Centralia (14 page)

Peter slammed against the seat as if it had broken loose from its anchor. Air squeezed from his lungs, and his head jerked violently. If he had been clubbed in the back of the head and tossed down a flight of stairs, he couldn’t have felt worse.

For a second, maybe two, he forgot where he was and thought his Humvee had been struck by an improvised explosive device. He tried to speak, tried to produce sound from his vocal cords, but his lungs didn’t want to cooperate and take in air. Finally, though, the awareness of reality returned, and it didn’t take him long to get his bearings and regain his composure. Ignoring the throbbing in his neck and the relentless swirling sensation in his head, he checked Amy to make sure she was okay.

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice shaky and weak. “Fine.”

Peter unhooked his seat belt, opened the vehicle’s door, and
nearly fell out of the cab. The odor of gasoline and burnt rubber was everywhere. Beneath the Tahoe, something ticked, ticked, ticked. His legs trembled, not willing to support his weight, but he pressed on. He had to. He had to finish this. As he moved, his head settled and cleared. One of the pursuing Tahoe’s headlamps was busted and the front end was crumpled like tissue paper, but the other headlamp was somehow still intact and emitted cloudy light around the scene of the accident.

Peter assumed that since no bullets had flown his way, the occupants of the other Tahoe must be too injured to fire, unconscious, or dead. Sticking close to his vehicle, he slipped out the handgun that he’d tucked into the waistline of his pants, and in one fluid motion swung it forward and fired a string of shots at the Tahoe’s windshield.

When he reached the driver’s side door, he yanked it open. The driver toppled out, his face blood-covered, his head swiveling on his neck like a ball on a string.

Peter looked across the driver’s side to the passenger seat. Another gunmen was there, his body folded almost in half and wedged into the footwell. He too appeared dead.

The back driver’s side door opened and a man, about six-two and built like a grizzly bear, eased out. His eyes were glassy, and he wobbled on his feet as if he were honey drunk. A large gash below his left eye oozed bright-red blood down his cheek. When he saw Peter, his eyes widened and he swiped at the blood, smearing it across his face to his ear. He looked from Tahoe to Tahoe, then to the dead driver on the road. His face twisted into an awful scowl as understanding dawned.

Before Grizzly could go on the offensive, Peter struck him in the face with a fist, connecting just below the gash. The man stumbled
back, grunted, and reached for his weapon, which was seated in a shoulder holster. Peter raised his weapon to fire, but nothing happened. He’d used all his rounds. Before Grizzly could aim and fire, Peter was there, delivering a quick kick to the man’s hand and dislodging the gun. It flew into the darkness and rattled across the asphalt.

Seeing an opportunity that was never really there, the big man lunged for Peter, his eyes blazing, teeth gritted. His hands were like meat hooks.

Peter sidestepped and delivered a blow to the man’s abdomen, but it didn’t even faze him. He turned and growled at Peter, bared his teeth and clenched his fists, and snorted like the angry bear he was.

If Peter was going to survive this night, he needed to regain control of the confrontation. He stepped forward and jabbed at the man’s face. But Grizzly was surprisingly quick for his size, and his reaction time was sharpening by the second. He blocked Peter’s advance and threw a punch of his own. Peter deflected it. Another punch was thrown, a large roundhouse that had lights-out written all over it. Peter deflected it as well. A third punch came at him. This time Peter not only deflected it but simultaneously stepped forward and drove his elbow into the man’s face.

That one landed solidly, causing Grizzly to stagger backward, arms falling to his sides.

Peter wasted not even a fraction of a second. He immediately followed that blow with another one, a sharp jab to the throat. That was followed by a battering ram to the abdomen, which succeeded in doubling the man over. From there all that was needed was a double-fisted hammer to the upper back, and Grizzly collapsed onto the road. He didn’t get back up.

Breathing like he’d just run a hundred-yard sprint through six
inches of mud, Peter put his hands on his hips and scanned the darkened perimeter, looking for any other gunmen. There had been four in each of the other vehicles; why would this one carry only three? His neck still ached, but there was no time to let that slow him. They needed to get out of there, get on another road, and find a place to lie low for the night.

Amy leaned against the vehicle, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was shaking and sniffling, wringing her hands.

Peter went to her. “Are you hurt?”

She ran a fist across her cheek, then held up a quivering hand and said, “Look at me. I’m a wreck.”

“It’s okay,” Peter said. He put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine. We’re all right. We’ll be okay.”

Amy shook her head. “No. It’s not all right.” Her eyes met his, and in hers he found sorrow so deep one could drown in it. And fear. Such fear. “Peter, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was going to come to this. I didn’t know you’d come to me. I had no idea they’d go this far.” She was rambling, jumbling her words together as if she knew she needed to release them in a torrent while she had the chance
 
—and the will.

“Whoa, slow down. What are you talking about?”

Amy drew in a long, stuttered breath and exhaled through pursed lips. She wiped at her tears again and shook her head. “Things aren’t what they seem. They’re not what you think. It’s all been an act.”

“What’s not what I think, Amy? What do you mean?”

“This. You. Me. Everything. We need to find Abernathy. It’s
 
—”

Amy’s head snapped back at the same time a crack pierced the air. Even as her body slumped against the car and another shot cracked like thunder, Peter was on his knees, then his stomach.

Amy’s body collapsed next to him.

The woman had fallen asleep holding her daughter in her arms, stroking her hair, wishing with every ounce of strength and faith left in her that their circumstance would change. Someway. Somehow.

But her daughter’s soft voice, like the muted babbling of a stream in a dense forest, murmuring something incoherent, had awakened her. She put her nose to the girl’s hair and drew in a long breath.

Again her daughter mumbled, her voice as soft and gentle as the whisperings of wind through the slender branches of a willow. This time the woman caught the word
Daddy
. She kissed her precious girl on the head even as a lump formed in her throat.

Her daughter stirred, exhaled, lifted her head. There was
sleep in her eyes, a glassy faraway gaze that focused on nothing. “Mommy?”

“Shh. It’s okay, baby. You’re all right. Go back to sleep.”

“Mommy, I fell asleep.”

The woman ran her hand over her daughter’s hair. “I know. You sleep now. Get your rest.”

But instead her girl pushed herself to a sitting position and rubbed her eyes. She looked around the room as if it were her first time seeing it, and the woman couldn’t tell if she was awake or still asleep.

The woman put her hand on her daughter’s cheek. “Sweetie, are you awake?”

The girl’s gaze shifted quickly to the woman and made perfect contact. Clarity filled her eyes now. “Yes. I’m awake. I was dreaming of Daddy.”

“I know.”

“Was I talking in my sleep again?”

“You were, yes.”

Her daughter was quiet for a moment, thinking. She thought a lot. The woman would often notice her just sitting and staring and when asked what she was doing, she’d respond that she was thinking. But rarely did she reveal the details of what she thought about.

“Mommy,” her sweet girl said, inching closer and putting her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Do you think Daddy knows where we are? Do you think he’s coming for us?”

Tears stung the woman’s eyes, and her throat swelled. She sniffed and swallowed past the lump. “I think he’s doing everything he can to be with his family again.”

At first the girl had believed her father was dead when the men told them he was, that he had died a hero’s death and had
been given a hero’s burial overseas. They said the woman and her daughter should be proud, that he had served his country valiantly and would want them to do the same. But as time passed, her daughter grew more and more resolute that her daddy was not, in fact, dead but was very much alive and searching for them. The woman never corrected her daughter, never argued the point, never dashed her hope. Hope was all they had left in this place, and to take that away from her daughter would be cruel and senseless.

The fact was, though, that the woman couldn’t trust the men who fed her the information. There were two of them; they’d come in suits and neatly combed hair. Their faces showed remorse but their eyes betrayed them. They had the eyes of wolves, hungry for power, hungry for dominance. And why should she trust them anyway? These were the same men who experimented on her daughter, who did things to her she would not even speak of. They said her husband was dead, but they very well could have lied.

In fact, she told herself often that they had lied. That her husband was still alive. That even now he was on his way to find them and rescue them. But in her heart, in the silence that resided there when her daughter was gone and she was alone with torturous thoughts, she questioned her own hope and whether it was misplaced, whether it was nonsense and only wishful thinking. The deluded optimism of a grieving and frightened wife.

Primarily, the doubt came when she was alone and felt nothing. Oh, she tried. She tried to feel, to sense that he was still alive. A wife would know, wouldn’t she? Shouldn’t she? But she didn’t. She felt nothing. Was that what it felt like when your husband was dead? Nothing?

Her daughter’s body grew heavy against her shoulder. She was asleep again. She laid the girl down on the bed and stroked her
hair, kissed her on the cheek. Then she sat on the bed next to her and offered a whispered prayer to heaven. “God, please let him still be alive.”

“He is,” her daughter whispered back.

The woman patted the girl’s head. “Shh. Go back to sleep now.”

With no time to think or plan or even check for Amy’s pulse, Peter rolled to the edge of the road, then scurried into the woods, taking cover behind a stand of serviceberries. The shot had come from across the road. A fourth gunman must have slipped from the wreckage as unnoticed as any ghoul and taken refuge behind the veil of darkness.

Quietly Peter stood and moved from tree to tree toward the back of the Tahoe. The taillights illuminated the area in a bloody glow. He remained in the woods, hidden in darkness, and moved with the stealth of a cat.

When he was thirty feet behind the wreckage, Peter stepped out of the woods, crouched at the knees and waist, and scanned the area. He checked the woods along both sides of the road, looking for anything that didn’t belong, any shadow out of place, any glint of metal. But the darkness was too oppressive. The trees seemed to swallow up any light from the starry sky, and the residual illumination from the vehicles only made it to the edges of the road, lighting the first line of trees and underbrush. Beyond that, deep darkness resided and somewhere in there, the man who had shot Amy.

Still crouched and moving silently, Peter took two, three steps toward the wreckage, then stopped and listened. Without the luxury of light, both he and the gunman would have to rely on
their other senses. Hidden by the darkness, they could move about almost freely, but any sound
 
—the scuff of shoes on the asphalt, the crackle of a leaf, the snap of a twig
 
—would give away their location. Peter only hoped his own hearing was better than his rival’s.

When he started moving again, Peter sidestepped across the road to the far shoulder. And there he waited. Minutes passed, and with each tick of the clock, Peter grew more anxious. It was another minute wasted, another minute that Amy could be clinging to her last strands of life. He had to do something.

In desperation, Peter decided to expose himself, to make himself the bait needed to catch that elusive last fish. Launching himself from the roadside like a man dashing through six lanes of rush-hour traffic, he sprinted across the asphalt toward the wreckage, keeping his eyes on the dark woods to his left where he presumed the gunman to be. The crack of gunfire sounded and with it a muzzle flash. Still running, Peter aimed his weapon and fired at where the muzzle flash had been, then two more shots to the right of the flash. He was taking a chance, assuming the gunman was right-handed and, after firing once, would quickly move to his right.

He assumed correctly. A grunt came from the darkness, followed by a complicated rustle of leaves. Another flash, and a bullet whizzed by Peter’s head. Slowing, he fired twice more, each shot a little to the right of where the flash had been. Another grunt, more rustling of leaves, branches snapping, then a heavy thud.

All was quiet, but Peter had to make sure. He rushed to the tree line, staying low and ready, his heart doing double time, every sense on alert. From there he moved from tree to tree until he reached the area where the last flash was seen.

There he found the gunman, not breathing, no pulse.

In a near panic, Peter returned to Amy and felt for her neck. “C’mon, Amy, be here.”

He couldn’t find a pulse. “C’mon. C’mon.”

Still nothing. She was gone.

Peter wanted to grieve; he wanted to sit by Amy’s side and not move; he wanted to stay with her until . . . until what? Until his pursuers showed up and apologized for having no idea things would get so out of hand and people would lose their lives? Until they suggested a truce and a round of hugs?

He had to get out of there. It was a public road, and though it was in a remote area and no doubt saw very little traffic this time of night, there was always the chance that some unsuspecting traveler on his way home from work or en route to a night of poker playing with his buddies would stumble upon the collision and find Peter there with five dead bodies.

It took him less than fifteen minutes to change the tire on the Tahoe. It was in bad shape, but hopefully the vehicle could get him far enough to find a new one
 
—one without a tracking device. He gleaned everything he could use from the four dead gunmen and their SUV: two automatic rifles, four handguns, and a dozen magazines.

Leaving everything else exactly as it was, Peter touched Amy’s shoulder, said again that he was sorry, then jumped into the Tahoe and headed off. He had to find a new vehicle and get back on track to Centralia. Tomorrow would bring a new set of challenges.