by Jake Cross
As a teenager, he’d had two spontaneous pneumothoraxes, hypothermia, ulcers, gastric problems, his illnesses reigning and abdicating like kings: always one at a time, but the throne passing from one to the next without pause or gap. Until he hit his thirties, when he started to carry them in two and threes. He was forty-eight and currently had elbow bursitis and nasal polyps, and ragged eczema on his back, but Nate didn’t think evidence of any of this would have survived the fire.
But the sesamoiditis, that was different. Missing piece of bone – surely the pathologists could use that defect to help identify a body ravaged by fire. Not concrete proof, but good enough. They thought it was Pete, and if the body had a specific fault that Pete also had…
Better yet, if it didn’t…
The operator was asking questions, but Nate hung up. He bust apart the handset and tossed the pieces into a bin on the forecourt.
Under the crumbling roof of the petrol station, he watched the woods across the road. No movement, but he wasn’t sure what he expected to see. Men hiding behind trees, just the whites of their eyes showing?
He had no idea if the police would try to trace the call, or even if they could, or if the woman on the switchboard had even understood enough of his rapid words to contact the people involved. He wasn’t even sure his information would do any good. Maybe the authorities had clever, secret technology that allowed all sorts of easy ways to identify a burned body. Just because the cops hadn’t yet said they’d identified the dead man, it didn’t mean they hadn’t. Maybe they were holding off for some reason. He just didn’t know. He only knew that he wanted to see a news item tomorrow claiming that the dead man in the house was not Pete, but some other hapless bastard’s brother.
And that three men had been arrested.
On the taxi ride here, while googling burned bodies, Nate had been all up for going into those woods and getting a confession from the kidnappers, but not now. He had no idea what he might find within that realm of darkness. If the biker had discovered what had happened to his men, it would mean he had probably been here. Might still be. All three of them, just waiting for him to show up.
But he had to go in. Quickly, he crossed the road and entered the woods some way down from the point at which he’d exited earlier. He moved slowly, keeping low, listening, watching, but seeing and hearing nothing. And he held the landlady’s kitchen knife tightly in his hand.
A few minutes later, he saw a patch of white off to his right and moved towards it. Soon that patch of white took on the shape of a van. Nate paused behind a tree. Waited.
No movement. The van was in the same position, and a shape at the back told him the squashed guy was still there, same position, still jammed in nice and tight.
But the other guy had gone.
From this angle, he could see the back of the van and the driver’s side, the black hole of the grave, and the empty spot on the ground where the guy who owned the wallet, the phone, and the knuckleduster, had been stomped into oblivion. But that spot was empty.
Maybe the guy had tried to move the van and, like Nate, been unable. Then what? Unable to free his friend, unable to call for help because he had no phone, what had he done? Cut his losses and run? Or was he around here somewhere, maybe off seeking a branch to use as a lever to help unjam his pal?
Nate waited. His head told him ten minutes had gone past. If the guy was still around, he would have returned by now. So, he was gone.
Nate moved forward, slowly. He was wary of the remaining kidnapper. The guy might be awake, might have a gun. He circled around to come in from behind the tree the guy was jammed against, using it as a shield. Ten feet out, he paused, listening. No sounds from the kidnapper. No movement from the arm or leg he could see poking out beyond the trunk.
Nate move past the tree. Careful, distant, just in case. And the guy’s head turned and looked at him.
Nate was shocked to see him move, but glad, too. It meant he hadn’t killed the guy, and it meant the guy could now tell his story to the police.
Nate was also shocked to see that the guy was no such thing. The guy was a woman.
The ball cap had fallen off. She had neck-length blonde hair and the same dark skin as the other guy – Damar, the biker had called him. Her eyes were dark and her age somewhere in the early thirties. Nathan thought she would look attractive if all spruced up, perhaps in a dress instead of grubby jeans and training shoes, and a bomber jacket like her partner’s. He felt a moment of guilt, then slapped it aside. Woman or not, attractive or not, this was one of his kidnappers. His would-be killers. Her good looks were probably used to get men to trust her, like a siren.
Ten feet between them, the girl trapped, but still Nate was wary as he stood there and showed her the knife and said, ‘Where’s the other guy?’
A slight shake of the head. She barely had the strength for it. She had been lucky: if the van hadn’t hit the hole and stopped, it would have crushed her to death against the tree. But she hadn’t gotten off unscathed. Nate saw the right arm bent all wrong between her and the back doors of the van, and knew it was maybe broken or dislocated. The space between the tree and the van was slight, maybe eight inches, so there was probably a bad torso injury there, maybe a broken rib or ten. And he could see a big laceration on her temple, which had leaked blood down one side of her face. Luck for her, and some for him, because in this condition she was not going to cause him any problems. His plan to get her to a police station could work. But he needed to get her out of there. Now he wished he’d kept the landlady’s phone. He could have called the cops and scarpered while they came to get her.
His fuzzy brain not thinking straight again.
‘We’re going to the cops,’ he said. ‘You and me. And you’re going to tell them everything. They’ll love your confession. So, I’ve got to get you out of there. Don’t try anything once you’re free. Understand?’
He showed her the knife again, turning it to try to catch the moonlight, just so she would understand it was sharp and deadly.
The girl shook her head.
‘One of us is going to jail for murder, bitch,’ he said. ‘And let me help you on that one. It’s not going to be me.’
He stepped forward and, always watching her, started kicking earth removed from the grave back into it. His plan: fill the hole so the back wheel of the van would have traction. He knew it might take a while.
The girl made a noise. No, not noise. Speech. A word or two. Sounded like she said, Bring help.
‘This is all the help you’ve got,’ Nate said. ‘Just me, the guy you tried to kill. You’d die out here if not for me. Understand? So in return, you’ll tell the police why you tried to kill me.’ He stopped, glared at the girl, fighting a sudden urge to hurt her. ‘And why you killed my brother.’
The girl’s head dropped. Too much effort to keep it raised to look at Nate.
Nate continued kicking. Continued to stare at her, in case she was playing possum. Soon he had created a kind of causeway under the van’s back wheel, from there to the edge of the hole. Kneeling, he grabbed handfuls of dirt and packed it around the wheel.
He prayed this would work. He jumped in the driver’s seat. The keys were still there. He started the engine, put it in first, and gave the accelerator a little push. The van shook and moved slightly, so he pushed the pedal down hard and prayed. And the van shot forward.
He slapped the steering wheel in triumph.
He went back to the girl. Freed, she had tumbled into the grave. She was on her back, that busted right arm bent awkwardly under her waist. She was moaning, and this time it was just noise, not words. The moonlight caught her eyes. Glazed, blank, like a daydreamer’s. Concussion, he figured.
Nate stepped into the grave and grabbed her under the arms, which elicited a loud grunt of pain that made Nate feel good. He could smell a battle between body odour and perfume. He dragged the girl out and laid her flat, then opened the back doors of the van. A small light in the roo
f blinked on, giving a weak grey illumination to everything.
The first thing he saw was his clothing, piled in a corner near the wheel arch. His suit. Somehow he’d missed it before. Seeing it, he suddenly felt dirty in the kidnapper’s clothing. He stripped quickly. Naked for a couple of seconds, the trepidation returned, as he’d feared. Then he dressed in his own gear and tossed the kidnapper’s clothing into the van. He was going to keep the guy’s stuff in case the cops needed DNA evidence. The suit was creased, but not torn or dirty or bloodstained. The shirt, however, was red all over the front, probably blood from his mouth, and some of the buttons had been torn away.
Next, he dragged the girl closer and sat her up, then lifted her, sat her on the edge and pushed her backwards. And there was a little slice of anger in the way he pushed her. No resistance from her as gravity pulled her hard onto the metal floor, cracking her head with a clanging sound. No moan of pain from the blow to the skull, but she yelped when Nate folded her legs inside, which made her roll onto that bad right arm.
He was about to shut the door when he spotted a duffel bag. He dragged it close and opened it. Inside was a newspaper and a clear glass bottle that he assumed was the acid used to remove his fingerprints and tattoo. And a knife, bigger than his own.
And a battery-operated circular power saw. Immediately an image popped into his head. Him, naked, tied, lying unconscious in the grave, but waking with a scream as one of the kidnappers started cutting him with the saw. Had that been their plan, to cut him into pieces before covering him with soil? He shuddered and fought down the urge to pound the woman lying in a heap right in front of him.
A noise from way off. His head perked up like a cat’s. It sounded like an engine, and it sounded close. Too close to be on any of the roads around the woods. Inside the woods.
He remembered the words the injured woman had croaked, the only two she’d managed. Not ‘Bring help’, as in Please bring me some help, as Nate had first thought. But ‘Bringing help’.
As in my friend is bringing help.
He shut the back doors and ran around to the front of the van, looking everywhere. The engine noise seemed to be all around, as if bouncing off trees, so he couldn’t place it.
He jumped into the driver’s seat, thankful that no interior light came on when he opened the door.
Ahead he saw a shimmer of black in the woods, a moving blob of darkness coming his way from the north, the route the van had taken. Not some kid out playing on a dirt bike, then. But someone coming here, following the van’s tracks.
He bent over the steering wheel, low, and watched through the windscreen, and soon enough the moving blob reshaped into a large motorbike. Not an off-road machine. The machine was dark and the rider was dark, and in the night it would have been impossible for Nate to recognise the guy as the blond biker who’d picked him up, except for one thing.
What meagre moonlight filtered through the trees stood out starkly on the skin of Blondie’s pillion, because he was half-naked. Nate had taken his clothing. He could see dried blood all over the guy’s chest, but his busted face had been cleaned. The guy called Damar.
Nate clutched the steering wheel hard as the bike entered the clearing and stopped. Five metres away. Nate held his breath, fearful that they might somehow hear his breathing through the van’s metal body and over the night noises and the bike’s engine.
Then a second bike entered.
This was an off-road machine in bright colours. Nate saw a glowing yellow dragon’s eye on each of the handguards and a fiery spiked tongue along the front mudguard, which combined to give the appearance of a face. Again, two men sitting astride the machine. They wore jeans, thick jackets, and black helmets.
Nate could picture how it had all gone down. Blondie, hearing no news from his pals, had returned to a pre-arranged meeting point and waited, and then Damar had arrived with no clothing and a smashed nose, and minus his girlfriend, bearing a sorry tale of how their prisoner had escaped. Blondie had then called in backup, and now here they all were.
Blondie jerked back hard, knocking Damar onto the ground. Clearly the leader of the kill crew, as Nate had suspected. He got off his bike and removed his helmet. The other two guys got off and all four started walking towards the van, with Damar leading the way with a dejected gait, like a man who knows he’s in for some suffering soon.
Nate had sat in silence, frozen, praying that these guys would arrive and see the girl was gone, and just turn and ride away. He cursed his stupidity. That damned drug clouding his brain. Of course these guys would investigate the scene thoroughly, and of course they’d want to take back their incriminating-evidence-loaded van. How ironic that he now might end up as buried pieces of flesh after all, because he’d chosen to come back here.
His brain reacted before he knew what its plan was. He twisted the ignition key, threw the gearstick, stamped the accelerator, and the van leaped forward. For the second time tonight, the guy called Damar had to dive aside to avoid being slammed by his own vehicle. The two new thugs behind him had a little more time to think, and they darted aside with a little more grace, moving away from each other like parting curtains. Blondie, at the back, had all the time in the world to simply step out of the van’s path, and was helped by the fact that Nate had already twisted the wheel to aim the van at the track through the woods.
Someone banged the side of the van as it blew past the kill crew. Then the vehicle was enveloped by trees. Nate slapped on the headlights. Behind him, even over the van’s roaring engine, he heard the scream of a bike coming in pursuit. Not Blondie, because he didn’t have the right machine for a chase through the woods. A glance in the wing mirror confirmed it: the silhouette of the dirt bike behind him, bouncing over his tracks, a single rider aboard. Nate saw only one black arm on the handlebars, the other raised, pointing at the van. Gun, he thought.
The track, some old walking trail, was barely wide enough for the van, and certainly not ample enough to permit the bike to come alongside. But come alongside it did, off to his right, the black shape weaving this way and that to avoid trees, bouncing up and down over fallen branches and other forest detritus. Just three metres away. He saw the guy try to aim his gun, but there were too many trees flashing past and his ride was too bumpy to give him anything but a blind luck shot.
Maybe the guy thought himself a lucky chap, because Nate heard a gunshot, but nothing came of it, or maybe a bird in a tree somewhere fell dead. Another shot, and this time Nate heard a clang on the side of the van. Then two more loud bangs, no clangs, just shredded bird or bark.
Nate remembered the junk-filled ditch just in time, and turned the wheel even before he’d put his eyes forward again. The van’s right-side wheels dipped as the ground fell away beneath them, then rose into the air as they bounced off the far side of the ditch. The van rocked as if hit by something heavy. His head smacked the side window. Behind him, he heard a moan as the girl was thrown across the floor and into the side of the van.
Then he was back on the track, nice and neat, and staring ahead at a vertical slash in the trees. The main road. Fifty metres. Nate saw the blip of cars rushing by behind funnels of light.
The gunman was ahead now, but he slowed and turned left, probably having spotted the fence that blocked his path. Nate realised his intention: cut in behind Nate to join the track and use the gateway, since cutting in front would be too dangerous and he wouldn’t know which way Nate was planning to turn onto the two-way street, and he wouldn’t be able to aim his gun behind him.
Nate aimed straight ahead. A moment before the van blasted through the gateway, he glanced in the wing mirror and saw the black shape of the bike emerge from the trees and take the path just a few metres behind him.
Then the walls of trees were gone and the world was wide open, and Nate was washed in light. Light everywhere. Vehicles rocketing towards him from left and right.
The gunman would expect him to turn, but Nate didn’t turn. Too fast for tha
t, and not his plan anyway. He slammed on the brakes. The van skidded across the westbound lane and stopped in the eastbound lane, blocking it. A car bearing down on him skidded with a blare of horn, but the driver was living in a dreamworld if he thought this collision could be avoided.
The blow was hard enough to shunt the van a few feet. Nate barely held onto the wheel hard enough to avoid being wrenched out of his seat as the vehicle tried to jerk away from under him.
Behind him, the gunman had also had to stop, right in the westbound lane. Shit end of the stick for this guy. Nate got a car, but the gunman got an open-backed van loaded with scrap metal, lots of it. The van’s driver crushed his horn and his brakes. Dreamworld.
The cargo van disappeared behind Nate’s vehicle. Over the blare of horns and screech of brakes, Nate heard the crunch of a biker having a bad day. Bowling ball and skittle. Out of the passenger window, Nate saw biker and bike go bouncing down the road in a tangled mess, and for sure neither one was going to be fit for purpose after that.
Horns and screeching tyres all over the place now. Pedestrians flocking. Cops and ambulances soon en route. Newspaper columns soon to come. Nate restarted the stalled engine, twisted the wheel, stamped the pedal. He was blasting east seconds later.
When he woke again, the girl was mumbling. But not in pain. Anger. She was sitting up, leaning against the back of the van, feet near the dried puddle of her own blood. And staring at him with clear eyes in a face full of rage. Good job normal people didn’t have Superman’s laser eye-beams, or he’d be a charred husk right now.
One of her palms was on a wheel arch. Her good hand. Laid there flat, as if she were testing it for heat. Except, she was trying to pluck it free with her other hand. Two fingers moved, but that was it.
Christ. A memory. He had woken in the night again and gone in the back because the girl was stirring. And he had superglued her left hand to the wheel arch so she couldn’t bite out his eyes while he slept. He could now see a clear and solid mass all over her skin, in between the fingers, as if she had slapped her hands into jelly.
