“If you thought the cops were going to do something about a man disappearing, then you wouldn’t be so concerned about this gear you have in the back of the truck. This is survival gear. Gear for when society falls. Gear for when there are no other options. Gear for where there are no cops to deal with old men turning up dead.”
“It’s my gear,” said Meg’s dad. “And I know you’re not going to shoot me over it. You may be like me. You may think society’s falling. But you’re not one hundred percent convinced. Otherwise, judging from the type of man you are, you would have already shot me.”
The tall man grinned severely at them, looking between Meg and her father. “Who said anything about shooting you, old man?” He stared right at Meg. “I bet you’d be more inclined to go along with us if we threatened your daughter’s life, rather than your own.”
Meg’s heart was thumping wildly in her chest. She glanced over at her dad.
She saw that look in his face. That look of anger that was about to become unforgettable, that anger that was so wild it made him act out without thinking.
“You’re not going to shoot us,” growled her dad.
He looked like he was about to lunge up. He looked like he was about to attack.
She hoped he wouldn’t.
“Dad,” she whispered. “Calm down, okay? They have guns.”
He shot her a glance.
Then the man with the gun spoke.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, as he lowered the gun, pointing it now at her dad’s torso. “Maybe a murder rap is too much to beat. But surely even if things come back online, the cops aren’t going to try to go after us for a shot to the stomach ... a shot that clearly says self-defense rather than aggression.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” spat Meg. “You can’t just get away with shooting someone in the stomach.”
“Meg,” said her dad. “Stay out of this.”
“Stay out of this? I’m about as in it as I can be.”
Over by the truck, the men had started unloading the gear.
“Look,” said the man with the gun. “Why don’t you do the smart thing here and take the truck? The gear is ours. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
There was a long pause. Everyone glanced at everyone else in the tense silence.
Then, as if he had been waiting all along to do just this, her dad acted.
He jumped halfway up, lunging sideways and forward toward the man with the gun.
He was going for the man’s feet.
Something like a football tackle.
Something like a move from a karate movie.
It was purely her father.
Purely his rage.
Purely his athleticism that had grown ancient and rusted in his old age.
It seemed as if the world was now moving in slow motion. She saw each of her dad’s movements. She saw his eyebrows lowered in anger and she saw the fury shining in his eyes.
She saw the gun kick. She heard the roaring in her ears.
She saw her dad receive the impact of the shot, taking the bullet somewhere in his torso.
She saw his head and neck snap back, she saw his body jumping backward. She saw him collapse to the ground. She saw the blood appearing, already soaking through to the front of his jacket.
They hadn’t been bluffing.
They’d shot him.
15
James
Strong hands had dragged James for what felt like almost a quarter-mile. It had felt like forever. All the while, he’d received savage kicks and punches to the head.
Whenever he’d spoken, protesting his innocence, it had done nothing.
After a while, it had become too painful to try to speak.
Still, though, he tried.
He struggled against them, against their hands. But it did nothing.
They were strong and large. There must have been a half-dozen of them or more.
He was just one man. No match for so many.
“You think you can just do that to a woman?” snarled one of the men.
There was furious anger on his face.
“You think you can attack women like that, huh, buddy?”
“What’s that, nothing to say?”
As James opened his mouth, a hard fist collided with his mouth. He tasted the flowing blood. He heard teeth come undone.
Teeth floated around his mouth. It was a strange sensation, as they moved against his gums in new ways.
Another kick to the face.
Surely his nose was broken now.
His vision had gone all funny.
He could barely see his attackers. He only saw blurry shapes against a harsh light source from somewhere.
His body was on the edge. It was freezing, struggling to maintain its body temperature. He’d removed his jacket in his truck cab and now, if he could have thought rationally, he would have regretted that decision.
But James wasn’t thinking rationally.
All he could do was survive this.
And it didn’t seem like he was going to.
In their minds, he was a monster. He was a man who’d beaten up a woman. And for no reason.
In their minds, they were doing the right thing.
They were taking justice into their own hands. Which often resulted in positive changes. Justice, after all, needed to be served.
But, now that justice was in the hands of a mob, it was quite clear that it could go awry. Horribly awry.
James was on the brink. The very edge. His body was revolting against something. Against just being alive. He was vomiting now, a horrible thin bitter bile that rushed up from his stomach like a volcano. He tasted it all and as he opened his mouth, many of his teeth rushed out with the vomit, landing on the frozen ground, never to be found again. Somehow, the vomit was in his nose, burning his nostrils. His nose must have been horribly busted up, because the vomit couldn’t escape through his nostrils. It just stayed there, burning the sensitive passages, somehow working its way into the sinus cavities, where it burned like nothing else.
Another kick.
And another.
Hard ones, too.
James didn’t even know where he was receiving the kicks now. His body was in so much pain that it was losing its normal sensitivity. It was losing its responsiveness.
He was shaking as he lay there in the fetal position, the chill and pain all deep in his bones, mixing together to create a new horror.
Another blow to his skull. A hard one.
How much more of this could he take?
Surely it’d be over soon.
It was too much suffering.
The men who were kicking him were laughing. They were shouting things. The mood was celebratory. They were happy. As happy as they’d ever been.
James’s eyes were closed. He was clenching them as tightly as he could. He was trying to close out the world. But it wasn’t any good. Of course it wasn’t.
He was beyond feeling helpless. Beyond feeling like a coward. Beyond feeling ashamed at his lack of ability to fight back. After all, what could he do? There were some situations in which one was simply outnumbered, simply overpowered.
This was one of them.
“Get him good!”
More laughter.
Another kick.
“Not there. Get him in the nuts.”
A hard kick to the groin.
Laughter.
Another kick.
“Not there. Look, do it like I am. Really drive your hips into it.”
Another kick. This one more powerful.
“I see what you mean. Yeah, felt pretty good.”
“Better, right?”
It sounded as if they were discussing a casual softball game, or something similar. Some situation in which technique mattered.
“Hey!” It was a new voice. Someone James hadn’t heard yet.
“What?”
“What is it?”
“We’re busy here,
buddy.”
“They caught the guy who attacked that woman! Come on, let’s go give him hell!” It was the new voice once again.
The men around James fell silent. Apparently they were realizing their error, realizing that James was the wrong man.
There were no more kicks. No more voices. No more discussion of technique.
No more of anything.
James lay there, waiting, wondering what was going to happen.
Slowly, he began to hear footsteps as the men shuffled away.
He imagined they might have had sheepish looks on their faces.
Or maybe they didn’t. It was hard to know what they were thinking as they slunk away from him, apparently not ashamed enough to even try to do anything to rectify their mistake.
James continued to lie there. And nothing happened.
The men were gone.
James was left alone in the darkness. In the cold. With the pain. Punished for a crime he hadn’t committed.
He didn’t know how long he’d lain there. It seemed like at least an hour, if not more.
It seemed as if he wouldn’t be able to move. It seemed as if the pain would prevent him from ever getting up.
But as time wore on, and as no one returned, the cold began to win out over the pain.
James knew it was a decision. It was one of those instances in which it seems as if there actually is no decision, as if fate is already laid out for you. But he knew that he could at least try. He knew that he could try to get up.
He might not make it. Maybe his body was broken. Maybe it was too far gone. Maybe the damage was serious.
Well, if he didn’t try, he’d die here on the cold ground, easily freezing to death in the bitter night. What a strange way to die for a native Floridian.
It was a huge effort, but James somehow managed to get his head up. His neck strained, the pain shot through him, but he looked around, turning his head this way and that.
He could barely see anything. But he could see enough to know that there was nothing around him. Nothing at all.
“Help!” he called out, as loud as he could. His throat stung for some reason. “Help!” Louder, this time. But no answer. And he knew that there wouldn’t be one.
There was no one around.
Somehow, he’d have to get out of here. He had to get back to his truck. Back to his truck. Then back to Florida.
Would he be able to drive? Maybe not. But his professor could take over. His professor could drive while James recuperated and rested. Or maybe they could find a way off the highway on-ramp, get to some secluded place, and James could rest.
Rest.
That was what he wanted.
That’s what his body craved.
So he had to fight against every instinct he had to just stay there, lying down.
It was as if his own instincts and reflexes were trying to betray him, trying to trick him to just go to sleep there in the cold. Meanwhile, he knew clearly that it was a sleep he’d never wake up from.
He visualized his truck. Visualized himself getting back into it. It was a mental trick, a technique in order to motivate himself to keep going.
He pushed, lifting himself off the ground.
He didn’t know how he’d done it, but now he was on his feet, swaying unsteadily.
James gritted his teeth against the pain.
He walked slowly in a circle, looking this way and that.
There was nothing to indicate which direction he should head in. Nothing to indicate in which direction lay the on-ramp and his pickup.
But he had to choose one.
16
Matt
Where was James?
What had happened to him?
The last Matt had seen, peering intently into the rearview mirror, a group of large men had dragged James off somewhere.
James didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve a beating. And he certainly didn’t deserve worse.
But what was Matt to do? He was just one man. Unarmed.
Matt thought back to his favorite books, and his favorite authors. What would they have done in this situation? Would they have been able to justify it to themselves?
Certainly they would have. What was that quote that Matt was always using in class? Something along the lines of, “To heed the call of the masses, one must remain as one, act as one, think as one, and betray nothing but the one.”
The meaning of the passage, Matt had to admit, was somewhat obscure. But that was one of the reasons he liked it. While he wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, least of all one of his own students, Matt didn’t actually know what exactly that quote meant. But then again, he didn’t really know what most of what he talked about meant. Of course, the real trick to it all was never admitting that or anything like it to anyone.
Well, something would happen. Matt was sure of that. He did hate to see his student, or former student, dragged off like that. But, surely the people who’d done it would realize their error. There was, after all, no real reason that James should suffer whatever fate it was that he was about to suffer.
And what’s more, was it really Matt’s responsibility to intervene? Surely not. How could it be? What was his relationship to the kid? His teacher. That was it. Well, and James was giving Matt a ride. But surely in the understood or implicit contract given to the situation there wasn’t any such clause that related to rescuing said driver from dangerous—or potentially dangerous—mobs.
The more Matt thought about it, the more he was sure that he’d done the right thing and stayed put in the vehicle. He was sure that when James returned, he’d even go so far as to thank Matt for staying there with his truck, for protecting it.
Yes, that was it. While James was out there getting mixed up in who knows what, Matt was here doing the responsible thing. Kids these days, kids like James, just didn’t understand that. They didn’t understand the value of property the way an older, more mature, and obviously more educated person like Matt did.
He was definitely doing the right thing. But maybe he wasn’t doing quite enough of it. Come to think of it, to really protect James’s vehicle for him, Matt ought to just go ahead and get in the driver’s seat. From there, he’d be better able to actually take action in order to protect the vehicle from whatever harm might potentially befall it.
It wasn’t hard to slide over into the driver’s seat. And, in fact, it felt a little better being over here. Matt ran his hands over the steering wheel. It felt nice. He glanced in the rearview mirror again. No sign of James.
The engine was still on. Idling.
The shifter was in neutral. Matt touched it, and jiggled it back and forth the way he’d seen others do. He didn’t really know what he was doing.
Matt was one of those people who was convinced that they could drive a manual transmission, although their actual practical application of these theoretical skills was quite scarce. In Matt’s case, he’d driven a friend’s car once or twice, burning through quite a bit of the clutch in a relatively short drive.
Up ahead, it was nothing but taillights. No movement.
Matt’s fingers went idly to the radio dial. Nothing. Not even static. The thing wouldn’t even turn on. Hadn’t it turned on before? That was weird.
Matt’s thoughts turned to the situation as a whole. Something weird was definitely going on. He didn’t know what. He couldn’t put his finger on it. He just knew that things didn’t feel right. Of course, while he thought it best to get out of the area for a little while, he was sure that things would be back to normal in no time flat. He expected perhaps to spend a weekend down in Pennsylvania, then be back up here soon enough. Surely everything would have calmed down by then. Come to think of it, maybe he’d take the train up. Amtrak could, at times, be nice, especially for intellectual and intelligent people like himself, people who liked to get lost in their own thoughts while staring out a window. It was ideal for writing. He remembered that some famous writers, people not too unlike himself i
n terms of their capacity for deep thought and creativity, had liked to travel and think on trains. Hadn’t some great book been written entirely on a train? What had it been again, maybe Great Expectations? No, of course not. Dickens had lived many years before the invention of trains. Or did he? Shit. He couldn’t really remember. When had Dickens been writing anyway? Shit. This was one of those things that he was always successful at glossing over in class, lacquering and obscuring his ignorance with a heavy slathering of complicated-sounding words that never failed to impress his students.
“Hey, buddy!” shouted someone. Loud and angry. The Western Mass way.
A horn blared. Then another. A cacophony of horns.
“Hey asshole!” shouted a woman. “Get the hell out of the way!”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Hey, buddy!”
“Move!”
“Get going or I’ll bust your face open, you prick!”
Matt snapped quickly out of his intellectual reverie. Looking through the windshield into the dark night ahead, he saw that the red taillights had moved up considerably. Now, for the first time in who knew how long, there was space between himself and the next vehicle. It was a little hard to tell, but it actually looked as if the vehicle in front of him had made it off the on-ramp and onto the actual highway.
“Get going!”
“Hey, buddy!”
“What the hell you think you’re doing?”
“Get going!”
The shouts were getting louder and the threats more dire. The insults were somehow getting more personal, although that seemed quite odd considering the fact that they presumably couldn’t see him. Maybe they were just getting more hurtful, with the curses more and more vulgar.
It was time to get a move on.
But, wait, what about James?
Matt glanced in his rearview mirror, knowing full well he’d see no sign of James back there. Behind him there was nothing but a line of cars filled with angry drivers.
The horn honking was intense.
Constant Danger (Book 1): Fight The Darkness Page 13
