by Ken Douglas
“ Motherfucker!” Harpine said.
“ I’ll sign your ticket right now!” Mitchel yelped as Rick added full power and started his takeoff roll.
Four and a half hours later Harpine was dozing in the back seat as they were lined up for a straight in to Bakersfield.
“ For a man who wanted out of the plane like there was no tomorrow, your friend sure ’nuff settled himself in,” Mitchel said.
“ Harrison can sleep anywhere,” Rick said.
“ Guess that’s what makes him such a good chief of police.”
“ You’re underestimating him. Many a man’s found out it doesn’t pay to underestimate Harrison Harpine.”
“ You’re right, I don’t know him.”
“ He’s a good man,” Rick said, conscious of the fact that Harpine was probably listening.
“ Okay, ’nuff said. I’ve written down all the frequencies you need to get up to Palma-Tampico. All you gotta do is keep putting them in and keep the arrow centered. Piece of cake. Child could do it.” Mitchel stretched, then yawned. “I’ve signed your logbook so now you’re legal.”
“ Thanks,” Rick said.
“ Mind if I bring it in?” Mitchel asked.
“ No problem.” Rick released the controls, sat back and relaxed as Mitchel landed the plane and drove it off the runway to the terminal.
“ Again, thanks for everything.” Rick shook hands with Mitchel on the ground. Then he was back in the plane, with Harpine in the right hand seat, taxiing to the runway.
“ I appreciate what you said about me, back before we landed,” Harpine said. As Rick had suspected the wily police chief had been listening.
“ Only spoke the truth,” Rick said.
“ Well, I appreciate it,” Harpine said.
“ Here we go,” Rick said, then he was shooting down the runway, then into his takeoff roll. This time he was the pilot in command. There was one to help him if he screwed up. When he’d owned the plane all those years ago, he’d spent countless hours in the pattern, practicing all kinds of landings, but he’d very rarely gone anywhere. He’d fooled Mitchel and Harpine with that power off landing. He set the frequency into the VHF radio, hoping the weather held. The last thing he needed was any surprises.
And he didn’t get any till daybreak. Harpine was waking up with the sun. It promised to be a gorgeous day. The wind was rushing away from the mountains on the right, toward the sea, when all of a sudden they were caught in turbulence and Rick lost control of the airplane.
Chapter Twenty
When J.P. left the car he knew exactly where he was, the end of Old Luke’s Road. Where the road ended, the hiking trail started, winding through the pines for several minutes till it met Bear Clearing, a man-made meadow where two or three times a year the boy scouts came to set up their tents and camp. The younger kids sometimes played there during the day and the high school kids sometimes lit campfires and drank beer during the early evening. Tampico was a small town and the young people had to make their own entertainment.
The path picked up on the far side of Bear Clearing and continued on for ten minutes at a brisk walk, snaking into Lover’s Hideaway, a small natural clearing, where the high schoolers went to make out and sometimes do a little more. From Lover’s Hideaway the path twisted its way to Prospector’s Donkey Road and a five minute walk down the dirt road would find him on Mountain Sea Road and only ten minutes from home.
He walked fast, away from the burning car, wanting to put as much distance from it as possible. When the Ragged Man came back he wanted to be long gone. He wanted to run, but his feet hurt and they were swelling up, forcing him to hobble along like an old man. He wanted to stop and rest, but he forced himself to go on.
“ Ow!” He stubbed his toe on a baseball sized rock. He looked down to inspect the damage. His right big toe was pouring blood and the toenail was broken. The front half of the nail stuck up ninety degrees, hinged on only by a flap of skin. It bobbed and flapped as he moved his foot, reminding him of a raw piece of meat, and it hurt like all get out.
His old man’s hobble was slowed to an older man’s limping stumble. He wanted to quit, to rest, but he remembered something his dad used to say. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” He didn’t want to be a quitter. And besides, when the Ragged Man came and found out what he’d done to his car, he was going to be really, really mad. So J.P. stumbled on toward Bear Clearing.
Then the forest went quiet, like it did that day the Ghost Dog chased his mom and tried to get his birds. J.P. stopped and listened.
Nothing. No sound.
This is bad, he thought. He turned his slow stumble back into a faster hobble, then into a slow run. His feet no longer hurt and he picked up his pace, bursting into Bear Clearing at a fast run.
He stopped in the middle of the clearing, dead out of breath.
The sun was going down in a sea of orange haze. The shadows were getting darker.
He looked around the clearing.
“ I’m not a quitter,” he said, panting, “I just need a minute to rest.” His bloody foot was throbbing and his sides ached where he had scraped against the rough metal, getting out of the trunk. Gingerly, he felt a bruised side and was shocked to find his hand covered in blood. He checked and found that both sides of his chest, under his arm pits and the insides of both arms were bruised, scraped and bleeding. His feet, battered against the rocky path, fared no better. He needed to rest.
He walked over to one of the two fire pits. The charcoal remains were surrounded by tree stump stools, empty beer cans and junk food wrappers. He bent over and picked up a Ding Dong wrapper. It’s Ding Dongs that got me into this, he thought, and if I ever get home, I’ll never eat another one as long as I live.
He sat on one of the tree stumps and tried to imagine what it would be like in front of the campfire, safe, with lots of friends. He closed his eyes, his head fell forward. He jerked it back. A quitter would fall asleep. He just wanted a few minutes rest.
He roamed his eyes around the clearing. The ground was covered with leaves and pine needles. The circling trees offered a wall against the outside world and the open sky allowed the setting sun to work its shadow magic on the trees, giving the clearing a ghostly, vampire feeling.
He wished he was home with his mother, but wishing wouldn’t make it so. He had to get there himself, without help, without wishes, so only marginally rested, he got up from his stool and limped through the clearing to the path on the other side. He was tired, hurt, bruised and scared, but he wasn’t a quitter. He was going home, no matter how rough the going was.
He heard a noise at the edge of the clearing, a movement through the brush, or the wind through the trees. He stopped, afraid to turn. A low rumbling growl froze him in place. The growl turned into the sound of deep breathing, then into the purr of a big cat, like the tigers in the San Diego Zoo. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t. He had to see. No matter how dumb it was, and he knew it was dumb, he had to see.
He turned his head and followed it with his body, swinging around, pivoting in place like a slow motion kung fu fighter. His skin was on fire and he felt his hair trying to stand. His mouth, dry from several hours of no liquid, got dryer and his hungry stomach churned. His feet, sides and arms screamed with pain and his mind said run, but he had to see.
And he saw.
Across the clearing, standing on the opposite side of the path, where he had entered it only a short while ago, stood the Ghost Dog. Only it was no dog. The red eyes bore into him and he met its cat-like stare head on, as curious as he was afraid. He knew what he was seeing, and it was no dog. No dingo dog like Rick told about in his story. No wolf. No bear. It was big, black and it was a saber-toothed tiger.
Its long white tusks gleamed in the setting sunlight and its glaring claws dug into the hard earth like it was Jell-O. Its smooth black fur glistened with sweat and its powerful looking legs resembled slick, black-oiled, muscle covered tree stumps. It was tiger-big,
tiger-dangerous and it growled a tiger-growl. It didn’t take a genius to know that it was tiger-mean. It snorted misty smoke from its nostrils and J.P. hoped that it wasn’t hungry.
For a full minute that felt like a full day, they stared at each other, eyes locked in a deep soul grip and J.P. knew what had happened to his cousin Janis. Like the whale that swallowed Jonah, this thing had swallowed Janis, only she wasn’t coming back. The saber-toothed Ghost Dog had eaten her, ripped her flesh apart and eaten her, then it drank her blood and all she was now was saber-tooth, Ghost Dog, tiger shit somewhere in the woods. And if he wasn’t very, very careful and very, very lucky, that’s what was going to happen to him, too.
Slowly he started to back up, neck hairs curled as he inched away. Any second he expected the black demon to pounce, and it looked powerful enough to clear the clearing like Superman, in a single bound.
Maybe the thing could jump like Superman, J.P. thought. But he was fast as the Flash. If only he could get a head start, maybe he could get away.
He backed up another inch and the satisfying purr of a cat that had the mouse turned to an irritated growl. The animal perked up its ears and J.P. stopped his retreat.
He waited but the black demon animal didn’t move. J.P. moved back another slow inch. Then another, then another. The Ghost Dog lowered its ears flat against its head and J.P. thought it was going to jump. He had to do something. So he did the first thing that came to his mind.
“ Stay!” he commanded.
The animal stopped its growl, perking its ears back up.
“ Oh God, make it stay,” he pleaded as he inched further into the woods. He moved cautiously, carefully, inch by inch, then foot by foot, never taking his eyes from the beast. As soon as the path angled and the animal was out of sight, he turned and ran, paying no attention to his bleeding feet, starving thirst or the heart pumping pain that pierced his lungs.
He didn’t hear the animal give chase, but he knew it would.
He dodged through the brush, pumping his arms like a sprinter, picking his bare feet up and laying them down on the dirt path like he was wearing track shoes and running on cinder. His raw feet were unable to send the messages of pain to his stressed out brain, because it was too frightened to listen.
He sensed, rather than heard, the black beast somewhere behind. He tried to pump his arms harder, knowing that his fleeing feet would keep pace, but his young body had been battered, abused, bruised, deprived of food and water and now he was losing blood. It was unable to answer the mind’s call.
He was running toward Lover’s Hideaway, on the verge of collapse, when he heard a woman’s voice crying out for more. There was help ahead. If only he could go on just a little longer. The hope of help sent a second wind soaring through his lungs and he was able to force himself to continue on, picking them up and laying them down.
He hoped that whoever was up ahead would be able to deal with the Ghost Dog, but down deep he knew that nobody could deal with a saber-toothed tiger. Not and live, but he wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t going to be a quitter. Even if he couldn’t go on much longer, he wasn’t going to quit. Quitters never win.
A scream that could have come straight from the African bush roared through the night, sending arrows of fear running up J.P.’s back, causing his body to pump out whatever remaining adrenaline it had left in a quick short blast. J.P. burst into Lover’s Hideaway Clearing, a screaming banshee wraith of a boy, covered with blood, sweat and dirt, looking like he had run straight out of hell.
He saw Stacy Sturgees, the Sheriff’s daughter, naked, sitting atop Deputy Terrenova and lightning quick he knew they were having sex. She was screaming, “More, more, more,” and somewhere back in his mind he knew she was enjoying herself, but he doubted she would be enjoying herself much longer.
He ran toward the couple, jumped over them and continued on without looking back, darting onto the path on the other side of Lover’s Hideaway, chugging like a dead-tired fox fleeing from the hounds. He shot along the familiar snaking path, grabbing for air and ducking low branches, like he’d done so many times when playing tag with his friends, only now it wasn’t a game. If he lost, he really lost.
He rounded the last curve before the path ended at Prospector’s Donkey Road and he saw the police car. He poured on speed, like a long distance runner, running for the tape. Please God, let it be unlocked, he silently prayed as he ran toward the driver’s door.
He pulled on the door and cried out. It was locked, but he had come too far and been through too much to quit. He tried the back door. Locked. He ran around to the passenger side and pulled the door open. Thank you God, thank you God, he thought as he piled into the car, shutting and locking the door after himself.
He was safe. At least for now. He lay back on the seat with his heart sending blood pounding to his brain. He fought for breath, but he failed to get and keep enough air to remain conscious. He passed out as the shooting started with one thought in his head. He hadn’t quit.
Jesse Terrenova was wide eyed, watching Stacy’s breasts bob and weave, twin melons of sexual excitement, as she slid her cute ass back and forth, pumping like a jack hammer. She screamed for more as the orgasm hit her.
He reached up and grabbed a melon in each hand. Their sexual softness sent shivers through his body and he squeezed and held on as his own pleasure began to build to a rising peak. “Oh my god,” he moaned, “I’m going to come again.”
She kept pumping through her own orgasm screaming, “Come for me baby. Come for me baby. Come for me baby.”
He was so excited, so worked up, so lost in the moment that he imagined he heard a jungle cat roaring in the forest. His second orgasm was so close and her fever rapid body was sending pricks of pleasure through him that were small precursors of the total rapture that he was about to experience.
He felt it building. He picked up his rhythm to accommodate hers. They moved as one. He was about to blast his way to heaven on earth when J.P., looking like he’d been put through a meat grinder, jumped right over them and continued on through the clearing. Stacy, her eyes closed in pleasure and abandonment, wasn’t even aware her privacy had been invaded.
He started slamming his seed into her when a deafening roar ripped through the clearing, drowning out Stacy’s orgasmic screams and all of a sudden a large-toothed, black panther-like animal roared into view. With a great leap it sprang upon Stacy, sinking its tusk-like teeth into her breasts, yanking her pumping, fucking body off his stiff hardness, leaving him to ejaculate into the cool evening breeze.
Still shooting his sperm, he instinctively rolled toward his service revolver, keeping his eyes on the huge animal. By the time he’d reached his weapon, the animal had ripped Stacy’s breasts from her body and blood was shooting from the screaming woman’s chest. He raised the forty-five automatic as the beast devoured her breasts and began shooting as it clamped its jaws on her once beautiful head, ripping it from her body, leaving the headless, breastless body squirming in the dirt.
The first shot hit the animal in the left shoulder as the black beast continued its grisly meal. The second and third went wild as the beast crushed Stacy’s head with cat like speed. He sank the fourth and fifth into its flank as it swallowed the bloody mess. The sixth and seventh hit the animal in the chest as it charged. The eighth and final shot followed the first into the left shoulder, but the beast kept coming.
J.P. had to go to the bathroom, and his sides hurt, but it was his feet that were the big problem. They were black and blue, swollen to almost twice their normal size. Getting out of the car to pee was going to hurt. He didn’t have to go all that bad, he thought, so he decided to wait.
Inspecting the inside of the cruiser, he found Jesse’s thermos and was reminded of how thirsty he was. He spun the top off, unscrewed the rubber cork. He had only tried coffee once, when his mother wasn’t looking, and had quickly decided he didn’t like it, but Jesse Terrenova’s lukewarm coffee was the sweetest tasting dr
ink that had ever crossed his parched dry lips. He downed the coffee, chug-a-lugging, like a drunk in a bar does a pitcher of beer, spilling as much down his chest as he swallowed.
With his thirst satisfied, he popped open the glove compartment and took out the box of granola bars that he knew he would find there. Like every boy in town, he’d spent plenty of time riding in Jesse’s cop car. Jesse coached Little League, ran the weekend crafts at the park, taught Bible school and did a myriad other things that caused him to give the kids in town a lift in the black and white, not to mention taking them on patrol with him. There wasn’t much about Jesse or his car that J.P. didn’t know.
The box of ten was half-empty, and he greedily scarfed down the remaining five, in a hurry to blunt the aching in his stomach.
Feeling a little better, with two of his three basic urges taken care of, he decided to concentrate on the third. There was no way he was going to get out of the car to pee. Reason number one, what if the black, saber-toothed Ghost Dog was still out there, and reason number two, he didn’t think he could walk on his battered feet. But he darn sure didn’t want to wet his pants.
He thought for a second, decided he could take the risk of opening the door. If he saw the Ghost Dog, he could close it quickly enough, but he wouldn’t get out of the car. He’d pee out from inside.
He rolled the window down and listened. The woods were making their normal noises. Birds were chirping, the morning breeze was rustling through the trees. They sounded alive and safe. He opened the passenger door, knelt on the front seat, unbuttoned his fly and pissed a strong yellow stream out into the wind. When he finished, he reached out, closed the door and rolled the window back up.
Then he checked the ignition and realized that he was going to have to get out of the car anyway. He needed the ignition on to use the radio and Jesse had taken his keys with him when he left the car, but fortunately J.P., like everyone else in town, knew he was always locking himself out of the car and that he kept a hide-away-key under the front bumper.