by Waite, Urban
He didn’t have time to think about the kid back there, Drake, the deputy he’d recognized by sight. The same stupid kid, half his age. The deputy had saved him, he knew that. Hunt knew he and Nora would have been dead as soon as Grady got the heroin. Drake had saved them.
GRADY SAW THE BIG SHOTGUN GO UP OVER THE HOOD like some demented ship breaking through a giant wave, up and then over, sliding down onto the hood. Grady turned, threw himself over the nearest car, and came crashing down onto the ground as the first boom of the shotgun came tumbling through the line of cars. Pain all through him. The dry ache of the wound in his stomach, like he was hollow, like there was nothing left there to give. He sat and wiped the snow off his face and jacket. His hand felt like a lead weight. He put the muzzle of the AR-15 over the hood of the car and squeezed the trigger. Car alarms rattled on with the vibrations of the bullets, the sound almost deafening. Another booming of the shotgun, the cars rattling again. Grady looked around, but Hunt and Nora weren’t there.
He waited, looked up over the car, and, when he didn’t see the cop, went at a near run, pinched over with his legs going, following Hunt and Nora’s fresh tracks in the snow. He could see them up there in the street, dipping from one light to the next. Grady stumbled, slamming hard into the side of a parked car but still moving. He was having a hard time focusing his vision. He’d lost the knife bag somewhere, his final clip loaded into the belly of the AR-15, and him running, holding the gun with both hands, his legs pumping after them, his side on fire, and the pain of his belly wound coming now and jabbing at him with every stride.
DRAKE WAITED, GATHERING HIMSELF FOR ANOTHER look over the top of the car. He clutched the shotgun in his hands and breathed in. Time seemed to slow, everything brightening, snowflakes falling, ashy light, the sound of a car on a snow-covered road some distance away, adrenaline-filled senses seeding his mind.
The phone in his pocket began to vibrate. He didn’t pick up. Nothing was happening. No shots fired back at him, nothing. He popped his head over the hood and looked at the street. No one was there, just the line of cars covered in a thin layer of snow and busted up by his shotgun. He kept his head down and crossed the street, broken glass in the snow, no blood, empty AR-15 casings dropped everywhere. An engine started up down the block, and there was the sound of the machine gun on it immediately.
WHEN GRADY REACHED THE SECOND BLOCK, HE SAW they were already in the truck. He steadied himself, snow falling and landing on his eyelashes, the cold wind at his back. The truck engine started and he took aim, his first cluster of bullets tearing down along the line of cars and skimming across the side of the truck, bullets playing on the metal bodies of cars like firecrackers.
He was too far away for anything but a lucky shot, the truck moving away too quickly for a shot with the scope, his head swimming. He pushed himself up and took aim again, this time letting the bullets go where they might. He didn’t care anymore, didn’t care whether he got the heroin or not. He just wanted to be done with it. He wanted Hunt dead. Wanted him dead and nothing more to do with the whole bloody business.
The truck tore out onto the street. A cloud of snow dragged out behind the tires, the wheels spinning. One last volley of bullets, sparks rising off the metal as the truck sped on. Grady stepped out onto the street with the gun going, back windows breaking on cars. Hunt’s truck fumbled in the snow, then spun around the corner, Hunt’s face visible for a moment in profile as he took the turn, the big wide-bodied truck fishtailing, and then he was gone.
HUNT PULLED TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. THE AIRPORT lay on one side, an empty four-lane road out ahead of them. Barbed-wire fence as far down the street as he could see. He checked Nora for bullet wounds. “Are you bleeding?” he said. “Are you hit anywhere?” He was frantic. Nora didn’t even have enough time to respond as his hands played over her.
“I’m okay,” she managed to say. She gave him a look and he could see the cut on her lip where Grady had slapped her. He touched it with his hand, the blood dry and smooth on her lip, a small swollen bump over her teeth. There were several more welts along her forehead and cheek, he couldn’t say from what. Nothing seemed to be bleeding. She turned her back and he untied the twine from around her wrists.
There was still the soreness in his calf. He’d hit the gas hard, worked the brake and slipped the transmission into drive. It had all hurt, but he hadn’t registered it at the time, his bad leg bracing for everything, torn muscles tensing. He was sure he was bleeding beneath the bandage, wound ripped open by all the excitement.
Behind, in the rearview, the streetlights continued down for a mile without breaking. They were parked next to a long fence that ran the length of the airport. Nothing but airplane hangars and metal containers to look at.
Hunt put his arm back over the seat and watched the road behind them. Nothing came out of the darkness, just the night back there and the falling snow. He’d seen Drake, shotgun out, running up on Grady as he’d fired on them. It was the last thing he’d seen before his truck took the corner.
Somewhere above, he could hear an airplane circling. He leaned over in the cab of the truck, took the Browning from the glove compartment, and held it in his hand.
“It’s done now, isn’t it?” Nora said, her breath in steamy tendrils.
Hunt looked down at the gun. There was about ninety thousand dollars’ worth of heroin to get back to. Ninety thousand dollars he didn’t want a thing to do with. He looked over at Nora. “The horses are up an old Forest Service road on the east side of the Cascades,” he said. He gave her the mile marker and made her memorize it. He told her where to find the trailer, how much he thought each horse was worth, and who to contact about them.
“Why are you telling me this?” Nora said. Night out there, and the darkness closing in on them, snow tapping against the window as if it wanted to get in.
Hunt looked down at the Browning. He looked at his hands for a long time. “The heroin is hidden in the stables, in the little cubby under the loose wooden board.”
Again, she wanted to know why—why was he telling her this? He wouldn’t answer. “It’s done, isn’t it?” she asked. “Please tell me this is all done.”
DRAKE JOGGED FORWARD IN A STATE OF DISBELIEF. He held the shotgun in his hands. There was the sound of sirens in the near distance. He knew this would be Driscoll, though he didn’t know how far off he was or if he would arrive in time to help.
Nora and Hunt were gone, Grady just standing there in the night with the snow falling all around him as he listened to the oncoming sirens. Drake raised the shotgun and called for Grady to throw his gun down. Grady took one half turn toward Drake and then he was off, running as best he could through the snow. Drake fired and missed, the spatter of the slugger shell, big as a meteor strike, on a nearby cement wall. A gust of snow obscured Grady’s running figure. The landing lights of a plane overhead illuminated Grady’s profile before the plane turned toward the airport, then nothing again.
Drake clutched the gun close to his body. He was running, following the imprint of Grady’s footfalls in the new snow. In the dark he could see only about thirty feet in front of him before the prints disappeared into the night.
The footprints went on, and he was running blindly. No sound, just the wind bringing the snow, then the shadow of someone running in the distance. He stopped in the street and raised the shotgun. A dull click of the trigger, the shotgun jammed and Drake just holding it useless in his hands. No time to dig the shell out. He threw the shotgun down and, running, brought out his service pistol from the holster at his belt.
Drake came to the perimeter fence, barbed wire all the way along it. Tall grass poked up through the new snow, a buffer area of about a hundred yards between the perimeter fence and the last of the neighborhood houses. There were no streetlights now, just the distant blinking of the runway lights to guide him to Grady.
HUNT TURNED THE TRUCK AROUND AND FOLLOWED the road to the edge of the airport fence. He found a sm
all alley, where he parked the truck under cover of shadow and sat looking out at the world beyond. A strange stillness out there, a light wind working the falling snow, everything white.
Hunt asked Nora again about the horses and told her to repeat the information back to him. When he was satisfied, he took the Browning and slid it down into the pocket of his rain slicker.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” Nora said.
“I can’t just leave him out there,” Hunt said. “There’s been too much taken away because of me.”
“What if he’s dead already?” Nora said.
He opened the door and felt the cold night come through the cab of the truck and mingle with the steam of their breath. Hunt didn’t have any more to say. Nora tried to tell him something, but he didn’t wait for her. He left the keys in the ignition and closed the door.
He limped to the edge of the alley and looked down the street, not a single car, just clean white snow, the perimeter fence across the street, stretching on into nothingness. He took a deep breath and plunged forward through the wind, his bad leg dragging against the drifting snow.
He didn’t have any clear idea where he was going, but he knew he’d find his way. He kept to the middle of the road where cars had passed and flattened a path before him. Running, half hopping to avoid injuring himself further, he almost tripped over the shotgun in the street. He was two blocks off the main road, the gun just resting there in the snow. He put his hands on the gun, the metal cold as the air around him. Hunt knew it had been Drake’s gun. Scanning the nearby snow, he soon found the track of Drake’s footsteps.
The chamber was jammed, and using his finger, he pried out a disfigured shell and dropped it into his pocket. One shell left. He held the gun in his hands, eyes searching through the storm-filled blackness. There was no sign of Drake but the footfalls in front of him, leading off toward the airport and quickly filling with snow.
DRAKE RAN ON. THE SIRENS HAD FADED AWAY AND now he could hear his own breathing, feel his heart pumping, sweat cold on his forehead. He stopped with the snow beneath him. He was in a wide field before the perimeter fence with the house lights a hundred yards back. Farther down the fence stood a series of shadowed dampening walls, built to block out the airport noise.
A set of guidance lights flashed on with a quiet intensity, brilliant white light everywhere and the thunder of jet engines overhead. The dark underbelly of a plane passed in the air above him at an incredible speed, and moments later he heard the scuff of the tires as they took the runway. Lights out, and Drake back in darkness, his pupils struggling to make sense of the quick shift from bright daylight back to the blackness of night.
The whistle of a bullet in the air, sound of bone and tissue tearing, his right knee collapsing, warm liquid down his shin and into his shoe. He fumbled forward. Blood splattered on the snow. His blood. He took another step, his body weight on his wounded leg, hot white pain. He gasped, held it, felt his lungs burn with it, his knee thumping. He fell and lay in the snow, eyes open, the tips of grass poking out of the fresh-fallen white field.
He heard the crunch of footsteps, tried to get up, his body not doing what he wanted it to. He got up on his elbow and pointed his pistol into the night. Beneath him he could feel the snow growing warm with his own blood. The crunch of footsteps. He took aim and fired toward the sound. Another bullet hit him in the right forearm. He yelled out, dropped the gun, his hand held over the new wound in his arm.
Crunch of snow again, the shuffle of it as it parted. Grady came out of the night holding the AR-15 on Drake. Grady’s breathing was irregular. A patch of blood was forming on Grady’s right side. Drake didn’t think he’d shot him, but he couldn’t be sure.
Drake panted, his face covered in a growing sweat. He felt light headed. He tried to keep his vision straight, but it was going and he couldn’t seem to help it.
Grady kicked Drake’s gun away. He tapped the scope on the rifle. “Could have taken off your head, but it’ll be more interesting this way.” Grady put a hand under his jacket, and when he brought it out, there was blood on his fingers. He looked at it. Felt the texture of it between his trigger finger and thumb. It seemed to amaze him.
“For who?” Drake managed to say.
“For me.” Grady let the rifle slip down through his hands into the snow.
Drake lay there, looking up, wet snow beneath him, the ground hard with the cold, his knees pulled in and his good hand over the hole Grady had torn in his forearm. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t find the energy to move. Grady placed a hand around Drake’s throat and held him down. Drake just lay there, feeling the inevitability of what would come next.
There was the sound of a spring releasing, something pulled forward on a slide. Drake opened his eyes and saw the blade come at him. Instinctively, he put out his hand and felt the knife slice in. The new pain surprised him. He found some reservoir of energy and pushed back in the snow with his good leg, his knee on fire and Grady on the ground slashing after him. Drake reached out again, his hand bloody, and grabbed for Grady’s sleeve. He felt the mechanism under there. He felt the handle of the knife and he tried to twist it off Grady’s arm. Grady put his whole weight on top of Drake, pushing the knife down.
For a moment it was just them in the snowfield. Nothing but their gasps, teeth clenched. Spit falling from their mouths, snow crushed beneath them. Grady on top of Drake, trying to drive the knife in, Drake trying to lever him off. Snow falling. The dim red flash of the lights from the runway. Drake landed his good knee in Grady’s gut, and both men called out in pain. The tip of the knife dropped into Drake’s shoulder and he felt it there throbbing in the muscle. He forced Grady’s hand back up.
A plane passed overhead, blinding landing lights, dragging a human shadow across the two of them. The snowfield bold and flat all around them. The landing lights flooded the scene in pure white light, and suddenly Hunt was there, pulled from the darkness like a magic trick.
Drake heard the click of the hammer a split second before the shotgun went off. He heard it but didn’t turn his face, didn’t even think to shield his eyes. The barrel was a foot away from Grady’s temple. Grady looked up, his face taking it in, realizing what was coming, for a half second his eyes widening, looking down the length of the gun. Hunt let his finger down onto the trigger, and Drake watched as the bullet took teeth and gums, tongue and throat, all the way back through Grady’s head and left it in a splattered mess on the snow-covered field.
A jet touched down, the thick sound of rubber meeting tarmac, the scuff of wheels, and the rise of smoke off the runway. Drake felt every muscle in his body give way. He felt the cold beneath him, welcomed it, let it soak in. Hunt stood there with the gun half-raised over Grady’s body, as if perhaps Grady might come back, as if he might still pose some threat. The lights dimmed around all of them until there was nothing but the faint red pulse once again.
“He was going to kill you,” Hunt said. He didn’t look at Drake as he said it. He just said it.
“I know.”
“I just shot a man,” Hunt said, his voice in a fog, turning to look at Drake, the shotgun still held in his hand.
“I know,” Drake said.
“I never wanted to.”
Drake coughed. He was watching the gun in Hunt’s hand, the pain in his knee aching and his vision going milky. He leaned over on his side and tried to focus, snow falling and accumulating on his lashes, the red-lit profile of Hunt’s face the only thing there to tell Drake he hadn’t imagined it all. “Even if I wanted to arrest you,” he said, “I’m in no condition to do it.”
Hunt gave Drake a blank stare, gun faced out toward him. Drake couldn’t read him.
Drake brought out his phone and toggled down through the numbers until he found Driscoll’s. The gun was still pointed at him. “Do you mind,” Drake said, motioning to the twelve-gauge pump.
Hunt threw the gun down in the snow and watched as Drake pushed Send and waited for Driscoll
to come on the line. Drake lay back in the snow and watched the flakes coming down. Driscoll was saying something, but it didn’t matter to Drake. He wasn’t ready for it, though he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He felt his head swim for a moment, the dizziness coming over him. When he turned back to find Hunt, he saw only his rough shadow jogging across the field, the far-off lights of houses behind his limping figure, the path he’d taken already filling in behind him. Everywhere the soft fall of snow, a distant crunch of footsteps, and then no sound at all.
AFTER THEY HAD RESTED, HUNT TOLD HER ABOUT the house. He said that it wouldn’t have made sense to go back there anyway, that the place didn’t exist for them anymore. It was all gone, all of it, and to go back there—even just to pick up the heroin—would have risked arrest, would have meant jail time, and he couldn’t do that.
They were sitting in the little pasture up the forgotten road. There was frost in the grass, but no snow. A day had passed and it was night again. Hunt had built a fire against the cold and hidden it as best he could with a wall of rocks, but no cars passed, nor did they ever seem to, and he knew they would be safe here, just like the old times, before all this. And he told Nora that he knew it would all change, but he didn’t know the future as he’d thought he did, and the only thing he knew with any certainty was that it was coming and he hoped it would be good.
Out of the darkness, they listened to the sounds of the horses in the pasture, the hard-soled hooves, the lap of their tongues as they bent into the bucket and drew water. Hunt and Nora had washed in the little stream, and Hunt had cleaned Nora’s lip and lifted her shirt to look at the bruises left on her body from the trunk. They had stood there next to the stream for a long time, just like that, half-naked, bruised, goose bumps on their skin, but happy. Hunt put a hand to Nora’s stomach and eased his palm around onto her back and embraced her and felt her warmth close to his.