The car was practically flying down the road, and when they came to a small hill, the car went airborne. When the car landed, there was an explosion, and the car started swerving out of control. “Crap!” shouted Diablo, “we must have had a blowout.” The car swerved off the road, and fortunately avoided hitting the trees directly, which lined the road. The car went careening through the bushes bouncing off of trees and rocks, until it finally came to rest on a tree stump. Oh well, thought Doc, it looks as if we will be going the rest of the way on foot.
The three of them climbed out of the car through the windows. Doc was still unsteady on his feet and very weak, so Diablo helped him along. They stumbled along away from the road. After about thirty minutes, they came to a barn at the edge of a field. The field was fenced in, so something was probably grazing there. Maybe a cow or a horse, thought Doc. That would be nice, if it was a horse, maybe they could ride it out of there. If it was a cow, maybe they could get milk from it or kill it and eat steak.
They entered the barn, and Diablo exclaimed: “Well, Doc, you wanted privacy, here it is. Do your magic, and fix Slasher.”
Doc looked around and saw a stool in the corner. He plunked Slasher on it and looked around. He found a hammer and advanced on Slasher.
Slasher screamed even louder and jumped to his feet, knocking the stool down as he backed into the corner.
Diablo looked at Doc with the hammer and open his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He tried again, “what are you trying to do?”
“ I am merely trying to anesthetize Slasher before I try to fix him.”
“He will probably be just fine without having to use the hammer on him, Doc.”
Slasher began animatedly nodding his head in agreement.
“Ok, have it you way, but this is probably going to hurt a lot,” said Doc.
Slasher sat on the stool again, reluctantly, and Doc took a look at the man’s ruined jaw. The bullet has hit the jawbone about halfway between the ear and the chin, and besides having dislocated it and ripped it completely out of the man’s face, it had knocked out six teeth. If he were able to reconnect the jawbone with Slasher’s skull, he would still need to think of some way to stabilize it, at least temporarily so it could heal.
Diablo looked around the barn and came back with a roll of duct tape and a spool of bailing wire. Doc stared at these items in utter disbelief. “Primates!” he muttered to himself. Nonetheless, he had nothing else, so he would have to make do.
Doc manipulated Slasher’s jawbone until he felt it pop into the socket. Slasher screamed and passed out. Luckily, he fell backwards, or it might have undone Doc’s work. Doc grabbed the duct tape and wrapped it around Slasher’s head and under his chin several times. He made sure slasher could open his lips enough to get water or soup so he wouldn’t starve to death. He stood back and surveyed his work. Not bad, he thought, but he felt that the Hello Kitty duct tape was a nice touch. Apparently this farmer had a daughter or a wicked sense of humor. As a finishing touch, Doc made a set of bunny ears out of the duct tape and affixed it to the top of Slasher’s head. When Diablo saw this, he started laughing uncontrollably. “You are a real character, Doc!” he chuckled.
Chapter 17
Fred woke up in the trunk of the Buick wondering what had happened. He assessed the damage, and came to the conclusion that the car had somehow gone airborne, and when it had hit the ground, he had been knocked out by the jack in the trunk of the car. It also appeared that he had accidentally fired the shotgun through the side of the trunk and into the left rear tire, which had exploded dramatically, causing the car to skid out of control. He slowly opened the trunk and listened for any noises that would indicate that these criminals were still around.
Hearing no such noises, he slipped out of the trunk silently and moved carefully to the front of the car. They were gone! Now he would have to track them down and exact his revenge. They were going to pay for what they did to Melissa! In his mind, he still saw his sweet Melissa lying there on the kitchen floor, and felt guilty for not being there for her. She didn’t deserve to die alone. He imagined her lying there face down on the floor, and wondered when the floor had been swept last, and hoped that it had been swept recently. Tears started to come, but he fought them back, thinking that he needed to put his emotions behind him and get the job done.
Fred looked around until he spotted their trail. They couldn’t be traveling very fast, because at least two of them were injured. He was unsure how long he had been unconscious, but judging by the fact that the engine was still warm, he figured that they had a thirty-minute or less head start on him. Fred surveyed the damage to his car, and noticed that there were dents and scratches on nearly every square inch of the car. “No respect,” he muttered to himself. “These idiots wouldn’t know a classic if it bit them in the butt.” Sadly, he thought, this car was probably worth more than the idiots who stole it.
Fred made his way through the woods cautiously but quickly. He didn’t want to stumble into them unaware, because they might get the drop on him. After about fifteen minutes, he spied a barn next to a pasture. He thought he recognized the barn, and believed that it belonged to one of his neighbors, George Green. If that was the case, he wondered if George had put up his prized bull or if it was still grazing in this field.
Last year, Fred had encountered George’s bull in this pasture while he had been looking for the chicken thieves. He had tracked them to this pasture, and made it about halfway across it before he saw the bull. He had slowly and calmly started retracing his steps, when the bull had turned around and had seen Fred. Fred remembered running for his life, and barely getting away.
Fred tiptoed to the barn, and peeked through a knothole in the wall of the barn. What he saw made him start giggling uncontrollably. He bit back the laughter and clamped a hand over his mouth. What a bunch of clowns, he thought. One of them was wrapped in bed sheets like he was wearing a toga, one of them looked like some kind of deranged bunny rabbit, and the other was laughing his head off at the one with the bunny ears. This was just too entertaining to interrupt, so Fred silently watched as the situation unfolded.
When the man on the floor with the bunny ears woke up, the one who had been laughing told them that they had better keep moving if they didn’t want to get caught. They started out of the barn and Fred started to move toward the barn door. Fred suddenly stopped himself when he realized what these three boobs were about to do. “This should be really funny,” Fred mumbled under his breath. The “troublesome trio,” as Fred was now calling them, exited the barn and began to cross the pasture.
Chapter 18
Steve and Tom slowed the car and searched for signs of the stolen vehicle. After passing by the place where the car had run off the road several times, they finally saw tread marks leading into the bushes. They pulled over and parked the car beside the road. Getting out of the car, they noticed tire tracks leading into the woods. After a few minutes, they came across the car. The car had come to a rest about fifty yards into the woods, after bouncing off nearly every tree along the way. It was definitely not going anywhere now.
The car had finally come to a rest on top of a tree stump with the front wheels completely off the ground. The left rear tire looked like someone had shot it with a very large gun, and there were bullet holes in the windows and trunk.
“What the heck happened here?” asked Steve.
“I shot the windshield and side window, and I think that the hole in the trunk was my third shot, but I never shot the tires.”
“It looks like the tire was shot out, but by who?”
They opened the trunk and discovered a hole in the side of the trunk. It smelled like cordite in the trunk, indicating that the gun had been a shotgun.
“What do you think did that?” asked Steve.
“Not what, who. If I had to make a guess, I’d say they inadvertently picked up a very pissed off stowaway somehow.”
“Do you
think it is the farmer from the house where they stole the car?” Steve asked.
“I don’t know, but we’d better find these guys before he does.”
Tom could only imagine how angry this farmer must be after thinking that these jackasses had killed his wife. For a minute or two he considered slowing the search a little to give the farmer a chance to even the score, but then he realized that this wouldn’t help the situation at all, and he really didn’t want to have to arrest this poor farmer for murder.
They made their way through the woods as quickly as they dared, knowing that there were three fugitives and a pissed off farmer ahead of them somewhere in the woods. The woods were thick, and both Steve and Tom could see dozens of places that could have been used for an ambush.
After what seemed like an hour (but was probably closer to fifteen minutes), Steve grabbed Tom and signaled for him to stop and be quiet. Steve and Tom could hear muffled voices coming from a short distance ahead. They inched ahead until they came upon a barn next to a pasture a few minutes later.
The barn was old but seemed in good shape. The voices they had heard must have come from inside the barn, thought Steve. They crept up on the barn for a closer look, and saw a knothole in one of the boards nearby. Tom peeked in, but didn’t see anyone there. Steve insisted on taking a peek as well, and reported that there was a stool in the middle of it.
Steve and Tom crept around the side of the barn until they noticed a large pasture on the other side of the barn. Once around the barn, they had a clear view of the pasture. They looked across the pasture and saw something that both of them would talk about for years to come.
Chapter 19
Doc, Slasher, and Diablo exited the barn and made their way across the field. This was way easier than traveling through the underbrush, so they should be able to make up some lost time this way. That trek through the woods had been harsh, and after all the excitement, they could really use a lucky break like this. About halfway across the field, Diablo suddenly stopped short. Slasher ran into him, and Doc ran into Slasher.
“What did you stop for?” asked Doc.
“I ran into him,” said Slasher, indicating Diablo, who was now standing there concentrating.
“What’s up, Diablo?” Doc asked.
“Shh, I thought I heard something.”
Suddenly they heard a loud, deep snort coming from the other side of a rise. Diablo slowly walked forward straining to see over the rise, and then they heard the sound of thundering hoof beats running toward them.
Diablo said, “awesome, a horse. Now if we can catch him, we will be able to go twice as fast.” Soon, however, they realized that he was only half right. They were definitely going to travel twice as fast, but it was definitely not a horse. An enormous bull came charging at them. This was the largest animal Slasher had ever seen. He stood frozen in fright as the thousand pound four-legged freight train barreled down on them. Somehow, Diablo thought, we have really pissed off this bull, and now he wants to kill us. “Run!” he yelled at the other two.
This snapped Slasher out of his trance, and the three of them took off running back toward the relative safety of the barn. All of a sudden a crazy man with a shotgun appeared between them and the barn.
“Hey, isn’t that the farmer from the farm house we were just at?” asked Diablo. Slasher whimpered and Doc soiled himself for the third time in as many hours. The farmer fired a shot at their feet, so the three convicts turned and ran toward the right side of the pasture, away from the bull and the farmer, who was already racking another shell into the chamber of the shotgun.
After running what seemed like a small marathon, Doc and Slasher made it over the fence unharmed, however, Diablo wasn’t as lucky. As he was climbing the fence, the bull caught him. The bull gored him in a place where, as the farmer would later describe it, “the sun don’t shine.” Even worse, the bull seemed to think that Diablo wanted to ride it, and this seemed to really make the bull crazy. Soon, Diablo was an unwilling participant in some kind of rodeo from hell, as the bull thrashed about, and Diablo was unable to get enough leverage to get off the bull’s horn. After what seemed like an eternity to Diablo, who was now fading in and out of consciousness, the bull threw him over the fence. Diablo landed in a heap, and Slasher grabbed him and dragged him along behind him as they ran as fast as they could through the woods.
Chapter 20
Fred stood next to the barn door and watched as the three criminals wandered into the pasture of the meanest bull he had ever seen. This bull was well known by anyone who lived in the area. If he ever managed to escape, you’d better lock up your kids, because he was convinced that this bull might try to eat them. This bull was both the biggest and the meanest bull in the state. Fred had seen George (the owner of the bull) try to load this bull onto a trailer to take him to a livestock auction last month, and the bull had all but destroyed the trailer. In the end, George had decided to come back later with a tranquilizer gun. In fact, Fred thought that George was supposed to cart this bull off today. He must be running late, Fred thought. Fred k
new that if George ever did get this bull to the livestock auction, he would likely be paid a small fortune for him.
Fred remembered how when he was teenager he had been in the 4H club at his school. He had raised a bull and had proudly taken him to the auction. Fred had worn his best suit, and led the bull into the chute awaiting his chance to parade the bull past the potential buyers. He had to wait about five minutes for the other competitor to finish parading his bull around the ring, and in that time, Fred’s bull snotted on him, peed on him, stomped on his foot, and tried to gut him with his horns. When the chute gate finally opened, Fred’s suit was torn and he was covered from head to toe with mud, snot, and bull urine. The buyers and judges had felt so sorry for Fred, that his bull had fetched a record price.
Fred was brought back to the present by what was happening in the pasture in front of him. What happened next was the funniest thing Fred had ever seen. The bull charged the three idiots, and they started running toward the barn. Fred aimed the shotgun at a spot just in front of the three criminals, and fired a shot at their feet to let them know that they were not welcome. They turned tail and ran for the fence, but the last one didn’t make it. The man looked like some kind of twisted ventriloquist dummy atop the bull, and he was being thrown around like a rag doll. “Man that’s gotta hurt!” exclaimed Fred through his laughter. Finally, after what seemed to him like a qualifying ride at any rodeo, the bull pitched the man over the fence and snorted at him for effect. Fred was now laughing so hard, he was crying.
After a minute or so, he finally regained his composure, and wiped his eyes. “Man did he have that coming to him,” said Fred. Seconds later, he was back in the barn, and was met by two police detectives. After explaining to the detectives what had happened, and how he had come to be standing in his neighbor’s cow pasture, the detectives asked which way the fugitives had gone. Fred showed them where they had gone over the fence, and offered to help track them. The detectives declined and told him to go home, but Fred had other ideas. He was going to try to warn George before he and his wife became victims as well.
Chapter 21
Steve and Tom shook their heads in disbelief as they walked away from the crazy farmer. Imagine, thinking he witnessed his wife’s death, and having the balls to crawl into the trunk of the getaway car! And to top that off, to follow them to this cow pasture so he could watch the show. Steve had to admit that the criminals had put on quite a show. One had looked like a Frat boy at a toga party, one had looked like a deranged rabbit, and one had tried to ride the wrong end of a bull.
“Wow,” said Steve, “That guy won’t be able to sit for a month!”
“Yeah, he won’t be driving the getaway car, that’s for sure.”
It suddenly occurred to Tom that Fred didn’t know that his wife was still alive. He turned around to tell the good news to Fred, but the old farmer was gone.
“Did you see where that crazy old coot went?”
“No, isn’t he still here?”
“No, but I’ll bet we haven’t seen the last of him. As long as he thinks that his wife is dead, these guys had better watch their backs.”
Steve and Tom walked around the pasture fence to where the “troubled trio” had gone. There was a blood trail leading away from the fence toward George Green’s house, which was about a mile away.
“Why don’t these guys just give up and turn themselves in before they kill themselves?” Asked Steve
“I don’t think God is through punishing them for their sins yet. Besides, I am rather enjoying this.”
“Let’s just hope we catch up to them before Farmer Fred does,” Steve said.
Steve and Tom continued following the trail that the ill-fated fugitives had taken, but in the process, Steve twisted his ankle on a root. They stopped for a few minutes and assessed the damage. Steve’s foot had begun to swell and it was now throbbing in his shoe. Steve knew that he was going to have to suck it up and keep going or the three criminals would kill again. Steve found a stick and leaned on it for support. They were moving at a much slower pace now, but they knew that they could stumble on the trio anytime, so they had to remain cautious.
Steve remembered how he had been at summer camp when he was ten years old, and had gone on a hike with the other campers. They had come to a gorge, and found a grape vine to swing across the gorge with. The other campers began swinging across the gorge and landing safely on the other side. When it was his turn, Steve had gripped the vine and swung out over the gorge, only to realize that he was deathly afraid of heights. When it came time to let go and land on the other side, he suddenly realized that he couldn’t let go of the vine. He remembered chiding himself for his cowardice, and forced himself to let go of the vine, but now he had already started swinging back to the other side. Steve had plummeted to the bottom of the gorge, about twenty feet below, and had broken his arm in three places. The hike back to camp had been tough, but not as tough as having to watch everyone else have fun in the pool all summer while he had to wear a cast.
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