The Dead Run (21 page)

 

CHAPTER 37

I
t took Sherry fifteen dark, claustrophobic minutes to wake Eric, screaming at the top of her lungs from four inches away and shaking him as hard as she dared. When she finally got through, he lurched up as if out of a nightmare and smashed his head against the ceiling.

Not a lot of room in Marshall Buchanan's trunk.

And only a keyhole's worth of light, the beam as narrow as a laser pointer and halfway as potent. Sherry and Eric lay curled, by necessity, into what Sherry imagined would have looked from above like the yin-yang symbol. Still linked at the wrist, if no longer at the lips.

That kiss seemed a long ways off now. Like a moment from another life.

Like freedom.

“Ow,” Eric said dully, lifting his hand to his forehead and rubbing vigorously, Sherry's hand along for the ride.

“Are you okay?” she asked by rote, the question's absurdity asserting itself in an instant.

“If we're where I think we are, fuck no.” He dropped his arm. “Jesus Christ. I feel like I'm hungover. What about you? Did he—”

“I'm fine,” Sherry said, the words clipped and certain, trying to convince herself. “Can you see all right? You don't have a concussion or anything, do you?”

“What's there to see?”

“There's this.” She pressed her discovery into his palm, felt his fingers explore it. “I found it in the pocket thing, behind me.”

“What is this, a flare?”

“I think so. And there's this.” She arched her back, reached under herself with her free hand. Taking care not to hit Eric with it—that was all he needed, another blunt trauma—Sherry laid the tire iron across his body.

Eric didn't seem overly impressed. “I guess I can try to hit him with it, when he opens the trunk. It's better than nothing.”

“I had something else in mind. My dad used to have a car like this. The backseat is the kind that folds down. If we can push through the upholstery and reach the lever thingy with the tire iron—”

“We can what, roll into the backseat and get our asses kicked all over again?”

The note of defeat in his voice scared Sherry more than she wanted to admit. Just as surprising was the way that fear cemented her determination. What had seemed like half a plan just moments ago struck her as unassailable now.

“Uh,
no
.” Sherry's voice was full of scorn—shades of Caroline, this morning, chasing down the quiet new girl fleeing for home. Talk about a different life. Let her step to Sherry now and see what happened.

I'll Brazilian-wax your head, bitch.

Despite everything, Sherry smiled to herself.

“What then, already?” Eric snapped, bringing her back.

Sherry took a deep breath, hoping the words came out sounding as plausible as they seemed in her head. “We throw a flare at him and hope he loses control of the wheel. And while he's struggling with the car, yeah, we climb over and whale on him.”

That last part, she'd made up on the fly.

Eric didn't reply. She took his silence as consent and kept brainstorming.

“Or we get a door open, and—”

“Fuck, this is only half a flare. The cap's missing.”

“The what?” But the sinking feeling in her stomach told Sherry she already knew.

“The thing you twist off to ignite it. There's supposed to be a button here. Were you lying on top of it or something? Are there any others?”

“I don't know. No. Not that I could find.”

“Well, let's hope he's got some matches back here.” Eric was twisting and turning, running his hands across every surface, just as Sherry had done.

“There's this,” he reported, unearthing a plastic gallon jug. “I think it's gasoline.” He shook it, and a trickle of liquid sloshed inside.

“Almost empty.”

Eric gripped it between his knees, unscrewed the lid. The unmistakable odor assaulted them, filling the closed space, and he spun it shut, shoved it at Sherry, resumed his search.

“Aha. Somebody loves us.” He pressed a matchbook into her hand. Sherry flipped back the white cardboard overleaf, raised it into the light.

“Two matches.”

“And a teaspoon of gas. It'll have to do.” He was already squirming to face forward, tire iron in hand. Jerking Sherry's arm at the shoulder, making her a marionette again.

“I can't get the seat to—it won't go down,” he said in a fierce, sweaty whisper. “I'm gonna try to wedge this thing between the cushions, open up a little space. Forget about us getting into the backseat, though—we'll just have to get a fire going and hope for the best.”

A feverish interlude of breath and labor.

“There. Hand me the gas.”

He turned toward her, beckoning, and Sherry saw the crack of light he'd managed to create—and through it, a thin sliver of Buchanan's suit-jacketed right arm and florid hand, fisted around the steering wheel.

Should the spirit move him to turn, the monster would see them right back.

At least he had the windows down—perhaps it would keep him from smelling the gas. Sherry passed Eric the jug and braced herself as the liquid splashed out, praying Buchanan wouldn't hear it. He was not the kind of man who listened to the radio while he drove; aside from the white noise of tires against asphalt, the car was silent as a tomb.

And probably about to become one.

“Okay, hand me the matches.”

Sherry pressed them to her lips for luck as yet another prayer ran unbidden through her mind, like the news ticker at the bottom of a television screen.

Eric torqued himself against a wall, bringing Sherry's arm with him as he grasped the matchbook, plucked a match, doubled the cardboard over the head.

Sherry clenched her jaw, squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. Eric pulled the tiny clump of phosphorous across the striking surface, and an acrid puff spun into their nostrils.

Smoke, no fire.

One shot left.

Match. Set. Game.

Sherry held the mangled flare at the ready, so that even the briefest spark would be enough. Praying hadn't worked last time, and so she forced herself to utter no such supplications, conscious or otherwise—to suppress what a lifetime of instruction had drummed into her. It was the mental equivalent of holding her breath.

Eric swiped the match against the strip, and a teardrop of fire appeared like a miracle.

He touched it to the wick of the flare.

Independence Day.

The sharp red chemical light fizzed like a firecracker, and Sherry had to turn away. Eric held it at arm's length, shielding his own eyes, then shoved it through the space he'd leveraged open. The flare dropped onto the backseat, and up shot the flames, just as Sherry had seen in her mind's eye.

Eric yanked the tire iron. The view vanished, taking the light with it.

The flare's tracers were still spangling Sherry's vision when the car jerked hard to the left. A blaring horn tore by, and then the car jerked right, harder, throwing them both against the wall. Sherry banged her knees. Eric, his head.

“That was fast,” he muttered as the car bumped across the rumble strip and shuddered to a standstill.

The trunk was heating up. Was it the fire, Sherry wondered, or her internal furnace, stoked by fear? Were the flames consuming the upholstery right now, licking their way toward the gas tank? Was Buchanan roasting where he sat?

This plan, she realized, frantically and far too late, was based on Buchanan getting the better of the fire. If he didn't, they would die here. Someone, some half-bored cop, would pry open the trunk and find two unidentifiable crisped corpses and that would be the end.

Come on, Buchanan,
Sherry thought.
Stay alive a little longer, you son of a bitch.

A door opened, and then another. Sherry heard muffled slaps and pictured him beating at the flames with his suit jacket, that hideous mottled face turned away from the heat.

Far too quickly, it was over. The sound, the sizzle. The heat, real or imagined. All of it replaced by footsteps, each one a symphony of weight and scuff, gravel and dust. Each one bringing him closer, until the world went silent and he stood before the trunk, frame blocking the keyhole and its light.

Eric tensed beside her, the iron in his hand. Sherry prepared to kick, with all her swimmer's strength, at the first glimpse of him.

There would be a moment, she thought, as his key jangled on its chain. An instant, when the trunk would protect them and expose him, and a blow could be struck. Everything had led to this—the risk feeding the opportunity as oxygen fed fire.

The key was in the lock. The trunk whined on its hinges, and a ribbon of light appeared.

A belt buckle.

Eric lunged.

There was no room to swing, and so he drove the tire iron straight into Buchanan's crotch, like a lance.

The monster gasped, doubled over, clutched at himself. Eric scrambled over Sherry and dove for the dirt—realizing, an instant before she did, that Buchanan's most logical defense was to slam the trunk.

Forgetting, perhaps, that Sherry's arm was locked to his.

She pitched forward with him—and then past him, as Buchanan recovered, staggered forward, and threw out a hand. He caught Eric by the throat, arresting his progress halfway through the dive.

Sherry heard Eric's breath catch, with a choking sound, as she slammed to the ground. She looked up and saw him swing the tire iron again. But the angle was awkward, the effort enfeebled.

Sure enough, their moment had come. And now it was gone.

Buchanan caught him by the forearm and bent it backward. Eric howled, dropped his weapon. It clattered against the car's bumper, fell beneath the left rear wheel. Sherry reached for it, but the handcuff held her back.

Buchanan looked down at her as if he was seeing Sherry for the first time, and a gruesome smile cleaved his face.

Sherry thought she'd been scared before. But the monster's full attention—the particular terror of his gaze—sent her pulse skyrocketing.

Buchanan moved with brutal new efficiency now, as if some nascent thought had kicked him into a higher gear. He palmed Eric's face, shoved him deep into the trunk. Made sure the chain between the handcuffs stretched across the trunk's threshold, and then dropped the full weight of his body down on the lid.

It clicked shut on Eric's anguished shout, and Buchanan removed the key, then squatted before Sherry, his face inches from hers.

She kicked at him—back pressed against the car, arm raised above her head, no give at all to the chain holding it there—and the monster chuckled, wrapped a hand around each of her calves, and pressed them slowly to the ground.

“Just you and me now,” he drawled, sliding his rough hands up her legs until they clutched at her thighs.

“Maybe you remember how we handled disobedience at the compound,” he said, each word like some horrible curse. Sherry felt herself freeze up, go cold, her mind already fleeing her body, like a field mouse trying to outrun an owl on the wing.

He forced her legs apart with his hands and dropped a knee between them.

“Maybe you heard about the Rod of Correction,” he went on. But the monster's voice sounded far away. It could not reach Sherry in the place to which she had retreated, that familiar room inside herself.

Buchanan reached down and down and down, into a place that no longer existed. Sherry shut her eyes and concentrated on the ringing in her ears.

It sounded suspiciously like a cell phone.

She opened her eyes in time to see Buchanan rise, whip a phone out of his back pocket, and press it to his ear.

“Yeah, boss, what is it?”

The monster listened. And seemed, somehow, to shrink with each word that he heard.

“No, no, I'm just a little busy right now. Had an incident, with the girl. But everything's under control.”

He listened again. And did not like what he heard.

“Understood, boss.” He swiped a hand across his forehead, shook the sweat to the ground. “Good thing you called when you did, though.” Nodded. “Yes, sir. On my way.”

He slapped the phone closed, bent over Sherry once more.

“Guess this will have to wait,” he said, and scooped her up into his arms.

The next thing Sherry knew, she was back in the trunk.

There was no light this time.

 

CHAPTER 38

O
ne second, there was nothing up ahead but dust and scrub and the old double yellow, laid out across the blacktop like the tongue of some giant, exhausted lizard.

The very next, a gaggle of Harleys crested an invisible incline, clustered around a burgundy-on-blue Beemer, burning up the highway. Nichols counted twelve bikes: six in front of the car, one flanking it on either side, four bringing up the rear.

Military style. Crisp and tight. These dudes weren't playing.

The road separating the van from the convoy was straight, flat, and disappearing fast.

Unstoppable force, meet immovable object.

Or something like that. Tenth-grade physics was pretty much a blur, at this point.

“Aquí vamos!” Fuentes called to his troops, and Nichols heard the men rise, fold their bench seats into the floor, take up ready positions, click-clack their weapons. Fuentes clocked them in the rearview, nodded in approval, then threw some sunshine at Cantwell. “Make sure you're strapped in nice and tight, señora. This might get a little bumpy.”

A fucking gentleman all the way.

“What's the play?” Nichols asked, but by the time he got the words out, the answer was clear. Fuentes stayed in his lane until the very last second—until the lead section of de la Mar's convoy was nearly parallel to the armored van—then jerked the wheel violently, sent his rhinoceros lumbering into the other lane with a screech and stench of burning rubber.

It wasn't the most elegant maneuver in the history of combat, but it was brutally effective. The two-ton vehicle careered into the Harleys like the world's biggest bowling ball, scattering bikes and throwing riders. The gleaming choppers flew across the tarmac, wheels spinning helplessly. The riders slipped and tumbled and rolled and smashed, a blur of leather, flesh, and blood.

It was too much to take in—especially with the van still skidding across the lane, tires shrieking as Fuentes labored to control it. Nichols caught a stomach-wrenching glimpse of one downed rider, motionless by the roadside, his limbs splayed at hideously unnatural angles.

He wouldn't be getting up.

Of the six lead bikers, only one had managed to keep control of his rig—eluding the fireworks explosion of bodies and chrome, dipping and weaving his way clear, and then executing a sweeping U-turn and pulling a hand cannon. He bore down on the van, squeezing off one shot after the next, a full-throated bellow serving as his own personal “Ride of the Valkyries.”

You had to give the guy an A for effort, if an F for brains. The bullets impacted uselessly against the van's exterior with a series of dull thumps. Then the back doors flew open, and a fusillade of automatic gunfire threw the True Native backward off his bike.

Though not so far as to escape being barbecued semi-alive when its fuel tank exploded, seconds later.

By the time Fuentes righted the van, the Beemer had reversed course and was beating a full-throttled retreat. The remaining True Natives buffered the fleeing car, their six bikes arrayed around it in a loose horseshoe. Sitting behind one of them, holding on for dear life, was a young brunette.

“Who the fuck's that girl? Fuentes, we gotta get her outta there.”

The cop didn't seem to hear a word. “Here comes the fun part,” he announced, a note of glee nudging his voice into a higher register. He dropped his foot onto the accelerator, and the van leapt forward.

Nichols clutched his armrests as the jolt threw him back against his seat, then looked up to see the bikers pull automatic weapons of their own, twist backward on their rides, and take aim.

“Get down!” Nichols bellowed.

He fumbled to undo his seat belt, dropping to the floor just as the staccato volley of gunfire tore through the air, then turned and scrabbled for Cantwell, tried to pull her to him as the barrage continued, furious and terrible.

It took a good five seconds for Nichols's eardrums to separate the trill of artillery from the trill of laughter. He raised his head and saw Fuentes cackling, hands ten-and-twoed, looking for all the world like he was captaining a goddamn RV on a family vacation.

“Hey, I appreciate the thought, Sheriff, but this is no time to give me a blow job.” He gave another chortle, reached down, and clapped Nichols on the shoulder. “We're one hundred percent bulletproof, cabrón. That includes the windshield. Get up off your knees.”

Nichols hauled himself back into the seat. The bikers hadn't gotten the message, were still tearing through reams of ammo as if they'd never heard that the definition of crazy was doing the same shit over and over and expecting the results to be different.

Watching the bullets fly at him without flinching was no easy adjustment. Cognitive dissonance like a motherfucker.

“Okay,” Fuentes decided. “Let's see what this baby can do. Everybody hold on to your culos.”

As he spoke, the van sprang forward, bearing down on the bikers. Within seconds, they were close enough for Nichols to read the panic on their faces. The indecision. It was go-down-with-the-ship or live-to-fight-another-day time, and the True Natives quickly revealed themselves as pragmatists. Knowles raised his arm, gave a retreat signal, and all at once they peeled out, like a wave rolling back to sea. In five seconds they were specks on the horizon, gone as suddenly as they'd appeared, and the BMW was all alone.

At least the girl was safe.

“Hey, what's the matter?” Fuentes called after them, rocking back and forth against his seat. “The party's just getting started! That all you bitch-made banditos got?”

His eyes narrowed, and his narration dropped in pitch and volume.

“Guess it's just you and me then, Luis. Me recuerdas, pendejo? You ready for a blast from the past?”

The BMW jagged left, then right. Fuentes shadowed each feint with gritted teeth, his face drained of fun. This was it. The moment he'd been waiting for, scheming to bring about.

There was nowhere for the car to go—it lacked the horses to get away, the finesse to elude. Besides which, the wheelman was clearly an amateur, no imagination on him whatsoever, and not a day's training in evasive maneuvers. Probably de la Mar's chauffeur, more accustomed to idling by the curb with a newspaper spread out across the wheel than handling high-speed getaways.

Well,
thought Nichols,
at least this will be his last
.

Fuentes's battering ram of a front spoiler was only inches from the BMW's rear bumper. Nichols's body tensed for the impact that was surely coming, unsure why the Mexican was drawing this out.

Especially when the True Natives could decide to bust a U-turn at any moment and rejoin the fight. Or rally up a few friends to change the odds. Any biker gang that rode strapped with machine pistols probably had plenty of bigger, badder shit stashed away, too. Not to mention plenty of restless amigos hunkered down over brewskis at the nearest roadside shithouse.

It was one hunch Nichols had no desire to confirm.

“What are you waiting for?” the sheriff demanded. “Force him off the road, already.”

Or don't,
he added mentally, reminding himself that this vigilante shit was nothing he approved of. Though the fact that he felt the need to point that out to himself certainly seemed to—

“Paciencia,” Fuentes replied stonily, disrupting an inner monologue Nichols was more than happy to consign to the trash heap. “I gotta do it careful, or I'll flip his pinche car, and he'll never know it was me.”

Nichols opened his mouth, but there was nothing to say. This whole thing was too far gone.

At least he was among the executioners now, and not the executees.

There was surprisingly little comfort to be found in that.

With supreme care, Fuentes edged up along the Beemer's right side and gave it a slight nudge, spoiler-corner to taillight. But nothing was slight at this velocity, this weight. The smaller car yawed wildly, back half fishtailing until the front grille was nearly perpendicular to the van. The tinted windshield left everything to the imagination; Nichols could only picture the river of sweat pouring down the driver's face as he tried to correct his course.

Very few motorists knew how to regain control of a vehicle in this situation. Nichols had scraped plenty who didn't off the blacktop in his time on the force. The impulse was to overcorrect, to try to pull your ass back into line by jerking the wheel as far as possible in the other direction.

That impulse was dead wrong. Emphasis on the dead. It was how 90 percent of rollovers happened. A forensics guy named Kaplan, in town to write up a fatality report for some insurance company, had explained it all to him once over about twelve beers. Made Nichols swear never to set foot inside a Ford Explorer, come hell or high water.

This wasn't exactly a textbook case, of course. When de la Mar's driver overcorrected, Fuentes was right there, trying to impart another bump. Dude was no dynamics expert himself; he seemed to think a second tap would straighten the careening sedan, edge it off the road with a minimum of drama, and set up the face-to-face scenario he'd been jerking himself off to all these years.

When the second tap sent the BMW flipping through the air like a breeching whale instead, Fuentes looked as surprised as anybody.

Nichols watched it turn over once, twice, and suddenly an awful thought occurred to him.

The murderous Federale might not have been alone.

The world was full of innocents, and any one of them could have been inside that car.