Gia nodded. “Yeah, I understand.”
Justin turned back toward the van and Gia limped after him. He helped her up and across the driver’s seat to sit on the passenger’s side. He stepped in and pulled the driver’s door with a creak before it slammed.
***
He turned the key in the ignition and the starter screamed and ground at him. He made a face and said, “Already started.”
The engine rolled and hammered twice before going back to its shuddering roll. The water from the pipes rained over the roof still.
Gia looked back in the back at the empty storage area with the wheel wells jutting up and out into the space. A coil roller hung on the wall of the van with a jumper cable clamp dangling down and swaying like a threat. The black paint over the back windows was running down and away in dirty smears. She tried to swallow and her throat went dry remembering her ordeal in the back for two days.
She considered putting the gun back against Justin’s temple. She would fire even though it would shatter the window beside him. She’d push his body out for Susan to find and she would drive back to California in two sixteen hour stretches with the engine hammering. She would be cold at night with the window busted, but she wouldn’t have to eat chicken salad.
I’m as messed up as they are, Gia thought as the gun felt heavy in her hand again. We started in the same place, we ran to the same soulless place, and we ended up back in the same hole where we started all fighting to survive.
She supposed her chance to take her rage out on Justin had passed and now they were a team. She wasn’t the kind of person to shoot her team members. That was more a thing Susan did and maybe to a lesser degree Don.
Justin shifted into reverse with a grind from the transmission. He put a hand behind Gia’s seat and looked into the cracked mirror on her side. “Hang on. This might be rough, if it even works at all.”
He pushed down on the accelerator and the engine hammered four times before it revved up and went more steadily. The bumper ground in front on the remains of the counter, but did not pull free.
Justin let off the gas and the engine hammered twice as it slowed back down. He turned the steering wheel over toward Gia for three rotations. She heard the tires crunch as they shifted outside and under the van.
He revved again and the van picked up into the air a few inches before it tore free and dropped back down. He let off, but then pushed the gas again. The van pulled back and turned. The wheels ran over something and pitched. Whatever it was clunked underneath them and scraped the bottom. The van lost momentum.
He stepped on the gas and spun the tires on the wet concrete before the front wheels bumped over the top of the object. It looked like a section of the refrigerator. He accelerated again spinning the wheels and fishtailing the back end before he caught traction and straightened.
He kept going without slowing. The jagged wall scraped her side of the van and tore her mirror off her door as they emerged from the building and twisted out into the grass and the sunlight.
As they curved away, she saw the group home looked boarded up and abandoned even without the giant hole in the side. Other buildings that looked like sheds and barns spread out across the property beyond the clusters of pine trees. She saw the rusted out hulk of a large, harvesting thresher with its round, twisted blades facing her next to one of the barns.
A lump caught in her throat. She looked out of the windows on both sides and saw no signs of Susan. The engine hammered twice, rattled like it was threatening to quit, and then rolled steady again.
“Get us out of here,” Gia said.
Justin ground the gears into drive and they bobbed forward along the grass past the group home building. They circled around the front and bottomed out as they rolled up onto a graveled road.
Justin rested one elbow on the door as he steered them along the trail. Gia could almost believe they were on a pleasant Sunday drive. It almost made her angry to see his casual posture. She wasn’t even sure what day it was and she didn’t feel like asking. All horror movies started with some version of what appeared to be the casual Sunday drive.
The gravel trail gave way to a paved road that weaved down the steep switchback of the hill. She thought about Old Pastor Jack and at what stage he would have discovered he had no brakes. Justin was using his quite liberally to keep the van under control. Gia wasn’t sure what car Pastor Jack had been driving. She honestly didn’t remember what car her mother drove either.
Justin’s posture shifted and he grabbed the wheel with both hands. He pressed the accelerator causing the engine to hammer more than it fired evenly. The driver’s side wheels of the van skirted the edge kicked rocks up underneath.
Justin swerved back with the next curve of the switchback, but he didn’t slow down.
Gia gribbed the edge of her seat with the hand not gripping the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”
Justin didn’t answer as he stared into his side mirror more than the road.
Gia started to yell out her question again, but then they were struck from behind lifting the back end of the van off the street. By the time they slammed back down, they were careening toward the edge. Justin swerved hard to the right to keep up with the curve, but Gia was still sure they were going over.
“What’s going on?” she shouted.
He slowed slightly to make the next curve to the left. The engine sledge hammered with every strike of the pistons now rocking the entire vehicle.
They were smashed from behind again lunging them forward into the curve. The sides buckled outward on the walls of the storage section. The back doors snapped off their hinges and fell away from the van entirely.
Gia turned in time to see that the falling doors were still bound together by the latch in the middle as they fell. They struck the pavement behind the van and broke apart from one another spinning as they separated.
Gia thought, some bonds can’t survive a fall. She was not sure where that was from before it came into her head.
As she stared into the grill of a large truck behind them, the thought slipped away. The doors slammed up under the tires and the truck swerved from side to side. The truck slowed as it regained control and fell back allowing Justin to put some distance between them as he negotiated the unforgiving curves.
As the truck fell back, Gia saw that it was a flatbed and quite large. The engine of the pursuing vehicle growled with the change in power. Gia saw through the windshield and the face she saw staring back was the dead eyed mask of the owl. Susan still wore the soaked, blue pajama top below the masked face.
Gia felt two waves of emotion with cold fear and hot anger swirling inside her.
Gia yelled over the swirling air from the open back and the hammer of the engine trying to shake them apart. “We have to get away from her.”
“I’m trying,” he said using his whole weight to pull the steering wheel with each turn. She wondered if the power steering was out. “Should we head toward Dark Orchard and try to get help?”
“It may be too far,” Gia said.
“Do you know any houses or people between here and there?”
Gia shook her head. She didn’t know anyone between here and LA “Go over the bridge. The bar is there. We can try to call for help.”
“It’s probably closed,” Justin said.
“This van may not make it anywhere farther away.”
“Okay, hold on.”
Justin made the turn at the bottom of the hill and bottomed out again. As he tried to make the straight away, Gia saw the bridge ahead. The van shifted from side to side as the engine hammered.
“Get it under control, Justin.”
“I’m trying. I think something is bent.”
The flatbed made the turn and closed the distance. Gia looked back into the dark sockets of the owl. The truck smashed the back of the van lifting it up and slamming it back down.
They swerved onto the bridge and the tone under the tires changed as she
saw the river out between the girders. The flatbed slammed them again. The wheels locked and they began to twist. The flatbed was pushing them along.
Gia thumbed off the safety on the gun and aimed back through the van. She fired into the grill of the truck. There was a spark and steam sprayed out of the truck humid into the van with them.
The truck dropped back on the bridge to where Gia could see the owl again. It sped up with more spraying steam toward them as the van slid and drifted to the side out of its lane.
Gia fired two more shots punching white holes in the windshield. The owl dropped out of sight and the truck started to coast. Gia pulled the trigger a third time, but the mechanism wouldn’t budge. She did not know if it was jammed or empty.
The van continued to drift and smashed into the girders. The doors came off both sides and Gia was thrown out of her seat backward into the dashboard.
She lost her grip on the gun and it sailed out of her hand out the open door. She turned to see it spin in empty space down into the river several feet below. The van tipped toward its nose threatening to continue its spill out into the river.
She pulled Justin by his shoulder and he lifted his face off the steering wheel. His nose and mouth were bloodied.
***
“Come on,” she said. “We have to get out the back before we fall in.”
They left their seats and walked back through the cargo section toward the opening as the van teetered forward and backward between the girders of the bridge.
They walked out far enough where they could see the steaming flatbed with two holes through the windshield. Susan sat up in the owl mask holding her shoulder. The engine revved and the truck barreled toward them.
Gia and Justin jumped off the back of the van and ran to the side toward the Mount Seller end of the bridge.
The truck hit the van launching it out over the river. It flipped over upside down as it splashed below. The truck smashed into the girders and bent the supports of the bridge. Gia felt the vibration through her bare, aching feet.
The transmission ground and the truck backed up tearing free of the twisted metal. The wheels turned and the truck made a slow turn toward them.
Justin bowed his head and spit blood out on the paved surface of the bridge. “We need to run.”
They turned and charged toward the end of the bridge as the truck picked up speed. Justin was uneasy on his feet and Gia could feel the glass in her feet. They cleared the end of the bridge as the truck began to roar behind them.
Gia realized they were holding hands as they ran.
They veered left toward the parking lot. The building was the same as she remembered from when she was sneaking in. The neon was dark and read “The Seller Summit”. Gia couldn’t even remember what it used to be called.
As they ran over rocks in the parking lot, her pace slowed. Justin scooped her up in his arms and ran with her toward the door. Gia cried and on impulse kissed him on his cheek.
He sat her down on the patio and they pulled at the door. It was locked. They knocked, but saw no movement inside.
The truck turned into the parking lot spitting up rocks as it raced across. Justin picked up the ashtray canister by the door and smashed it through the window in the door. He reached through and pulled the latch.
They stumbled inside facing down a bearded man with a double barreled shotgun. “Don’t think of moving, you two.”
“Someone is chasing us,” Justin said.
“Didn’t ask. Don’t care. Tell the police.”
“Call them. Now. Please,” Gia said.
The man narrowed his eyes as he kept aim on them.
Gia turned and saw the truck closing on the porch. “Justin?”
Justin pushed her sideways and they knocked chairs off the tables going for the floor.
The gun went off blasting splinters out of the wall.
The truck smashed through the patio overhang and then took out the front of the bar. Tables and chairs scattered all around them. The man with the gun went under the front of the truck and the wheel went over him. He screamed and then went silent.
The door opened. The owl dropped out gripping her bloody shoulder. Susan shook as she bent down and lifted the shotgun in both hands.
Her voice came sharp and slushy behind the hard mask. “Time for a new game.”
Justin shoved a table up and over against Susan and the truck. He pulled Gia to her feet and they ran back through the tables toward the back bathroom hallway.
The shotgun fired and blew out a mirror on the wall.
Justin pushed them sideways into the ladies’ room. They limped across and shoved open the door to the handicapped stall. The door to the bathroom burst open behind them and the owl limped in carrying the shotgun. Gia heard sirens before the door swung back closed.
Instead of closing the stall door, Justin moved Gia behind him against the wall and blocked her with his body. Susan limped forward breathing hard inside the mask. She stopped and raised the gun slowly. Gia heard the hammer click back.
Justin whispered. “Do what you’ve got to do. I understand.”
“You should have protected me,” her harsh voice accused from inside the mask.
The hammer clicked dry with no report from the gun.
The door to bathroom burst open and a man’s voice shouted. “Turn around and drop it.”
Susan whirled around in the owl mask and aimed at the officers. “Make me.”
Justin pulled Gia sideways to the floor beside the toilet.
Two shots blasted out through the bathroom. Susan pitched backward and landed on her back inside the stall. Gia wasn’t sure if it was better to see her face or the owl mask that covered it.
The officer leaned in with his gun still out and said, “Who the fuck are you two and what’s going on?”
Justin and Gia held up their hands. Justin looked at Gia and back at the officer. “She’s my sister. She killed Don Blackheart and left his body in her car back in Los Angeles. And then we kidnapped …”
“She kidnapped us,” Gia said. “She murdered Don and then kidnapped us. She had us chained to a radiator in the abandoned group home up on the hill. We escaped and she tried to kill us. She’s crazy.”
The officer looked down at the body in the owl mask and then up at Gia and Justin. “Come out of there slowly and come with me until we can sort this all out.”
***
Chapter 15
What now?
Gia stood over her mother’s grave and stared down at the old, tall grass. Someone needed to mow. She supposed she didn’t have much room to complain, if she never came out to visit.
Justin Simms stepped up beside her and took her hand. She glanced at him beside her. His hair was sculpted up to its usual messy perfection. He had bright, white tape over his nose. The rest of his face was bruised and swollen too. The scab on his chin actually looked the worst.
Gia knew that she didn’t look much better. She was wearing black slacks and a white and purple flowered top instead of pajamas, so that was an improvement at least.
“Did you see any photographers?” Gia asked.
“Not yet,” Justin said. “We didn’t do much to shake them from the hotel, so they will probably be here soon.”
She nodded. “It’s not even the Hollywood paparazzi. It is crime photographers fascinated about … Susan.”
“A picture here in the cemetery is probably gold for them.”
“We should go.”
“Back to the hotel?”
Gia shook her head. “No, the police have cleared us here. We should go?”
Justin licked his lips staring down at the grave and asked. “So, what now, then?”
“We should head back to LA. Investigators there will have questions.”
“A lot more photographers too,” he said.
“They can’t wait to splatter our relationship over every website and magazine after all of this,” Gia said.
Justin shook his he
ad. “And they don’t even know the half of it.”
“And they never will.”
They turned and walked down the path toward their rented car. “Can I ask you a question, Gia?”
She smiled. “Sure.”
“Why didn’t you turn me in to the police?”
Gia sighed. “I don’t have many people, Justin. None left that would put their life on the line for me. Maybe we started all wrong. I’m sure we did. But we both need someone willing to go to extremes for us.”
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