. There are just over twelve hours left to end this game, so let’s see what happens when someone tests his beloved adaptability.

  The mountains are hunchbacked masses around me, blanketed by the night sky and slumbering along with the heat. Traffic is light too, and for long stretches all I see is the road just in front of me, highlighted by the bike’s beam. Driving this way is almost like melting. The wind hits my skin, and it feels like it’s lifting it free. It then does the same with my muscles, my bone. I become weightless and arid.

  The cycle’s side mirror only suggests at my outline, making a silhouette of my hunched shoulders. It’s a portrait of coiled energy, straining forward. My features are obscured by the helmet, and I wonder if Daniel would recognize me right now, or if Abby would. I certainly don’t . . . though I have a feeling my mother would, if she were still alive.

  Don’t forget the Coal Man.

  No, I’ve never been able to do that. Out here, I’m remembering him more than ever.

  I gun the engine and duck lower, and the thought skitters behind me on the wind, but without leaving its usual oily coating of shame. Leaning into the next curve, I use reflexes and an aggression I thought long forgotten and realize I’m tired of that. Of working so hard not to remember things. I wait for what I think is a straight shot of road, then bend forward and give myself over to the desert’s bosom. My true mother, I think. My childhood home. For a moment I decide to trust the road and the bike and the desert and the world around me, and I close my eyes and just let myself be.

  It’s good. Like sinking to the bottom of a pool while the world rages above the water. For a moment, nothing can touch me. The road leaps away from me like I’m flying, the bike thunders between my thighs, and I realize this is the best I’ve felt since leaving work the day before.

  A smile breaks out beneath my visor, and I take in such a deep breath of the desert air that one of my ribs actually pops. Then I open my eyes.

  Just in time to catch the cop car swinging onto the interstate behind me.

  Please, please, pl—

  The police cruiser’s lights whirl in a strip that yanks the desert away from the night and send chills racing through my body. I am no longer melting. For another quarter mile or so, I consider not stopping and if I thought I could outrun the car, or that the officer inside wasn’t already on his radio, I’d gun it.

  Instead, I let up on the gas, and the bike jolts atop the gravel of the wide shoulder as it slows. The emergency beacons spin behind me, painting alternating shots of red and blue light against the desert. Shifting my weight to one side, I lower the kickstand but leave the motorcycle idling and my helmet on as I watch the door to the patrol car swing open through the side mirror. The officer steps from the vehicle and suddenly I think, White van, ambulance, BMW . . . police cruiser?

  My heart kicks hard. I watch the officer stride into view, I look for a weapon at his side. I’m not sure, I’m not sure. Another car whisks by, and I can see two occupants, one slumped and the driver with his neck craned our way, but of course they don’t stop.

  Glancing back through the mirror, I see the officer’s step hitch as he realizes I haven’t turned off the bike. Half turning, I pretend to fiddle with my helmet as I take stock of him too. His bulk is illuminated by the headlights of another car, though it flickers once the car flashes by, then flares again in front of the beams of an oncoming semi.

  I have to shield my eyes from the high-beam glare, but relax a little. The officer is too large to be Malthus. The man who waved to me in the water park was slighter, and agile compared to this man’s bow-legged saunter. The officer seems to swell, getting even bigger as he nears, but that’s probably just a trick of light. The phosphorescence from the oncoming headlights splay around him like heat, and he looks like he’s fuming, fuming and then bouncing as the semi slips just slightly to the gravel shoulder.

  I catch a flash of concern on the officer’s face, or maybe I just imagine it in the whitewash of the semi’s beams. Either way, we both turn at the same time, him toward the oncoming rig, me away, and I right the bike and heel-kick the stand so hard my left flat pops off my foot. The semi —Crystal’s semi—roars behind me.

  Nerves shoot through my limbs like fireworks and I grip the clutch too fast. The bike shoots out from under me, burning my left calf with the exhaust pipe, and the pain blinds me along with those onrushing headlights. I cannot let this bike fall. The muscles in my arms scream as I cling to the handlebars, and I launch myself at the wobbly seat while a collision shatters the still night behind me
. I shoot forward, leaning low. Please, please, pl—

  I think I’m gunning the motor, but I can’t hear it over the screeching metal behind me, and all I see in the side mirror is a wad of tin being catapulted toward me, growing larger and larger still, until it almost resembles a patrol car again. I might be shrieking. My throat burns as I gain traction, and then everything speeds up again as the cruiser whips the cycle’s back tire from under me.

  I can’t keep it from falling this time. In my mind, I curl my limbs in tight as I’m flung around, a stone skipping over asphalt. The road punches my breath from my chest as I skim the blacktop, and a searing heat lights up along my left leg, flaming as I slide into the roadside bramble.

  My vision goes speckled, but I realize my helmet remains on. I’d be thankful, but I can’t catch a full breath in the small space. I can’t lift a hand to remove the visor yet either. My hearing shorts out, ears buzzing, and my pulse throbs in strange places, twitching beneath my left armpit, and in one inner thigh, but my body is in that shocked nothing place. I am feeling very little at all.

  It’s dumb luck that I’ve come to a stop facing the wreckage. The smoke and dust thrown up by the crash has dropped a forbidding scrim over the whole scene, but the semi’s headlights pierce the haze like spotlights on a prison wall. Burning rubber suffuses the air, and I cough and try to force myself into a sitting position. The immediate burn in my left leg incinerates my breath.

  Miraculously, though, my limbs are straight, and after I work out my right side from my left, I rise and limp back to the bike, which lies tottering between me and the semi. The saddlebag is on top, and I’m hoping the knife is still inside. Barring that, it’d be nice if another car could pass by right now. I’m moving well, but only out of shock and adrenaline. Once those two things wear off, I’m going to be paralyzed with pain, and I need to be far away from Malthus before then.

  Or do I? Knife acquired, I pause. Why chase Malthus to Victorville if he’s right behind me? And Daniel has to be in that semi too, right? Malthus has kept Daniel close all along. He’s used him to keep me going.

  Before the smoke clears, before I can change my mind, I unlatch my helmet and let it clatter to the pavement. Then I limp across the wide, empty road, away from the revealing headlights and straight into a black abyss. I can’t help but whimper as the pain and the darkness team up, like doorbell and mat, to welcome me back home.

  My injured leg flares in warning.

  I need to keep moving.

  That’s all I’m thinking as I crouch in the creosote and sagebrush behind the semi, though this need to act fast and move forward is linked to a more dubious fortune: I now know exactly where Malthus is.

  He cut the truck’s headlights thirty seconds ago, and I ­haven’t heard a sound since, which means he both wants to avoid attracting the attention of other drivers for as long as possible, and that he’s still inside the cab of that truck.

  I hesitate in the swollen darkness and squint down the road, hoping for a set of headlights to emerge over the soft decline. It’s a selfish wish. Nearly everyone who’s tried to help me, down to the little terrier, has ended up terrorized or dead. Malthus has done a stellar job of letting me know that I’m all alone out here, and that if I want my life back, if I want Daniel, I need to go after him myself.

  The abrasion along my left leg is beginning to scream, and my joints ache and wobble, like they’re held together by screws that’ve come partially loose. My fingertips tingle as I grip the blade, and I have to focus on the mechanics of breathing, in-and-out, as I scrabble to the other side of the road.

  I search for movement around the semi, then drop to a low squat and scuttle forward like that, all of my senses snapped tight. I make good progress until I brace against the ground near the back tire and something soft breaks open beneath my hand. I can’t really make it out, but I feel something fleshy bubble up between my fingers, and when I jerk my hand back, I know it comes away red.

  The desert sways. I have to grip the bumper for balance and grit my teeth to keep the tightness in the back of my throat from unraveling into sound. That would be dangerous, and I’m not even sure at this point what would come out. Before my legs can give, and before my mind tries to begin working out what part of the police officer I’ve just touched, I force myself to stagger forward, ready to swing out with the knife.

  I know I can do it too. Forget my motto, the maxim that saves me while I save others in the OR. I know I can do harm.

  I can do it without shedding a tear.

  I ease around to the right, away from the officer’s remains, keeping low to the ground to minimize my movements in the side mirror. Yet my footsteps stutter on the sharp gravel, as if the dead cop’s body parts have coalesced, and he’s now gripping me by the ankles, holding me back. There is a soft blocky glow hovering two feet from the ground up in front of me, and I waver as I realize the passenger’s side door has been flung wide open.

  My injured leg flares in warning. Was the door jerked open at impact? Did Malthus climb out after dimming the headlights? Or—hope springs now—maybe Daniel was able to overtake him after the crash. Maybe my fiancé is free, escaped into the wild night.

  Bending, I place my palms on the ground, still warm despite the absence of the sun, and search beneath the chassis for movement. I then swivel to peer at the darkness looming up behind me, expecting a horror-movie moment, and am almost disappointed when I see nothing there. There’s nothing anywhere except for that door, only fifteen feet away.

  I’m coming for you, Kristine. I’m following close. I’m right . . .

  I tear forward, jerking free of the Coal Man’s voice. I can only handle one madman at a time.

  I launch myself atop the stairwell, and the truck tilts beneath my weight. The shocks go off like a cannon across the flat terrain as I swing into the cab, eyes wide against the dark, ears pricked, so tight they ache. I sight the figure behind the driver’s seat and yelp before familiarity registers, right before I lash out with the blade.

  I’m not sure what tips me off first . . . the slim, unwinding frame that’s tilted away from me. The strong, square jaw rendered mute beneath duct tape. Maybe the beautiful hands, sloppily bound at the wrists, shaking as they flare in defense. Perhaps it’s the sole soft, brown eye staring back at me, the other lost beneath a blood-soaked bandage.

  But then I think, No. It’s just me. I don’t recognize Daniel because of the way he looks. I recognize him because the emptiness that has been Malthus’s accomplice on this journey, ever since Daniel was first taken from me, is suddenly gone. The world rounds out and is recognizable now that Daniel is once again beside me.

  I reach for him, yet Daniel makes a sound that’s both ululant and wild, and even though he can’t speak, the smothered cry tells me all I need to know.

  Malthus is still here.

  I lower my blade and tear back around, catching the rubber edge of my remaining shoe in the doorframe as I yank it shut behind me. I slam down the lock and lunge to do the same to the driver’s side door, then blindly search the ignition for keys as I squint through the dusty windshield. Nothing.

  I push back between the seats and rest a hand on Daniel’s knee as I catch my breath. I can’t reassure him fully, because I’m still scanning the vista outside our troubled cocoon, and I’m spooked by what I see. The entire desert is visible from up here. I certainly would have been visible from this vantage point. So where is Malthus?

  I shift close to Daniel, my breath lifting his hair. I place a hand on his neck and find it hot and slick with sweat. “Does he still have a gun?”

  Daniel nods.

  “That’s okay. I have this.” I lift the knife, causing Daniel’s sole eye to flare, and I motion for him to hold out his hands. Provided he’s uninjured—outside of his carved-off eyebrow, that is—it is now two against one.

  “See that?” I rasp once
I manage to saw through the tape without cutting his palms or wrists. I try on a smile for him, for both of us, but it doesn’t quite fit yet. Even in the dark, I can see that he’s been forced to don Henry’s old clothes. “You’re not the only one who’s good with something sharp.”

  I drop it to the bench between us and yank the tape from his wrists while glancing at his ankles. They aren’t restrained. I ball up the tape and scan the dark outside as I throw it on the floor of the cab, before I realize Daniel’s breath is as labored as mine.

  “God. Sorry.” I rip the tape from his mouth in one go, and Daniel turns his head from me, hissing from the sting. Immediately, though, he’s gulping in air, filling his lungs like he hasn’t breathed in a year. I wonder how long that air passage has been covered, as he looks me directly in the eye and exhales. “Ahhhh. . . .”

  Then he’s in my arms. That’s it. I’m done being stoic, at least for a moment, and I begin to rock, holding him close. We’re chest to chest, heartbeats thumping like alternating pistons, boomboomboom, and I realize too late that I’m making another weird sound in my throat. I cut it off if only because we still need to hear what’s going on outside.

  Daniel finally slumps, his breath hot against my neck, and I let out my own jagged exhalation before letting go. Drawing back to search his face, I can’t help but flinch. The bandages render him unfamiliar, a half mask that splits his face into two warring factions: the smooth, kind side that I know so well versus the blank-slate part I can only guess at. This close, almost nose to nose, even his good eye looks shattered near the iris, and I think of Henry and Crystal and the dog and can’t help but wonder at all the things Daniel’s been forced to see since his abduction at that rest stop hours earlier.