Long Dark Night

by Janci Patterson

  She had training. That would make distracting her more difficult. Fortunately, she ran after Jack, leaving me behind her. She clearly didn’t perceive me as a threat.

  I ran up behind her and hooked my foot in front of her legs. As she tripped, I shoved her between the shoulders, sending her sprawling palms-first onto the concrete.

  Jack had already reached the driver’s side. I sprinted around to the passenger’s side and yanked open the door.

  The car of corpses drew closer, and their images became clearer. There were four of them—all big-muscled men. They’d be here any second.

  The girl climbed to her feet in front of the car. “Let’s go!” I shouted.

  Jack turned the key in the ignition, and the car hummed to a start. As he threw it into drive, the girl stood in front of the car to block him.

  “Just hit her,” I said.

  Jack gave me a wide-eyed look, and instead put the car in reverse and gunned it over the planter, flattening a small juniper bush.

  “What?” I shouted. “You can stab yourself but you can’t flatten her?”

  “Sorry,” he yelled back. “At least when it turns out you’re punking me, the only one I’ll have hurt is myself.”

  Jack pulled around the girl and slammed on the gas, soaring toward the entrance to the parking lot. We cruised out of the lot just before the corpse-car pulled up to the driveway. They tried to pull across to block us, but we were too far out. Jack stepped on the gas, and we blew past a stop sign.

  “Wahoo!” Jack shouted.

  I couldn’t appreciate his enthusiasm. I turned around in my seat to watch behind us. “We won’t get hurt if we get hit,” I told him. “So just go.”

  “We might hurt someone else,” he said.

  Oh. Right. I’d been thinking too much about the corpses behind us, and not enough about potential beaters in front of us. The girl would have survived a blow, but a beater might not. Better to drive safe.

  In my mind, the corpse car paused long enough for the girl to climb into the passenger seat, and then bolted after us. We turned a corner so hard that I smacked my ear on the window. They turned the corner right behind us.

  “We’re not losing them,” I said. “Can we go faster?”

  “The freeway’s at the end of this street. We can go faster there.”

  So could they, of course.

  Where was Vance in all this? I’d thought he was here because I hadn’t sensed the corpse that killed Leo—but I couldn’t feel that girl, either. Vance had called me from a blocked number. That could have been from anywhere.

  “That girl,” I said. “I think she’s the one who killed your cousin.”

  “Not Vance?”

  “Vance doesn’t do himself what he can send other people to do.”

  This sent a message, too. I was important to Vance, sure, but not important enough for him to come deal with me himself. I wanted to be offended, but instead I felt something else, something I’d thought I’d forgotten how to feel.

  Hope.

  If Vance wasn’t here himself, maybe we had a fighting chance. “Go faster,” I said.

  “Hang on.” Jack switched lanes, checking his blind spot and everything, and sped up the on ramp to the freeway.

  We’d missed the rush hour traffic, but the freeway was still full of cars. As we pulled into the far right lane, Jack had to slow down to normal freeway speed.

  “Can you weave and lose them?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding me? I am not a race car driver. I don’t even speed, normally.”

  I actually smiled. Jack might not be ready for this, but he was starting to talk like himself again, and that was another good sign.

  I sat back in my seat, focusing on the corpses behind us. I could sense four of them—the driver, pushing his foot to the pedal, and three others in the backseat of the car. One of them had his arm stretched across the back of the seat, and another sat hunched forward, with his elbows in his lap.

  The girl was in the passenger seat. I knew that. But I still couldn’t feel her.

  Jack might not be comfortable weaving through traffic, but the corpse driver was. I felt him move into the left lane, then farther left, then back to the right, all the while closing the distance between us.

  “They’re gaining on us,” I said.

  “Do you think they’ll call the police?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Not even to report their car stolen?”

  That would make for a plausible story. “Depends on how involved Vance is with the Vegas cops.”

  “Well, we won’t pull over,” Jack said. “With this many cars on the road, they can follow us, but not much else. We’ll watch for chances to get away, and ditch the car as soon as we can.”

  “What’ll we do then?” I asked. He was right, though. We shouldn’t be driving a stolen car all the way to Baker.

  “I’m still a person, with a license. I can rent us a car.”

  “Aren’t you too young for that?”

  “I’ll have to pay extra, but I can put it on my credit card. No one knows I’m dead, yet.”

  No one knew I was dead, either. I was officially a missing person. The police classified me as a runaway after my parents died. The last recorded person to see me was the ER nurse who treated them.

  The corpses behind us sped a little closer. I didn’t have to turn around to know they were just a few cars behind us, now. We were driving past downtown. Brightly lit casinos glowed to our left, a few blocks from the freeway.

  Jack leaned back in his seat, holding the wheel with one hand like he was in a car chase in a movie.

  “Don’t enjoy this,” I said.

  He made a show of being offended. “I’m not.”

  But he was. He shook his head, bringing himself back to reality.

  “Vance will probably clean up the body,” I said. “He won’t want the police looking for us, unless he’s damn sure they’re in his pocket.”

  “So Leo won’t get a funeral.”

  I winced. What was wrong with me, talking about his cousin like that?

  It was easier just to think of him as a body.

  “If he isn’t found,” I said, “then it’ll be longer before anyone’s sure he’s missing, and longer before they’re looking for you.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Though that’s a big chance to take, don’t you think?”

  It was. If he was a suspect, the police would put a trace on his credit cards. “We better move fast, just in case.”

  The corpse-car dodged left again, and then pulled up right behind us. “Here they come,” I said.

  “There’s an exit right here,” Jack said. “Should I take it?”

  Which would be better? “I don’t know.”

  Jack glanced in the rearview mirror. “Oh, crap,” he said.

  I twisted in my seat just in time to see the car barreling at us. The hood of the corpse-car crunched into the corner of ours, and we screeched into a skid. I twisted around to look forward in time to see us speed directly into the v-shaped barrier dividing the off-ramp from the freeway lanes.

  The world lurched, and glass splintered around me. Shards sliced through my skin and clothes, and for a moment I felt weightless. As the freeway blurred, my body skidded over smooth metal, and then rough concrete that tore at my skin. I slammed to a stop against the cold barrier at the edge of the road.

  I rolled onto my hands and knees, skin tingling as it repaired itself from the abrasions. Tiny bits of glass rained from my face and chest.

  I looked up to see our car impaled on the barrier, concrete lodged a good two feet into the crunched car hood. Jack sat strapped in behind the wheel, jerking in vain at his door handle. Somehow, in the rush to drive away, he’d still remembered to put on his seatbelt. Through the empty space where our windshield had been, I could see bloody gashes knitting themselves closed across his forehead.

  Behind that, the front of the corpse car was now one with
the back of ours. As I climbed to my feet, I could see the girl still in the passenger seat, engine parts squished against her body. A metal beam pierced her square through the sternum, burying itself into her seat, pinning her in. She stared at it, clawing at her chest with her hands. It had missed her heart.

  One of the backseat corpses climbed out the side window, looking at me. Other cars were pulling to a stop in front and behind us, no doubt wanting to help. I wondered how many had seen me get cut to ribbons by the windshield and then stand up, apparently unharmed. This was how all those legends got started.

  We needed to run.

  “Through the windshield,” I yelled at Jack, motioning for him to come toward me. He unsnapped his seatbelt and lifted himself onto the dash, climbing over the hood and then the concrete barrier. I turned and ran as he caught up to me. Jack headed toward the off-ramp, but I pulled him to the concrete wall at the side of the overpass.

  I lifted one foot onto the retaining wall at the edge of it, boosted myself up. Jack followed, and I took his hand, now as cold as mine, and squeezed it.

  And then we jumped.

  Eleven

  We both tumbled as we hit the ground. My legs buckled underneath me, and Jack fell knees first, his momentum carrying his chest flat to the ground.

  He groaned, but I scrambled to my feet and pulled him up. Our broken bones were already working themselves back together.

  We stumbled forward, and then ran. The other corpses must have taken longer to get past the wreckage; I could feel them coming after us, but not right on our heels. A few blocks away, I could see the lights of the strip, their glow simulating daylight. As we reached the stop light, I veered toward them. The corpses trailing us turned as well. The strip meant crowds, which might raise our chances of losing them. It would probably take the girl a while to extract herself from the car, and if she wasn’t careful, she might pierce her heart trying to get out. If she could sense us, this was the perfect chance to get out of her radius and away.

  I raced down the sidewalk, Jack behind me. I could hear the corpses’ feet pound the sidewalk. They were gaining on us. Farther back, I could feel the driver corpse bend over what was probably the passenger side of the car, but as we ran, he faded away.

  As we entered the city, we ran past rows of palm trees, backlit by the glow of the casinos. Small buildings gave way to taller ones, and bright signs towered overhead. Jack and I moved deeper into the strip.

  Traffic was backed up along the road, and cars circled the entrances to parking garages. We ran past the entrance to a bar and lounge right as a group of twenty-somethings piled out of it. I nearly ran full-speed into a woman in a cocktail dress with blonde hair piled up high enough to make her a head taller. She swore at me as I dodged around her.

  The corpses were even closer now—maybe twenty yards behind. They’d have a visual on us. We needed to do something besides run if we were going to lose them.

  “We need to hide,” I said to Jack.

  He nodded, running right beside me, and headed for a crowded part of the street.

  We wove between tourists in jean shorts and teenagers posing for pictures. I wove as tightly around the groups as I could, so the corpses behind us might lose line-of-sight. Jack and I passed a dark alley, and at the end of it, I could see the back side of a casino fountain beyond an iron gate. It was a desperate gamble, but I didn’t have time to deliberate. I grabbed Jack by the arm and dashed down the alley. Grabbing the gate with my hands, I hoisted myself onto it, my tennis shoes scraping for a foothold.

  We landed on the far side of a courtyard display, with topiary, glittering light displays, and cascading streams of water between us and an array of tables set up for guests to eat outdoors. The tables were mostly empty now. Most people must have been seated inside.

  I propelled myself over the concrete ledge and into the water. Jack splashed down behind me and I flattened myself onto the smooth, concrete bottom. The bottom of the fountain was covered in a slimy film, which rubbed off on my face and hair. A wave passed over me as Jack lay down in the water, sending coins skittering away.

  I could feel the corpses approach the entrance to the alley, still running at full speed. Let them move on, I thought. Let them not be able to find us, and give up.

  The corpses split up, two of them running ahead down the street, the other turning toward the alley. I froze. If they’d seen where we’d gone, they would have stayed together. That meant they couldn’t sense us, either, and didn’t have any direction from the invisible girl.

  At the bottom of the pool my hand brushed against a coating of coins. I picked up a penny and popped it into my mouth. It might be someone else’s wish, but Jack and I needed all the luck we could get.

  From our spot in the fountain, I could see the top half of the gate we jumped over, which meant that if the corpse walked up to the gate, he might be able to see us.

  We both lay silently, while the corpse at the end of the alley came closer step by step, his head weaving around, as if scanning for us. I grabbed Jack’s hand, and he clasped mine in return. I wanted to tell him what I could see, how close we were to being caught, but there wasn’t any air, and there wasn’t any time.

  The corpse couldn’t be more than ten paces from the end of the alley now. If he didn’t think of the fountain, if he didn’t think we’d had time to get over the gate, he might not look for us here. Stop, I thought at him. Turn back.

  For a split second the dewy outline of the corpse seemed to harden, like the sillouette of the corpse that had missed me back at Vance’s compound. He stopped, standing in the alley, one foot forward. I waited for him to shift his weight and continue toward us.

  Then the image of him crystallized into its normal, tiny dots, and he turned back and walked away, still looking around. His mouth made rhythmic movements, as if talking. He was probably questioning passersby, to find out if anyone had seen us.

  He’d missed us. And while I was relieved at that, I was more concerned about what it was he’d done. That was the second time a corpse had changed form in my mind, then wandered away, missing me entirely. I hadn’t done anything. He should have continued and found us.

  The corpse continued off down the street, mouth still forming words. The streets were crowded enough that I hoped that no one around remembered. It seemed we’d avoided the notice of casino security, or the beaters would have dragged us out of the fountain by now. There might be security cameras, so we couldn’t wait here long.

  I turned slowly toward Jack, so as not to make waves. He blinked at me, and bubbles shook free from his eyelashes, catching in his hair. His face twitched a bit. He must have been trying as hard as I was to hold still.

  Then he reached an arm out, wrapping it tentatively around my waist, giving me plenty of time to pull away.

  His touch should have terrified me. I should have shied away. But for that moment, I was just glad he was there with me. For the first time since my parents died, I didn’t feel alone.

  So instead, I leaned in. Jack slid along the bottom of the fountain, pulling me close to him. His body was neither warm nor cold, already adjusted to the temperature of the water. Aside from Lyle he was the only living person to have touched me in what felt like a century, and now he was dead.

  And yet here he was, reaching out for me, like I was the one who needed comfort. I leaned my head slowly against his chest, and I felt his face brush the top of my head. I wanted to stay right there in that moment, never breathing, never moving, lost to time, so that no one would ever find us again.

  The corpse finally ran down the main street, in the direction his friends had gone. As they moved away, the first one faded out of my reach, then the second, then the third. For now, we were alone. I couldn’t stand waiting any longer. I sat up, causing water to swish between Jack and me. Habit told me to gasp for air, but my body didn’t call for it.

  As I climbed out of the fountain, I realized my skin hadn’t gotten pruny. A strange sense of
melancholy washed over me, and I shook my head.

  Such a stupid thing to miss.

  Together, we climbed out of the fountain and back over the fence. I stood dripping in the alley. Our clothes clung to our frames. Jack ran a hand over my hair, squeezing it out, which sent all the water down the back of my shirt. I wasn’t sure how much that helped, but I appreciated the gesture. I still couldn’t sense the corpses. A light breeze ruffled a flag. Cars honked on the street. Somewhere, across the fountain, a woman laughed.

  “We need to find a car rental place,” I said. “Fast.”

  “Soaking wet,” Jack said. “This is going to be awesome.”

  “Tell them a friend pushed you into the hotel pool.”

  Jack nodded. “Let’s go.”

  We moved more slowly back onto the street. Several passersby gave us strange looks, but I ignored them. “There’s probably a gas station closer to the freeway,” Jack said. “We can ask about rental places there.”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to risk re-entering that girl’s detection radius. “Let’s go this way.” I led Jack along a crowded street parallel to the freeway, away from both the pursuing corpses and the car accident.

  It took us ten minutes to reach a gas station, and another twenty to walk to the car rental place. By then we were drier, though no less bedraggled looking.

  “You wait here,” Jack said. “If the cops have already flagged my credit card, they might hold me. If that happens, you run, okay?”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m expecting a daring jail break as a return favor. Don’t think you’re getting off the hook entirely.” Jack’s cheek twitched as he turned to go into the store. I wanted to ask if he was scared, but we both knew the answer. Talking about it wasn’t going to help.

  I paced around the block for twenty minutes before Jack appeared with a set of keys.

  “They need to finish cleaning it,” he said. “They’ll pull it around front in a second.”