As Night Falls (4 page)

N
ick edged through a scatter of dry leaves. The sound was whisper-light, yet it had the force of buildings toppling. He could see the road unspooling before them. He put down a last cone without considering its placement. This was pure charade now; soon Harlan would toss aside the few he still held, and then he and Nick would be gone.

Instead of dropping the cones though, upset bloomed on Harlan's face. His faulty memory had kicked in, and now he was watching his only friend walk away from him, with no idea why. A full second ticked by as Nick weighed the risk of trying to hiss a reminder in Harlan's cabbage leaf ear—which he would have trouble reaching—versus waiting for him to remember the plan.

Understanding dawned and Harlan moved over alongside Nick. They stood beside a pack of trees bordering the bridge.

The guard's back was turned as he observed the fourth inmate board the bus, moving slowly, enjoying the last remnants of his freedom. Old-School must've already given up on his. Nick could picture the ancient inmate selecting a seat and sitting down, silent and resigned.

In just five seconds—not as many as Nick had wanted; the teenage driver had introduced infuriating delay—the light was going to change and both cars would take off. The driver of the SUV didn't appear to be as impatient, but that didn't mean she'd stick around.

Nick seized the handle on the rear door. He knew it wouldn't be locked—cars here never were—but Nick's heart still pulsed until he felt a reassuring give.

This vehicle might wind up being even better than the kid's. Its windows had that nice tinting that had become standard while Nick was inside. He'd seen the evolution take place on TV ads and cop shows.

Harlan crowded close, bumping into Nick, and their entrance was clumsy.

The driver twisted around. She sucked in one quick breath—it made a
click
in her throat—at the sight of Harlan filling the plank of seat behind her, his head pressed up against the roof. Harlan barely got his legs out of the way before Nick let the door swing shut. He heard a second thud that he couldn't account for.

“Drive,” Nick said conversationally. “And we'll let you live.”

The guard was just beginning to frown as he surveyed the suddenly transformed makeup of his work crew.

The car in front of them drove off slightly ahead of the green.

A bullet rang out, fired up at the gray, featureless sky. A warning shot, an alert, or perhaps simply sheer futile fury on the part of the guard.

“Drive!” Nick roared.

Harlan cringed, curling in on himself, the massive vehicle shaking with the movement of his body.

The light changed and the SUV rocketed through.

This car was as nice as someone's living room, provided that living room was inhabited by a half-dozen teenagers. The floor was covered with wrappers and stray cosmetics and bits of food, the seat ridged with something sticky. Nick saw a flurry of white that resembled dandruff. A wink of silver in the low light made him realize that the dust was actually nail filings. Quick as a snake's tongue his hand shot out, closing over a slim, sandpapery blade that had gotten wedged between the door and the seat.

He refocused on the woman in front. Her grip on the wheel was unsteady, and the great vehicle gyrated as it drove forward.

“Give me your phone,” Nick said, back to his original friendly tone. There wouldn't be a signal out here, but he wasn't taking any chances. He had spent months going over each of the changes that had taken place during his twenty-four years inside, and pondering their effects. His escape wouldn't be felled by the widespread use of computers or the arrival of 911 in the area.

He became aware of Harlan breathing hard beside him, his body giving off heat in waves now that they'd hit the high-octane warmth of the car.

The woman fumbled with something on the seat beside her, and Nick's heart had a second to flare. She had a CB radio, or a relative on the job; maybe she was a cop herself. But then the woman dropped her pocketbook over the seat, and a useless fluster of things came tumbling out, along with her wallet and cell phone.

Nick emptied the wallet of cash, then examined the phone. There was a casing with a seam along it; when he picked at the opening, the plastic popped up. Inside sat the strange-looking battery that powered the device. Nick removed it. Now the phone could no longer serve to establish the woman's whereabouts to this point. Just a few of the facts he'd learned: that everyone had one of these mechanized insects now, and they could do a lot more than dial a call.

“What do you want?” the woman asked. But there was no heft to her question, or expectation of being answered. Her tone was whimpery and weak.

Nick reached for the lever to roll down the window, then quickly corrected himself. He found the button that did the job now, and pushed it, but nothing happened. He jabbed at it again.

“What the hell?” he said to Harlan, low.

Harlan reached out a hand. It covered the whole ledge on the side of the door.

Childproof locks, Nick realized. When he twisted around, he glimpsed special seats with straps and harnesses, in a third row that looked a whole acre away. There were humps back there, boxes maybe, a jam-up of shapes impossible to make out.

“Roll down this window,” Nick growled.

The woman jumped and let out a little cry. She began stabbing at buttons. Nick almost laughed at the sheer number of them.

“Want me to come up there and help?” he said, beginning to rise from his seat.

Harlan laid a hand on Nick's arm, which Nick shucked off with some effort.

“No, no—” the woman cried. She kept flailing around. Smacking sounds, whirrs, from up front until his window finally dropped down.

Nick sent the pieces of her phone sailing out into the frigid remainder of the day.

“Now,” he said, friendly-like again. “I want you to get off 9 and head toward Wedeskyull. You know where that is?”

“Yes,” the woman whispered. “I live in town.”

“Ah,” Nick said. “All the better. Except we're not going to town. We're going somewhere outside. Long Hill Road. You know it?”

“Yes, I know it,” the woman said, sounding oddly pleased, as if they'd discovered common ground.

Nick looked at the trees whipping by, their bare branches lashing.

Long Hill Road
.

Just the name in his head had become the purest drug during the last year he'd spent preparing. Long Hill Road was where he would find what he needed to get away, not only from prison, but from a life that had inexplicably succeeded in dragging him down. On Long Hill Road, Nick could take a brief pause, gather breath for the final push that would enable him to lose himself forever. Reach a place where he'd never be found.

“Good,” Nick said. “Then hurry.”

In the end, the woman turned out to be a good little getaway driver. Her foot pressed hard on the gas, and she didn't slow down even on the twists and ells and curves.

But a stop sign beside the broad flank of a field finally brought her to a halt.

Nick sensed the possibility a moment before it occurred to the woman. His mother always said how smart he was, but prison had shown him that even more than brains, Nick had great instincts. He knew whenever somebody was getting ready to piss him off, buck him or thwart him. Sometimes he knew before they knew it themselves.

Now he started to climb into the front. From this position he could see how lovely the woman was, although not young, with a silver sheen to her otherwise brown hair, and bottle-green eyes behind eyeglass frames. She had taken off her coat in deference to the cranked-up heat in the car, and her breasts swelled beneath a clingy top.

Nick paused. It had been more than twenty years since he'd felt the warmth of a woman beside him, let her scent fill his nose. Nick fingered the catch on the woman's pants, some kind of smooth hook contraption he'd never seen before, and the woman shrank away from him, her body becoming an inviting curve against the back of the roomy seat.

Harlan's hand dropped over the seat; he didn't have to stretch to do it. That hand was like a sandbag, and it held Nick down for a crucial strike of a second.

They didn't have time anyway. Once Nick would've indulged, taken what he wanted without thinking about the repercussions, or what would happen next. But prison had poured a smooth, hard shell over that part of him, taught him to take a more considered approach.

He wrenched himself around toward the rear. He could make out the sound of labored breathing, loud even for Harlan. Was it the woman breathing so raspily?

“Get off me,” Nick commanded, his gaze flitting between shadowed spaces.

Harlan looked down at his hand as if it didn't belong to him.

The woman released her seatbelt and scrabbled at the door handle. The door flew open on its hinges, almost slamming shut again and sending the woman back onto the seat. But she was able to slip through a gash of space before the door closed itself. She took off at a run across the field, awkward in high-heeled boots.

Harlan finally lifted his hand, and Nick uttered an order, thrusting the nail file at him. The file was only insurance; Harlan wouldn't need any weapon besides his fist or foot or fingers.

“No,” Harlan said, starting to shake his head. “I don't want to.”

Nick squinted out into the gathering twilight. The woman had made enough headway—although there didn't seem to be any place she could really go—that Harlan would have the best chance of catching up to her. Harlan wasn't agile or graceful, but sheer size would allow him to cover more of the space that lay between the woman and the road.

“Nick,” Harlan said, the skin around his eyes forming valleys. “Please. She's leaving.”

Nick slapped the dash. “And you think she's just going to let us take this baby?”

Harlan began kneading his fingers, knuckles popping in distinct detonations.

“Besides, she knows where we're headed.”

Harlan's eyebrows lay like a cattail across his forehead. They rose as one when Nick's gaze met his. Harlan had always been able to read Nick; that ability had latched them together from the start. He knew that Nick wouldn't let up till this was done.

“You want to be free, don't you, Harlan?”

Harlan's head moved in a nod.

“I don't just mean free of prison,” Nick went on. “I mean that once we're out, for good, you never have to listen to anyone you don't want to again. You don't even have to see that person again. That's a whole other kind of freedom.”

He'd pieced it together from Harlan's mutters and murmurs in the middle of the night. There was someone Harlan hated with an intensity that threatened to crash his bunk, rattle their whole block. Somebody had screwed Harlan over, cheated him of everything he deserved.

Nick saw the jolt his words delivered, but uncharacteristically, Harlan didn't jump to carry out the act he'd been tasked with.

The woman's stumbling progress across the field was starting to irritate Nick. He'd had enough of reasoning and cajoling. Nick could feel a thick sludge all around him now; something bad would happen if Harlan didn't snap to.

“I'm telling you what to do,” Nick said. “And you'd better do it.”

Harlan moved like he'd been yanked. He snatched the file out of Nick's hand, his thick fingers surprisingly dexterous. Harlan got out of the car as if hypnotized. He emerged on the wrong side, and a car sheared around him, horn wailing its reproach. Harlan appeared unfazed as he lumbered off across the field.

The woman put on a burst of speed, headed for trees at the faraway edge of the field. If she reached them, she would be lost amongst the slashes of trunks and the coming night.

But Harlan caught up to her and grabbed her from behind, wheeling her around with the butt of one hand. Nick was still far enough away that Harlan had to shout to be heard.

“She doesn't even have her coat on! I don't have to do nothing—she'll just freeze out here by herself!” He twisted his head to look in Nick's direction.

Nick strode forward, the message in his eyes unchanged. His breath condensed into white clouds as he began to jog. It cast a haze over what Harlan had been told to do.

“No,” the woman cried. “Please don't. I won't tell anyone. You can have the car—”

Harlan raised his arm, blotting out the sight of the woman's body and the sky. Her disembodied voice released a cascading wail that sent a flock of birds wheeling.

“Please, no! No! I have children!”

Harlan drove the file into the woman's neck. The noise it made as it entered sounded like sawing steak.

The woman walked forward as if nothing had happened. After a second or two, she took a skip-step, like it still might be possible to jump out of the path of the blade. Then she fell, facedown on the flat, level plane of the field.

Nick arrived at the place where she had dropped. Time was of the essence now, they had to get away from the body. Still he stood, staring down at a sight that sent him reeling backwards more than twenty years. The rush of blood from the woman's neck was beautiful against the barren landscape. Dimly, Nick registered the thud of Harlan retreating.

When at last Nick turned, he jumped. Harlan had come back, and he stood so tall that he blocked out the remaining light. Filled with regret and remorse—whatever he'd done to earn his time, Harlan wasn't a killer—he was going to rebel, and Nick had an image of the two of them tangling. Mind control would be no match for the force Harlan could apply without even trying.

But Harlan only bent down and draped the coat he'd retrieved over the woman's fallen form.

Back in the car, Nick sat and stared at the dashboard. It was like looking at a flight deck. He couldn't find a key, or the silver slit into which it should be inserted. He kept checking the road, expecting to see a cop pull up behind him in the deepening dusk. He told himself that they'd driven some distance, and the guard hadn't seen which car they'd gotten into. There was no reason for anyone to be suspicious of a luxury SUV stopped at the side of the road. Folks would think the rich lady inside was just handing out those pouches of juice to her brats in their fancy additional seats, like one upholstered throne wasn't enough for a five-year-old.