The Real

by James Cole

  As Jeremy entered the Square he was confronted by high-beamed headlights that pained his dilated pupils. It was the first sign of life since he escaped the old church. Very slowly, too slowly, it approached. Jeremy slowed to a brisk walk and kept a wary eye on the car, ready to react to any threatening action. The car passed without incident.

  Two blocks down on the right was his condominium building. He could make out no obvious activity there or in the adjacent parking area. Up to this point, Jeremy had chosen speed over stealth, but he didn’t feel comfortable taking the direct approach home from here. Instead, he veered right and cut in front of City Hall and sneaked down the hidden steps that led to the fountain. From the fountain he could see the back side of his building, including the closed garage door on the ground floor and his top-floor condo. The window shades in the living room of his unit were partially open and the lights were on. Jeremy usually made a point of turning out the lights when he left home but on nights like tonight, with the Unreal burning brightly in his brain, routines were easily forgotten. In fact, not only did he not remember if he turned the lights off, he also had no specific recollection of locking the door when he left. What if they were already waiting for him inside?

  Jeremy hated all this uncertainty but it didn’t matter. He needed transportation. The garage door remote was in his car so he would have to enter through the front of the building. He cut across the public parking lot that bordered the back of his building, using the smattering of parked cars for cover. He crouched at each vehicle and watched for any movement before darting to the next bumper.

  A black Dodge Magnum with tinted windows occupied the first parking space in the lot, directly behind and facing his garage door. If someone meant to stake out the back side of his building and garage, that would be an ideal location. Actually, he thought, if someone were only watching his building, they would probably not park quite so close. The Dodge Magnum was better positioned for an ambush, especially if the target were someone entering or leaving by way of the garage. Jeremy lingered but his internal clock urged him on. He had already wasted too much time watching and waiting.

  Jeremy sprinted past the suspicious car and along the side of the building. He peeked over the head-high retaining wall, pulled himself up and over and landed squarely on the brightly illuminated front stoop. Once inside the common entrance, he opted to go downstairs, directly to the garage. He would have liked to go upstairs and gather a few things but that was a luxury he could not afford. He had his wallet and car keys and his cell phone and that should be enough. When he got to the bottom of the long, steep stairwell, he unlocked the door to his garage, turned on the light and locked the door behind him. Jeremy felt better, now that he had made it this far; in a couple of minutes he would be free and clear.

  Suddenly, a sound like stampeding horses echoed down from above.

  They’re here.

  The heavy pounding of feet on stairs spurred him to frantic action. He had to get out. In his renewed panic Jeremy reconsidered his plan. If he had to outmaneuver and outrun he should take his motorcycle, not the car. As he made for his beloved crotch rocket, he caught sight of his hiking boots and his backpack, which lay exactly where he had dropped them after the camping trip with Jinni in September. He heard men’s voices, loud and urgent, followed by a sharp CRACK like the sound of a door being broken down. Jeremy tore off his Birkenstocks, slipped on the boots without tying the laces and as quickly as he could, strapped on the bulky backpack. He grabbed his helmet, jammed it on and punched the button on the wall. With a series of loud squeaks and clanks, the chain drive raised the garage door, its progress painfully slow.

  Jeremy jumped onto the bike and dug frantically in his pocket for the key. On the third try he got the key into the ignition and fired up the engine. If his pursuers hadn’t heard the garage door, they certainly heard the engine’s snarl. As usual, there was just enough room for the bike to squeeze out between the bumper of his car and the wall, but this time the bulky backpack got hung up. Jeremy lurched and jerked, trying to break through but could not. By now a panic of epic proportions threatened to render him helpless. Time was running out. He couldn’t go forward so he pushed himself backwards until he and the backpack broke loose. Jeremy fell flat on his buttocks while the motorcycle rolled forward and fell over just outside the garage.

  Without the encumbrance of the motorcycle, Jeremy slipped easily through the space between his car and the wall. Under other circumstances it might have been a strain to lift the 500 pounds of motorcycle, but not tonight. In one quick, almost effortless motion he righted the bike. However, getting the engine to crank again was a different matter.

  The carburetor must be flooded.

  Jeremy punched the starter button again and held it but like the doomed character in a cheap horror flick, he could not get it to crank.

  Well, I guess this is it, he thought fatalistically. I’m a dead man. He could not believe that this was what would get him caught.

  He forced his thumb off the starter button, trying to give the uncooperative engine a respite, but he couldn’t wait long, terrified that he might be on the verge of being caught. Just as he tried again, two lights as startling bright as a prison searchlight popped on. It was the Dodge Magnum and its blinding headlights took dead aim at his corneas. Jeremy jumped violently, almost upsetting the bike again. He hit the starter button desperately, like a monkey on crack.

  The Magnum swung out of its parking space with a subtle squeal of its front tires on the slick concrete. He caught a glimpse of the driver, a young male with tousled hair and a deadpan expression. Jeremy expected the car to mow him down or mash him against the concrete wall until his guts spilled out, but those weren’t the driver’s intentions at all. The car whipped around in the opposite direction and scooted off down the street. Jeremy realized that the driver had the look of someone who had been asleep – perhaps a bar patron who passed out in his car after a night out on the town.

  Then, when all seemed hopeless, the most beautiful sound – the engine sputtered to life. Miraculously, all this commotion had yet to attract any of Monika’s goons. Perhaps they had taken the stairs down and were stymied by the locked door that led into the garage. Jeremy stabbed the gearshift down to first. A right turn would have led away from the scene and was the safer choice but his curiosity got the best of him. He turned left onto the street that ran alongside his building.

  As Jeremy topped the small incline that bordered the condominium, a light swept across the faces of the houses that lined the street opposite his building. A split-second later he saw more of the same and recognized them for what they were – flashing blue lights. At the stop sign he was baffled to see that there were two police cars parked at the curb in front of his building. Why were they here?

  Was this Dr. Cain’s handiwork? Had he framed Jeremy in the same manner that he had presumably framed Grady? Did he know that Jeremy suspected him? Maybe he got word that Jeremy had been asking about the cold room keys. If Dr. Cain framed Grady, couldn’t he just as easily plant some damning piece of evidence on Jeremy?

  Jeremy made sure he came to a complete stop at the stop sign. As he stared squarely at the front door to his condominium, the uniformed policeman exited. Jeremy eased out into the street, turning right, away from his building and the cop. As he made the turn, the officer’s arm went up in a waving motion. He wanted Jeremy to stop. Pretending to misunderstand the gesture, Jeremy returned a friendly little wave as he completed the turn and headed off down the street, not too fast and not too slow.

  The road dropped off at a steep angle, quickly obscuring Jeremy from the policeman’s view. Jeremy accelerated down and away, using a higher gear than normal to reduce the engine noise. Halfway up the next rise, he took a quick left turn into a church driveway. If he could get to the outlet on the far side of the church grounds, he might be able to buy enough time to get out of town.

  The church road ran up a long gradual rise, affording Je
remy a good view of the road from which he had just turned. He zipped past the church and the small cemetery. There was a single speed bump that he only remembered after the shock wave initiated in his tailbone, propagated up his spine and terminated painfully in his brain. Jeremy slowed as he approached the outlet onto the public road. One more turn and he would be home free.

  Jeremy checked his rear view mirror one last time before he exited the church grounds. With all that had already happened tonight, he was numb to the scene unfolding behind him. First one and then the other police car slid around the corner, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing. Jeremy watched detachedly, as if those were not rear view mirrors mounted on his handlebars but rather two tiny televisions and these were not real policeman but stunt men shooting a staged chase scene.

  When the reality of the situation sank in, Jeremy’s reflexes took over. He turned left and gunned the throttle. He realized that by running, he was digging himself a deeper hole with the law. But if it was as he feared, and the police believed that he, and not Dr. Cain, killed June, the legal repercussions of running were inconsequential compared to those associated with the charge of murder. He needed more time to implicate Dr. Cain. It would do him no good to get corralled now.

  A hundred bicycle rides had left Jeremy intimately familiar with every side street, short cut and cut-through in the small town, but this knowledge merely leveled the playing field. These were city cops and this was their turf. His only chance was to get out of Destiny and away from its confining streets. Jeremy’s was the ultimate road machine but he needed wide open spaces to exploit his advantage. If he could just make it to Sticks River Road, he could outrun them, and at the end were hundreds of square miles of wilderness in which to hide.

  Two miles down the road, Jeremy turned right onto Sticks River Road. The police cars were still in hot pursuit but he felt confident that he could distance himself from them now. The initial portion of the road ran through a residential section with a number of intersecting streets. Jeremy held back a bit, inasmuch as 80 mph could be construed as holding back. He topped the last hill before the long flat straightaway, ready to open it up. But there was a problem: more blue lights. Unlike the ones that tracked him from behind, these were stationary. It was a roadblock, perhaps a half mile down the road.

  The sun had stagnated somewhere below the eastern horizon but the car’s headlights illuminated the crucial details. A lone officer had staked out a position just in front of the right front bumper of his squad car. He stood staunchly, holding a make-my-day pose, and in his right hand, the requisite make-my-day revolver. His left hand fervently motioned for Jeremy to stop with a gesture similar to the Nazi salute.

  Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!

  Jeremy slowed to half his prior speed. The police cars were right behind him now. He was trapped.

  Or not? asked a rogue voice in his mind.

  The car was positioned so that Jeremy’s right lane was completely blocked; however, there was sufficient room for a motorcycle to pass by in the left lane, in front of the police car. As for the gun, he didn’t think policemen were allowed to shoot at people except in self-defense.

  As he approached within a couple hundred feet of the roadblock, Jeremy still did not know if he would stop or try to get through.

  What to do, what to do?

  Based more on impulse than careful consideration, he went for it. That open space in front of the police car begged to be breeched. Jeremy downshifted and accelerated. He tried to telegraph his intentions to skirt the roadblock by hugging the left edge of the road, a line that would leave plenty of leeway between the bike and the roadblock cop. In as much as it was possible, he did not want to threaten the officer. Jeremy felt a little safer with his helmet on, although it would probably offer scant protection from a bullet.

  At less than a hundred feet Jeremy caught sight of something laid across the road. He had seen enough police chase scenes on television to recognize it as some type of tire-puncture strip. It extended from the middle of the road and disappeared in the grass on the left-hand shoulder. No wonder that side seemed so inviting – Mr. Make-My-Day planned it that way. Jeremy leaned hard to the right and careened recklessly across the road, directly in front of the gun-welding cop who, thankfully, instead of shooting, dove for cover. The motorcycle left the road on the right shoulder, passing within inches of the rear bumper of the squad car.

  Jeremy overshot the smoothest part of the shoulder and could do little more than hold on for dear life the bike bumped inelegantly over the rough ground. Gradually he coaxed it out of the clumpy grass and back onto the shoulder proper. He endured one more moment of concern as the front wheel struck a discarded cardboard beer box, which burst open on impact. The rear end fishtailed dangerously in the loose dirt before he finally managed to finesse the motorcycle back onto the pavement.

  In a burst of exhilaration and horsepower, Jeremy launched his beloved ‘Busa down the straightaway with a ferocious roar. Now they would have to play by his rules. In his wake, twelve empty beer bottles bounced and rolled across the blacktop, clinking like chimes.

  *****

  Jeremy had hoped that the roadblock would delay the chase cars longer than it did, but they took the same route around it as he had and promptly rejoined the chase. He estimated his lead to be about 30 seconds. He didn’t know how fast their souped-up cruisers could go, but he could go faster. In the past, Jeremy had gone as fast as 160 mph down this same stretch of road, and he was confident that would be more than enough to maintain his cushion. But as he punched through the 120 mph mark, he realized something was amiss. It felt the same way it did when riding in the turbulent cross-winds behind an eighteen-wheeler on the interstate, only worse. It was the bulky backpack. While he lay flat on the gas tank in the usual aerodynamic position, the backpack extended up into the wind stream. The uneven air flow was destabilizing the bike. As Jeremy increased his speed, the effect worsened until he felt as if the vicious wind might rip him from the bike like an ill-secured mattress from a pickup truck.

  Jeremy now feared the police would catch him before the break in the road, some five miles distant. As the blue lights in the rear view gradually gained ground, a plan of sorts came to him. It hinged on spotting the old three-in-one pine tree in time to make the turn while maintaining enough lead to turn off the road undetected.

  By the time Jeremy reached the Keep Out sign at the break in the road, his buffer zone had shrunk to almost nil. He would have to take full advantage of his familiarity with the area if he meant to shake off his pursuers. His lead gradually increased as he negotiated the curvy section of Sticks River Road and after a few minutes he could no longer see their lights. Jeremy had no way of knowing if the cops trailed by one, two or three curves, but he knew that time and speed were of the essence.

  As he wound farther and farther down that crooked road, he became more and more worried that he had already passed the landmark pine.

  Suddenly, inexplicitly, the words that went with a childhood game entered his mind and began to repeat: Red Rover, Red Rover, send Jeremy right over… Curiously, the voices – and there were several – were like those of young children. That made sense, inasmuch as Red Rover was a child’s game. Why or how he heard the voices made no sense at all.

  An instant later he saw them in the beam of his headlight. As dreadful and impossible as it seemed, a string of children, holding hands, had formed a barricade across the road. They were chanting, Red Rover, Red Rover, send Jeremy right over…

  Jeremy braked – hard – but it was too late. Just before impact, he shut his eyes. He would rather die than witness the carnage the speeding bike would certainly inflict on their fragile little bodies.

  One second passed… nothing. Two seconds… Jeremy opened his eyes to see nothing but the empty road before him. He checked behind but his vision could not penetrate the trailing darkness. The children were nowhere to be seen.

  There was, however, something there, so
mething of utmost importance, standing like a sentinel in the shadowy edge of the forest: the three-pronged tree. Had it not been for the red-rover children in the road, Jeremy would have passed by the tree and the skinny ruts that lay beyond it. Were it not for the hallucination, or vision, or whatever the children were, he would have missed his turn.

  Jeremy veered off the pavement and into the woods. If there was a way to turn off his headlights, he would have done so, but, as a safety feature, the lights on the ‘Busa were designed to stay on. The only way to kill the lights was to kill the engine and at fifty yards in, that’s what he did. He didn’t have to wait long. The two police cars whizzed by, blue lights blazing. Just as they passed his position, their brake lights activated. Jeremy winced, fearful that they had spotted him. After a tense few seconds, the brake lights blinked off and the taillights disappeared over the next hill.

  Jeremy waited, half expecting to see headlights reappear but none did. He relaxed for the first time in a long while, counted to fifteen, cranked his motorcycle and headed into the forbidding darkness of Reefers Woods.

  On the other side of the first significant mudhole, Jeremy cut the engine again. He checked the coverage on his mobile phone – one bar. He hated to stop but if he were going to call Tavalin, he had to do it now before going deeper into the woods and farther away from any towers. He needed information. Coincidentally, his phone showed two recent missed calls from his friend. Had Tavalin already heard what was going on? Did everyone know? Jeremy hoped against hope that his picture would not once again be making the rounds on the national news outlets.

  Jeremy kept a nervous eye trained down the muddy lane in the direction of the main road while he waited for the call to connect.