Authors: Mark Nykanen
They ran off still holding hands.
“You go right,” Lauren yelled between breaths, “and I’ll go straight or left, depending on what he does.”
Kerry was shaking her head. “No-no. We stick together.”
“He’s got a gun. We stick together, he’ll kill us both.”
For the first time in hours, Lauren read terror on Kerry’s face. She could see this even as they raced on, and felt it in the young woman’s tight grip. They looked back to find that Stassler had disappeared; but then his head rose up from behind a rock, and they saw that he’d never slowed down. He was screaming words they couldn’t possibly understand through the rain, wind, and thunder. In the instant that followed, he fired his gun at them, a wild shot that had only the slimmest chance of finding its target, and most likely was intended only to scare them into stopping. If so, it failed miserably in its mission because at that moment Lauren squeezed Kerry’s hand and pushed her away. The two of them scattered like sparrows, Kerry indeed veering right, rapidly widening the gap between herself and Lauren, who was darting straight ahead, then cutting between a wall of boulders and shooting out from them like a pinball.
Lauren glanced over her shoulder as Stassler leaped up on a rock. He looked toward her, then Kerry. She rejoiced over his indecision. Then, with a heartfelt sense of what she had to do to save the girl’s life, she waited till he turned to her once more, and that’s when she ran five more steps and fell. She rolled onto her back, grabbed her ankle, and screamed. She lay there gripping it fiercely as lightning stung a pinnacle only fifty feet away. Rain lashed her, washing the dust and sweat from her face, leaving only the turmoil and terror she wanted him to see.
He actually raised his arms in triumph, the gun silhouetted against the flashing sky, before jumping from the rock and racing toward her.
I
’D BEEN TRAILING THEM FOR
all of five minutes when they spotted me, but I didn’t care. I knew that seeing me in the middle of that storm would leave them witless, a loss of nerve and intelligence that neither could afford, given the perilously fragile state in which it existed in both of them under the best of circumstances.
What did I need to worry about? They were running off holding hands like Hansel and Gretel, and in my imaginings at the time I wondered which one of them played Hansel and which one played Gretel in their professor-student fantasy. The point was they were
together
. I needn’t have worried about them getting away, and as I looked at them fleeing like children I could feel all my earlier concerns misting into the breath of this chilly thunderstorm. And then they shocked me by separating. It was an intelligent ploy, and so surprising that it was like watching a play, believing wholly in its verisimilitude, only to have an actor suddenly come out of character by turning to the audience and asking for a beer. I would never have guessed that they were up to such a stratagem, such self-sacrifice. I would have bet the compound on their fear of me keeping them together. Their sudden separation drove me to stop and choose, but what I wanted most, what I absolutely required, was no such choice: I needed them both. My only remaining option was to kill one of them as quickly as possible, and to immediately hunt down the other.
But then I forced myself to reconsider. Perhaps not. Perhaps the hard bounty of a desert storm would do my work for me. I took comfort in that, but only a fool bets on chance when certitude lies by its side. I could gun them down, collapse the mine with the murder weapon in it, and flee. They’d never find the gun, and I would begin my waiting game, for the years to blur memories of the deed, though not, of course, of me.
So all was not lost, but I needed to work swiftly. And I did, as soon as I saw nympho media whore fall and roll around like a toddler thrown from a trike. Amazing, I thought, how instantly our problems solve themselves when we don’t panic.
I set off for her, keeping an easy eye on Her Rankness too, though I did lose her among the shadows and rock. Still, I knew her direction, and the night was only beginning. I also knew what Her Rankness would face as she ran into the darkness, if not soon, then in all likelihood later. It would terrorize her as much as I could. And she had to be greatly weakened from not eating and drinking. She was only now getting her first taste of water. She wouldn’t run for long before stopping to drink, and if she was like most of the desert’s near fatalities, she would prove gluttonous and barely able to move by the time she’d had her fill.
What I didn’t anticipate in my newfound equanimity was nympho media whore’s deceptiveness. As soon as I ran toward her, she rose like a cripple at a televangelical’s rally, and took off with a burst of speed, wholly unhampered by injury.
This was abominable behavior, like a mother bird faking a broken wing to lead a fox from her nestlings.
Now I’m facing difficulties again. She’s keeping the distance between us so constant that I’m certain that she’s intentionally luring me farther away from Her Rankness. Why else would she turn back so often? Fear is an obvious answer, and though I flatter myself in thinking so, and willingly grant that it does play a role, I would be delusional if I didn’t recognize that the success of her deception seems to be spurring her on as well. Yet this deceitfulness, this disgusting dishonesty, has been such a distinctive feature of hers that I should never have been surprised by this twisted turn of events. The only surprise is that she found a victim for her cheap treachery in me. Why I let this happen is a question that I’ll have to resolve eventually, if for no other reason than to make sure it never happens again.
Yet, as long as she continues toward the compound, I’m not overly concerned because I know what awaits her. She can’t possibly anticipate the wonders of the desert night, the transmogrification wrought by a storm of this magnitude. She’ll be more than a bird faking a broken wing, she’ll be a bird whose wings are clipped entirely, a bird forced to watch a fox feed on her nestlings. There’ll be no compound tonight. No road. Not for her. How do I know? Because the rain is a relentless, truculent ally. It’s drenched me. It’s drenching her. Wild sheets of it lash the rock and sting the eyes. I see her soaked hair whipping in the wind, and every time she looks back I see lengths of it snaking across her cheeks and brow. But best of all, I see her fear, genuinely stark fear. I want her face to overflow with it, to grow even uglier and more contorted for all the toil she’s given me.
But I get even more than I asked for because she slips and falls hard. No cheesy trick this time. She’s really grabbing her knee, rubbing it fiercely. She gets up, but she’s limping, bent over, holding her knee and trying to run at the same time. Not so fast now, is she? See how suddenly it all changes? I’m almost within shouting distance. I want to tell her to stop, spare us all this effort. Then I realize that most assuredly I am within shooting distance. All I have to do is “wing” this bird, and she’s mine. She’ll crumple like foil.
I raise my left arm, rest the barrel of the revolver between my elbow and wrist, and steady my aim. I lead her as I would a dove or a duck, a deer or a dog, and shoot.
She jumps from the impact, but is not hit, at least by the bullet. I see her smacking her leg as she runs, as if to brush away chips of rock that have sprayed her skin. Close, very close.
I want to get closer before I try again, so I maintain my runner’s stride. She’s no longer babying her knee, so I assume that my latest injection of fear has inoculated her against whatever pain she might have felt. I’m beginning to think that she’s a runner of long standing. I know something about this. I ran cross-country in high school, and several twenty Ks in college. I haven’t run a race for many years, but I recognize serious runners when I see them, and I have to say that she’s a serious runner. I suppose if you’re as deceitful as she is, you’d better be. She has the practiced stride of someone who doesn’t waste a lot of energy flailing her arms and legs in useless motion. This would give me pause, if I didn’t need to keep pace myself. I have to admit I’m beginning to tire, and as I do my thoughts about her blacken. Though she doesn’t know it yet, she’ll also be forced to slow down, and eventually stop, if not from fatigue then from the desert’s own deceitfulness. She has no monopoly on duplicity. The desert, she’ll soon see, is not always what it appears to be either.
Till then, I can only try to keep up. She’s widening the distance between us, no doubt figuring that we’re fully afield of her little friend. She’s right about that.
I’m probably a hundred fifty, maybe two hundred feet back, and still she shows no signs of flagging. But I have to keep up, keep her in sight. Just in case. But this is growing increasingly hard to do. She’s like that idiotic bunny on television, the one that never winds down. I can’t even calm myself with thoughts of her death. It’s all I can do to keep her in sight.
And then I hear it, and ease up, take an extra breath. Yes, I hear that glorious sound. It’s there. It comes to me as the most benevolent of saviors. I don’t even have to run now, but I do because I’m not taking any chances. I need to see if she throws her life away. I wish that upon her, the blend of desperation and stupidity necessary to make her attempt the impossible. It would serve my interests well.
The sound grows louder. The first time I heard it speak, the roar was so animate it chilled me. Then I drew closer, felt the ground beneath me shake, as if evil spirits—if you believe such pap—were rising like wraiths to take over the darkness. And then I saw it. The moon was out, three quarters full, and it reflected off the surface with the intensity of chrome.
There it is now. I can see it again. And yes, I see her as well, stupefied by the sight, paralyzed by its bold presence. She’s standing there, staring at it. Doesn’t know what to do. Better not get too close, nympho media whore, it’ll eat you right up.
She’s looking at me. My smile grows in the fractured light that spills from the sky. To settle my shooting arm, I slow to a walk. I missed last time because I was too far away and out of breath. I’m going to keep it simple now and gun her down at
point-blank range
, as the newspapers love to say. That’s why it’s critical to convey supreme confidence, to let my smile prosper with every step, to give her the unbreakable impression that she’s cornered in one of the desert’s own cul-de-sacs.
I take heart in the fact that she’s not moving, not going anywhere. Where can she go? And she’s got to realize that Her Rankness is stymied too, trapped as it were by my greatest ally, whose long thick arms come alive in a sudden rain, whose dry washes run deep and fast with water, currents so strong that they rip boulders loose and send them tumbling into the empty reaches of the far desert.
That’s it, nympho media whore, stare at that torrent all you want, but if you try to cross that roiling water, you’ll die. You’ve come to one of the desert’s phantom rivers, and now you stand upon its unsteady bank.
She edges no closer. I see her looking left and right. She could run along the bank, but to where? To go right is to lead me to her friend, the one she thought she’d die for, and to go left is to run toward the maw of this widening river of madness, all the water and waste now starting to eat at those sandy banks. Look, there goes a chunk—she jumps back—consumed by the hungry current. She glances at me. The distance between us narrows to thirty, thirty-five feet. Now she’s the one forced to choose. Does she die in the river? Or does she fall to her knees and beg like a mendicant for the measly alms of her life?
Her eyes sweep back to the river. How deep? I can almost hear her thoughts. Deep, my dear, deep by the parched parochial standards of the desert. Six feet, seven. It may not sound like much, but once you get in the water whips you around with the frenzy of a washing machine. I have found the bodies of man and beast after these storms, their skin and hides bruised and gashed from the beatings they endured. So little different, really, from the raging floods that surge through our cities. In Los Angeles the wide, concrete-lined river comes alive with everything imaginable—bed springs and old cars, fifty-foot trees and refrigerators—but most of all, it comes alive with people who are dying. You can never imagine just how swift a flood current is until you’ve seen an arm rising from that churning muddy mass as it sweeps out to sea. A lone arm reaching up, as if to be plucked to freedom. And then that lone arm sinking down, never to be seen again.
If she takes the dive, I’ll applaud. She’ll drown of her own accord, and I’ll have only Her Rankness to hunt down.
But if she doesn’t, I’ll force the issue. This is even better than having her fall from the cliff. There are always questions, annoying and protracted, when someone falls from way up on high. But a flooding desert claims lives every year; the ignorant and learned alike grow fascinated with the violent juxtaposition of seething water and barren land, the ancient and venerable constituents of earth and sky. It’s hard not to become mesmerized by the manner in which one consumes the other, gobbles up big bites and carries it away. But the desert always wins. Always. Because the sun always shines. I remind myself of this as I approach her. No matter what else, the desert always wins.
T
HE SURGING WATER TORE OFF
another chunk of bank less than two feet from where Lauren stood. It happened so fast that it was as if the earth had simply vanished. If she hadn’t felt it in her feet—the rude awakening of roots and rocks and soil—she might not have believed her eyes at all.
She’d hesitated for moments, caught between the river racing constantly away, and Stassler moving relentlessly closer; cocky enough to slow down, as if he no longer had a need to hurry. Even at his best, she knew she could outrun him, but his gun, his bullets? The only cover rushed by in the raging water, and after backing up over the last few inches of bank, after drawing close enough to be swept away in the slightest surrendering of land, she charged upriver, refusing even now to compromise Kerry’s safety. She sprinted along the very edge, tempting fate with her feet, deciding in the odd clarity of her panic that if he did shoot her, she’d cast herself into the flood rather than let him seize her bleeding body.