Saving Jason (16 page)

F
rom the garage came the sound of the little door screeching open. The bison all turned their heads to look.

The three men walked out into the light. Even from that distance, I could see that they were all holding handguns. Somewhere in the building, there must have been a cache. Gino probably knew what he was doing with a gun and the weasel looked at least minimally competent. But the Missing Link stuck a long-barreled silver revolver down the front of his pants. I hoped that he would trip and put a hole through his privates.

They walked toward the field and split up. Gino and the weasel came straight on, but moved very slowly. Cautiously. I could tell by their body language that they were already frightened. The big guy jogged far around to the left before coming down toward me—flanking me. He was surprisingly fast for his size.

From the driveway came the sound of a gunshot. I looked and found enough spilled light from the barn to see Gino, weapon in hand, firing into the air. He shot three times and began walking through the grass toward the young male bison. He had, no doubt, deduced that their commotion was the result of our presence. And he was coming to finish us.

If the gunfire was meant to frighten off the bison, it didn’t work. Maybe it was merely meant to distract them from the approach of the other shooter. But the bison were so domesticated that they did not register the sound as dangerous. Instead they continued to focus on me. They ran, stamping and grunting, along the electric-fence line, both angered and fearful. I threw up my hands and shouted hoarsely and they scattered like a flock of pigeons, only to immediately form
into a compact group and return. They were still ignoring Gino, who had advanced to less than a football field away. He was close enough to be in silhouette; I could see his outline clearly, but not his features. Soon—another minute or two—and he might see me, the distant light reflecting off of my face or white shirt. I panicked. With no plan other than retreat, I turned and ran back toward where I had left Aimee.

I realized immediately that Gino was driving me, herding me. The shooter coming down from the other side would complete a pincer and they would have us both.

Gino fired again. This time, however, he was close enough to the animals that they reacted. With the unison of a flock of starlings, they turned and ran. They didn’t go far—twenty yards or so—before wheeling and looking back. The weasel came forward, and for a moment stood facing off against the herd. Neither side was willing to make another move until they had fully assessed all the dangers.

Gino still couldn’t see me, but the big man was now coming up along the fence, deep in darkness. His eyes would have adjusted and he would see me any second. He pulled the weapon out from his pants.

I bolted. He saw me and chased after. We ran parallel along the fence. I didn’t know whether he could see it or not, but we were both dangerously close to zapping ourselves into eternity.

He fired. It made a lot of noise. I wasn’t a great target, but if he was simply trying to scare me so much that my legs turned to Jell-O, it came close to instant success. I staggered, fell, picked myself up, and ran for the outer fence. I leapt up and hit the fence two feet off the ground, grabbing hold with my fingers and pulling myself higher.

Another shot rang out and this time I heard the bullet whistle by, close enough that I believed that I could smell it. And then I heard the roar of the bull again. Much closer. I risked a look over my shoulder and saw, once more only in silhouette, a bison. A behemoth of a bison. Like some truant from the last ice age, snorting, roaring, and stamping the ground. He had arrived to defend his herd.

The three shooters saw it, too. Gino and the weasel turned and
ran, but the guy who had just been chasing me was penned between the bull and the fence. It was only thirty yards away. A heartbeat or two once it began to move. Courage or stupidity? He faced it, aimed carefully, and began to fire, smoothly and regularly, giving himself time to pull the weapon back from the recoil and take aim again. Four more shots. Then he calmly opened the cylinder and began taking bullets out of his pocket and carefully inserting them.

The bull wasn’t polite about it. It didn’t wait for the man to fully reload. With a long hop, it began its charge.

I don’t know if any of the bullets hit their target, but if they did, they didn’t slow the bull down. It covered the intervening ground in seconds. When the younger bulls had chased me the week before, the ground had seemed to thunder and reverberate, but this attack was so quick, over thick grass, that it was almost silent. The man looked up from the gun and his calm evaporated. When the animal was only yards away, he turned to the side and ran.

He ran the wrong way.

He hit the electric fence belly-first. The lightning bolt that arced from the fence sounded like the demise of Gog and Magog. It boomed, hissed, and sizzled. The combined scents of burnt flesh and ozone filled the air. The man remained upright, jerking in horrifying spasms for what seemed like minutes but must only have been for a second or two. The gun dropped from his hand and he fell, slumped over the sagging wire.

The fence was designed to stun a buffalo, which was then supposed to immediately recoil. It was not made for prolonged contact. One of the big lights over the barn burst, flinging a fireworks of sparks over the yard. Back inside the building, the circuit breaker overloaded, tripping off not only the fence but the main electric as well. The other light over the barn door went dark, the fence released the dead man, and he finally sank to the ground.

A
ll the buffalo, the big bull included, moved far back from the fence. They recognized the crackle and sparks and respected them—and the smell of scorched flesh had them spooked. The bull kept his distance and made sure the more curious of the younger males kept theirs, too. One in particular retreated far down the field.

I jumped from the fence and ran to where I had left Aimee. Without the distant glow from the barn light, the night was pitch-dark again and it took me a few minutes to find her. I bumped into the dead electric fence more than once in the process, scaring myself witless each time.

Aimee was in trouble. Her breathing had become shallow, her pulse was faint, and her skin was cold. Shock was well under way. I had to get her to a hospital. There were plenty of vehicles in the barn and only two men left. The odds were atrocious, but there was no alternative. Somehow, I needed to outwit or overpower them or she would die.

The bison had all lost interest and moved off a good distance, swallowed by the night again. The big bull was lowing and roaring—he may have been hit by a bullet—but he was on his feet and moving. His adversary was never going to move again.

I pulled Aimee under the fence and once more hitched her up onto my back. I started back across the field. She felt heavier.

“Leave me,” she moaned close to my ear.

I could not leave her. The ghost of another woman was there with her. And if I could save this woman, then maybe the ghost would finally let me be.

“We’re leaving here together,” I whispered to her. “Just do me a favor and keep breathing.”

She moaned again.

The long building was a black wall against the black sky, an illusory goal, but the shadow loomed larger as I approached it. I was heading in the right direction at least.

I carried her across the rutted dirt drive. We were almost at the barn when the light came back on, an alarm like an old-time firehouse bell went off, and the wall-sized rolling steel door began to rise with a rumbling clatter.

Aimee whimpered in my ear at the sudden noise and explosion of light. But she was still alive. I took her to the side of the barn and laid her down in the shadows.

“I need to find us a way out of here. I’ll be back for you. No matter what.”

She didn’t reply. In the dim light, I could see her face again. She was beyond pain. She needed a hospital and soon.

A big diesel engine ground into life, and a moment later twin high beams preceded a Mack tractor truck out of the door and into the yard. The lights swept over the field and caught the group of young male buffalo grazing peacefully again. They looked up disinterestedly and went back to their midnight snacking. Nothing else moved.

A second truck started up. The lights came on. I saw what they were doing. They would have a fleet of large trucks, lights covering the field. Then they could each take a truck and hunt us down—if we were still out there. As it was, a stray flash of light as a truck made the turn could easily frame us on the wall and it would be over. I needed to move.

The second truck—another big tractor cab—pulled out and lined up parallel to the first, their lights covering a swath forty yards wide over the field.

The driver of the first truck jumped down from the cab and strode back into the building, leaving the truck running, lights on. It was Gino. He carried the gun by his side. I pressed my back up against the wall and waited for him to pass inside. He didn’t see me.

I was frozen with indecision. The risk of trying to take one of the trucks while one of those two was there and keeping watch was too great. Doing it with Aimee slung over my shoulder was impossible. But the risk of staying put was almost as great. I huddled there while a third truck rolled out and lit up the field. Then it was the weasel’s turn to bring out another truck. The two men continued to alternate until six trucks were lined up, all idling loudly, high beams slicing the darkness into narrow strips of gray bordering swaths of brilliant white. Nothing more happened for at least another ten minutes. The two men sat in the bookend trucks, scanning the field for any sign of us—or the caveman, though by then they must have realized that it was his demise that had caused the electrical blackout. The lights from the line of trucks revealed highlights from the ground between them and the fence, but little detail. If we had still been hiding out there, we could have stayed low and been invisible.

Gino must have realized that the plan wasn’t working. He jumped down from the cab of the truck and jogged to the other end of the line. He and the weasel conferred for a few minutes, with gestures that indicated their plans. Gino returned to the Mack, gunned the engine, and slipped it into gear. The two trucks—the big Mack with Gino on board and a honey wagon with the logo
YOU DUMP IT, WE PUMP IT
spelled out in brown—pulled out onto the grass, plowing it down as they ground slowly toward the fence. About halfway there, they turned, allowing the lights to sweep like large, and deadly, spotlights. But there was nothing to see but grass and the tall fence. They continued.

Eventually, on one of those turns, the lights would pass over us hiding against the wall and we’d be discovered. The odds were strongly against us no matter what I did, but they were never going to get any better.

“Aimee? Come on. We’re going to get out of here now.” I tried to get her arms over my shoulders again, but she was limp. There was nothing for it but to lift her in my arms and carry her clutched to my chest. She would not weigh any less that way, but she would be marginally
easier to hoist and keep in position. I squatted beside her, tucked my hands underneath her, and with an explosive jerk, I rose up. Her head flopped back and her arms and legs dangled. She had been reduced to an awkward burden. I held her to my chest and scurried toward the nearest truck.

It was another big semi cab. I didn’t know how to drive one, but I didn’t have much choice. Aimee was already beginning to slip out of my grasp. I staggered to the opposite door, propped her on the running board, and climbed up. The engine was idling and the cab unlocked. I swung the door wide, jumped down, and lifted Aimee into the passenger seat. I sat her up and strapped her in.

“We’re almost there,” I said. “How are you holding up?”

She didn’t answer. She might not have heard me. Pain and loss of blood were ganging up on her senses. Her body and brain were sealing off all nonessential systems. There wasn’t much time.

Lights swept over me as one of the two big trucks out in the field made a turn for another pass. I froze, hoping that I had not been seen. Immediately, I realized that there was no point. If I’d been spotted, I needed to escape soonest, and if by some fluke they hadn’t seen me, it was still time to break out. I slammed the door behind me, climbed over Aimee, and half fell into the driver’s seat.

There was a big red button labeled
BRAKE
. I pushed it. Nothing happened. I pushed it hard and it sank. The truck rolled a few inches. There was a clutch and a tall gearshift. How hard could it be? I held down the clutch, revved the engine slightly, shoved the shifter into the spot where first gear was on every manual transmission I had ever seen, and let out the clutch. The truck began to move—in reverse. I was headed directly for the barn, going fifteen miles an hour—backward.

I pulled the truck out of gear, and shifted into where third ought to be. The engine growled at me and the transmission bucked unhappily. But it didn’t stall. I pressed down on the gas, spun the wheel, and headed for the main gate.

“No comments on my driving, okay?” Maybe she could hear me.

The bright high beams swung by again, washing the cabin with blue-white light. They were on to me. I shifted up two gears and the truck bucked again before accelerating like a muscle car. With no load or trailer, the 400 horsepower and 1,300 pounds feet of torque on the average big diesel goes straight to acceleration. I had to race through the gears to keep up with the roaring engine. The gates were a hundred yards ahead and approaching quickly. The tall side mirror showed both trucks bouncing across the field after me. They had already been moving when I started and were traveling faster, so they appeared to be closing in. I triangulated our relative positions. The septic tanker had a slight chance of beating me to the gates—I had to assume that it had been stored empty. I raced up the gears and kept the pedal to the floor. The engine howled every time I pushed my foot down on the clutch. It was going to be close.

The Mack cab bounced onto the drive behind me, but now my head start was beginning to pay off. I looked again and saw that I was even pulling away.

The tanker was coming in at an angle on my left. It hit a deep rut just before the driveway and bounced hard and high. For a split second, the weasel let up. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I kept the accelerator floored and squeezed through in front of him. The double gates were right there.

“Hold on. This is the tricky part,” I said. Aimee didn’t answer.

I hit the first gate while still shifting and the wheel was almost wrenched out of my hand. I let go of the shift and held on to the wheel. Planks, two-by-fours, hardware, and whipping strands of barbed wire flew in all directions. But I was gone before it all registered. The outer gate was sturdier, but that just meant it was louder when it cracked and exploded as I came through.

I pulled the wheel hard to the left and bounced onto the asphalt. The truck felt like it was ready to roll over, but it surprised me. It held the road and barreled on. The next turn was coming up fast. A left would take me out toward the highway and the hope of finding help
and a hospital. Straight would lead me deeper into the desolation of the Pine Barrens. If they caught me there, I would have no chance. But if I could get to the highway, I could soon have every highway patrolman in Suffolk County out to stop me. And that would be enough to turn the tables. I turned left.

The truck gave that same vertiginous pull as if it wanted to fall over on its side. I let the truck take the turn wider, thumping off the pavement on the far side and plowing briefly through the underbrush. Short pine trees and scrub oaks snapped at the window on the passenger side, while others sank beneath the tall chrome grille.

The first of my pursuers took the turn. Gino in the Mack. Like the vehicle I was driving, it had no trailer. It was all about horsepower and torque. But he was the better driver. He seemed to have some idea of what the hell he was doing. I did not. He downshifted into the turn and took it slower, but much steadier, keeping it under control. I was merely hanging on, hoping that my lack of knowledge wasn’t going to get me killed.

I aimed for the road and the truck responded, bouncing back onto the tarmac again. I tasted blood and found that I had just bitten my tongue. But I was ahead of the other two trucks, and while they were in pursuit and, I was sure, intent on killing me, they were following me to where I wanted them to go.

The transmission seemed to have an as yet inexhaustible number of gears. I was in sixth and the engine was howling for another change. I pulled the stick back and the gears ground and the truck bucked. I shoved it into neutral and tried again, double-clutching this time. Much smoother. I was barreling along at seventy through the dark woods. A faint glow up ahead signaled civilization and safety.

That’s when the truck behind me struck. Gino came racing up and hit the rear end of the tractor. It was barely a tap, but the effect was terrifying. The truck began to yaw and I felt as if all control had disappeared. I remembered hitting black ice in upstate New York when I was first learning to drive in college. I steered into the skid and let up
on the accelerator. The wheels grabbed and I pulled the truck back into line just before it rolled off into the woods again.

I knew what he had done. An asymmetrical push from behind doesn’t need to be forceful to be effective when a vehicle is traveling at fifty miles an hour or more. A gentle nudge can be deadly. I needed to keep directly in front of the truck behind me, so that if he tried it again, I would be able to take the blow solidly in the center. I moved the truck onto the crown of the road and tried not to think about what would happen if some poor citizen wanted to come down from the other direction.

There were now two sets of headlights behind me; the honey wagon had finally achieved some momentum and was coming up strong. The woods whipped by. I risked another quick look at Aimee, but no miracle had happened. Her head was hanging to one side, her eyes staring at the dashboard. I thought I should feel something, but my adrenaline kept me from going there. I would pay for it later.

The highway was just ahead. I hit the brakes and double-clutched down two gears. The Mack raced up behind me on the left and gave another nudge. The tanker was just over my right shoulder. I felt the truck begin to slide and I downshifted again. The wheels grabbed, but there wasn’t time—or room—to make the turn onto the on-ramp. The tanker’s lights filled the right-side mirror. I wasn’t so much driving as being driven.

The Mack was coming up again for another push and I swerved to the right, just before passing under the L.I.E. The tanker truck veered away. The weasel overcompensated. He must have panicked. He didn’t have time to register what he’d done. The truck hit the concrete overpass at close to seventy miles an hour and the lights in my mirror went out. The sound of the crash was magnified in the short tunnel, but I wasn’t around long enough to absorb it. I felt no shock, no horror, just relief that I was now being pursued by only one crazy killer rather than two. I immediately flipped back to the task at hand.

The next on-ramp was also a right turn and I was on top of it.
There was no time to downshift again. I mashed the brakes, pulled the wheel over, and hoped that the tires would continue to hold the road. They did. Barely.

The curve was tight, sloped for sedans and station wagons moving at thirty or forty, not for a giant diesel cab tearing through at fifty. I leaned into the turn, as though my puny one hundred and eighty pounds might make a difference. Somehow the truck held the road and I was on the L.I.E. and running back up through the gears.