by Jude Hardin
I needed to find a road, but I had no idea which way to go. Daylight was fading fast. I would be harder to find in the dark, but the temperature would plummet overnight and I would probably freeze to death before morning. My only hope was to find some sort of shelter and build a fire.
I stopped and listened. Leaves crunched and twigs snapped under the heavy footsteps of Stoneface’s men. They were in the woods. I could hear them talking.
“I’ll be damned. He stripped the motherfucker.”
“Yeah. Blood trail’s gone and it’s getting dark. Let’s go back. We’ll never find him out here.”
“We have to find him. We’re going to have our elbows broken with a sledgehammer if we don’t find him. You know what it’s like to not be able to feed yourself or wipe your own ass?”
“Let’s at least go get some flashlights.”
A pause, and then, “You go. I’ll wait here in case he doubles back.”
“All right.”
The one going for the flashlights faded away at a trot. The other one waited at the site where they’d hanged my friend. I decided to do what he wanted. I decided to double back.
I took the boots off, tied the laces together, and carried them around my neck. I crept through the woods in stocking feet, making as little noise as possible. By the time I got back to where Pete had been executed, Muscle Head Number One had a campfire going. He sat in front of it, warming his hands. He looked comfy-cozy. I snuck up behind him and violently jerked the handcuff chain around his throat. He struggled for about five seconds, and then I felt his trachea cave in. I let go, expecting to hear a gasp or two, but he never took another breath.
I searched his pockets, but Muscle Head Number Two must have been carrying the key to the cuffs. Number One had a wallet and a comb and a Ford ignition key and a half-eaten protein bar. I took all of it and his pistol and walkie-talkie, and hid behind a cedar tree and waited. I put my boots back on. I gobbled the chocolate in three bites. It tasted like a stale brownie laced with vitamins. Not something I normally would have chosen, but under the circumstances it was like tiramisu at the Ritz.
I wondered if Number Two would bring a search team when he returned. I doubted it. He was probably too embarrassed to admit that he and his newly deceased friend had allowed me to escape. The human ego is a powerful force. World leaders invade countries because of it. Otherwise intelligent people will go to great measures to avoid having it bruised, and I had the feeling Muscle Head Number Two wasn’t exactly Einstein in the first place.
Pete’s Rolex had a little button you could push to make the face light up.
Five forty.
Twilight.
The embers from Number One’s fire cast an orange glow on his corpse and the surrounding area. The warmth of it beckoned like a Siren, but I wanted to maintain an element of surprise so I stayed where I was and tried to keep my teeth from chattering.
Number Two crunched in carrying a flashlight and a small cooler. An Uzi hung from a strap around his neck. I was right. He didn’t bring anyone with him. He ran to his fallen comrade and said, Oh shit, and knelt beside him.
He tried to shake him awake. “Kevin. Kevin!”
I stepped out and aimed the pistol at Number Two’s chest.
“Kevin’s not with us anymore,” I said.
He looked up at me. “Son of a bitch.”
“You got that right. I want you to grab your weapon by the barrel, pull it off your neck, and toss it this way. Deviate from those instructions and I’ll put a hole in your heart.”
He grabbed his weapon by the barrel, pulled it off his neck, and tossed it toward me.
“You going to kill me?” he said.
“Maybe not. Depends on how well you cooperate. You got the key to these handcuffs?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“In my pocket.”
“Which pocket?”
“It’s in the right front pocket of my pants.”
“You got another gun?”
“No.”
“I want you to reach into the right front pocket of your pants, pull out the key to the handcuffs, set the key on top of the cooler, and take five steps backward. Deviate from those instructions and I’ll put a hole in your heart.”
He reached into the right front pocket of his pants, pulled out the key to the handcuffs, set the key on top of the cooler, and took five steps backward. I walked to the cooler and picked up the key and managed to free myself by the dying light of Kevin’s campfire.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Koby.”
“Like the cheese?”
“Like Toby with a K.”
“You H-A?”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t play dumber than you are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I think you know damn well what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a Christian militia group called the Harvest Angels. Along with a slew of other terrorist acts, they were responsible for a plane crash twenty-some years ago that killed my wife and daughter and all the members of my band. My wife was from Jamaica. It was a racial thing. Now I don’t want to jump to any conclusions or anything, but my friend dangling from the tree branch here is also a person of color. Maybe that’s just a coincidence. And maybe, just maybe, it was a coincidence that I got clobbered over the head by a guy named Bear—who I know for a fact is a member of the Harvest Angels—and magically ended up in that little house of horrors with Dr. Stoneface and you and Kevin and the rest of the brainwashed bunch. What do you think, Toby with a K? Was all that just a coincidence?”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He wasn’t going to talk unless I made him talk. I decided to make him talk.
“I’m going to put these cuffs on you,” I said. “I want you to turn around, slowly, and put your hands behind your back. Deviate from those instructions and I’ll—”
He ran up and kicked the glowing embers like a field goal. A fountain of orange exploded in my face, the sparks searing my skin like acid-dipped needles. My left eye felt as though someone had stabbed it with a soldering iron. Toby with a K was quicker than he looked. He was on me in an instant. He tackled me and we fell together into the cedar tree I’d been hiding behind earlier. The Uzi was still on the ground. I had a grip on the pistol, but he had a grip on my wrists and he had eaten more PowerBars than I had. He had me pinned to the ground with those gorilla meat hooks of his, and the situation seemed hopeless until he got down close to my face and said, “You’re going to die, bitch.” That was a big mistake. I thrust my head forward and clamped down on his nose like a pit bull. I directed every ounce of my rapidly diminishing energy to my jaw muscles, slicing through the tough cartilage with the sharp edges of my incisors. I bit his nose completely off and spit it back at him. He rose with a gurgling scream, his hands pressed against his ruined face trying to stop the blood from gushing. I stood and took aim and blasted a hole the size of a quarter through his breastplate. The bullet exited through his back, a splatter of blood and flesh landing on the hot coals with a sizzle.
“Dumbfuck,” I said. “I warned your ass.”
The gunshot reverberated through the mountain like a thunderbolt, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before Kevin and Koby and I were missed. It wouldn’t be long before a posse was sent out to find us. I put Pete’s shirt and coat on, and I pulled Koby’s wool skullcap off his head and put it on mine. I slung the Uzi around my neck, grabbed the flashlight and the cooler, and headed west. I wanted to get as far from Stoneface’s compound as possible. With a little luck, I would find a road and hitch a ride and alert the authorities, and this whole ordeal would be over before daylight.
I hiked for about an hour and then decided to stop and check out the cooler. There were two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some more PowerBars and four bottles of spring water and another flashlight. I opened one of the b
ottles and swallowed half the water in a single gulp. I unwrapped one of the sandwiches and ate it, trudging through the dead underbrush as fast as my weakened legs would carry me. It was 7:30. I was missing Jeopardy. Funny, the things that go through your mind in dire situations sometimes. About ten minutes later, the walkie-talkie squawked.
“K-One, do you copy?”
Rule #9 in Nicholas Colt’s Philosophy of Life: Nobody ever got into any trouble by just shutting the fuck up. But I don’t always follow my own rules. I keyed the TALK button. “This is Nicholas Colt,” I said. “Who am I talking to?”
“Where are Kevin and Koby?”
It was Stoneface. I recognized his voice now. I put the cooler down and sat on it. “Did you hear the gunshot a while ago, around five forty-five?”
“No.”
“I see. Well, the shot you didn’t hear sent a bullet tearing through dear old Koby’s chest. Before that, I strangled Kevin to death with a handcuff chain. Both your boys are dead.”
“You’ll never make it off this mountain alive, Colt.”
I almost laughed. He sounded like he was reading from the script of an old TV show, The Lone Ranger or something.
“Fuck you,” I said. “I will leave this mountain alive, and you’re going to leave it in the back of a police car. I shut you motherfuckers down in Florida, and I’m going to shut your asses down here.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“What happened to Virgil Lamb and his grandson Joe? They buried somewhere on your property? Or maybe they’re part of your little cult, like Derek Wahl was.”
I heard a click, and then silence. I got up and continued walking. It was cold, but I was deep in the forest and there wasn’t any wind. It was practically comfortable with the clothes I had on. Every twenty minutes or so I stopped and took a drink of water and nibbled on a PowerBar for energy.
I made it to a ridge with a recess that might have been considered a cave. It was only about ten feet deep, but it felt twenty degrees warmer inside. I cleared an area at the mouth and arranged some chunks of limestone in a circle and started a fire with twigs and some branches from a fallen oak. I was exhausted. I decided to stay there and rest for a couple of hours. I planned to go back out at midnight and carry on in the same direction and continue looking for a road.
A small clearing around the ridge allowed light to shine in from the moon and stars. I stood at the edge of the cliff and breathed the sweet cold air in deeply. The fire crackled and the heat from it stabbed some circulation back into my feet. After a few minutes, I crawled into the deepest part of the cave and leaned against the back wall. I pulled the collar of Pete’s coat over my nose and mouth, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.
In my dream, I was eleven years old. I sat on a bench outside the Hollows Cove Mortgage and Trust Company, chewing on a stick of licorice, waiting for my stepfather to take care of some business inside. A man on the corner opposite the bank stood beside a big hand-painted sign that said NOOSES ON SALE. Not for sale, but on sale, as if you needed to hurry on over to get one cheap. I rose from my seat and crossed the intersection.
There were several lengths of rope lying on the ground, each with a hangman’s knot on one end. I counted the loops on a couple of the knots and, sure enough, there were thirteen, just as I’d always heard.
“What are the ropes for, mister?”
“They’re for ugly redhead retards who jaywalk.”
“I ain’t no retard. And it ain’t no crime to have red hair.”
“But jaywalking is a crime. Haven’t you heard the news? It’s a hanging offense now.”
“You’re funny, mister.”
My stepfather appeared then, seeming to be in a foul humor, the way he got when he drank too much whiskey the night before.
He grabbed me by the arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Just talking to the noose salesman here.”
“I’ll take one of those,” my stepfather said to the man.
“Buy one, get one half-price. While they last.”
“I’ll just be needing the one.”
My stepfather handed the man some money and picked out a length of rope, checking the knot to make sure it functioned properly.
“Why’d you buy that noose?” I asked on the ride home, but my stepfather didn’t answer.
And we didn’t go home.
He steered the truck through an open gate and parked beside a tobacco barn. He got out, grabbed the rope with one hand and my hair with the other, and pulled me shouting and screaming to the inside of the barn. Next thing I knew I was standing on a rickety stool with my hands tied with baling twine, the loose end of the rope secured to a roof beam and the business end to my neck. It was hot in the barn, probably over a hundred degrees, and the noose was tight and the hemp coarse and I could feel it burning into my sweaty skin. I teetered on the stool, knowing a loss of balance meant instant death.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You heard the man. Jaywalking’s a hanging offense these days. Nothing I can do about that.”
“Please, I’ll be good. I promise.”
“You should have thought of that before. Too late now.”
A wasp flew overhead. I followed it to its nest with my eyes.
“May as well get rid of them damn things while I’m at it,” my stepfather said. He picked up a can of gasoline, screwed the lid off, sprinkled some in the straw around the stool, and then doused my pants with the rest.
He lit a match.
Now I had a choice. I could jump off the stool and hang myself, or I could stand there and burn. Up to this point, I’d thought all this was just another one of my stepfather’s ways to scare some sense into me but those gasoline fumes were real and making me dizzy and the flame on the end of that match was real and the noose and the rickety stool and the wasp’s nest, and it was hot, hot, hot in the barn; and just when I thought, This is it, I’m going to die now, I woke with my heart hammering in my ears and sweat dripping from my forehead.
I scooted back toward the mouth of the cave, stood and stretched. I scooped some dirt onto my little fire pit and extinguished the lingering coals.
I looked down into the ravine and saw a dozen or so pinpoints of light heading my way. The posse hadn’t waited for daylight. They were coming for me now. How the hell they were tracking me in the dark I didn’t know. I opened the cooler and grabbed the fresh flashlight and a bottle of water and started climbing the ridge as fast as I could.
I figured they were ten, maybe fifteen minutes behind me. I was deep in the forest again, moving as swiftly as possible while trying to avoid a million eye-gouging tree branches. The icy mountain air seared my lungs and throat and the sound of my heartbeat pounded through my jawbone like a jackhammer. I tripped and fell and thought about staying down. I thought about staying down and blowing my own brains out, but I wanted to see Juliet and Brittney again. They were my driving force. They were what I lived for. I wanted to see them again, but my legs felt like rubber and when I tried to stand, they buckled under my weight. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t take another step. I inched along on my elbows, knowing Stoneface and his henchmen would catch up soon. They would catch up soon, but I still had the pistol and the Uzi and I wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
I switched the flashlight off and waited in the still blackness. In the distance, I heard someone playing an old gospel song called “Til the Storm Passes By” on a harmonica. I shook my head, but the lonesome wail persisted. When I finally realized it wasn’t an auditory hallucination, I crawled toward the sound and came upon a clearing and a shack that had been built into the side of the hill. Smoke rose from a galvanized steel pipe in the roof and candlelight glowed dimly from the single window in front. I hid the Uzi behind a bush. I doubted the occupant would be very happy if he or she looked out and saw me standing there with a machine gun. I kept the pistol tucked in my waistband. Somehow I found the strength to stand
then and I staggered to the door and banged on it frantically. A short chubby man with a long white beard and a .44 Magnum answered.
Santa Claus meets Dirty Harry.
“What do you want?” he said.
“I’m being followed. They’re going to kill me.”
“Who’s going to kill you?”
“I don’t have time to explain. Please, help me.”
He tugged on his beard with one hand and held the .44 pointed toward the ground with the other.
“You’re out of your mind,” he said. “Get away from my house.”
I drew my pistol and aimed it directly between his eyes. He twitched, started to raise the .44, and then thought better of it.
“Drop the gun,” I said.
He dropped it. “What do you want with me, mister?”
“Take three steps backward,” I said.
He took three steps backward and I knelt down and picked up the revolver, never taking my eyes off him. The .44 was a hulk of a weapon, heavy and black and unwieldy. I didn’t want to carry it around, so I whizzed it toward the bush where I’d hidden the Uzi. It landed with a thud. I kept the pistol aimed at Dirty Santa and stepped inside and closed the door.
The cabin was one room. There was a fireplace and a table with two chairs and a twin-size bed and a ratty old recliner. No electricity, no indoor plumbing. Something in a cast iron pot over the fire smelled wonderful.
“They’ll be here in a few minutes,” I said. “I don’t know how they’re tracking me in the dark, but they are. I need to hide somewhere, and I need for you to tell them you haven’t seen me.”
“Why should I help you?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to shoot your ass.”
“Good enough reason, I reckon. The only place to hide is under the bed.”
“All right.”
I walked to the bed, got down on the floor and scooted underneath it. I scooted all the way against the wall. There was a sliver of vision between the floor and the quilt and when the knock came, I saw the old man’s bare feet flap across the pine boards to answer the door.