“
Get out of here,” Leda said. Her
voice was tense.
Burkette was running from the shack toward us,
then he veered over to his large gray sedan parked ahead of our car
in the drive. He yelled something else but his voice was drowned in
the sound of wind, rain, and my car’s abruptly snarling engine. A
spotlight swiveled around to us, blinding me for an instant. I saw
Burkette raise his arm and a gun spat flame into the streaming
night.
I shoved the gas pedal to the floor and
cramped the car across a short expanse of lawn, back to the dirt
road. Again the gun blasted, once, twice, three times. But we
weren’t hit.
For the first time I really understood the jam
I was in. I was in it for murder. It hadn’t been clear in my mind
until now. It hadn’t been real, but a snarl of panic coiled inside
me as I shouted, “You all right?”
“
Yes, yes. Get going—that’s all,
Eric!” She was twisted in the seat, looking back toward the shack.
“They’re coming.”
“
Got it to the floor. Can’t see a
damned thing.”
“
You got to! They’re shooting
again.”
The car lurched and skidded over the road in
the mud-slimed ruts.
“
They’re closing in, Eric.” She
moved next to me in the seat. “You’ve got to go faster. You’ve got
to lose them.” There was a sob in her voice, then she began to
swear. The things she called Clyde Burkette reached beyond
obscenity, beyond my imagination. She pounded the dashboard with
her fists. “You’ve got to lose them!”
Burkette had figured this was where I’d head
for first. I’d proved myself a dope all over again.
Leda’s voice was shrill. “Eric, suppose they
shoot our tires.”
I wheeled the car off the road at the first
turn. For an instant I thought it was all over with. Grass sprung
in the middle of the road and I saw it was nothing more than a
wagon trail, one of those which spider-web parts of Florida like
Martian canals. I recalled it as a detour to a main road leading
away from Cypress Landing. If we could make that road we might be
able to lose Burkette long enough to lose ourselves in the
backwoods and head for Frank’s cabin.
I tramped on the gas and prayed.
“
They missed the turn,” Leda said.
“They missed it!”
Chapter 18
Burkette may have missed the turn that first
time, but it didn’t take him long to swing the car around. Only
moments, and that spotlight gleamed like the leaping white eye of a
dragon in the rear-view mirror. I gave the car all she had. The
wheels thundered over the rough road.
Leda’s voice was quieter now, but there was an
edge to it I’d never heard before. “What if they get us, Eric?
What’ll you do?”
“
I don’t know. They won’t get
us.”
“
Sure, but what if they
do?”
I didn’t answer. What use was there? A file of
car headlights spat their meager illumination through the blinding
rain ahead on the main road. I cut directly into the traffic and
started passing.
There was barely room for two cars abreast,
but I let it ride, cutting between oncoming autos down the middle
of the highway.
“
There’s no point my saying be
careful,” Leda said.
“
No. Just sit tight.”
“
I wish to hell I was
tight.”
By the main route I knew it was about fifty
miles to Frank’s cabin if I judged right. But we couldn’t take the
main route. It would mean staying on this road too long. We could
only use this road long enough to lose Burkette, if that was
possible.
It was almost blind driving. All I had to
depend on was the natural instinct of the other fellow to get out
of the way. To them I was a drunk and they did get out of the
way.
“
I can’t see anything of them
following us,” Leda said. “But it’s hard to say.”
Fifteen minutes of that and we were clear of
traffic. The road was just pouring night as far in both directions
as we could see.
On either side of us now lay jungle and
swampland. An occasional water-filled cutoff glistened in the car’s
lights, pushed into that tangle of throbbing vegetation. Tall
cypress trees flanked us, their skeletal arms trembling with the
weight of wind-smashed Spanish moss.
I knew we’d have to turn off soon into that. I
knew what it could mean, but it was our one chance. Unless I wanted
to trust luck on an upstate run.
The thought barely struck me when I pushed the
brakes and wheeled the car around.
Just ahead on a curve in the road two squad
cars hovered, with slicker-tented men patrolling patiently. I
didn’t think they’d seen us, but I couldn’t be sure.
“
Roadblock,” Leda said.
“
Yeah. This is really it. We’ve got
to start into that.” There wasn’t must else to say. I hoped to
select the lesser evil of the many rain-washed and insecure
roads.
“
But—but this isn’t the way Frank
took me up there,” Leda said.
“
Sure. I’ll find it, though. We’re
headed right, and I know this country.”
“
God. We’ll get stuck,
sure.”
“
Maybe not.” I swung in to the left
through a running ditch of water nearly hub-cap deep. It fanned out
in a muddy shower beyond the slope of the hood, then back-fired
onto the windshield.
I wrestled the car straight.
“
Keep an eye on our
tail.”
Not that it would do much good. If they’d seen
us at the road block, and tailed us, we’d have to stick to this
road anyway, because I knew it didn’t turn off save for cow paths
into nowhere.
Now came the fun. The road was swamped with
water. We sloughed from one side to the other in running ruts,
leaped over unseen roots. Rubber shrieked and screamed against the
fender and I thanked my dead brother for buying the best. Rain
drummed all over the car in increasing and diminishing
thunder—hood, top, windshield, side—like a reefer-drunk drummer on
different kettles.
Off in the rain-shrouded night jungle life let
loose their agony in high-pitched sounds that rose even above the
motor’s howl and the driving rain.
I kept the pedal on the floor. I knew the road
was straight for a good long time. Then gradually the road rose and
we came up out of that swamped mud. The tire hummed on what was
once hard-packed ground. It was softer now, like glass mushed over
with oatmeal, but a hell of a lot better than back
there.
“
We’re going it now,” Leda said.
“We’re okay now, aren’t we, Eric?”
I chanced my first look at her for quite a
time. She had both hands on the dash, her head thrust forward,
bright eyes searching the wild night ahead.
“
You’re a trooper,” I said. “A real
one. I’m sorry I got you into all this, baby. But I’ll get you
out.”
She glanced at me and smiled. Her lips were a
bit tight and the smile went cockeyed. “I know you will,
darling.”
Then I saw the yellow gleam of two cat’s eyes
ahead. It was another car approaching. I didn’t decrease
speed.
“
There’s a bridge!” Leda
said.
But I saw that too late. The other car and I
started across the narrow bridge at the same time. Wood planks
ripped in a staccato roar, loose, and our rear end bucked and swung
straight at the oncoming car’s lights.
I tried to wrench it back. We were going too
fast.
At the instant we hit, I knew it was a truck.
An old truck.
Leda screamed and we rocked off into the
night, smashed through the wooden guardrail. For a time there was
no sound save the wild whine of the motor and the monotonous thump
and crash as metal and glass gave way, as young trees snapped. I
held to the wheel and watched us dive down an embankment of
withered pines, straight at the rain-mottled, gleaming surface of
water.
We struck hard, head on, and water geysered
into the air. I heard a sharp clunk beside me, and Leda sprawled
across the wheel. She’d smacked her head. She groaned, and the car
settled a bit to one side and was still.
A small cloud of steam hissed above the water
and vanished. The engine creaked, we settled again, then it was
very silent. For a moment.
“
Hey, down there!” A cracker voice
yelled through the rain from up on the bridge. It was the voice of
an old man. “Y’all right, down there? Hey, y’all right?”
Chapter 19
“
Leda, Leda!” I shook her, tried to
straighten her in the seat. She moaned. Up on the bridge the old
man yelled something again. “Are you hurt, Leda?”
She moved against me, then slowly pulled
herself around in the seat. We sat with our feet braced against the
dashboard, looking down at the windshield, the hood of the car,
water and darkness.
“
I’m—I’m all right,” she said.
“Hurt my head.”
“
Quick,” I said. “Out your side of
the car. We’re in water, but it isn’t deep. Just climb out and
start away from the car. Think you can do it?”
“
Yes, but—”
“
Never mind the buts. We can’t let
that guy up there get sight of us. C’mon.” I opened the door
against mud on her side. It would only open partway. “Squeeze
through,” I told her.
She lifted herself through the door. “I’m
dizzy.”
“
Yeah.” I searched around on the
floor for the Colt automatic. It was down between the clutch and
brake pedal. I shoved it in my pocket and climbed out after Leda
into the water and the raining dark.
Up on the bridge the man was shouting. Then I
saw something else. Chickens were on the bridge, squawking,
fluttering around. A dead chicken floated in the water next to our
wrecked car. Three more flapped and clucked wildly in the small
stream.
“
Ye won’t talk,” the man on the
bridge said. “Damn it all to hell anyways. Truck busted to nothing
an’ all my chickens loosed, airy a one ain’t kilt or loosed. Damn
an’ goddamn! Is anybody down there?” His voice echoed for a brief
instant, then was muted by the rain. “They dead sure hell, I
reckon.”
“
Keep going,” I whispered to Leda.
“Head for dry land, over there.” I shoved her through the water,
which was up to our knees. “Be as quiet as you can.” It was then I
knew I’d struck my leg on something. The one that’d been wounded in
Korea. It was painful.
We made higher ground. I found a tall cypress
on a hummock with knee-high grass soaked but soft around its
base.
“
Sit down—never mind the mud,” I
said. “We’ll wait till he goes.”
Leda sank to the ground, leaned against the
tree. I hunkered beside her and watched. It was very dark, but the
lights from the truck on the bridge threw an eerie yellow glow over
the landscape with the rain coming down in a steadied
fall.
“
How’s your head?” I looked and saw
she’d cut it pretty badly above the right eye. It was best to let
the rain wash it.
“
Geez,” Leda said. “What a mess!
Eric, what’ll—”
“
Hang on.” I motioned her quiet.
The old man on the bridge was coming down the far side, just beyond
where our car went through the railing. Our luck, smash into a
truck loaded with chickens. I tried to reckon how much farther we’d
have to go to reach the cabin. I knew precisely where we were, and
according to my guess we’d have a rotten sight of miles before we
found the place. If we found it. . . .
“
Dead, sure as Blue’s a hound an’
Bessie’s belly’s swelled like a melon.” The man waded through water
to the car. I couldn’t see him clearly, but he cursed plenty about
the chickens. “I didn’t do nothin’,” the man said. “I didn’t do a
thing, no-siree. Seen ’em comin’ like faar thu a tin hawn. Din’t do
nothin’, damn an’ goddamn.” He reached the car. “Dead,” he said.
“Dead as hell.” He looked in the driver’s side. “Airy a soul!” He
thrashed around the other side and stood by the open door. He stood
there for a long while staring inside the car. He didn’t say
anything.
Finally he started away from the car, then
stopped. “They gone,” he said. “They done taken off. Mebbe floatin’
in the river.” He started to cry, great racking sobs which cracked
through the rain. He blew his nose with his thumb and sobbed some
more. “Gone,” he said. “Reckon I’m done fer. Ain’t airy one chick
lef’. Truck dead as hell.” Abruptly he cursed into the night and
thrashed back toward the bridge. He didn’t say anything else. Then
I saw him cross the top of the bridge, silhouetted in the lights
from his truck. His shoulders were bowed and he shuffled. He picked
a chicken off the guard rail and threw it with all his might in the
direction of the truck. It screamed and clucked. Then he was
gone.
“
We’ve got to move on,” I told
Leda.
“
All right.”
I helped her up. She looked at me. Blood was
running down the side of her face. “Which way?” she said. Her tone
was resigned at first, then she seemed to summon courage and
strength from somewhere. “Let’s go, Eric. Let’s go, we’ve got to
get to the cabin.”