by Brian Hodge
Justin reeled backward, halfway supported against April as she aimed into the risen Tony’s midsection. She fired. Again. Again. Again. Tony jerked, was knocked off his feet. Mere inconveniences.
Justin wavered, feeling steady enough to run, and locked hands with her. He heard the wet spatter of approaching footsteps along the walkway, on the run. He wheeled around and saw a trio of soggy guys in the Indiana Jones outfits, quickly ascertained they did not carry guns. April wasted no time in letting them know she did.
“Back off!” she shouted, and they froze. “Just back off!”
They shifted into slow motion, raising empty hands and backstepping out of the way. And did not interfere as he and April rushed past them. They would find plenty of cause to move in a few moments. Tony was struggling to his feet atop the rocks, dragging that canvas bag of money.
So they ran, he and April. Determined not to look back.
Chapter 32
FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE
The rain was beginning to ebb, and the more adventurous were leaving their shelters. Busch Gardens steamed, worked its way inside clothes. You got wet no matter what, but at least rain was cooler than sweat. The walkways were beginning to fill with life once more. Parting like the Red Sea when Justin and April came charging along the paths.
The inconvenienced were irritable, or curious, or simply didn’t know what to think at all, this bruised and bleeding man rushing past in stumbling headlong gait, the woman beside him with a gun.
Wait a minute or two, he thought sourly. Then you’ll really be curious.
They lurched past rides and animals, gift shops and food stands, along wide thoroughfares and narrow curving paths. Everywhere, trees dripped the sky’s burden. He could hear distant sirens by the time they reached the main entrance, voices in the early-evening gray that he knew would prove no help. They couldn’t even begin to understand.
A parking-lot tram was loading just outside the main gates, but they bypassed it. They’d move faster on foot. They had a deathgrip on each other’s hands as they pounded onward, beneath a sky whose indifference was etched into every rolling cloud. They were halfway across the entry drives when Justin broke his new cardinal rule and looked behind. Tony was dashing through one of the desert-toned portals. From this distance, he appeared to have reverted back to the old Tony they knew and loved so well.
They sprinted across McKinley Drive, playing a dangerous game of chicken with hydroplaning cars that skidded and fishtailed and blew angry horns. Into the auxiliary parking lots, row upon row, so many cars. For a moment he blanked, could not remember. It came to him a few seconds later, and he twisted them on course for the rented Aries.
Mendoza was relentless, all the worse for his concentrated silence, total bloodlust focus breathing steadily closer down their necks. And then he branched, going his way while they went theirs. A reprieve was too blindly naïve to expect; it was a race to get to a car first. And Justin knew Tony could cover far more ground and do a lot more damage in something the size of the Lincoln than they could in their little rolling box.
Justin was wheezing by the time they got to the Aries, fumbling with the key while April slipped and slid around to the other side. He fell behind the wheel, let her in. Threw his head back in pain and clamped a hand over his bleeding shoulder while jamming the key home. Let it rev, throw it into gear. They kicked up a plume of spray in their wake across the asphalt.
“Justin!” April cried out, pointing.
Tony was paralleling their path one row over, fenced onto the other side by parked cars. The separation wouldn’t last long, though.
Justin spun the wheel right when they came to the lot’s main drive. They skidded, spun halfway beyond control, and he battled to bring it under rein while shooting for the exit. Behind them, Tony had just careened out of his own row.
Justin gunned for the exit, the lines of cars already waiting to turn onto McKinley. Tony’s grillwork loomed steadily closer in the rearview mirror, and Justin knew if they had to wait in line, they might as well roll belly-up here and now.
He saw his chance. Went for it.
He threaded the needle between the two rows of exiting cars, the right- and left-turn lanes. The fit was tight as a wedge; sheet metal flexed and scraped paint and primer down to bare steel. More horns, more angry faces. He stomped the gas and shot out across the northbound lanes, realizing if he stayed there a couple more seconds, they would inevitably collide with the oncoming cars. Once he swung left into the clear southbound lanes, he let out a breath he’d been holding for what seemed like minutes.
Behind them, they heard a grinding crash as Tony tried to bull the Lincoln through. Justin looked back, saw the cars ahead of Tony furiously maneuvering out of his way rather than sustain more damage. Their lead on him was minimal; he was out of the exit and after them a lot sooner than anticipated.
Justin gunned it south, hung a screeching right onto Busch Boulevard. Veering from one lane to another and back like a stock-car driver jockeying for the lead. April leaned over to buckle him into the seat belt and shoulder harness, then secured herself.
He raged and pounded the wheel when they reached their first intersection with a traffic light. Red light, and too clogged to do anything but wait. He brought the Aries to a skidding fishtail stop, two cars between them and Tony.
“You’re bleeding,” April said, and he looked at his arm. The drops pattering to the seat. He had a crazy fleeting thought that it was good they’d taken the insurance option when renting the car.
April hunted for a cloth, found nothing, ended up ripping her shirt bottom into a long strip. She wound it around his shoulder, knotted it snug. Not perfect, but better than leaking.
“Does it hurt bad?”
“It was worse earlier.” He spared the bandage a second look, then one for her. Gave her a softly grudging, “Thanks.”
The sirens he’d heard minutes before grew as loud as an air raid: police cars in the eastbound lanes, rocketing toward Busch Gardens. The timing couldn’t have been better, for they at least inspired Tony to keep his cool during the rest of the red light. While sidearms and shotguns may have been limited in effectiveness, they could still give him no end of inconvenience.
The police rolled past just after the light turned green, and Justin wasted no time exploiting the compact size of the Aries to thread back and forth through every gap opening ahead of them. The Lincoln may have had momentum on its side, and sheer V-8 battering-ram power, but no way could it boast the same nimble maneuverability.
“I did something I didn’t tell you about,” Justin said. He took a hand off the steering wheel long enough to reach beneath his seat, pull out a familiar shape, and rest it on the dashboard. April blinked at it. One last kilo of skullflush.
“I thought you blew it all up.”
He shook his head. “I held out on him. Just in case. So think fast. If you come up with a way to use it against him, sing right out.”
If his years in the ad business had taught him anything, it was to never, never, go into a potentially hairy situation with only one idea to pitch. The more you had up your sleeve, the better off you would be, and the people at the top had the roomiest sleeves of all. Not that he had any idea how to turn one final kilo to an advantage, but better a little leverage than none.
Option number two lay in the rear floorboard beneath a blanket swiped from the motel. Fully loaded and ready to rock. A minute later, when the motel flicked past, he felt a kind of passing nostalgia. It had served its purpose well. We who are about to die salute you.
I-275 was less than two miles from Busch Gardens, and Justin breathed easier once they reached it. No more red lights to blow, no more intersections that could turn disastrous. He veered onto the circular on-ramp and let it slingshot him around into the southbound lanes. Tony followed fifty yards behind and closing.
Justin kicked the speed higher, saw Tony do likewise. No way to peer through that reflective glass. It was as impassi
ve and impenetrable as the shades he wore earlier. And as they both pressed south, they played deadly games of hound-and-hare, wolf-and-stag among the traffic. The highway led them steadily closer to the towers of downtown, past exit turnoffs for quiet suburban neighborhoods. He got a lump in his throat when shooting past a billboard for a radio station promoting its traffic reports. A yellow monoplane sat atop the sign, angled as if on crash course for the highway, and Erik had told him it was responsible for a lot of stained underwear in people seeing it for the first time.
The Lincoln gained, even got close enough to crimp its front fender against their rear. The Aries wavered, glass and plastic littering the pavement like confetti. It was coming back for a second taste when Justin cut left around a bus with curious faces pressed against the glass, looking down in restrained panic.
April sat rigid in her seat. He had a momentary thought that he would prefer to be doing this alone, not for her safety, just that he no longer cared to have her around. It was emotionally safer that way. He uneasily began to realize that she was becoming the receptacle for every free-floating bit of fury boiling inside. He wanted to blame her for the rain, for Kerebawa’s death. Wanted to blame her because Tony was as tenacious as a pit bull on the attack, would not give it up even though common sense screamed for it. Wanted to blame her for things he’d not even thought of yet. Wanted to lean over into her face and yell until his lungs were raw, that none of this would have happened had she just had the courage to face the consequences of her past and not knuckled under to Mendoza.
But the road rolled on, and so did they, in tortured silence more corrosive than bile. Had Saturday evening traffic not been so plentiful, Tony would more than likely have already borne down on them and ground them into an end-over-end junkpile.
Nearer to the heart of the city, I-275 made its curve to the southwest, toward St. Pete and the bay. He had no choice but to follow, did not want to coax Tony into a chase through the city’s streets. As recklessly as he was barreling after them, drop him into inner-city traffic with that juggernaut and watch the casualties mount in his wake. So southwest, then.
“Justin, where are you going?” April, tight and wired.
“I don’t know.” An honest answer, wearily offered.
“We can’t keep this up, Justin. Pretty soon we’ll run out of heavy traffic, and then do you know what he can do to us?”
“Hey, I’m trying, all right?” He glared at her, a gaze to wilt flowers. “You got any better ideas? I’m all ears!”
He sagged against the door. Hated this, hated everything, hated the speed, the tropical landscape, the other vehicles he dodged with no more concern than if this were a giant game of bumper cars. Hated himself for falling in with psychopaths and head-case women who masked their neuroses until they already had their claws sunk into your heart. Hated himself some more, on general principles.
The highway was an endless flatland, arrow straight. Open fields with gauntlets of palms on both sides. Stretches of glass office buildings and multistory hotels alternating with suburban tracts encroaching upon the highway. Billboards like widely spaced dominos. Justin had the Dodge opened up as wide out as its engine would chug.
At last they rolled through the succession of gentle curves that he remembered from his previous trip to St. Pete, the perfect night with April when she had shown him where she’d grown up. The curves that sucked them toward the Old Bay and the Howard Frankland Bridge spanning it.
Justin gripped the wheel and fumed, high-octane adrenaline burning through veins and arteries. He felt like a machine whirling toward inevitable breakdown, an explosion of parts that would rain shrapnel in every direction. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, his belly an empty sack caving in on itself. Cannibalizing himself inside to keep it going, keep it all together.
He jogged around a pickup and thumped onto the bridge, shocks flexing, and in the mirror, the Lincoln followed his lead. Traffic, finally, had thinned enough to grant Tony his wish. He was on their tail, grinding bumper to bumper as Justin veered back and forth across both lanes. He turned the Dodge’s fenders to junk on both sides. First the right, on the outer retaining wall, then throwing a slipstream of sparks from the left as it raked along the center divider. Tony pounded them again from behind, and the jolt was enough to cause whiplash.
Too many more like that, and the Aries would be pulverized.
“Get the rifle out of the back,” he said.
April leaned over the seat and brought it up front, blanket and all. Unwrapped it. He had one hand on it when Tony came bashing forward again, and he heard the bumper dropping to the bridge.
Justin fought around another car, then had April take the wheel. She leaned across and gripped it with white-knuckled hands while Justin pivoted in his seat, foot still jamming the gas, and propped the AK-47 across the seatback. No single-shot action this time; he switched it for full automatic.
The gunfire was agony on the ears inside the tight interior, and the first volley chewed the back window into crystal that avalanched from the frame. The second he centered on the Lincoln’s windshield. Tony got the idea and cut sharply to the side and dropped back. Justin squeezed off anyway, aimed lower at the engine. Sparks pinwheeled off the hood and front quarter panel, and Tony dropped back another twenty yards.
Justin turned to face front again, regained the wheel. Rested the AK-47 beside his leg, muzzle pointing at the roof. It had bought them time, nothing more.
Rolling, rolling. The land disappeared behind them, the last of Tampa. Miles ahead, St. Pete. In between, only this ribbon of bridge. Justin wiped blood and chillsweat from his face.
Overhead, the sky had turned schizophrenic. To the north, day’s last light was breaking through a caul of clouds, a horizon smeared with pink and tainted by an eerie yellow haze.
To the south, it was apocalyptic with clouds as dark as betrayal, and far away, a jagged trident of lightning speared the sea. A sky at war with itself. He entertained the crazy notion that the eventual outcome hinged entirely on his own victory or defeat.
Another mile later, he had the sense that his thoughts were not entirely secret. Privy to someone else.
He locked onto the wheel, wide-eyed, while he found himself experiencing that dizzying plummet through aeons. Began to shake his head, No, no, no, I can’t be feeling this again, not now, NOT NOW! But protest as he might, he fell prey all over again. His mind swam, his soul reeled. And he recalled Erik’s explanation for the first flashback. The hallucinogen gets into your system, lies dormant in fat cells, can be released later when the cells are broken down. Rationality still held a finger on him, and he knew that with no more than he had eaten lately, little wonder it hadn’t already happened.
Ride it out, ride it out…
The Dodge, hurtling toward destinations he could no longer clearly see. Blind instinct, dumb luck, sheer terror.
April was forgotten, yet he was not alone. He was open to some desperate spirit clawing pitifully for companionship, and through a green soulstorm he recognized her.
The same one as before, who had pulled him across the city to watch as she fell victim to Tony’s experimentation in some sordid dungeon. And later, as Tony’s twisted love turned to hunger. He felt the anguish of her self-loathing, realized she was incomplete, in fragments. And when he began to wonder where she was coming from, he received a claustrophobic image-sensation of sleeping at the bottom of the sea, where anything with a taste for your waterlogged flesh — or what remained of it — could come in for a nibble.
She’s … she’s right under us.
Erik had been found floating south of here. Justin felt sick with the realization that this was Mendoza’s watery graveyard for those he chewed up and spat out.
Whatever was left of the girl clung to his soul with the urgency of an abandoned child seeking comfort and assurances that she wasn’t alone after all. Confessions, remorse. All at once he understood that she too had played a part in Erik’s final
night. She too bore the guilt, and it was digesting what remained of her. Seeking forgiveness and absolution, before nothing was left to burn.
How to finish Tony, it was all he wanted. If she could help, he would light a candle for her wayward soul every day that remained of his life. She did not turn him away.
She filled his head then, so much in so little time. Wherever she was now, in some transcendent Yanomamö realm or a hell of her own making, she at least was privy to the laws of nature that those who traveled above her overlooked.
The sea. The answer had surged beneath them all along. For a moment, all too brief, his mind floated with an image of her as she had been in life: blonde, with the face of a wanton child. And if two souls could kiss, they did. Just before she said goodbye, because he could no longer divide himself.
And when the green haze cleared, he could see as never before.
They were nearing the three-mile point where the microthin spur of land from the west jutted out to underpin the bridge. Its rocky shoreline was in sight ahead. Behind, Tony was regaining nerve enough to creep closer.
“Okay, son of a bitch,” he muttered out the window, “let’s see what you’re really made of.” Then, to April, “Hang on.”
The Dodge was in the inside lane, and he wrenched the wheel to put it in the outside. Jammed both feet on the brakes, and as the Lincoln came squealing alongside to mash doors, Justin one-handed the AK-47 up and out the window. Held the trigger for a burst of fire that ripped through the Lincoln’s fender and engine compartment and coughed out spumes of smoke and steam.
Tony lost control of the Lincoln, and as it lurched back and forth, it squashed the Dodge against the outer retaining wall. Justin slammed the transmission straight into park, brought mechanical anguish from his own engine, and then both cars were spinning into blurs that sent them bowling along the bridge in loops that reduced knees and stomachs to jelly. Justin wrestled the wheel, saw pavement and sea and sky whirl interchangeably. The world was motion gone insane, and shrieks of tires twisted beyond endurance as rubber sprayed into the air. And then…