Lost Echoes

by Joe R. Lansdale

  He tried for the gun again, but now the guy was on him, and—

  Tad kicked, caught Pale solidly under the chin, sent him spinning to the edge of the drop. But Pale scuttled around on his hands and knees, and even with one eye gone, a dart stuck in his hand, he made it to his feet, jogged for his car.

  Tad tried to cut him off, but he faked right, went left. Some football maneuver. Tad hated football. Run, bump, and mill, that was all that shit was, bunch of goobers in pads and helmets running together, and here was this motherfucker, blind in one eye, outmaneuvering him with some football move, and now he was drawing a gun from under his coat.

  Tad flicked a dart from his left hand to his right, twisted his wrist. The dart made a humming sound, went right into the guy’s throat. Pale gagged, fell to the ground, crawled behind his car.

  Tad jumped on the hood and took a leap, and there was Pale on his back, looking up, gun in hand, and as Tad came down on him like a big panther, the goddamn Flintstones song jumping into his head, the whole fucking thing in a wink of the eye, the gun fired.

  The chief worked his way steadily to the top of the hill. As he pulled himself over, he looked about cautiously, having heard a gunshot.

  Tad was amazed.

  The guy missed. Here he was, the biggest goddamn target in creation, and the guy missed.

  He thought: One eye will throw you off, won’t it, motherfucker?

  Tad had dropped his two remaining darts, was on top of the guy now, and the man was strong. Tad didn’t fight the strength. He snatched at the man’s wrist, flexed it where the nerves gathered, made the man’s wrist go weak. The gun dropped. Tad brought his fist down with all his weight behind it, hit Pale in his wounded throat, hit the dart there, drove it in deeper. Pale raised his shoulders and head, let out with a sound somewhere between a burp and a gurgle. Tad reached behind the man’s ear, brought his hand back sharply, as if he might thump his own chest, and caught him on the rear point of the jaw, knocking him out.

  Tad stood up, said, “Love tap, cocksucker.”

  As he put a hand on the hood of the car, he realized he had allowed himself to be distracted.

  He heard movement, turned, thinking: I’m getting old.

  He started to duck.

  But he was a heartbeat too slow.

  The chief swung a large limb and it caught Tad on the forehead, knocked him to the ground. Tad tried to get up, but the chief hit him again, this time behind the neck. Tad hit the dirt like he lived there.

  The chief hit him another time, in the head.

  Another time.

  He tossed the limb aside and leaned against the car, took in some deep breaths.

  “Pale,” he said.

  Pale didn’t answer.

  The chief bent over him, saw the dart in his throat. He pulled it out, flicked it away. He lifted Pale’s head. “Sergeant, you with me, man?”

  Pale blinked his eyes. Blood ran out of the ruined one, blossomed like a ripe strawberry on his neck.

  “I said, you with me?”

  Pale said, “He put my goddamn eye out!”

  The chief could see that now. There was blood all over the place. “Yeah, man. He did. Can you get up?”

  The chief helped him. Pale pulled the dart out of the back of his hand, tossed it aside, put that hand over his eye.

  “Sit in the car,” the chief said. “You got some first-aid shit, right?”

  “Glove box. But there ain’t no eye in there. Man, God, fuck, it hurts.”

  “All right. Come on.”

  The chief walked him around to the driver’s side, helped him in. “My gun. It’s on the ground,” Pale said.

  “Sit there a minute,” the chief said. “I’ll get the gun, the first aid.” The chief closed the door, hurried to the other side of the car, stopped to kick Tad in the head, looked around until he saw the automatic. He picked it up, opened the door on the passenger’s side, climbed in.

  “God,” said Pale, his hand over his ruined eye. “I hurt bad. I’m fucking blind. My eye. It’s gone, man. Gone.”

  “You go home, gonna be hard to explain.”

  “Oh, God. I don’t know what to do. That fucker. I hope he’s dead.”

  “I believe he’s dead and then some. Pale, look at me.”

  Pale looked.

  The chief lifted the automatic quickly, put the gun to Pale’s blind eye, and pulled the trigger.

  58

  When the car went over, Harry thought, this is some shit, and he thought maybe if they hit certain spots, he was going to get a flashback replay of what had happened to the other couple. It was a thought that ran through his mind, then he remembered they had been dead when they went over, or so it had seemed in his previous visions. And besides, the gunfire at close range had kicked his eardrum wicked hard, made it difficult for him to hear himself yell. Which he was doing.

  He and Kayla banged together, flew against the glass and all about the car like Ping-Pong balls. The car hit on its front bumper, did a headstand, and went completely over, partially crushing the roof in, knocked the flapping trunk lid off, finished a complete flip, and came to rest with the nose of Harry’s car smashed up against a tree.

  There was a flutter of images, weak, like a dying bird trying to lift its wings a last time, and then there was the darkness.

  Harry lay there blinking, turned his head to the left. He was lying partially on the dash, partially draped over the steering wheel.

  He hurt, and though he wasn’t hearing all that well, something inside of him had come undone and all the sounds of horror and misery and destruction were moving about in his head, bumping together, and he felt all of them, and they made him sick. He lay there not moving, feeling all the terrible things there were to feel until they slowly began to subside.

  He was so tired of being afraid.

  “I’m sick of it,” he said aloud, “and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

  He was staring out of the windshield of his car. The glass was spiderwebbed. There was a tree in his view. He had seen the tree before, a few days back. He realized he was on top of the car where he had had the visions.

  Thank goodness for this big-ass tree, he thought.

  Cautiously Harry rolled off the dash, tried to get some kind of balance, but the angle made it difficult. At first he thought Kayla had been thrown from the car, because the back right door was open, almost knocked off, and he didn’t see her. He did see Joey through the open door, though. He was positioned with his head against the ground, his neck bent like a wire hanger. He was supported on his knees, his legs still bound up behind him.

  Harry leaned over the front seat and saw Kayla on the floorboard of the backseat, lying facedown. Not moving.

  Harry coughed, spit up some blood. He hoped it was from something banged inside his mouth, not inside his gut. He leaned over and touched her. The car shifted to the left.

  “Shit.” With the ringing in his ear, he couldn’t even hear himself speak. He called Kayla’s name a few times, but she didn’t move. Again, he could hardly hear the sound of his own voice. Had no idea if he was yelling or whispering.

  Carefully he climbed over and fell against the backseat. The car creaked, shifted more to the left. Harry pushed his weight slowly to the right, lay on the seat, put his hand on Kayla’s back. He could feel her breathing.

  He tried the door on his left. It opened. He got hold of Kayla and pulled her out of the car, onto the slope. It was a little precarious, but the slope wasn’t too radical there, had some shape to it. He could keep his footing, could lay Kayla out fairly straight, her feet drifting a bit toward the bottom of the hill.

  Lying there on his back in the dark, Kayla beside him, looking up the hill, he could see the shape of tree limbs overhanging the slope, and he could see spotted between them ragged rips of night sky; stars, like the silver tips of straight pins, poked out suddenly as his eyes become accustomed to the night.

  His thoughts were rattled. He wondered abo
ut the chief. He had had hold of him as they went over, but he didn’t see him lying about. Had the bastard gone all the way to the bottom?

  He thought he heard a kind of snapping sound up the hill, but his hearing was still messed up. He felt as if his balance was off as well; the hill seemed to tilt precariously. He turned and looked at Kayla, lying in the vines and leaves. She was breathing heavily now, one arm was twisted funny, and he could see something poking up under her cop shirt. Her eyes fluttered but didn’t open.

  Harry leaned over her. “Can you hear me?”

  He couldn’t hear himself, but he hoped she could.

  Her eyes came open and she moved her mouth. Harry thought the word was yes.

  “I can’t hear well, but I want you to listen. I’m going up the hill. See what’s going on. I think you’re going to need a doctor.”

  Harry unbuttoned her shirt, moved it aside carefully. There was a rip in her side, and a rib was poking up through the wound.

  “All right. It’s not bad.” He tried not to lie too obviously, tried to look certain, like someone who knew. He wasn’t sure how she was doing or even how he was doing. “I don’t want you to move. I’ve got to go up, see how things are. Got to get you a doctor. Don’t know if I should move you again.”

  He didn’t say what he was thinking: They may come down to finish you and me.

  He couldn’t just sit and wait. He had to go up and see how things were, on the sneak. Had to get Kayla a doctor. And if there was a chance, any kind of chance at all, he had to kill both of those sons of bitches. An unlikely event, but it was all he had; it was the thing that gave him juice.

  He was lucky, the hill might have taken care of the chief and he was lying at the bottom of it all, wadded up like a ball of aluminum foil.

  That still left the other guy.

  Kayla grabbed his arm. He looked at her lips, tried to understand what she was saying. He got it. It was easy.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He patted her shoulder, said, “They wouldn’t have had to burn me with a cigarette. They just showed me one and a match, a lighter, I’d have sung like a goddamn canary.”

  She tried to smile, but the smile crawled away, became a tight line.

  He gave her one more pat on the shoulder, and steeled himself, started up the hill.

  So, I’m kind of fucked here, the chief thought. Or I could be fucked, if I’m not fucked now. Got to put it together. They find this business, it’s gonna look weird, but way I see it, I push this car over the hill too, it comes out like this: Guy comes up here to push an unsuspecting couple over the lip of the hill, a renegade cop.

  Yeah. That’s good.

  Then he shoots himself in the eye, and drives himself over.

  Now that sucks.

  Let me see. Okay. I leave the car at the top of the hill. I wipe the gun clean. I put it in Pale’s hand. He committed suicide. Shot himself up here on the hill. Maybe he gets found, and no one will find the car down the hill. Least not right away, therefore no connection.

  All right. That sucks too. But it’s a little better.

  And what if I sit here long enough someone wants to neck comes up the hill, and I have to kill them too. Then I got a pile of bodies.

  Shit. I got a pile now. I got these two, the trussed-up guy, and Harry and Kayla.

  I’m getting quite a congregation.

  And I don’t even know if they’re all dead. Got to finish the job. Shit. Got to go down there and do that. Make sure they’re in the deceased column.

  What a mess.

  Think, man, think.

  It’s a problem. Could be a bigger problem I fuck around here long enough. Thing is, I make sure those two are finished, then I just leave, walk off, work my way to town, it’ll take me…Good grief, three hours, maybe more. It’s a good walk. I might be seen.

  I could stick to the woods. There’s just that highway problem, and if I wait until there’s no traffic, I can run across, and then there’s woods bordering the road there, and I can work my way back toward town. Then there’s that space of houses and the like before I get to my place.

  Not easy, but shit, it’s what I got.

  It beats sitting here watching Pale’s brains drip off the upholstery.

  The chief got out of the car, looked at Tad’s body.

  Who is this guy? What’s his story? What’s with the darts? What is he, a freelance dart master hiding in the woods, ready to try out victims?

  What do I do with him?

  Okay. I can put him in the car with Pale. That would work. I could put his fingers on the gun, make it look like he shot Pale. Yeah, that would work.

  When everyone gets a look at this, it’ll be a big mystery. But there’s nothing to connect me. Just some cop gone bad had a deal of some kind going down, and it didn’t work out. Maybe it’ll look like he picked this guy up for a blow job, and the guy turned on him, shot him.

  Oh, wait. How did this guy die? He’ll have marks on him from the limb. So that won’t work. Not unless they want to believe he beat himself with a stick.

  Okay. I could fire a round into his head, and it could look like they had a fight maybe, and the guy on the ground, he got in the car as Pale was trying to get away, shot him, then for some godforsaken reason, shot himself.

  Not so good.

  The chief’s head was starting to hurt.

  Okay, let’s go at it again….

  Fuck it.

  I’ll make sure those kids are done for, leave everything as it is. No way anyone is going to figure out this goddamn mess. I made the mess, and I’m not sure what’s going on, so how’s anyone else gonna figure it?

  Come to think of it, this is good. It’s like the Gordian knot of crime, so interwoven and messed-up it’s impossible to figure out.

  Now, if a UFO would just crash into the side of the hill, it would be a perfect night.

  The chief checked his watch.

  Okay. I buy the DVD.

  The chief felt pressure on his ankle.

  He looked down, tried to move his foot, couldn’t.

  It was the guy on the ground, the one he had batted with the stick like a tetherball.

  He had grabbed his ankle, and now the man’s other hand shot out, his forearm striking the inside of his leg, working a nerve there, knocking him backward and down.

  The chief had stuck the gun in his belt, and he pulled it out, tried to shoot the bastard. A hand slapped up, got hold of the chief’s wrist. It hurt. He dropped the gun. He kicked with his other foot, knocking the guy off of him, scrambled to his feet.

  But now the man was up, on his feet, wobbling from all those blows from the limb, but, goddamn it, he was standing.

  They both looked at the gun lying on the ground, wet-black in the starlight.

  Harry came over the lip of the overhang and looked up to see Tad and the chief struggling on the ground. A moment later the chief rose up with something in his hand.

  A gun.

  Tad, like some kind of jet-propelled shadow, shot across the ground, extended a palm, hit the chief in the chest, knocked him up and onto the car hood, and caused him to do a flip and go over to the other side.

  Tad limped around the front of the car, trying to get to him.

  The chief, looking as if he might need a winch to get him up, grabbed hold of the car’s tire, made it to his knees. He still had the gun. Tad came around the front of the car and Harry yelled, “Look out, Tad. He’s still got the gun.”

  Tad shifted as the chief fired. The shot hit Tad high in the left shoulder and spun him around and knocked him on the ground.

  Harry was on his feet now, on the cliff’s edge, seemed to have some of his balance back. He ran toward the chief screaming.

  The chief took careful aim at Harry.

  Fired.

  Harry, when he saw the gun point in his direction, held it a beat, the way he thought Tad would, then dropped so low he was running on hands as well as feet, like a big ape—a spotted-ass ape. Ther
e was a burst of light from the automatic and the bullet sang by his head, and now he was almost on the chief, and there was no way the bastard was gonna miss from there, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t do it, was mad as a pig that had just found out sausage was his cousin, was through being afraid. He kept coming and the chief, still on his knees, rose up so that one knee was lifted, took careful aim, and then—

  Just before he fired, Tad, lying on the ground, seeing almost double, the night spinning black and star-pricked in his head, managed to grab a handful of dirt and throw it, hitting the chief in the face. The chief, jerked, fired—

  —and it was a miss, and Harry was on him.

  Tad lay down on the cold ground and rolled onto his back and looked up at the night and all the stars, and they did a milky spin up there, around and around, and he found that he could not feel the ground anymore. All he felt was cold, and as if he were falling, one moment down a bottomless pit, the next, upward into the star-specked eternity of space. Then he didn’t feel anything.

  Harry and the chief rolled over and over, and when the roll ended, the chief’s gun was gone. The chief wobbled to his feet. The chief threw a right as Harry came into range, and Harry remembered what Tad had once told him. What they do doesn’t matter. Be like the monkey. Be selfish. Don’t care. Do your thing.

  And he relaxed, not worrying about the punch. He did his thing. The punch hit him and knocked him on his ass.

  Goddamn, Harry thought. That hurt. Maybe what they do does matter. He rolled to his hands and knees and the chief kicked at him. Harry took the kick, grunted, rolled into the chief’s leg, pushing at it with his body, dropping him to the ground.

  Harry scurried on top of him. The chief tried to put his thumbs in Harry’s eyes, but Harry twisted away and dropped between the chief’s arms, letting his elbow fall into the chief’s face.

  The chief barked like a dog, was suddenly possessed of tremendous strength, tossed Harry off of him. He got to his feet. Harry could see he was looking for the gun.