Primal Threat

by Earl Emerson

  “He got super-pissed when we beat him,” said Zak. “If we did it again, he would really be mad.”

  “I think it’s a bad idea,” whispered Stephens. “You can beat them down, maybe, but at the bottom the road runs flat along the river for a good bit before it gets to the bridge. If they don’t crash, they’ll catch you on that section.”

  “If we do it right they’ll crash,” said Muldaur. “Somebody come with me.”

  “It’s suicide,” said Stephens.

  Muldaur looked at Giancarlo, who said, “My leg. I can’t do it.”

  “Zak?”

  “Chase them down the hill?”

  “One of us on either side. Scare the piss out of them.”

  “They’ll shoot at us when we come by.”

  “They’ll be lucky if they keep all their teeth in their mouths going down that mountain.”

  “So will we.”

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “I wish we knew the road better.”

  When Scooter and his companion got into the Land Rover and disappeared slowly over the lip of the mountain, Muldaur pedaled through the weeds and rocks to the road. By the time Zak caught him, he’d already reached the juncture where the road headed downhill. Zak took the wheel rut on the right side of the road, while Muldaur took the one on the left.

  38

  “This thing just doesn’t seem right,” said Perry, holding the armrest on the door with one hand, bracing himself against the dashboard with his other. In an attempt to further wedge himself in, he had one foot on the seat and his knee in his chest. The Land Rover was rocking so violently Perry felt like a shoe banging around inside a washing machine. He’d already bit his tongue and smacked his elbow on the window, and now that Scooter was beginning to pick up speed, he’d fumbled for his seat belt so many times he gave up. It was all he could do to keep from bouncing through a window and landing on the road.

  This was by far the worst road they’d seen so far—and they’d been on some doozies—rocky as heck, the pitches changing every fifteen or twenty feet, off camber at the worst times, with more frequent and rockier rain diversions across it than anything they’d seen until now. Much of the road surface seemed to be granite, slick and hard, and there were loose rocks everywhere. There was no telling how many months or years since anybody drove it.

  The only good part was that Perry was able to see the panoramic view out to the west, at least when his teeth weren’t clacking together. Scooter had his eyes glued to the road, wrestling the steering wheel as if it were alive, cursing every time they hit a bump, pumping the brakes and letting them go and then jamming them again, engaging the ABS system four times in just the first hundred yards. It was almost as if he were deliberately trying to pitch Perry through the windshield.

  And then in a flash their situation changed. Whooping like wild Indians on a raiding party, two orange-clad cyclists passed them, one on either side, flashing down the hill at almost twice the speed of the Land Rover.

  They’d come so close to their windows and had startled Scooter so badly he momentarily lost control of the vehicle. Perry smashed his head against the roof and yelled, “Shit!” It came out thit.

  “Jesus! What was that? Bastards!”

  “Don’t chase them,” said Perry. “They’re going too fast.”

  Scooter sped up anyway. It was reckless, and Perry was about to tell him to slow down when Scooter thrust the rifle at him with one hand. “Pump some lead into those assholes.” Incredibly, without losing control of the vehicle, Scooter had snatched the rifle from the floor in the back. They hit another bump and Perry’s head made contact with the roof again, causing him to see stars. The rifle smacked him in the face and then flew into the backseat, where it bounced into the cargo area in the far rear.

  “Shoot those fuckers.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s all I can do to keep from going through the roof.”

  “Ass wipe.”

  They passed a small waterfall, the water rushing under the roadway through a culvert. Then the road flattened and turned left, gigantic rocks on either side. It swung right and began descending along the edge of the mountain again. Somewhere between the time Ryan lost his grip on the rifle and the waterfall, they lost sight of the cyclists. When they came back into view there was only one rider, and he’d lost most of his speed. “Where’s the other fucker?” Scooter asked.

  “I don’t know. Slow down and quit swearing. Maybe the other guy went off a cliff.”

  “We can only hope.”

  “We’re going to go off a cliff if you don’t slow down.”

  “Quit being such a pansy. We almost have him.”

  Perry’s tongue was swelling where he’d bitten it, and he could taste iron as his mouth filled with blood. Twice in the last hundred yards the suspension had bottomed out with a horrible metallic clunking, and twice they’d hit so hard Perry thought he’d sprained his neck. He was being jostled so that his voice came out in a warble. Whatever else was going on, they must have been making the cyclist nervous, because the remaining rider kept turning his head half a notch so he could chart their progress in his peripheral vision. Perry could see no obvious reason for the cyclist’s sudden decrease in speed. Whatever prompted it, the cyclist looked to be in complete control, while Scooter was barely able to keep the Land Rover on the narrow, snaking track.

  Gradually they drew close enough that Perry could see it was the retarded guy. As soon as he realized who it was, Scooter began driving even more recklessly, edging closer to the rear wheel of the bike. “Stay still, motherfucker! I’m going to run you down.”

  “Quit cursing,” said Ryan.

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “You’re going to get us killed!” Just as he spoke, they slid partially off the road and sideswiped a sheer wall. Perry was surprised he’d yelled, and even more surprised at how high-pitched his voice sounded. He hadn’t flung such anger at anyone in years. The noise the Land Rover made when it contacted the rocks merged into the excruciating staccato cacophony coming from Perry’s mouth when he realized they were both about to die.

  “Look. We can tag this bastard. Watch me tag him.”

  “Can’t you see he’s toying with you?”

  “No way. All I have to do is put on a little pressure and he’ll go off into the trees. If we catch him, I bet I can make him tell me where the others went.”

  The cyclist slowed on a piece of road about twenty feet long, a section less steep than the rest. He raised his left hand above his head and gave them the one-finger salute, then shot down the hill like a guided missile. Scooter gunned the accelerator.

  Ryan stopped talking as they went around a curve that had a drop-off on the left. He could feel a knot growing on his forehead like a unicorn horn. All he could see was air, haze, and blue sky. Scooter turned the wheel too hard, and they went back across the road to the right, where the Land Rover nudged a barrier of rocks, bounced, hit it again, and then without Ryan knowing how, spun around 180 degrees. They were suddenly sailing down the hill backward, the cliff on their right.

  Scooter was screaming a torrent of curse words, and then Perry was yelling, too. He heard metal on metal. Metal on rock. Metal on dirt. Metal on trees and brush. Bushes rushing past the sheet metal and windows. He was tumbling inside the car. They seemed to tumble forever. When they finally stopped, all he could hear was steam hissing out a broken engine hose and the stereo, which was still blaring. Scooter was moaning. At first Perry figured Scooter was surely dead, or about to be, while he himself was going to be okay.

  Considering what he’d just gone through, Perry felt surprisingly sound. It seemed as if they’d been sliding and rolling and careening forever. It was only when he tried to get out that he realized he couldn’t move. Not an inch. Not his arms or legs or head. Not even his pinkie. In fact, now that they’d stopped tumbling and he’d stopped holding his breath, he came to the sudden realization that he couldn’t breathe, either. He was i
n a vise of crushed metal, and the vise was so tight he couldn’t expand his lungs or close them. He was so constricted, he could barely squeeze thoughts through his cranium. One thing was certain. If he didn’t get out of this in just a few seconds, he was going to suffocate.

  “Somebody help me,” he wanted to say, yet, when he tried to speak, the only thing that happened was a little bit of warm blood trickled down his chin.

  39

  Muldaur heard the crash behind him and began to decelerate. It had sounded like a house rolling down the road, metal grinding, trees snapping, glass breaking, and, buried in the middle of the insanity, one man screaming.

  He coasted another 150 yards before he found a widening of the road where it was flat enough to turn around, then began riding back up toward the accident site.

  The grade was like a wall in spots, and he marveled at how recklessly he’d been descending. He used his lowest gear and slid forward on the saddle so he wouldn’t tip over backward. The slopes on the left side of the road were peppered with Douglas fir, and there were trees off to his right amid the gullies. Farther up there’d been bluffs and death-defying drop-offs, but they’d crashed at a spot where a screen of trees caught them.

  He and Zak had separated earlier at a place where the road dropped like the dip in a roller coaster, and at the bottom of that dip was a hairpin curve to the left, a turn Muldaur had barely negotiated. There’d been a bailout road mostly overgrown with grass and saplings, which Zak had taken partway back up the hill while Muldaur continued left. Neither said a word. It was simply understood that Zak couldn’t make the corner.

  Now Muldaur saw a long strip of chrome on the edge of the road and found scuff marks in the dirt where the Land Rover had gone into a stand of immature trees. The trees had netted the SUV, bringing it to a halt before it could tumble farther down the mountain. It was on its roof, nose pointing toward the road, small trees crumpled under it.

  Muldaur laid his bicycle on its side, then carefully picked his way down the rock scree toward the crash site.

  They’d all been flirting with disaster, but for some reason the reality of the accident hit him now like cold water. His heart was in his mouth, sweat dripping off his nose and out of his helmet. It was a weird feeling, walking down to this wreck he’d precipitated, almost as weird as seeing Chuck Finnigan step off the bluff this morning and not being able to do anything about it.

  The Land Rover’s roof was caved in, the undercarriage facing up. Muldaur lay on his belly in the rocks and peered inside. As his eyes damped down from the bright sunshine, he recognized a man inside, his shoulders and head showing. He was pinned in the twisted sheet metal.

  “You okay, buddy?” Muldaur said. “Hey, buddy. Buddy?”

  “Can’t breathe,” gasped the man in the car. His lips and face were dark with loss of oxygen, his features bloody, battered, and unrecognizable, his eyes open but filled with blood and earth from the crash so that it was impossible to know if he was gazing at Muldaur or his maker. The interior of the Land Rover reeked of gasoline, beer, fresh pine needles, and mountain dust. Muldaur knew there’d been two men in the Land Rover, Scooter and Ryan Perry, but he had no clue which this was.

  “Listen, we’re going to get you out of there.”

  “Can’t breathe.”

  “Get up, motherfucker!” Muldaur looked up from the position he’d taken on his stomach to see Scooter standing over him with a rifle. Scooter’s forehead was bruised and swelling, and blood ran down his face from his scalp. “Get up, you idiot! Move!”

  “He needs help.”

  “And you’re going to give it to him?”

  “Look, the two of us can get the jack out and pry some of this loose. We can at least give him some space so he can breathe, but we have to move fast.”

  Scooter considered the notion for a few seconds and then pumped a cartridge into the chamber of the rifle. “Stand up before I do you right here.”

  “But he’s suffocating.”

  Scooter fired the rifle into the rocks behind Muldaur, then motioned for Muldaur to move away, kept motioning until Muldaur was fifteen feet from Scooter. It was an effective tactic, Muldaur thought, because the rocks would slow him considerably if he tried to rush the other man.

  After Muldaur had moved away, Scooter peered into the crushed SUV. “Ryan. Ryan? You all right?” He reached inside with one hand, came out with a handful of dirt, then a shoe. He looked at Muldaur. “You killed him.”

  “He’s not dead. We can get him out. I’m telling you.”

  “You’re not telling me anything, you moron. Get up the hill.”

  “No, let me check. I can—” Scooter fired another bullet into the rocks, this one closer than the last. He did it carelessly, as if he didn’t mind kneecapping Muldaur or shooting one of his toes off.

  As they climbed through the rocks to the road, Muldaur conjured up several stratagems to take the gun from Scooter, but Scooter kept his distance, and the muzzle remained trained on his target.

  Scooter gestured for him to kneel in the road in the classic assassination pose. “Get down, motherfucker.”

  Before he could comply, Scooter walked behind Muldaur and struck him across the shoulder blades with the butt of the rifle. The blow knocked him to the ground on his face, the Styrofoam helmet crunching against the rocks. “Up! Up, you bastard!” As soon as Muldaur got to his knees, Scooter hit him again. He smacked Muldaur in the head until the helmet came apart, leaving only a system of straps and a couple of strands of Styrofoam. One of the lenses on the sunglasses popped out.

  The gun came down again on the back of Muldaur’s neck and threw him to the roadway. For a moment he thought he wouldn’t be able to get back up. The blow could easily have paralyzed him. Scooter kicked him in the ribs. “Where are they?”

  “Where are who?”

  “Your friends.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Scooter kicked Muldaur again, and Muldaur, thinking about the appropriate time to make a grab for the rifle, covered his head with his hands and curled into a fetal position. “Just tell me where your friends are hiding!”

  Scooter barraged Muldaur with blows, kicking and slapping and swinging the rifle down hard while Muldaur slapped back ineffectually, hoping to grab the rifle but coming up empty each time.

  40

  Zak knew the Land Rover had crashed but didn’t know how badly, and a minute after he heard all the noise, he managed to find a vantage point in the road where he spotted Scooter wandering in the trees with a rifle. The Land Rover was wrecked. Muldaur and the other occupant were nowhere in sight, and Zak knew that if he exposed himself, he’d be shot at. So he waited. Seven minutes later, when he saw Scooter marching Muldaur out of the trees at gunpoint, something in his gut rolled over.

  From his vantage point he couldn’t see all of the beating, but what he did witness threw him into a state of disbelief—Scooter swinging the rifle at Muldaur and knocking him to the ground, then knocking him to the ground again.

  Zak made his plan as he rolled down the hill and saw a natural ramp on the road directly above Scooter. If he picked up enough speed, he might get airborne, and if he got airborne and timed it properly, he might take Scooter down. At the very least, he would crash into him, and if Zak kept to hard surfaces, Scooter might not hear him coming until it was too late.

  When Scooter did hear him, Zak was already barreling down the mountainside at almost thirty miles an hour, Scooter jacking a cartridge into the chamber, sighting along the barrel, pointing the Winchester toward Zak’s chest as Zak bounced down the road. Somewhere in the middle of it the gun went off.

  The crash was a blur, and strangely it was silent in Zak’s brain. He was in midair when the explosion occurred, and he definitely felt the heat of the gunshot on his bare leg, but he didn’t hear it. Later he figured the bullet had gone harmlessly between his legs. He must have hit Scooter with one of his pedals, because he felt a jolt in the crank arm. The force twisted Z
ak and the bike around in midair and flipped him. It was a rough fall—he’d been higher than Scooter’s head when it started.

  Now Scooter was on the ground cradling his bloodied head, Muldaur standing over him with the rifle, while Zak lay on his back trying to assess the damage he’d incurred. The wind had been knocked out of him, and his left hip and rump burned with road rash. Both shoulders were sore, but the helmet had protected his head, even though he had a headache. His right ankle was scraped, and he could feel blood seeping through the sock.

  Zak rolled over and then got to his hands and knees slowly, bending his joints, counting his digits, inspecting himself for wounds. He stood slowly and limped over to his bike and found that, miraculously, except for a bent brake lever, it was mechanically sound. Zak picked it up and walked it up the hill toward Muldaur, testing his legs and glancing down at the blood oozing out his arm. A crash at such a speed should have been a lot worse. Fortunately, the impact with Scooter had absorbed much of his momentum.

  Except for a large tear in the left leg of his cycling shorts, Zak’s kit was intact, as were his sunglasses.

  Lying on his side, Scooter groaned and said, “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t.” Muldaur had the rifle now.

  Following Muldaur’s directions, Zak headed down the dirt scree toward the flipped Land Rover, aware that the closer he got to the vehicle, the more nervous he became. It was as if he were walking through a trapdoor directly into his childhood. This wasn’t anything like coming up on a wrecked car while riding Engine 6. He didn’t have a crew backing him up. He didn’t have protective equipment, and he didn’t have the profession propelling him forward. Here he was free to let fear take full rein. And for reasons he would mull over for years to come, take over it did.

  Ten feet away from the wreck, he froze.

  Zak peered into the half-crushed Land Rover. He edged forward, his legs quivering. He was having a difficult time breathing. He wanted to move forward. He wanted to squirm into the crushed passenger’s compartment and find the occupant, but, hypoxic and shaking, he stared into the vehicle in a daze.