Finally, after what seemed an interminable length of time, all the motion stopped and the car died.
It was a five-car pile-up. From Heddy’s vantage point it seemed to her the driver of the Volkswagen was dead. A matron with steel silver hair slumped over the steering wheel with her skull cracked on the windshield. Blood ran from the wound to cover her face.
People in the remaining three cars were in various conditions from dead (a teen male driver of an older model Mitsubishi Galant), to slightly injured (his passenger, a young girl who looked to have suffered mere bruises where the seatbelt held her in position during the crash.) In the third car, a white Chevrolet Caprice, the driver and passenger, two men, seemed shaken but unharmed. The front of their car had bumper damage and the hood was crimped, but otherwise they had come into the wreck at a slower rate of speed and had been able to avoid the worst of it.
Cars stopped, halted by the debris and carnage blocking the highway, drivers stepping out of their vehicles to lend a hand.
Heddy pushed and finally got the air bag out of her face and to the side. She put both hands against her cheeks. They felt hot to the touch and raw, as if the first layer of her skin had been peeled off. Tears blinded her until she rubbed them from her eyes.
She looked around the interior of the Riviera. Panic overrode the first adrenaline rush of fear that had taken her when she hit the water and went into the slow-motion spin. Have to get out of the car. Cops will come soon. Over and over, that’s all she could think, get out, get away, hurry.
She saw Jay pawing his way from beneath the air bag and said to him, “Get out of the car and to the side of the road. Wait there. You say a fucking word to anyone, I’ll shoot Emily in the head and I mean it.”
He twisted in his seat to see his family. His face was also burned red from the impact of the exploding air bag, but he seemed not to notice it. “Em? Carrie?”
“I’m all right, Daddy.” Emily peeked up from behind the seat. “I just bumped my head and my knees, I think.” Her voice was shaky.
“I hurt my arm,” Carrie said, rising from where she lay across the seat, holding onto her left arm.
“Get out of the car!” Heddy roared.
Jay fumbled for the door and unlocked it, then stumbled out.
Heddy couldn’t get her door open. She realized after a struggle that it must be crushed in. She caught a glimpse of other people in the several car lights that lit up the highway and the wrecks. It looked like a nightmare to her. She wished she was dreaming, but she knew this was for real and they were in pretty deep trouble. Someone might be dead (the driver of the Volkswagen and the kid in the Galant) and maybe someone in the cars stopping on each side of the wrecked cars had a cellular car phone and was already calling the cops.
She crawled across the center console between the front bucket seats and out Jay’s side. She hurried around the car to where Crow was. He sat with his head against the spider-cracked window, perfectly still, his eyes closed. The air bag was crumpled all around him, like a cushion an assassin had pressed down around his head. She jerked open the door and had to catch him as he fell toward her. “Crow! Wake up, get up, Crow, are you all right? Damn!”
His eyes slowly opened and then he blinked several times as if he didn’t know her. Finally he said, “We still alive?” His upper teeth must have bitten down on his lower lip because it bled a bright red stream down his chin and neck.
“Come on, try to stand up. They’ll be cops here soon. We have to get away from here.”
He pulled himself up by holding onto the door. He surveyed the damage to the car and, with Heddy, realized that it was totaled. The front end was crushed, the driver’s door was bent in the middle, and along the side of the car were streaks of metal scraped bare. “Christ, Heddy...”
“Let’s go.” She reached into the back seat and withdrew his leather satchel. “Here, take this, move it!”
Heddy knew she possessed the coolest head and she had no injuries beyond the facial burns, at least she couldn’t feel anything else wrong yet. It was up to her to get them out of this.
She hurried Crow away from the car, avoiding the headlights, and over to the side of the road. Someone came up to them, an elderly man in overalls. He said, “You’re hurt, let me help you.”
Heddy snarled, “Get the fuck away from me, man,” and he backed away, surprised.
Crow was stumbling, but his steps were surer as they reached the gravel lining the road where Jay stood holding Emily in his arms. Next to him stood Carrie shivering, keeping her arm close to her body. Jay was already surveying the wrecked cars looking for someone to help them, someone to report to, Heddy saw it in his face.
“Move it,” she said, slipping her free hand into her purse. It was a new one she’d bought at a discount department store when she had gone out earlier to pick up the chicken for dinner. It was a big forest green vinyl bag and it held, besides the money and her gun, two pints of Jim Beam. It seemed a lifetime ago that everything had started going wrong. The guy at the service station surprising her at the ladies’ room door. The boy who stepped into the room with a gun to which a silencer had been attached. And now this...
She herded the family before her and steadied Crow with one hand on his upper arm. They passed by the other wrecked cars. Heddy saw the female driver of the Volkswagen and knew she was either dead or completely knocked senseless. She wasn’t moving while two men tried to pry open her stuck driver’s door. She saw the kid in the Galant, his girlfriend on her knees in the front seat, hanging over him and wailing. People were at her door, trying to convince her to come out of the car. Spilled gasoline from ruptured tanks created rainbow sheets sparkling across the pavement. Heddy wrinkled her nose at the stink. The whole place could go up with one spark. Outta here, had to get away from here.
All total there were probably eight cars and trucks at the scene, but most everyone had exited their vehicles to try to help the people still remaining in the wrecked cars. They paid scant attention to the five stragglers making their way past the stalled cars into the darkness beyond. Too many people all over the place, too much activity.
Heddy looked around and saw the road was bounded on one side by a forest and on the other by open fields. She said, “We’ll head across the road, into those trees.”
They lost the glow of headlights as they moved deeper into tree cover. The land was flat and it was clear between trees so the going was easy. After they were in a couple of hundred yards, Heddy told Jay to turn right. She hoped they were following the road and could come out far enough away from the wreck to catch a ride. Not catch a ride, actually, but take one.
Her face kept burning so that she put her hand up to her cheeks over and over, wondering how bad it looked, how red it was. Yet they’d been lucky, all of them, to escape serious injury.
They could get away from this mess if they hurried. They were behind the highway patrol’s back if she was right about this maneuver. Who the hell knew? She was like some kind of glider that sailed in the clouds, going whatever way the wind blew.
Carrie was making sounds. Heddy said, “Shut up, you’re not hurt.”
“Where are we going?” Jay asked, but he continued walking.
Crow kept wiping his lip and saying, “Shit, I’m all bloody, shit, look at this shit, how’d that happen, Heddy?”
“It was an accident, how’d you think it happened? No, really, I decided there wasn’t enough excitement and thought I’d plow into an oncoming car. You dumb fucking goof.”
“Can it, will you? Where we going?” Crow wanted to know, unconsciously echoing Jay.
“I hope we’re following alongside the road and we can come out above the wreck. I’ll flag down a car.”
“Maybe you’ll flag down a patrol car,” Jay said. “Maybe you better flag down an ambulance. My wife’s hurt and Emily might be hurt too.”
“I’m okay, Daddy.”
Just then they heard the sirens and knew the ambulances and cops
were closing in. Everyone stopped, even Heddy, to listen. She judged they were too far away to ever find them now. She couldn’t even make out any individual lights from the direction of the highway, only a hazy yellow glow that came through the tops of the trees. At any moment she expected to hear an explosion and the whole area light up with flame.
She pushed them onward and for another twenty minutes they walked through dark silent woods, no sounds other than their feet on the soft cushiony leaf fall on the ground and an occasional whimper from Carrie. Even the kid was quiet, walking next to her father, holding onto his hand to keep from falling in the dark.
When Heddy thought they were far enough from the scene, she instructed Jay to head back toward the highway. At the woods’ edge, she turned to Crow and put both hands on his shoulders to look into his face. “You okay now? Can you keep an eye on them until I get another car?”
He grinned a little then winced and wiped at his split lip. “Yeah, I got it wrapped.”
“I wish that was true.” With that she stepped away from the treeline and crossed a soggy drainage ditch, her shoes sinking and squishing, to the roadside. She saw a car coming toward her, its headlights small white eyes cutting through the darkness. There was no lighted bubble on top so she hoped it wasn’t a patrol car. If it was...hell, she’d know what to do if it came to that. You did what you had to. That’s what she and Crow had been doing for days now. Whatever the situation called for, they did it. You didn’t survive any other way.
She stepped onto the macadam and felt the heat of it warm the soles of her muddy shoes. Despite the earlier rain the highway retained sunny summer heat. She was sweating, fear sweat, even though the air had cooled. She could smell herself, musky sweat crawling all over her body. She didn’t know how she looked. She had on the wig and had straightened it before leaving the woods. But she might have blood on her from Crow and her face was probably scarlet with burns. She had no idea. She just knew she had a mission to perform, and she’d do that. Nothing could stop her.
As the car neared, slowing, she stepped further into the road blocking passage and waved her arms. The car lights were in her eyes, white sapphire suns bearing down out of darkness. The car stopped. She rushed toward it and around to the driver’s side. She had the gun out before she got there and hit the rolled up window with the gun barrel. The driver was a woman, fortyish, her eyes big and round with new fear.
“Open the goddamn door.” Could she shoot this woman? She didn’t think so. Or maybe she could. Yes, she could. If she had to, she’d shoot her.
The woman started moving the car forward and Heddy stepped back, taking aim, ready to put a bullet through the window. The woman watched her and slammed the brakes. The car, a very old red Ford Escort, died.
“Get out of the car,” Heddy shouted. She looked up and down the highway, hoping no one else would come along. “Hurry!”
The woman unlocked her door and stepped out. Heddy marched her at gun point across the ditch to where Crow waited with the others. “Go get in the car, I’ll take care of this,” he said.
The woman was babbling. She had been terrified when the woman pointed a weapon at her, but now that she saw so many strange people, some of them dripping blood or looking wounded, Heddy could see she was wild with panic. Her hands fluttered at her breast as if they would be able to catch reality and bend it back to normal again.
Heddy gestured the family to the car. She got them inside and tried the ignition. It started on the first try, but it backfired and boiled smoke from the exhaust. She put it into gear and heard the clunk, felt the lurch jerk her backward as the transmission dropped into drive.
“What a piece of shit. I had to stop a car that ought to be in a junkyard, for crying out loud!” She turned it around and kept it idling by placing one foot on the brake while pressing on the gas pedal to keep the engine going, waiting for Crow. She thought at first the sound she heard was another backfire, but then she realized the sound had come from the forest where she couldn’t see a thing.
Crow killed the woman. Well, she wasn’t surprised. The woman would have told the cops her car had been stolen; she would have let everyone know what car they were in. Shit happens, that was Heddy’s philosophy. It happens to be the best of us, she thought. Don’t it, though? Life’s a beach and then you drown. What a hoot.
If she wasn’t so exhausted, so wired and sick to her stomach and trembling with an overload of adrenaline, she’d laugh at just how many people were dying tonight. It was a regular slaughter.
#
THE Escort wouldn’t go over fifty miles an hour. At that speed it rumbled and spit coal black smoke from the exhaust pipes and threatened to shake itself to pieces.
“You couldn’t find a better car than this?” Crow asked. He wished now he’d let Heddy stay in the woods and he’d been the one to approach the road to flag down a vehicle.
“It’s not my fault that woman was driving this junk heap.”
There had been headlights behind them for twenty miles now. Another junk heap unable to go very fast, Crow wondered? Or their pals from St. Louis?
“Well, we’re gonna have to do something, Heddy. I think we’ve got company on our ass.”
He saw Heddy glance in the rearview mirror. The car jerked and banged as she tried to push it above fifty. Suddenly she applied the brakes and they all found their heads whip-lashing. She pulled to the side of the road.
“What’re you doing?” Crow asked, glancing back over his shoulder at the car that had been following them.
“We need to settle this right here. I can’t outrun them. Let’s just get out of the car and do it, Crow.” She pushed open the creaking driver’s door and stepped out.
Crow hurried, doing the same. He said, “You take the keys?”
Heddy held up the car keys and shook them.
They both turned to face the oncoming headlights.
“Don’t pull a gun until you know for sure,” Heddy said. She had her hand in the green vinyl shoulder bag.
The car came toward them slowly. When it reached where they stood at the side of the road, it stopped. Crow stiffened. How damn many people had the lab owners sent after them, a whole fucking battalion?
Someone got out on the driver’s side and looked over the roof at them. “Got car trouble?”
He was about a hundred and fifty years old, Crow estimated. He had a white Santa Claus beard and enough wrinkles to rival the surface of the moon. This was not someone tailing them from the wreck, couldn’t be. The tough guys in St. Louis didn’t hire on geezers. The relief that flooded through Crow was like a whoosh of cool wind down a hot canyon wall.
“Nah, we’re okay, Pops.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Nope, thanks for stopping.” Crow gave little thought to taking the old man’s car. It was something from the forties, something almost as old as he was. A faded black round-roofed car that looked like a hearse. They’d be no better off hijacking it.
When the old man pulled away, Crow gave Heddy a grin. “We’re getting paranoid.”
“Getting? I’ve already passed paranoid into insane.” She laughed a little, relieved too.
Back in the car with the Escort on the highway again, Crow said, “They check out that Riviera, they’re going to wonder where the owner is.”
“I thought of that.” Heddy looked over at Jay. “But I don’t think we can let them go.”
Crow wondered why. Yeah, they knew where he and Heddy were going, but what did it matter? They’d be out of the country before anyone caught them. Maybe. Maybe not. He wasn’t sure about that, really. For that reason or perhaps reasons of her own Heddy just didn’t want to let the family go. For his part, Crow realized with a shock that he wouldn’t be able to pull a trigger on Carrie or the little girl. He had a thing for Carrie. It’s true she had talked him out of doing anything back in the motel room, but even that made him want her more. She spoke to him in a soft, soothing voice. She appealed to his h
onor and no one had done that in years. Relinquishing the idea of taking her against her will made him feel cleaner somehow than he’d felt in ages.
Oh, he could do Jay easy, no problem, but kill a kid or a woman he wanted to fuck? Not in this lifetime. So they’d have to let all three of them go.
He hadn’t wanted to bust the woman in the woods, for that matter. He thought about it before he did it. He didn’t listen to her. He’d heard better pleading from guys in Leavenworth. Shit, he’d done better begging himself. Not that it had saved him either. It just seemed sort of sad to murder a woman because she had driven her car down the wrong road at the wrong time. Wasteful. She was old, maybe forty-five, and she was fat as a butter ball and she was, in the end, dead as sin, lying on her stomach in old dead leaves with a hole in her head. Damn shame.
He needed to get cranked. He’d felt pretty secure when they had the brand new Riviera and three hostages for cover if they got caught. But now, riding in this rustbucket, squeezed next to the little girl who had been silent the entire time, he felt like he was two steps away from a prison cell again. If he could crank up, maybe he’d stop worrying about it.
Hell, let Heddy do the worrying. If she happened to stay sober enough.
#
I think Heddy knew, even after she had stopped and found out the car following us wasn’t after her, that they were back there--the people from St. Louis. Daddy told Mama and me that Crow and Heddy must have knocked over a lab house, probably crack, a crack house, or meth, he said, a meth house. That’s what he said, knocked over, but I knew he meant they robbed it. I had seen crack houses on TV on cop shows. People involved in them were all members of the gangs and stuff, real gangsters.
Daddy had whispered to us about this while Heddy was out getting food for us and Crow went to the bathroom. Crow came out and Daddy didn’t say anymore.
Now we had been in a wreck where I got thrown onto the floorboard behind the front seat, bumping my head and scraping my knees on the carpet. And because of Heddy, we’d just walked away. There were a lot of people, but they were all over the wrecked cars and didn’t even notice when we left.
DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels Page 9