by B. V. Larson
“How do you know—” began Ingles.
Spurlock rammed the gun harder against the other’s head. Ingles was pushed against the truck’s doorframe.
“Because I called them, you asshole! I wanted to know if you were gonna pull any funny shit. They use a five-digit code, with a letter. Where’s this key from, Ingles? Huh? Tell me, I really want to know.”
Ingles glanced at him over the gun without moving his head. Spurlock saw something in his eyes, something that wasn’t quite right. They had eye contact for only a half-second, but Spurlock knew he was in there, still scheming.
The truck, in the meantime had rolled almost to a halt. Ingles pulled it out of gear to keep the engine from dying. He grimaced as he used his injured foot.
“It’s a locker from a ski resort. Dodge Ridge, I believe. It’s up in the Sierras on highway forty-nine.”
“I don’t give a shit where it is!” roared Spurlock. “Where is my DAMNED MONEY?”
Ingles put the car painfully into gear again, then soon shifted into second. “There isn’t any money.”
It was Spurlock’s turn to register shock. “What?” he laughed in disbelief.
“There never was. I’ve been a bit strapped lately, which is partly why I did this whole operation. Primarily, however, I did it all for love,” Ingles snorted. “I suppose it all seems foolish now. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
Spurlock’s mouth sagged. “You did it all for love?” he echoed in disbelief. “You’re telling me you’re some kind of college faggot with a thing for some freshman boy you can’t have? What, did you have a boner for Nog? What man? Tell me before I blow you away.”
“I assure you, she was female and quite attractive,” replied Ingles. He shifted smoothly into third.
“Stop the truck, man,” Spurlock ordered.
Ingles shifted into fourth.
“Stop the fucking truck man, before I blow your brains out!”
Ingles floored the truck. The engine revved and whined in protest. He turned to Spurlock. “Jump now, or I’ll kill us both,” he said evenly.
“What?” screamed Spurlock. He grappled the wheel, but he didn’t have the leverage, and Ingles just kept accelerating. He tried to force it out of gear, but without the clutch being in, the transmission held firm. He shoved the gun into Ingles’ face.
“Man, I don’t want to do this,” said Spurlock. Ingles looked at him and then back at the road.
“See that telephone pole down the road?” Ingles asked him coolly. “We’re going to hit that in about thirty seconds.”
Hating himself for it, Spurlock squinted through the windshield. The telephone pole grew perceptibly on the horizon. He glanced at the speedometer. They were pushing ninety. A stop sign came and went in a blur. Someone in another pickup honked at them, but it was only a flash of sound and gone.
“Slow down,” said Spurlock. “I can’t jump at ninety.”
Ingles slowed to fifty, but still the telephone pole continued to loom. “That’s it,” he said flatly. “Jump now or die with me.”
Spurlock looked at him. He meant it, that was clear. He thought of bashing him with the pistol, but the rigid way he held the wheel he could swerve hard and roll them right over.
“You dumb fucker,” he said.
Ingles looked at him, and their eyes met a second time. Both of them knew the truth in that moment.
Spurlock pulled the trigger.
Squirt-squirt-squirt.
. . . 24 Hours and Counting . . .
At the bottom of a shallow ravine, a great white mechanical whale lay upside down in a patch of crushed sagebrush. The tires were flat and the roof had sunken as if a giant had sat upon it. Silent and unmoving, Nog’s body stretched out from beneath the driver’s side. His black hair fluttered in the breeze that ran down the canal.
Locked inside the trunk of the car, Ray wondered how hot it would get by noon the next day. It was broiling hot now, and he could tell by the dimming light that leaked through the cracks into his metal tomb that it was evening outside. Soon, it would be dark, and the odds of anyone spotting the wreck would drop to almost nil.
His chances of getting out by himself he calculated at precisely zero. The car was a new model Lincoln, but still made with real steel, not the flimsy aluminum of most econoboxes that dented when you kneed the door shut. Not only was he locked upside down in a steel box that could have withstood a determined attack with a crowbar, but he was mummified with duct tape. The bastards had taken no chances with him. He could hardly move. He knew he must have looked like a big silver slug, wrapped from head to foot in fresh tape. Parts of him were going numb and he knew he might never feel with those nerves again. Vaguely, he wondered how many rolls it had taken the pricks to cover him.
Lying there in the darkness, breathing through the slits they had left over his nostrils and mouth, there was a lot of time for thinking. Vance wondered what would get him: would he suffocate first, or die of heatstroke, or possibly dehydration? He recalled the cadet some years back who had been getting a rough hazing and had died in the process, drowning in his own blood because his “buddies” had done a lousy job while gagging him. At least drowning would have been relatively quick.
He snaked out his tongue to wet and push back the edges of the tape. They had softened and frayed a bit, but it might take a week to lick his way out. This thought made him chuckle, which kicked up dust that had sifted into the trunk. The dust made him sneeze, and he began to choke. He became alarmed, and alarm almost shifted into panic. Breath was life, however slim his odds were now. He fought for calm, and controlled his body by force of will. Two more desperate urges wracked him to sneeze, one after the other, but he resisted. He simply refused to die from such an absurd cause.
When he had regained his composure he relaxed somewhat. He tried to sleep, figuring he would last longer that way, should he later get lucky enough to be rescued.
It was there, at the very edge of sleep, that he remembered Justin. He had to make it for his son’s sake. At this point, however, he wondered if his son might have fared better than he had. He hoped so. He held back a sob. His welling tears wet the inside of the tape over his eyes and he passed into a hazy form of sleep.
#
Only two miles away from his trapped father, Justin was hard at work. He had the coffee can in both his grimy hands. He tossed another load of soft sandy earth onto the growing pile as he continued working. The start had been easy, all he had needed to do was roll down the passenger side window. Dirt had flooded in, all but burying Justin and the window handle in the first few seconds. Yelping, he had managed to push enough away to keep lowering the window. The gears and glass squeaked and scraped against the rocks and loose earth. More earth flooded in, but finally he thought he had it open far enough to climb out.
Then he had begun the digging. At first, the shaft held. The walls, although only loosely packed, kept their place against his small, filthy hands. Justin’s seven-year-old mind had no more experience with tunneling than any kid who had dug in the neighborhood sandbox at the park. He knew enough to watch out for cat lumps, and he knew that the further down you dug the wetter and harder the dirt became. But Justin knew nothing of cave-ins. He had no experience with deep holes, ones that require bracing and careful progress.
Already, he was thinking of which toys he would play with first when he got home. Probably his Micro Machines, he figured. He missed them the most. He could have really used a few of them down here to keep him company.
Each coffee-can load of dirt that he scooped up raised his spirits. At first he counted them, but soon he lost track. The mound of earth on the floor of the van just grew and grew. Dirt now filled the front cab area of the van and just kept going.
Soon, he had to climb right out of the window and into the dark space he had created beyond it to get another scoopful of earth.
It was as he was climbing out the window that the ground gave way. From above, it appeared that a giant g
opher had undermined a spot in the orchard. A sudden sinkhole appeared and a great wad of earth sloughed down into the van. Justin was swept with it, a helpless swimmer on a wave of wet sand and rocks.
His head struck the dash and he lost consciousness. The dirt didn’t cover his head, but it did cover his pitiful supply of food and water, and the bottom of the PVC pipe.
Far from freedom, Justin had plunged himself into utter blackness.
. . . 23 Hours and Counting . . .
Spurlock had managed to grab hold of the wheel and work the Ranger to a stop after he squirted three rounds into Ingles’ head. That was the only good news of the day, as far as he could tell. He’d dumped the body, but it was only a matter of time. The cops were usually lazy and good-for-nothing, unless it came to uncovering his crimes, he lamented. Then, they were fucking wizards.
“Murder One,” muttered Spurlock as he cruised down a residential street. “I finally did it, I’m in the big time now, and the bastard leaves me out of gas.”
The Ranger’s needle hovered over the E.
“E” is for empty, thought Spurlock. He had to get gas, but he was penniless, and—guess what? That crazy fucker Ingles had not one dime in his bloodstained pockets.
That brought his fortune to exactly one quarter, three dimes and two pennies: fifty-seven cents in all. There were, of course, Ingle’s credit cards. Those he had already ditched miles away from the body. He wanted it to look like a robbery—a robbery and murder that Tom Spurlock hadn’t committed. Using the credit cards had been out of the question from the beginning.
Even the Ranger was very hot, too hot, but he needed wheels to get out of town. This whole thing had gone badly, it had gone so badly that he still didn’t quite believe it. He had come out of a list of crimes and a gauntlet of grim abuses with nothing.
Spotting another likely-looking house, Spurlock pulled the truck over about a hundred yards down the street from the front door and climbed warily out. He didn’t like petty con-jobs like this, but it was all he could think of short of just robbing someone. He walked up to the porch of a fairly new suburban home. The shrubs had hardly had a chance to grow in yet. As he walked up, he tugged his wallet from his back pocket and made an effort to smooth back his unkempt hair. It was still damp from his quick clean-up at the corner gas station restroom. Ingles’ blood had clouded the water as it spiraled down the drain. A fitting end to the bastard, thought Spurlock.
It wasn’t killing Ingles that really bothered him. It was the idea of paying the price for it. America’s prisons were nice places, relatively speaking. Especially in California. Lots of inmates had their own color TVs in their cells and plenty of workout equipment to keep themselves busy. They didn’t take you out and work you to death in the hot sun, either. Folsom did a bit of that, but not most of the others.
No, it wasn’t the prisons themselves that he feared. It was the other inmates. All the TV sets and weights in the world didn’t matter when you were caged with a pack of animals. The inmates were your true jailors and they had their own rules. Very harsh ones.
Even more than the inmates, he feared the ultimate penalty. The big one, the state’s grinning reaper. In California, it was the hiss of gas pellets. He always wondered if people tried to hold their breath to gain a few more seconds of life, or if they welcomed a quick end and just breathed deeply.
He shuddered and was startled as the door opened. He almost couldn’t recall having pressed the doorbell. The woman who answered it was pretty, if a bit on the chunky side. She had a baby on her hip and the clamor of cartoons in the living room behind her suggested that more children were present. She gave Spurlock a wary look.
“Hello ma’am,” he began, grinning, but not so widely as to show his worst teeth. “I’m your neighbor, from just three doors down.” Spurlock waved vaguely behind himself. “I was wondering if you could help me out.”
She tried to smile but it came off as a grimace. “What can I do for you?”
“Lovely kid you’ve got there, ma’am,” he said. “I’m expecting one myself this month. Is it a boy?”
“Yes,” she said, softening a fraction. Spurlock smiled back. Women always went for it when you complemented their brats.
“You see, ma’am, I hate to bother you like this, but I’ve got to pick up my brother and his kid in Livermore. There’s a baseball game there today. And, well anyway, they went off leaving me with an empty tank and no cash. Can you believe it?”
“I see,” she said, stiffening. They always did that as soon as you mentioned cash. A Frisbee lost in the backyard? Sure, no problem. Ten bucks? Different story. Sometimes he thought it was easier to get into a woman’s pants than it was to get a few bucks off her.
“I’m real embarrassed to have to ask like this, ma’am. I just need a small loan, see, until I get back. Just two hours, then you’ll have your money. If you want to ask my mother about it, I could take you over there. She’ll back up my story.” Spurlock didn’t even sweat the ‘meet my mother’ line. When he had first come up with it a couple of years back he had figured on taking them to an empty house where he had previously knocked and play some bit about mom not wanting to get out of bed. These days, he didn’t even worry about it. He had learned that no one wanted to follow you down the street to meet your old mom. They would give you the cash or they wouldn’t, but they wouldn’t follow you down the street.
“I don’t know,” she said.
On cue, he pulled out his wallet and showed it was empty. “See ma’am? If you could see your way to helpin’ your neighbor, I would really appreciate it.”
Reluctantly, she lifted her purse from a side table and slowly dug into it. She shifted the brat’s weight from one hip to the other. Spurlock watched her and fantasized about doing her. It had been quite a while since he had had a nice clean housewife like this one. Too bad he was on the run.
She looked back up at him and she must have seen the leering glint in his eye. She looked flustered. “Here,” she said, shoving a five at him.
Normally, he would have taken it and left. But this was the fifth house he had hit. He needed more than five friggin’ bucks.
He took the five and conjured a look of vast disappointment. He chewed his lower lip. “My truck gets good mileage, ma’am, but there’s no way I can make it to Livermore on a five.”
She was silent and so was he. He didn’t look at her. He let the tension build. She had already sprung for five to get rid of him, so why not ten?
“I’ll have to ask my husband,” she said, “that’s all I have.”She left the door ajar behind her.
Spurlock waited with mild trepidation. He slipped the five into his front pocket and looked back at the Ranger. He thought about bolting, but that might lead to a call to the police. He didn’t need that right now.
Men required a slightly different touch. As the door opened again, he put back his grin and shoved a hearty hand at the guy. He was a fairly big, blond guy in shorts and a tank top. He ignored the offered hand and frowned. Spurlock knew right away he was screwed.
He began his story again, but could tell it wasn’t working. The guy listened in stony silence.
“Look,” Spurlock finally said. “I can tell that I’m bothering you folks and maybe I should just be on my way. I don’t want to be a bad neighbor.”
The blond guy seemed not to hear him. He slowly pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. “So, you’re looking for a little loan, eh?” he said.
Spurlock looked down at the wallet and his heart fell away into his shoes and died there. A big flashy badge all but filled the guy’s wallet. He was a cop, and Spurlock knew he had been caught. Still, the beauty of this scam was that it was very hard to prove any wrong-doing. He took a breath and pasted his smile back into place. He would bluff it through.
“Yes sir, if you could spare a five, that would do it for me. You’ll have it back in two hours—three tops.”
The cop glanced at him as if surprised he was still going fo
r it. The bastard looked a bit off-balance and it made Spurlock sing inside to see it.
“Forget it,” he said, snapping his wallet shut.
So, the prick had been just baiting him. Spurlock nodded and smiled some more. “I’ll be on my way, then. And thanks for your time. I’m sure I’ll see you around soon.”
“Hold it a moment, please,” said the cop.
Right then, Spurlock could see the door of his Ranger. It was just a hundred yard dash away. It seemed like a mile. He kept walking, with a curt wave of the hand over his shoulder. The best was to play that he was a bit pissed and done talking.
“I said hold it a moment, sir,” said the cop. He had followed him out onto the driveway.
Spurlock whirled around and put on a slightly annoyed look. “Yes?”
“I’d like to meet this mother of yours.”
“Why? Look, if you don’t believe me, that’s fine. I’ll have to find some other way to get there. Here, here’s your wife’s money back.”
The cop looked down at the five in mild surprise. For just a second, Spurlock thought that he had him. Then his pig-instinct took back over and he refused the money. “Let’s go meet mom.”
Spurlock looked at him as if he was a nut. “Look man, I’m really in a hurry here. If you don’t want to help me out, then please take back your money and let me find some other way to solve my problem.”
The cop set his jaw. “I don’t buy it. I don’t buy any of it. I don’t recognize you and I know this neighborhood.”
Spurlock laughed in disbelief. “Look man, I’m new here, that’s all. I’m staying with my mom and looking for work, that’s all.”
“Let’s see the address on your ID, then.”
“I told you, man: I’m new here.”
“I’m off-duty, so I’m going to make a citizen’s arrest here until I can get back up.”
Spurlock argued and reasoned until his throat hurt, but the cop bought none of it. He got the cell phone from his wife’s and called in a car to come pick them up. While they waited Spurlock thought about bashing the guy, but he was pretty tough-looking and he decided that he’d rather take his chances with the system. For exactly this kind of emergency, he had no ID on him, and he had already buried the gun.