While She Was Out

by Ed Bryant

  While She Was Out

  Ed Bryant

  This is, of course, for two special people in particular, editors Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Ed Gorman. Kris made sure people read While She Was Out in the first place; Ed ensured they’d read it ever since.

  Contents

  While She Was Out

  Afterword: While I Was Out

  While She Was Out

  It was what her husband said then that was the last straw.

  “Christ,” muttered Kenneth disgustedly from the family room. He grasped a Bud longneck in one red-knuckled hand, the cable remote tight in the other. This was the time of night when he generally fell into the largest number of stereotypes. “I swear to God you’re on the rag three weeks out of every month. PMS, my ass.”

  Della Myers deliberately bit down on what she wanted to answer. PMS, she thought. That’s what the twins’ teacher had called it last week over coffee after the parent-teacher conference Kenneth had skipped. Pre-holiday syndrome. It took a genuine effort not to pick up the cordless Northwestern Bell phone and brain Kenneth with one savage, cathartic swipe. “I’m going out.”

  “So?” said her husband. “This is Thursday. Can’t be the auto mechanics made simple for wusses. Self defense?” He shook his head. “That’s every other Tuesday. Something new, honey? Maybe a therapy group?”

  “I’m going to Southeast Plaza. I need to pick up some things.”

  “Get the extra-absorbent ones,” said her husband. He grinned and thumbed up the volume. ESPN was bringing in wide shots of something that looked vaguely like group tennis from some sweaty-looking third- world country.

  “Wrapping paper,” she said. “I’m getting some gift-wrap and ribbon.” Were there fourth-world countries? she wondered. Would they accept political refugees from America? “Will you put the twins to bed by nine?”

  “Stallone’s on HBO at nine,” Kenneth said. “I’ll bag ‘em out by half- past eight.”

  “Fine.” She didn’t argue.

  “I’ll give them a good bedtime story.” He paused. “’The Princess and the Pea.”’

  “Fine.” Della shrugged on her long down-filled coat. Any more, she did her best not to swallow the bait. “I told them they could each have a chocolate chip cookie with their milk.”

  “Christ, Della. Why the hell don’t we just adopt the dentist? Maybe give him an automatic monthly debit from the checking account?” “One cookie apiece,” she said, implacable.

  Kenneth shrugged, apparently resigned.

  She picked up the keys to the Subaru. “I won’t be long.” “Just be back by breakfast.”

  Della stared at him. What if I don’t come back at all? She had actually said that once. Kenneth had smiled and asked whether she was going to run away with the gypsies, or maybe go off to join some pirates. It had been a temptation to say yes, dammit, yes, I’m going. But there were the twins. Della suspected pirates didn’t take along their children. “Don’t worry,” she said. I’ve got nowhere else to go. But she didn’t say that aloud.

  Della turned and went upstairs to the twins’ room to tell them good night. Naturally they both wanted to go with her to the mall. Each was afraid she wasn’t going to get the hottest item in the Christmas doll department-the Little BeeDee Birth Defect Baby. There had been a run on the BeeDee, but Della had shopped for the twins early. “Daddy’s going to tell you a story,” she promised. The pair wasn’t impressed.

  “I want to see Santa,” Terri said, with dogged, five-year-old insistence.

  “You both saw Santa. Remember?”

  “I forgot some things. An’ I want to tell him again about BeeDee.” “Me, Too,” said Tammi. With Tammi, it was always “me too.” “Maybe this weekend,” said Della.

  “Will Daddy remember our cookies?” said Terri.

  Before she exited the front door, Della took the chocolate chip cookies from the kitchen closet and set the sack on the stairstep where Kenneth could not fail to stumble over it.

  “So long,” she called.

  “Bring me back something great from the mall,” he said. His only other response was to heighten the crowd noise from Upper Zambosomewhere-or-other.

  Sleety snow was falling, the accumulation beginning to freeze on the streets. Della was glad she had the Subaru. So far this winter, she hadn’t needed to use the four-wheel drive, but tonight the reality of having it reassured her.

  Southeast Plaza was a mess. This close to Christmas, the normally spacious parking lots were jammed. Della took a chance and circled the row of spaces nearest to the mall entrances. If she were lucky, she’d be able to react instantly to someone’s backup lights and snaffle a parking place within five seconds of its being vacated. That didn’t happen. She cruised the second row, the third. Then- There! She reacted without thinking, seeing the vacant spot just beyond a metallic blue van. She swung the Subaru to the left.

  And stamped down hard on the brake.

  Some moron had parked an enormous barge of an ancient Plymouth so that it overlapped two diagonal spaces.

  The Subaru slid to a stop with its nose about half an inch from the Plymouth’s dinosaurian bumper. In the midst of her shock and sudden anger, Della saw the chrome was pocked with rust. The Subaru’s headlights reflected back at her.

  She said something unpleasant, the kind of language she usually only thought in dark silence. Then she backed her car out of the truncated space and resumed the search for parking. What Della eventually found was a free space on the extreme perimeter of the lot. She resigned herself to trudging a quarter mile through the slush. She hadn’t worn boots. The icy water crept into her flats, soaked her toes.

  “Shit,” she said. “Shit shit shit.”

  Her shortest-distance-between-two-points course took her past the Plymouth hogging the two parking spots. Della stopped a moment, contemplating the darkened behemoth. It was a dirty gold with the remnants of a vinyl roof peeling away like the flaking of a scabrous scalp. In the glare of the mercury vapor lamp, she could see that the rocker panels were riddled with rust holes. Odd. So much corrosion didn’t happen in the dry Colorado air. She glanced curiously the rear license plate. It was obscured with dirty snow.

  She stared at the huge old car and realized she was getting angry. Not just irritated. Real, honest-to-god, hardcore pissed off. What kind of imbeciles would take up two parking spaces on a rotten night just two weeks before Christmas?

  Ones that drove a vintage, not-terribly-kept-up Plymouth, obviously.

  Without even thinking about what she was doing, Della took out the spiral notebook from her handbag. She flipped to the blank page past tomorrow’s grocery list and uncapped the fine-tip marker (it was supposed to write across anything-in this snow, it had better) and scrawled a message:

  DEAR JERK, IT’S GREAT YOU COULD USE UP TWO PARKING SPACES ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS, EVER HEAR OF THE JOY OF SHARING?

  She paused, considering; then appended:

  – A CONCERNED FRIEND

  Della folded the paper as many tunes as she could, to protect it from the wet, then slipped it under the driver’s-side wiper blade.

  It wouldn’t do any good-she was sure this was the sort of driver who ordinarily would have parked illegally in the handicapped zone-but it made her feel better. Della walked on to the mall entrance and realized she was smiling.

  She bought some rolls of foil wrapping paper for the adult gifts- assuming she actually gave Kenneth anything she’d bought for him-and an ample supply of Strawberry Shortcake pattern for the twins’ presents. Della decided to splurge-she realized she was getting tired-and selected a package of pre-tied ribbon bows rather than sim
ply taking a roll. She also bought a package of tampons.

  Della wandered the mall for a little while, checking out the shoe stores, looking for something on sale in deep blue, a pair she could wear after Kenneth’s office party for staff and spouses. What she really wanted were some new boots. Time enough for those after the holiday when the prices went down. Nothing appealed to her. Della knew she should be shopping for Kenneth’s family in Nebraska. She couldn’t wait forever to mail off their packages.

  The hell with it. Della realized she was simply delaying returning home. Maybe she did need a therapy group, she thought. There was no relish to the thought of spending another night sleeping beside Kenneth, listening to the snoring that was interrupted only by the grinding of teeth. She thought that the sound of Kenneth’s jaws moving against one another must be like hearing a speeded-up recording of continental drift.

  She looked at her watch. A little after nine. No use waiting any longer. She did up the front of her coat and joined the flow of shoppers out into the snow.

  Della realized, as she passed the rusted old Plymouth, that something wasn’t the same. What’s wrong with this picture? It was the note. It wasn’t there. Probably it had slipped out from under the wiper blade with the wind and the water. Maybe the flimsy notebook paper had simply dissolved.

  She no longer felt like writing another note. She dismissed the irritating lumber barge from her reality and walked on to her car.

  Della let the Subaru warm up for thirty seconds (the consumer auto mechanics class had told her not to let the engine idle for the long minutes she had once believed necessary) and then slipped the shift into reverse.

  The passenger compartment flooded with light.

  She glanced into the rearview mirror and looked quickly away. A bright, glaring eye had stared back. Another quivered in the side mirror.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said under her breath. “The crazies are out tonight.” She hit the clutch with one foot. the brake with the other, and waited for the car behind her to remove itself. Nothing happened. The headlights in the mirror flicked to bright. “Dammit.” Della left the Subaru in neutral and got out of the car.

  She shaded her eyes and squinted. The front of the car behind hers looked familiar. It was the gold Plymouth.

  Two unseen car-doors clicked open and chunked shut again.

  The lights abruptly went out and Della blinked, her eyes trying to adjust to the dim mercury vapor illumination from the pole a few car- lengths away.

  She felt a cold thrill of unease in her belly and turned back toward the car.

  “I’ve got a gun,” said a voice. “Really.” It sounded male and young. “I’ll aim at your snatch first.”

  Someone else giggled, high and shrill.

  Della froze in place. This couldn’t be happening. It absolutely could not.

  Her eyes were adjusting, the glare-phantoms drifting out to the limit of her peripheral vision and vanishing. She saw three figures in front of her, then a fourth. She didn’t see a gun.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” she said.

  “Not doing nothin’, yet.” That, she saw, was the black one. He stood to the left of the white kid who had claimed to have a gun. The pair was bracketed by a boy who looked Chinese or Vietnamese and a young man with dark, Hispanic goodlooks. All four looked to be in their late teens or very early twenties. Four young men. Four ethnic groups represented. Della repressed a giggle she thought might be the first step toward hysteria.

  “So what are you guys? Working on your merit badge in tolerance? Maybe selling magazine subscriptions?” Della immediately regretted saying that. Her husband was always riding her for smarting off.

  “Funny lady,” said the Hispanic. “We just happen to get along.” He glanced to his left. “You laughing, Huey?”

  The black shook his head. “Too cold. I’m shiverin’ out here. I didn’t bring no clothes for this.”

  “Easy way to fix that, man,” said the white boy. To Della, he said, “Vinh, Tomas, Huey, me, we all got similar interests, you know?” “Listen-” Della started to say.

  “Chuckie,” said the black Della now assumed was Huey, “Let’s us just shag out of here, okay?”

  “Chuckie?” saidDella.

  “Shut up!” said Chuckie. To Huey, he said, “Look, we came up here for a vacation, right? The word is fun.” He said to Della, “Listen, we were having a good time until we saw you stick the note under the wiper.” His eyes glistened in the vapor-lamp glow. “I don’t like getting any static from some ‘burb-bitch just ‘cause she’s on the rag.”

  “For God’s sake,” said Della disgustedly. She decided he didn’t really have a gun. “Screw off!” The exhaust vapor from the Subaru spiraled up around her. “I’m leaving, boys.”

  “Any trouble here, Miss?” said a new voice. Everyone looked. It was one of the mall rent-a-cops, bulky in his fur trimmed jacket and Russian-styled cap. His hand lay casually across the unsnapped holster flap at his hip.

  “Not if these underage creeps move their barge so I can back out,” said Della

  “How about it, guys?” said the rent-a-cop.

  Now there was a gun, a dark pistol, in Chuckie’s hand, and he pointed it at the rent-a-cop ‘s face. “Naw,” Chuckie said. “This was gonna be a vacation, but what the heck. No witnesses, I reckon.”

  “For God’s sake,” said the rent-a-cop, starting to back away.

  Chuckie grinned and glanced aside at his friends. “Remember the security guy at the mall in Tucson?” To Della, he said. “Most of these rent-a-pig companies don’t give their guys any ammo. Liability law and all that shit. Too bad.” He lifted the gun purposefully.

  The rent-a-cop went for his pistol anyway. Chuckie shot him in the face. Red pulp sprayed out the back of his skull and stained the slush as the man’s body flopped back and forth, spasming.

  “For chrissake,” said Chuckie in exasperation. “Enough already. Relax, man.” He leaned over his victim and deliberately aimed and fired, aimed and fired. The second shot entered the rent-a-cop’ s left eye. The third shattered his teeth.

  Della’s eyes recorded everything as though she were a movie camera. Everything was moving in slow motion and she was numb. She tried to make things speedup. Without thinking about the decision, she spun and made for her car door. She knew it was hopeless.

  “Chuckie!”

  “So? Where’s she gonna go? We got her blocked. I’ll just put one through her windshield and we can go out and pick up a couple of sixpacks, maybe hit the late show at some other mall.”

  Della heard him fire one more time. Nothing tore through the back of her skull. He was still blowing apart the rent-a-cop’s head.

  She slammed into the Subaru’s driver seat and punched the doorlock switch. Della hit the four-wheel drive button. That was what Chuckie hadn’t thought about. She jammed the gearshift into first, gunned the engine, and popped the clutch. The Subaru barely protested as the front tires clawed and bounced over the six-inch concrete row barrier. The barrier screeched along the underside of the frame. Then the rear wheels were over and the Subaru fishtailed momentarily.

  Don’t over-correct, she thought. It was a prayer.

  The Subaru straightened out and Della was accelerating down the mall’s outer perimeter service road, slush spraying to either side. Now what? She thought. People must have heard the shots. The lot would be crawling with cops.

  But in the meantime-

  The lights, bright and blinding, blasted against her mirrors. Della stamped the accelerator to the floor.

  This was crazy! This didn’t happen to people-not to real people. The mall security man’s blood in the snow had been real enough.

  In the rearview, there was a sudden flash just above the left-side headlight, then another. It was a muzzle-blast, Della realized. They were shooting at her. It was just l
ike on TV. The scalp on the back of her head itched. Would she feel it when the bullet crashed through?

  The twins! Kenneth. She wanted to see them all, to be safely with them. Just be anywhere but here!

  Della spun the wheel, ignoring the stop sign and realizing that the access road dead-ended. She could go right or left, so went right. She thought it was the direction of home. Not a good choice. The lights were all behind her now; she could see nothing but darkness ahead. Della tried to remember what lay beyond the mall on this side. There were housing developments, both completed and under construction.

  There had to be a 7-Eleven, a filling station, something. Anything. But there wasn’t, and then the pavement ended. At first the road was suddenly rougher, the potholes yawning deeper. Then the slush-marked asphalt stopped. The Subaru bounced across the gravel; within thirty yards, the gravel deteriorated to roughly graded dirt. The dirt surface more properly could be called mud.

  A wooden barrier loomed ahead, the reflective stripes and lightly Chuckie hadn’t thought about. She jammed the gearshift into first, gunned the engine, and popped the clutch. The Subaru barely protested as the front tires clawed and bounced over the six-inch concrete row barrier. The barrier screeched along the underside of the frame. Then the rear wheels were over and the Subaru fishtailed momentarily.

  Don’t over-correct, she thought. It was a prayer.

  The Subaru straightened out and Della was accelerating down the mall’s outer perimeter service road, slush spraying to either side. Now what? She thought. People must have heard the shots. The lot would be crawling with cops.

  But in the meantime-

  The lights, bright and blinding, blasted against her mirrors. Della stamped the accelerator to the floor.

  This was crazy! This didn’t happen to people-not to real people. The mall security man’s blood in the snow had been real enough.

  In the rearview, there was a sudden flash just above the left-side headlight, then another. It was a muzzle-blast, Della realized. They were shooting at her. It was just like on TV. The scalp on the back of her head itched. Would she feel it when the bullet crashed through?