The Thousand Dollar Escape

by J. T. Brannan

  The second guy I’d hit got back in the game too, connecting hard with a huge swinging right hand to my head.

  The injury must have been making me weaker than I’d thought; normally they’d have been out of it with my first strikes.

  I heard a scream then – even over the recorded screams from the house, and the genuine screams of the customers – and recognized it as Sam’s. Hands had grabbed her, were pulling her back into the last room.

  Cops’ hands.

  Distracted, I took a hard punch to the gut without tensing and doubled over, suddenly feeling the overwhelming urge to vomit.

  Ignoring the pain in my stomach, my head, my shoulder, I tried in vain to reach out for Sam, to pull her back, but then the doorway was flooded by people trying to escape this madhouse, and she was gone.

  I stamped down hard onto the instep of the cop who had tackled me, pulling the man’s baton from his belt as I made space to move more freely. I whipped it round into the second cop’s face, breaking bones and teeth, and then saw the first man going for his weapon. I slammed the baton down onto his wrist, then crashed the butt-end hard into his face; and as he staggered back, I struck hard at his neck with the baton at full extension, the stunning impact dropping him to the floor instantly.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Kane, who jumped off the two bodies on the floor. There was blood everywhere, but the cops continued to scream and I knew at least that meant they were still alive.

  The doorway that Sam had been dragged through was clear, all the customers presumably out of the room by now, and I pulled a handgun from the floor – I didn’t know if it was the one I’d had before, or belonged to the cop I’d just KO’d, and didn’t really care – and threw open the door to the room, weapon leading the way.

  I was greeted with a hail of bullets for my trouble and I pulled back fast and low, somehow avoiding getting clipped.

  Kane, smartass that he is, hadn’t even gone near the door in the first place; and if my mind hadn’t been so addled from the sheer lunacy of this place, I might have noticed his reluctance and saved myself the near-miss.

  I calculated my options.

  Beyond the door was Sam, but there were also an unknown number of armed police, all with itchy trigger fingers.

  And if I went back in the room, would it even turn out to be the same room?

  In this place, who the hell could know?

  No, I figured my best choice would be to get out of here, try and relocate Sam once we got outside.

  The cops would be headed that way, after all.

  I wondered, briefly, if Carson would kill her the moment he saw her.

  It was possible, I figured; the customers were gone, and he had his boys with him, nobody that would rat on him for doing the deed.

  But the entire house seemed littered with CCTV cameras, presumably because of safety reasons due to the use of live actors. Sam’s murder would almost certainly be caught on film somewhere, and would Carson know where to get the footage? Did he have the power to confiscate it? And what if a staff member had watched the footage live? Would Carson be able to bribe him into silence? Would he have the will to kill him?

  For a thinking man, there were simply too many variables for killing Sam to make any sort of sense.

  But then again, who said Don Caron was a thinking man?

  He was a psychotic, a sick sonofabitch, and who knew what the hell he might do?

  The thought that Sam could have come this far only to meet her end with one of her husband’s bullets through her head made the blood run hot in my veins, my anger raging fiercely within me.

  If he’d killed her, I vowed I’d take my revenge, and make the bastard pay.

  But she was still alive.

  She had to be.

  So my mind was made up.

  I’d get out of this horror show and continue the fight outside.

  The only thing was, I thought – as I considered the roomful of armed cops behind me, and who knew fucking what ahead of me – how the hell was I going to do it?

  Chapter Thirteen

  I emerged onto the roof less than five minutes later, just as the lights went on in the madhouse below me.

  In the end, I’d decided that the stairs might be my best bet after all, and taken a chance on finding some sort of roof access. It seemed like I might never find my way out of the maze of rooms on the first floor, and had no idea how many officers were now in the building, combing the halls looking for me. If I could get up onto the roof somehow, I figured, I’d have an aerial view of what was going on outside, maybe even see what was happening to Sam – who had her, and where they were taking her.

  Upstairs, in the first room off the dark corridor, I’d found another grisly scene, this time a bathroom with blood covering the toilet, the sink, the walls, even the bath – and then a young woman, face deathly white, wrists slit, blood all over her, reached out of the bath and grabbed my arm.

  I freaked out and almost shot her in the face, but stopped myself just in time; instead I pulled her out of the bath, shocking her just as much as she’d shocked me, and recruited her as a tour guide.

  Near-naked and dripping wet, she scowled at me as she led me reluctantly through a hidden doorway and down a narrow corridor until we finally found the tiny access hatch that led to the roof. We couldn’t find a ladder, but – with a minimum of gun-based threatening – the bloody young woman had kindly agreed to give me a leg-up. Kane had jumped halfway, and I’d pulled him up the rest.

  I knew she’d go running off to tell the first person she saw, but I couldn’t bring myself to knock her unconscious; besides which, by the time anyone knew I’d come up here, I hoped to be long gone.

  Checking for helicopters but not seeing any, I shuffled over to the front lip of the building, saw that the two blocks did indeed make up a shopping mall, letting out into another huge parking lot at the front. Signs labelled it the Town West Shopping Center and – despite the relatively late hour – there were still plenty of vehicles in the lot.

  Many of them were police vehicles, a whole section of flashing lights and wailing sirens, a mixture now of Sand Springs and Tulsa PD, along with the county sheriff’s office. There was also a big old van there with ‘SWAT’ down the side, and heavily armed officers with body armor and submachine guns were out on the tarmac talking to their colleagues.

  Customers from the haunted house were being shepherded to the side, along with the crazily-dressed actors. Ambulances were also on scene, and the first wounded officers started to be brought out.

  Indeed, flashing lights and sirens seemed to be endemic in the area, I could literally see them over about a square kilometer; but then again, we had left a trail of destruction and damaged bodies over a good bit of land, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

  I heard a chopper then, and looked up to the sky; and there it was, still a long way off but coming in fast. But then I spotted that it was from a local news network, and allowed myself to relax slightly; only slightly however, because it wouldn’t take long for the police to catch up. And anyway, if the footage from the news chopper was being broadcast live, then any police officers watching would soon get a perfect shot of me spread-eagled on the rooftop.

  I’d have to move soon.

  But where the hell was Sam?

  And then I saw her – just as the SWAT team entered the building beneath me – being manhandled into a Sand Springs police cruiser by none other than Don Carson himself.

  So she was still alive, and – because she had been seen alive by other cops and deputies – hopefully he wouldn’t do anything stupid, and she would stay that way, for now at least.

  The car pulled away, Carson driving, and two other Sand Springs vehicles followed on in convoy.

  He had what he wanted now, so he was handing over the mess to the locals.

  Nice.

  The cars pulled out of the parking lot, and I realized I was running out of time; Carson was getting away with Sam, and soo
ner or later SWAT would realize where I was – either from the news feed, or from the young woman who’d helped me get up here.

  I started moving, heading along the first block before jumping across to the next, keeping low as I ran to keep out of sight from the police party in the lot below me.

  Finally, I reached the end of the second block, far away from the majority of the police presence, who were still concentrating their efforts on the Hex House.

  And in the parking lot below, I saw exactly what I was after.

  I looked over the edge of the building, on the corner facing away from the parking lot, checking that it was clear; then quickly swung myself over the side, dangling from my good arm until my feet made contact with the end of an air conditioning unit sticking out of the wall.

  I tried to put my weight on it and lever myself slowly down but lost balance and was forced to grab hold of the unit as I fell with both hands, my bad shoulder wrenched hard; and then my grip went and I fell the remaining ten feet to the concrete sidewalk, legs buckling as I made contact with the hard ground.

  I rolled around on the floor, struggling to cope with the pain racing through my shoulder. I could see blood on the sidewalk, and knew that the wound had leaked through both the bandage and the shirt.

  But I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself and simply pulled myself to my feet, cradled my injured arm and took a peak around the corner into the parking lot.

  Kane was still up on the roof, but I wasn’t worried about him – at the back of the complex were a couple of low roofs for the service entrances, and he would no doubt leap down onto one of them before making a longer jump down to the grassy area that ran along the rear of the complex.

  I hoped to be gone by then, but Kane would know what to do – simply get the hell out of there, and hope to meet up with me later.

  If I was still alive.

  And if I wasn’t, Kane would still be okay. He was a survivor, and he’d just move on and start again.

  Around the corner, I spotted the same guy on the motorcycle I’d seen from the top of the roof. He was in the lot now, parking up.

  I was racing toward him as he was taking the helmet off, punching him backward and ripping the key right out of his gloved hand.

  I sat astride the bike, inserted and turned the key, and roared off the line, my shoulder in agony as I steered over to the right, toward the parking lot exit that put me out onto West Skelly Drive.

  I wasn’t sure if I’d been spotted, and didn’t much care – all I could think about were the three cop cars ahead of me, turning past me now up the side of the shopping mall, headed north toward Southwest Boulevard.

  The route surprised me, as I had expected them to head to Interstate 44, but maybe the road they’d chosen headed back to Sand Springs somehow; I whipped the bike up toward them and saw they were turning left onto Southwest Boulevard, which made sense. Sand Springs was west of Tulsa, and this road probably went west until eventually meeting a road headed north to Carson’s hometown.

  I wondered how he’d swung it, how he’d convinced the city PD and county sheriff’s office not to bring Sam into their departments for questioning. But then I reminded myself of the scenario that Carson had set out, that his wife was merely a hostage. I was the criminal, she was the victim, and he was just taking her home, to ‘safety’.

  What a fucking joke that was.

  The sunlight was starting to fade a little now, but I could still see the cars up ahead no problem; and out of the corner of my eye – as we passed the rear corner of the mall – I was also relieved to see Kane sprinting north across the open grasslands. He’d obviously made it down from the roof okay, and was getting himself to safety.

  Good boy.

  I accelerated harder, overtaking an old pickup, checking over my shoulder to see if anything was following me.

  So far, nothing.

  But the chopper was directly overhead now, and I wondered how long it would be until someone spotted me.

  We passed an auto parts salvage yard on the left, then a string of residential units, and the boys up ahead must have spotted me because they were speeding up – first sixty, then seventy, then eighty miles an hour down the narrow country road, Don Carson’s vehicle now in the middle of the three-car convoy, protected front and rear.

  Unless . . .

  I revved the bike hard and moved further toward them. I then faked a move left into the other lane when I arrived behind the rear car, and the driver pulled over to block me; and then I used the opportunity to overtake on the right, narrowly fitting between the cruiser and the grass verge that bordered the road.

  As I shot past the hood, I saw Carson’s vehicle pull right in an attempt to hit me and I shot across the road to pull alongside the cruiser, steering with one hand – the bad one – as I withdrew the handgun from my waistband with the other and aimed it at the car’s cabin, looking for a shot at the driver.

  That was when I saw Carson smiling at me from behind the wheel, and before I could figure out why, I saw movement in the rear seat and braked instinctively.

  Just as I did, the rear window of Carson’s vehicle exploded as a passenger I’d not even seen pulled the trigger of his shotgun.

  The shot spread out in front of me, barely missing my body but some pieces hitting my front tire, blowing it out from under me and flipping the bike. I stayed on, but when I saw the rear police cruiser racing toward me I jumped at the last moment, tucking my head in tight as I rolled painfully across the two-lane blacktop.

  I ended up in a clump of grass by the side of the road, watching in burning, aching, terrible pain as that rear car smashed through the bike, wheels crushing it in half; and as the first two cars – one of them containing Carson and Sam – sped off into the distance, the rear car braked to a slow halt in the road ahead.

  I presumed they’d received a radio order from the chief to come and finish me off, and watched as two men got out of the cruiser, both holding shotguns; weapons that would soon be used to blow my head clean off my shoulders.

  They stalked toward me as I lay in the long grass, feigning unconsciousness. I had to let them get a little closer . . . just a little closer . . .

  They were upon me then, close enough to observe my damaged body but still at a distance they probably considered safe if I was to try anything.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ asked one of the men.

  ‘You heard the chief,’ the second guy said. ‘Finish him off.’

  The first guy sighed. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but Don can fill out the fucking paperwork on this one himself.’

  There was the sound of two shotguns being pumped ready to fire, and that was it – my signal to move.

  In a flash, I rolled over to face them, the handgun I was lying on coming up while my finger pressed down at the same time.

  The cop on the right took the first round, straight through his cheek, half of his head blasted away from the rear as the .40 caliber bullet exited his skull; the second cop took his shot in the throat, a geyser of blood arcing out of the man as he died with a horrid, inhuman gurgling noise.

  I was long past caring about taking it easy on these guys; there would be no aiming high, or going for arms and legs and other non-fatal areas. These fuckers were about to execute an injured man in cold blood, and deserved everything they got.

  Cops or not, there were two less murderous bastards in the world now.

  As the cops dropped dead to the blood-stained grass, I lowered the gun, my aching arm unable to even hold it anymore. It had been a miracle, I knew, that I’d managed to keep hold of the thing during the crash, and I didn’t blame my grip for giving up the ghost now.

  I was in shit-state from the accident, I knew that; I didn’t even want to look at the damage to my legs, one of which felt red raw. But eventually I did, saw how the pants leg had been torn apart, the skin ripped from the side of my thigh; gravel rash, nasty and probably going to get infected before long.

  I knew
it needed treatment but I could hear sirens heading this way from the direction of the shopping mall and knew the Tulsa authorities were on their way.

  I considered just lying there and waiting for them; after all, I’d been shot in the shoulder, had my leg half ripped off, and I was pretty sure I had a couple of fractured ribs and probably a concussion too. They might arrest me, but they’d also see that I had medical care.

  I could always try and escape from jail again, when I was feeling better.

  But then Carson would have Sam in his power for an unknown length of time, and I had a terrible feeling that she might not last that long.

  No, I decided as I dragged myself painfully to my feet, I had to get to her tonight.

  I turned south toward the residential area and hobbled over the grass border, glad that night was finally closing in as I stumbled over a low fence and into an empty back yard.

  Yes, I told myself as I blocked out the pain that was trying to pervade every single part of my body, you have to get to her tonight.

  You might not have another chance.

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  I watched the bastard cops in their cruiser as they sat outside the Carsons’ house, protecting the sonofabitch inside.

  Two cars, a pair of cops in each.

  And inside the house, six more of Sand Springs’ finest, including a couple of the guys I’d had a set-to with outside Ricci’s apartment. Good friends of Don’s, no doubt; willing to turn a blind eye to whatever the hell it was he was doing to her in there.

  Sonofabitch.

  My body wasn’t hurting anymore, at least not as much as it had been; I was pumped so full of drugs, it was a miracle I could feel the ground under my feet.

  After surviving that execution-by-cop earlier that evening, I’d staggered south through the neighborhood, passing churches and auto parts stores and houses and garages, all the while keeping to the shadows and wanting to scream in agony with every step.