by E. R. FALLON
The stars only provided a faint light. I prayed Joyce would trip behind me in the dark and I could flee to the house. But would I have just been fleeing one death sentence for another? After all, I had killed that man, and maybe Joyce and Albert were wrong or were lying and he was a bad guy, but maybe they were right. Because of the flashbacks I had, much too vivid and too real to have been false, it never occurred to me that I might not have done anything wrong or anything at all.
Once we got past the tree-line Joyce handed me some tissues from her pocket and gestured me to go behind the bushes.
“Don’t worry, I won’t look. Sorry we don’t have a flashlight,” she whispered.
I nodded though she couldn’t see me.
I pulled down my pants and I could barely see my body in the dark, just flashes of my skin. I felt the cold night air pinching at my skin. Then I felt a warm trickle of urine running down my thigh, and when I put my pants back on they were dappled with urine. “Damn it.”
“What’s wrong now?” Joyce asked in an irritated whisper.
“I got it on myself.”
“That’s too bad. Hurry up.”
I stepped out from behind the bush. “I got some on myself. Can I get my duffel bag out of the car and change?”
It was dark out but I was pretty sure Joyce rolled her eyes. “Military girl doesn’t know how to pee outside?”
“No, that’s not it, I—”
I didn’t finish talking when it became clear Joyce wouldn’t respond.
She walked close to me on our return to the car and I could see the shadow of the gun she now aimed at my side. “The Air Force is a man’s world. Takes a brave woman. I would’ve thought someone like you wouldn’t baulk about taking a tinkle outside.”
“Whenever I peed outside, I didn’t have someone pointing a gun at me.”
Joyce groaned. “What did I say about sarcasm?”
“I know, you don’t like it.”
“If you remember, then why are you still doing it?”
“It’s who I am, I can’t help it.”
“Even when you’re being held hostage by someone with a gun?”
“It’s who I am. I’ve been this way for forever.”
“It’s a defense mechanism. Did you know that? Some people use sarcasm when they’re on the defense. I learned that much from working at the doctor’s office.”
It was the first time she admitted to knowing Dr. Tompkins.
“I’ve heard that, yeah,” I said.
“So what do you have to be so defensive about, Emily?”
I almost said, “Well, right now, I’m being held hostage.” But I said, “Can I have my duffel when we get to the car? I have a clean pair of pants in there.”
“Why do you need them?”
“You know why.”
Joyce dropped the subject of my attitude but continued deriding me in her own way. “I don’t understand why someone with as much experience in what I assume was a harsh military environment is bothered by a little bit of pee on them.”
“You can’t see it in the dark, but it’s more than a little. It’s soaking my one pant leg. You wouldn’t want for me to get it on the car seats and all over you and Albert.”
“No loss for us. It’s your car, not ours.”
“Please?” I hated begging, but we’d reached the car and I would have to change outside if I was going to do it. There wasn’t enough room or privacy inside the car.
“I suppose you’re going to want your shoes next,” she said.
“What’s that, Joyce?” Albert said through the driver’s side window. He must have opened it.
Joyce opened the passenger side door to speak to him and the inside of the car lit up. “Emily here wants a clean pair of pants. She peed on herself.”
Albert chuckled. “Let her have them.” He gestured at me. “Hurry up, though, we’re wasting gas.” He’d kept the engine running.
Joyce motioned for me to follow her to the trunk Albert had unlocked from inside. She took out my duffel, and with one hand still pointing the gun at me, with her free hand she rummaged through my bag – the only bag of clothes in there as far as I could tell; I guessed she and Albert were going out of the country with just the clothes on their backs and the bag of money in the backseat – in the dark until she found the jeans I’d packed. I caught a glimpse of my white sneakers and was tempted to push her out of the way, grab them and run. But she had the gun pointed at me and the more I’d gotten to know Joyce, the less and less I felt she wouldn’t shoot me if pushed her hard enough. I shuffled from side to side, trying to warm my increasingly cold bare feet.
Joyce had moved my bag when she searched through it and underneath it was what I now could see looked like a bomb with wires sticking out of an open box in the trunk. It had a timer that wasn’t set. Where the heck had that come from? Had they hidden the bomb in my cavern?
“What the fuck?” I shouted. “I knew you two were nuts but you have a fucking bomb in a car with gasoline?”
Albert opened his car door. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, Albert. Emily has just discovered our little surprise.” She smiled at me and almost scolded me with a schoolmarm-like tone. “The gas and the bomb are far enough away from each other to not be a problem, dear.”
“Too bad she discovered it,” Albert said.
What the heck had he meant by that?
Albert shut his door and Joyce spoke to me.
“Albert made that bomb in case you try to do something naughty with the plane. It’ll be programmed to go off in case you try to land early.”
I’d been wrong about Albert’s background. She looked at me closely and seemed to understand what I was thinking.
“Did Albert work with explosives in the war?” I asked.
His demeanor, from the way he’d needed little rest to how he’d stayed up all night watching the outside of my house, did give off a military vibe. What had really given it away lately was how he’d referred to the time to Joyce in the military way once or twice when he was distracted driving.
She shrugged. “Probably. We were estranged for a long time, and he never told me exactly. He doesn’t like to talk about it. I do know he was in prison. That must’ve come after the military. Or the military threw him in prison. I can’t remember. He’s my brother but like I said, we didn’t know each other for a long time. And we don’t know everything about each other. He doesn’t know I’m dying. Can you tell? Don’t tell Albert. He won’t be able to handle it. I have ALS. Have you noticed how my hands shake and sometimes I seem a little ‘out of it’? My right hand is the worse, and of course I’m right-handed.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m not sure. I guess it’s because you’re easy to talk to, unlike Albert.”
“Is that why you did the robbery, to pay for your medical expenses?”
“No. I always wanted to do it. I don’t have much time left. That’s what my doctor told me, anyway, a while ago. So I figured I better do it before my time on this earth ran out. But I’m still here. For now. I haven’t seen a doctor in ages because I lost my insurance after your damn doctor got rid of me.”
“I’m sorry, Joyce. I won’t say anything to Albert. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She shoved the pants in my direction. “Here, put them on. I’m not turning around. I can’t see you too well anyhow. Albert can’t either, it’s too dark.”
I put them on. “What’s my fate, after you land in Cuba?”
“How’d you know … Never mind. You can start over there like us. It’ll be warm, nicer than where you lived before.”
“You’re going to let me live and expect me to stay there with you? What if I don’t want to?”
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”
I still wondered if they planned to kill me after I’d flown them there.
“Can I have my shoes
?” I asked.
“Hell, no. Why are you even asking me that?”
“I just thought I’d try.”
“There’s that sarcasm again. You better watch that.”
Joyce tried to open the passenger side door that faced us, the seat which would be hers, but it was locked. She made me walk with her while she went over to Albert’s driver side window, which he’d closed, and tapped the glass.
“Let us in. The damn door locked on us.” She looked at me standing next to her. “Your car sucks, did you know that?”
“Pretty much every car made after a certain year locks by itself after a certain amount of time has passed.”
Joyce blew air out of her nose. “Goddamn it, you are so sarcastic.”
I tried to diffuse her with, “My feet are numb. Can we please go inside?”
Albert gestured to us and I heard the lock open. Joyce stuck the gun into my arm and opened that door to the backseats.
“Get in. And you better remember what I said about keeping what I told you from Albert.”
I nodded quickly. My cold feet welcomed the warm blast of air coming from the car heater on the floor. Albert and Joyce didn’t always have the car heat on so I relished the occasional moment of warmth. But even being inside a cold car was better than being outside.
Albert accelerated and we were on what felt like the endless road once again. It seemed as endless as I felt hopeless. The police might have found Dr. Tompkins’s body by then, and if I managed to escape and get to them and then led them to Joyce and Albert, they would tell them what I had done to that man, and all three of us might be in jail. Either way, my fate was death, for life imprisonment was in a way a form of death. Would they think I had killed Dr. Tompkins? But Albert had strangled him and his hands were larger than mine.
Chapter Six
Joyce and Albert didn’t seem to need sleep. I caught Joyce nodding off a few times with me in the backseat, but Albert seemed wired and wide awake all the time. I wondered if he had gotten meth at the truck stop. Sometimes when driving he’d glare at me through the rearview mirror and his eyes looked bloodshot and crazed. He seemed to have left my baseball cap behind at the truck stop because I didn’t see it anywhere in the car. Maybe it would serve as a clue to help find me.
I woke up and thought it was still nighttime then I looked at the car’s clock and saw the time: 4 a.m. A Saturday. I remained still and pretended to still be asleep and listened to Joyce and Albert talking. They’d stopped at the side of a road just after midnight that same day to put some of the gas from the red containers I had in my garage into the car. It had been raining then but had stopped. Now Albert sat next to me and Joyce drove.
“They probably found the doc’s body by now and are looking for this girl’s car,” Joyce said. “We should get a new vehicle.”
Had she referred so me so coldly as ‘girl’ to take the emotion out of the ordeal?
“There’s nothing around here.” Albert sighed.
He’d removed his long-sleeved outer shirt and there were what looked like prison tattoos covering his big, hairy arms. His skin glistened with sweat despite the cold. How had he gotten that scratch on his forearm?
“Oh, hush. Some people have to live around here. This ain’t Mars.”
“I sure as hell hope so, or else we’re screwed.”
The car came to a screeching halt and I opened my eyes.
“There!” Joyce said.
Albert moved his large body in the seat next to mine and scooted close to the edge of the seat. Joyce had pulled over to the side of the road and parked behind a cluster of tall, wide trees, next to a small, lazy-flowing river.
I squinted out the passenger window and could see a new-looking, dark blue pickup truck parked in the driveway of what must have been the only house for miles, a red-brick, one-level place. To say it was quiet would have been an understatement. The sight of the river made me lick my lips. Joyce and Albert had brought some bottled water from my house but it was running out, and the only food I’d been given had been the fast food that I’d hardly ate from the truck stop. The soda had been long gone by then.
“You wait here while I check to see if the keys are in it,” Albert said. He started to open the door but Joyce stopped him.
“Nobody leaves their keys in their cars anymore, Albert.”
“That’s not true. In areas like this people still do. Anyhow, I can hotwire it if need be.”
“Did you learn that in prison?” she asked.
He gave her a serious look then moved his big self out of the car – he could open and close his door from the inside, I just couldn’t do the same with mine – and quietly shut the door.
“Do you think it has the keys in it?” Joyce commented to me from the front seat. “I’m taking bets.” She turned off the car. “Gotta save gas in case Albert screws up.”
I watched as Albert checked to see if the truck’s driver side door was unlocked. It was and he pulled it open. Albert climbed in and I could see him bending down in the seat with the door open.
“He’s hotwiring it,” Joyce said in an excited tone.
After a moment, the pickup truck started and Albert shut the door. He backed out of the driveway slowly and parked alongside us on the road. He gestured through the open window.
“Get the stuff out of the car trunk and throw it under the pickup’s back cover.”
“Stay there,” Joyce ordered me. She hurried out of the car and came around to where I sat to open the door. “Get out.”
The cold air woke me right up. “My shoes …”
“Shut up about that. Didn’t I tell you you’re not going to get them until we say so? And we haven’t said so.”
I dreaded touching the icy ground to my bare skin again and gripped around for the side of the open car door to steady myself as I got out. Joyce ordered me to stay in place while she quickly moved the red gas containers and the contents of the car trunk to the pickup truck. She carefully moved the heavy-looking box with the bomb and I instinctively reached out to help her. I didn’t want her to slip and have it blow up.
“Stay in place, dammit.” She boiled over with annoyance.
I stood still again, but shifted slightly from side to side because my feet were so cold.
“Come on, Joyce, hurry up.” Albert made an impatient motion over and over again with his hand like he wanted to beep the horn. “It’s so early, they’re probably sleeping but you never know.” He kept glancing toward the unlit house.
The sun began to gradually rise.
“Easy for you to say. You’re sitting on your warm ass in there while I’m stuck moving all this crap in the cold,” she whispered furiously.
I couldn’t resist a shrug and saying, “I did offer to help.”
She gave me a look like a knife piercing my flesh.
Once Joyce finished, she ordered me into the front of the truck next to Albert. There weren’t any backseats so we’d all have to ride together, jam-packed up front. Joyce gestured at me with the gun in her hand and I climbed up into the truck and sat next to Albert. He moved uncomfortably in his seat when my thigh touched his meaty one. Joyce got in after me but dropped the gun to the outside ground as she shut the door.
“Joyce, the gun!” Albert said.
She cursed and opened the door again, reaching down to grab the gun from the dirt. She closed the door and placed the gun in her lap and dusted it off with her fingers.
A naked chubby man with a headful of wet hair bolted out of the house onto the end of the quiet driveway. I winced as he ran across the pebbled driveway with bare feet. Albert quickly locked the doors but he still had his window open. The man pulled on the door handle unsuccessfully and then gripped the edge of Albert’s window. Water dripped off his hair and skin. He must have just gotten out of the shower.
“You’re stealing my truck! This is my truck. You can’t take it!” The man shouted so loudly I could hear every word over the grumble of the running engine. �
��I need my truck to get to work. Please!”
Albert took off with the guy still attached to the pickup truck, his body half dragging on the road and half hanging in the air.
Albert screamed, “Fuck!”
Joyce tossed the gun to him. “Here!”
With one hand grasping the steering wheel, with his free hand Albert grabbed the gun from his lap, pointed it at the guy, and fired one shot.
The bullet had pierced the man’s forehead and dark red blood trickled out of the hole. I gagged. Still attached to the window, the man twitched and then his body stilled and his eyes rolled off to the side. He fell down onto the road and I heard a loud thud. Little clouds of dust from the road rose through the air. The pickup truck jumped up and then back down and Albert must have ran over the guy.
“Holy shit,” I yelled in horror. “What the hell did you just do?” He’d blown the guy’s brains out right in front of me.
“What does it look like I did?” Albert shouted at me. He seemed angry, angry with me for speaking and angry that he’d shot the man.
Joyce reached to soothe him. “Take it easy, Albert.”
“You killed him,” I said.
Albert threw the gun toward Joyce but it landed in my lap and the metal felt warm against my crotch. Joyce swiftly took it from me and pointed it at me with her hands shaking. That time, I cowered and shut my eyes because I thought she might actually shoot me. When she didn’t, I opened my eyes after a few moments.
Albert roared away from the scene as a small, blonde woman carrying a young child, a little girl still in her cartoon-patterned pajamas, ran out of the house – the man’s wife and child, presumably. She set the child down on the grassy front lawn and ran out into the dirt road to her husband’s body. She cried his name, something that sounded like “Mike”, over and over and then howled with grief when he didn’t move.
Had Albert shot and killed him in front of me to show me what they were capable of?
I had gone to war and had seen many terrible things, but I’d never seen something as horrible as that nightmare moment. The man twitched once more on the dusty earth when his wife touched him and tried to hold his limp hand for one last time as he took what must have been his final breaths.