He had painstakingly dug up thirty seven mines that he had planted leading into his kill zone. He placed a thick rubber disk over the primer of each device and then eased the bolt down until it rested quietly against the rubber. He then took the firing mechanism off each one and laid the bombs in straw in the front corner of the truckbed just under the shotgun side so he could see them through the window. One stray bullet of course, and...
He had taken everything he could think of that might be useful either as a weapon or some other kind of tool and enough food and water for himself for a month, about as far ahead as he could bring himself to look. And last, he set a pair of fifty five gallon drums in the back and pumped them full of diesel fuel. It added almost a thousand pounds to the truck but it was a commodity so scarce and so valued that he was certain of its welcome.
With no more excuses available, he started the truck and bounced gently over the hardening field and into the ox-bow and came out in Magneson's meadow and stopped. There were three men outside the house and they all appeared to be carrying rifles. It was too far off for him to be sure of anything. He took the lupa and began a slow walk through the stirring grass towards Magneson's house. They weren't even trying to hide anything or disguise their noise, almost certain indication of marauders. When he was a few hundred feet away, he saw their van parked on the road and a driver sitting there, smoking. At least eight five-gallon gasoline jugs were strung to the frame in various ways. Albert froze when he saw the tip of the cigarette swing towards him. Then the door opened and the dome light blinked on. The man had grabbed a rifle and was heading in his direction, the gun riding at chest level. He suddenly regretted decommissioning the mines. But the man came just to the edge of the driveway and looked around. It could take five minutes before his vision accustomed itself to the almost total darkness after he stubbed out the cigarette. The man slung the rifle casually over his shoulder and walked back to the van. The other three emerged and in a few minutes the vehicle was clattering down the road towards Highway 61.
Albert crawled out on the road and turned west, racing along at a steady 40, too fast for a hijacking but too slow to make him a difficult target. The goggles kept him over the white line, each strike looming and slipping under the hood in that hypnotism of night and motion that lures the unwary to Sirenum Scopuli. The truck rumbled and clattered, that syncopation of cogs and axles and belts and explosions that culminate in motion forward. He counted each mile.
Keep east on this road eleven and a half miles to South 235. Left eight miles. Right at the Tee.
Each mile another moment that did not have to be relived. After seven miles he felt himself relax, felt the loosening of his back and neck muscles and the palm grease on the steering wheel. The odometer continued to turn, agonizingly slow...a tenth and a tenth and a tenth until the first bullet shattered his driver side window and kept right on going through the passenger door and out into the field.
A steel core .223, he figured as he hammered the gas pedal. The diesel groaned and started to rev up but it was non turbo and it takes a long time for the beast to hit his stride. They must be firing from higher ground because the bullet passed behind his head and exited at the door handle. The next shot glanced off the roof and then a fusillade of lighter ammo chinked and snapped against the tail gate.
He had passed them, but now they would be shooting for the back window making a last effort with the rifle. He had reinforced the tailgate and the front grill with sheets of half-inch steel but he ran out of material before he could fill in the front of the bed. Originally he had planned to block the entire back of the cab with plate. It wouldn't matter what he did now. He could crouch down and hope they shot for the window but an amateur shooting at an escaping target is going to shoot high or low; he's not going to make it. And if he shoots low by the right fraction, an accident almost certain to happen, the bullet will leave the barrel at about half a mile per second but it will immediately start to drop and it will still be traveling twice the speed of a commercial jet when it punctures the tin skin of the pickup cab and starts tunneling into the human back.
The next round shattered the rear window of the pickup and exited in a nice hole through the windshield. He heard a few shots following him, but nothing connected. He had surprised them by not using headlights. They hadn't seen him until it was too late and they couldn't shoot the tires, not that it would have done them much good. He'd had them filled with polyurethane and they were bullet proof.
Three more miles on this section of gauntlet and then a hard south turn onto 235, The windshield was webbing as he drove, the multitude of cracks traveling from one end of the glass to the other, making it harder and harder to see. And the wind whipped in the empty space to his left and from behind and chattered his clothing like a flag at sea.
The turn at 235 was almost perpendicular to his course and he would have to slow down some to make it or he'd flip. The tires screeched and he imagined the joints in the wheels and axles straining like weight lifters transported to Jupiter. The truck reared and started to roll.
They had explained it to him, the physics of it a hundred times. A truck weighing ninety thousand pounds is traveling north at sixty miles an hour and the driver tries to take a right turn to the east...the truck rolls west. The momentum of that rig sailing north does not change because some asshole turns the steering wheel. It just ignores completely the instructions of the tires and carries right on, dragging the tires across their treads but the rig starts to fold and once that beautiful moment has passed when everything is in perfect equilibrium, the great beast rolls west and flips the tractor like a toy and kills everybody and everything in its path.
He had seen a loaded beer truck take a ramp too fast in New Jersey and fall in slow motion onto a green four-door sedan with a man driving it who never even knew what happened to him. The truck settled on the car like an elephant and crushed it down to eighteen inches high, motor and all. The left wheels of the pickup were coming around and he opened the door and holding tight to the steering wheel, heaved his body out the door until he was hanging out like a wind surfer. The combination of the open door and the impulse created by his move was just enough to perform the most exquisite pas de deux as the wheels hit the ground again, smoking and screaming and dragging him south, towards the Tee.
"God Damn!" he shouted.
Eight miles. Eight times a tenth and a tenth and a tenth. He watched the odometer grinding through its repertoire of numerals over and over again and then the agonizing click of the milestone. He slowed to about 40 mph., the only speed at which he could effectively navigate. Up a ski slope and over the top, the truck flying for a second or two and hitting the ground, hard.
The mine triggers had been removed but anything that slammed hard enough into one of those primers would set things in motion. He saw lights in the distance to his left, both fire and electric and there was a moment they disappeared behind thick trees and then he saw them again, only now, they were headlights, blazing and fearless, making a run to intersect him at the Tee. They were going to cut him there and-
He pressed the accelerator and got the truck up to about seventy miles an hour and turned on his own lights, flooding the road with the beautiful, freezing, glare of halogen and then he turned them off and slowed and let the truck come to a stop in the middle of the road. The tires smelled and the temperature gauge had moved slightly towards the red. He idled there for a moment and crawled along the highway until he came to a farm driveway where he pulled in and parked. He had only a few minutes and they'd figure out that he was not coming their way and they'd come for him. And he'd be waiting. And they'd be expecting him to be waiting. He took three mines and three detonators and in the green glow of his dash lights, he reconnected them. It didn't take long. Each firing bolt was now pressed against a rubber pad.
He heard them before he saw them because they had turned their lights off as well and were crawling up the road now, expecting the ambush.
He wore his night glasses and they became acutely visible once they hit a hundred feet. He hugged a large cedar tree, inserting himself between the stiff branches. It was the only chance to defeat their night vision, to make himself appear to be part of the landscape. They might not distinguish the tree's heat signature from his own.
The first jeep stopped fifty feet from the driveway and he heard voices. Then he heard boots hitting the pavement. He could see three men circling around, heading for his truck. They made a lot of noise. The jeep drifted a few feet closer. Albert set the detonator and pulled the rubber spacer out. The mine was armed. The act of throwing it could easily set it off. He moved from the tree's grasp and tossed the eight inch pipe into the air. He couldn't see its trajectory until the jeep exploded in a terrific fireball.
He hit the ground immediately as automatic riflefire enfiladed his position. A bullet creased his jacket and then shattered the branches above his head and then one slammed into his leg, high up on the thigh. The piercing, searing pain of the steel tearing into the muscle was more than he had ever experienced. He had no memory of anything even remotely equal to the torment he now felt.
Do something. Don't just sit there and let them kill you.
He flipped over and lay prone, still wearing the night glasses but tears and sweat occluding his vision now. He could make out the great blobs of their locations but not any detail. He began firing back, sending storms of bullets into the yellowish-white-green blobs. They had no heart for it and retreated. The jeep had not caught fire but it had been destroyed and he could hear them running down the road and in a moment the sound of an engine and then the stutter of exhaust.
He lay where he was, blood seeping onto the ground and his leg throbbing unmercifully, beating on him, it seemed, cursing him and punishing him. The bullet had passed through but it had missed the big vein or artery or whatever was in there that killed you when you disturbed it. He didn't know if he could drive. They'd probably regroup down the road and wait for him, anyway. He wasn't going anywhere for a while. His pant leg was sticky with hot, coagulating blood and when he tried to move his right leg it spurted and violent spasms rippled down through the thigh and into his calf.
He finally sat up and leaned against a tree. He gave himself three minutes for the throbbing to subside and then pulling himself backwards along the ground like a slug, he dragged himself to the truck, pushing with his left leg and trying to keep the wounded appendage straight, which seemed to cause less pain. He pulled himself up by the door handle and managed eventually to find himself seated in front of the steering wheel, his right leg stretched out across the floor shift to the other side and his left foot on the gas pedal so that he was twisted into the driver seat. He used duct tape to dam the wound, winding it tightly up his thigh almost to the crotch. He heard himself groaning and grunting each time he moved and his hands were now trembling.
Using his left foot on the gas pedal, he eased the truck onto the road and scraped past the blown jeep. He saw two bodies lying inside. How was he going to clutch and break and accelerate with one foot while the other leg was bent out sideways and his torso was twisted and cramping?
Bitch, bitch, bitch...Forget the brake.
He didn't know where he was but he hadn't gotten very far down the eight-mile run to the Tee and he expected it was going to be a lively trip. He started to giggle and tears ran down his face, he was laughing so hard. The truck was already rolling so he flipped it from first to third and fanned the accelerator until the engine stopped lugging. In third, he hit 30 mph. and shifted just on the sound into fifth, lugging the engine again but the big 7.2 caught the revs and the truck started to accelerate in high gear.
The first shots hit the left front tire but the truck barely noticed. They sprayed the driver door and he felt the wind as several bullets passed over his legs and smacked into the passenger side. The bullets continued to rake the length of the pick up until he was almost a quarter of a mile down the road. He never let the speed fall below 60 mph., until the black and yellow stripes of the road warning sign were almost too close to miss. He pushed on the break, the strain transferring streaks of searing pain across his hips and into the injured limb. The truck shuddered as the anti-locks tried to cope with the momentum and the big Ford started to swing before it rocked to a stop, the engine stalled and the faint smell of anti-freeze wafting in through the broken windows.
He pulled the truck in around back of Mason's burnt out ruins, and turned it off. He flashed his headlights twice and then closed his eyes and leaned against the door. The leg was now so stiff he didn't think it would move.
He lay the lupa across his lap and closed his eyes. He was going into shock from blood loss. The bullet had missed the femoral artery or he'd already be dead, but blood had continued to pour from the wound until he was able to bandage it with the duct tape and the fall in blood pressure was a sure sign of shock and impending death. How long can a man live with a hole in his leg and down half a quart? Unless someone showed up soon, he was going to find out. It wasn't the worst way to go. He had seen the worst ways to go, if not the absolute worst. He had committed a few atrocities himself but was remarkably unperturbed by the memories. In fact, the wound relieved him of some anger. He now had first hand some inkling of what Monteith must have felt and Stogit and that woman. He didn't have to keep going back and killing them over and over. They had suffered, they felt his hatred and his rage and now he knew it and maybe he could forget about them. Where had Maureen gone to? She would be dead, already, or wishing she was. What an idiot. What did she accomplish by walking into that shit hole of a world and allowing herself to be torn to pieces? How did that help anybody? He had connected almost instantly to her. He knew her without having met her somehow. This is not something Albert, Old Albert would have even considered a possibility. He would have scorned it unmercifully and found the purveyors of such nonsense contemptible. She could cast spells, just like Rosemary. He wanted Maureen to come back so he could explain. He wanted her to know how this came to be.
Then his father stapled the paper airplane and handed it to him. He threw it over and over again and then he ran up to him, his arms raised to be picked up and the man looked at him without seeing and Albert realized that he became invisible when he asked for things. He tried it on his mother and the same thing happened. He went to her and raised his arms and she smiled at him and walked away. Albert knew that any time he wanted to become invisible, all he had to do was ask. Mickey shouldn't be giving her that credit card like that. She's going to run up the account and her pimp will take the money. Mind your own fuckin business. I've had it with this shit. Parks the rig, pulls out his bag, about the size of a hockey player's equipment bag and walks into the bus station in Laredo wearing a Mexican straw hat. You can't just abandon a rig like that. Watch me. You won't be able to come back here. Who's coming back? You believe in reincarnation, Albert? Not me. Nobody's comin back...it's a one-way trip. Come here, Luddy, come...What's he doing? Monteith-"
He woke long after sunrise, his mouth so dry he couldn't swallow. The leg was paralyzed and he couldn't even shift it. The bleeding must have stopped because he was still alive. He knew he had to take the tape off, relieve the constriction at least for a while or he'd end up necrotic and then certainly dead. How the hell did old Gus manage to pull that arrow out of his leg without screaming? Well, if someone wants to cut my leg off, they can have it. He unscrewed the water bottle and tipped a little into his mouth and it seemed to vanish like sea on sand. A little more and he was able to breathe more freely. Finally, he tilted the jug back and gulped.
With the Emerson, he sliced the tape and peeled it back from the wound. His jeans had blended with his skin in a matrix of blood and sweat. He tried to pull the denim off the hole but the pain was too much. He poured a little water on it and let it sink in but the blood was hard and the material would have to be peeled off after a serious soaking in something other than cold water.
When h
e opened his eyes again the barrel was against his temple and he could see several other men walking around in front of the truck. His hand was still tightly wrapped around the lupa.
"You know the routine," the man said.
"Not happening," Albert replied. "Shoot, because I'm going to kill you first chance I get."
"Is that a fact?"
"That's a fact."
"That leg hurt?"
"No."
The man laughed and Albert almost smiled in response but he kept his jaws stiff and his face flat and expressionless. It was Deserter's wild bunch or it wasn't. He heard them rummaging around in the back of his truck.
"Leave that alone," he barked.
"Who are you," the man asked.
"Who wants to know?" Albert said.
"Jesus Christ, man...you're about three seconds from a bullet in the head."
"Albert Smythe," he said and he felt the barrel leave his temple and the man stepped back from the door and holstered the piece.
"Ya, it's him," he said. "Rambo said you'd show up."
"Rambo.?"
"That asshole with the Amish kid. He said you'd show up eventually."
The man opened the door and delicately took the lupa from Albert's hands.
"This truck still workin?" he asked.
Albert could see his face but his voice was receding and then his vision blurred and he just quit trying, quit caring. They had him. It was as if the act of removing the gun from his hands had released him. He screamed as they pushed him over enough for someone to drive. It was the first time he had heard himself scream in pain. It was a strange, foreign sound, strangled and shrill but coming from someone else. He didn't sound like that. He felt the truck moving and his head lolled back on the seat. He remained conscious for the drive, however long that was and felt the vehicle bouncing and jerking when they left asphalt and headed into the woods. He heard more voices, distant, muffled but not unfriendly. He refused to respond to their questions or open his eyes. He had given up. He was no longer interested in continuing. They could have it all. Welcome to it. Be my guest.
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 28
