Dark End of the Street

Jon slowed, ran the car into neutral, and watched the old Bronco just idling there waiting for them to come and take what was theirs. Travers was in there, just a damned wreck after seeing ole Colonel Jon Burrows. How did he live? Why had he come back?

Damned comeback. ‘Sixty-eight style, motherfucker.

He jammed the car into drive and mashed the pedal.

“Jon!” Perfect yelled. “No, we got ’em. We got ’em.”

I saw him coming and dropped it hard into first gear, hearing my tires spin behind me, and headed right for the grille work on the Taurus. Hard gunning and waiting for him to drop away. My teeth ached they were clamped so hard.

I could see the car getting closer and closer as I headed up to about fifty.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Abby said, softly over the gun of the engine.

I gritted my teeth harder and punched the 302, juicing out every bit of muscle she had down a single rutted road only made for one car.

I could see the boy doing the same. Almost could make out his eyes, maybe ten yards between us, when I broke hard to the right, jumped up on a long embankment, darted around him, and kept on flying by.

I pounded the roof of my truck three times and kept on moving around the curves trying to find my way out.

I was smiling and laughing. Really just relieved as hell, with my damned heart in my throat, as I reached down and pulled Abby back into her seat. I knew they were gone. I was too far ahead and they’d never catch up.

She buckled back in and I took another road.

I’d gone too far. Too many choices for them.

I kept on smiling and laughing, rubbing Abby’s back for reassurance when the ground disappeared from under us.

We must have been going about sixty, no road, just air below, when we came crashing back down.

It was a hard landing. My back exploded with heat, black amoebas crawled over my eyes as my seat belt yanked me back hard.

Then I closed my eyes.

Never more in my life had I wanted to sleep so badly.

Chapter 35

THE LEAVES SMELLED of death. The sweet aroma of moist dirt with the tang of old copper pennies. Fresh blood. Even before I opened my eyes, I felt the warm, sticky wetness on my head. Everything was muffled and silent and soft. Coated in leaves. Buried beneath them. Over my face and in my mouth. Some kind of bug with a million legs crawling on my arm. I spit out some dirt, my head absolutely swimming. That same feeling of getting off the big roller coaster and bringing the curves home with you. I felt like I needed to throw up.

A small hand held my face. I opened my eyes to darkness above me. Seeing nothing. Small lips pressed close to mine.

“Shh,” Abby said. I held my body still. Wasn’t hard. I wasn’t sure I could move my toes.

I heard the crunching sound of feet running on old leaves. Branches breaking. Voices. A man and a woman. Too far away to make out the words. Just voices. Connotations from the sounds.

It was night now. Was sure of it. Goddamn, my head hurt, I thought, trying not to move my eyes or budge a finger. Everything moved in the haziness of the worst hangover I’d ever known.

Abby’s arms wrapped around me and pulled me toward her chest. I could feel her breasts against my neck and her nails digging into my skin. Before me was a mouth of a narrow dirt cave. The moon’s gray glow shot through the trees and onto a thick, wet carpet of forest floor.

I moved my arms. Maybe not a cave. A little opening in a hill. A concave mound of dirt and rock that had been eroded into a little burrow. Somewhere a dog would hang out during a storm.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t move.

The voices were clearer now.

All of it coming back. The woman from the casino. A man I knew. A hired gun. The wreck. The blackout. Jesus, how long had I been away?

Abby’s chest rose and fell in quick bursts. She held me even tighter. Her hands coated in wet black dirt. Leaves dissolving back to earth brushing across my face. I suddenly had the thought that this was what it was like to be dead, but awake. I was just getting loopy. I wanted to stay still.

I wanted those fucking voices to go away.

Shit, no gun. No car. No place to escape. Miles and miles of anonymous woods.

I took a breath and felt a groan coming on, the wet plink of rainwater beating some dead kudzu at the mouth of the burrow.

Two black boots appeared.

“I bet they followed the god dang creek,” the man yelled.

The woman yelled back.

He stood there for a moment. Not more than three yards away from my feet. Almost playing with us. Toying. Just make our hearts explode until he stuck the muzzle in the shallow dirt grave and finished it.

I remembered him. I remembered how he’d tried to rape a woman I knew and how he’d tortured an old hermit who was so shy he could barely look you in the eye.

I gripped Abby’s knee.

The rain plinked on a fattened brown leaf again.

The foot disappeared.

The crunch of boot soles on smooth creek bed fading into the distance.

“Do we stay here?” she whispered.

I held my head in my hands and wiggled my toes. They worked.

Sickness. Vomiting on my shirt.