by Tyler Keevil
I purposefully took aim at the target, gripping my pistol in the way Pigeon had taught me, and pulled the trigger. The Glock barked and kicked. From that distance it was hard to tell what part of the target I’d hit, or if I’d hit it at all. But the guy was watching so I kept firing, casually squeezing off each round, as if I shot at a gun range every day.
After a minute he started shooting beside me. His gun was louder. Mine went bam, and his went boom. While we were shooting we pretended not to pay any attention to each other, but of course we were. It was like pissing at a urinal trough, when you avoid looking at the other guy’s dick, but secretly you’re wondering if it’s bigger or smaller than yours. We shot off a full round together. As we reloaded, I asked him about the diversion again. This time he told me. Apparently there was a tunnel that took you down the other side of the mountain. The entrance was behind the bunker, past the bikes. I asked him about those bikes, too, and the owners – without letting on that I knew about his gang.
‘Those are our bikes. Cobra bikes.’
‘But where are the other Cobras?’
He gestured vaguely, waving his gun over his head. ‘They’re around. Don’t worry about them. But tell me something, kid: where you gonna go after hitting Winnemucca?’
‘On to Reno. To do some gambling. Then maybe over to San Francisco.’
‘Nothing but queers and faggots in San Francisco.’ He snickered, and flicked his tongue in and out at me, like a lizard. ‘You a faggot, kid? You like sucking dick?’
‘I’m going to see a chick I know, actually. A super-hot lesbian.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ He’d been fiddling with his cylinder, but when he heard that he stopped and looked at me. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I might know her, dick-brain.’
I pretended to inspect my clip. I didn’t like the idea of him knowing Beatrice’s name. ‘Trevine,’ I said.
‘Trevine, eh?’ he said, taking aim. ‘I’ll remember that.’
We blasted off another set of rounds. Whenever he stopped to reload, he’d take a long swig from his bottle. He never offered me any, but at one point he noticed me eyeing it. He held it up, and sort of shook it to show it off.
‘This stuff will put lead in your pencil, kid.’
The label on the bottle showed a lady in a red dress. She had inflated cartoon breasts and a serpentine body that tapered to a tail – like a cross between a mermaid and a snake. All the writing was in Spanish. The only word I could make out was ‘agave’.
‘Tequila, huh?’ I said, removing my clip.
‘Fuck no. This is the real deal, kid. Mezcal. A hundred and sixty proof. It’ll make you animal-crazy, and ready to fuck.’
I began to reload, casually plucking bullets out of my box, pretending to be mildly interested in his little bottle. Really I was thinking, I need to get my hands on some of that.
‘I wouldn’t mind trying it,’ I said. ‘Want to sell some to me?’
‘This shit is priceless. You can only get it in Oaxaca.’
I didn’t know where Oaxaca was, but it sounded far away.
‘Oh, well,’ I said. ‘Too bad.’
‘Tell you what, kid. I’ll give you the chance to win it. We’ll have ourselves a little shoot-out. Six shots each. Best spread wins. If you win, you can have the bottle.’
It was exactly what his brother had warned me about. But it was still pretty tempting.
‘What about if you win?’
‘I get to pick something of yours. Sound good?’
I thought about all the junk I had in the car. None of it was worth anything.
‘You can’t pick my cat. Or my car.’
‘Okay.’ He offered me his hand. ‘The cat and the car are out. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
We shook. He put the bottle down on the counter between us. Then he reached up, plucked the visor off my head, and tossed it like a horseshoe around the bottleneck.
‘We shoot for the mezcal and your visor.’
‘Wait a minute – why do you want my visor?’
He was grinning now. Triumphantly. I hadn’t even considered my visor. It was so comfortable and familiar that it was practically part of me.
‘Do you know how rare that thing is?’ he said. ‘I been looking for one for years. I heard a guy was selling them, up in Trevor. But when I got there, some fucker,’ he sneered, making it clear he knew that fucker was me, ‘had already gone and bought it.’
‘You tricked me.’
I reached for my visor, and he rapped me across the knuckles with his Magnum.
‘You tricked yourself.’
‘Whatever. The bet’s off.’
I reached for it again. This time he pointed his gun at me, inches from my face. I went still and stared into the gaping muzzle. It looked big enough to swallow me whole.
‘We shook, so we shoot.’
‘Okay, man.’ I let go of my visor. ‘We shoot.’
Before we could shoot, first we had to put up fresh targets. He had a whole bundle of paper posters with him, rolled up in a tube. We took one each and walked on to the range. The sun was resting on the rim of the crater. The light had deepened to a rich blood-red that saturated the terrain and seeped across the sand. Our shadows, long and gangly, loped along beside us.
As we came up to the targets, I got a look at the bullet holes. All of his were packed close together, right over the target’s chest – as if the poor bastard’s heart had been torn out. My target didn’t look like that. My target had holes scattered all over the place. I’d hit the silhouette in the neck, and the dick. I’d even shot him in the elbow. When the biker saw that, he chuckled and made some stupid wisecrack about me shooting wild and started whistling a little ditty. He kept whistling as we took the old posters down, and replaced them. To attach the posters, you used metal clips at the top of the stands. I fiddled with mine, buying myself some time. There was no way in hell I was going to win that contest. Not fairly, at least.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘Don’t you think these targets are too close?’
‘Twenty-five yards is standard.’
He’d tricked me. Maybe I could do the same to him.
‘I’m no good at this close-range shooting. Any pussy can hit a target at twenty-five yards. I shot my eagle at, like, two hundred yards. At least.’
‘Well…’
I shrugged. ‘If you don’t think you can hack it, that’s fine. We’ll just pussy-shoot.’
‘Don’t be a fuckwit. Whatever you can shoot, I can shoot.’
‘Great. Here.’ I handed him my target stand. ‘You carry these out there, and I’ll tell you when to stop.’
‘Why me? Do it yourself.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Well, if they’re too heavy for you…’
‘Fuck that. I got this shit.’
Holding them high to show how light they were, he stomped off towards the rear of the range, then stopped to turn around. I backed up slowly, pretending to judge the distance.
‘That’s better,’ I called. ‘Go a bit further.’
He walked on, and I backed up some more. The next time he stopped to check, he was way out there, among the metal rifle targets at the back. I was almost at the shooting stalls. The visor and the mezcal were within arm’s reach.
‘A few more feet,’ I shouted. ‘Near the backdrop.’
As soon as he turned to walk away, I grabbed the bottle and visor and bolted for the exit. Just as I got to the door, I heard him shout. I tripped on the threshold, caught myself, and kept going. In the parking lot, I passed the bikes. They were all in a row. I tried that trick you see in the movies, and kicked the first bike over. It fell into the one next to it, and they all started going down, like dominos. Incredibly shiny and expensive dominos.
Then I leapt into the Neon. I threw her in gear and peeled out of there, spinning my wheels, spitting gravel, swerving wildly. We fishtailed past the bikes and around the bunker. Behind it, just like
he’d said, was a tunnel. It had been bored into the crater wall between the twin peaks. The mouth of the tunnel was dark, and supported by wooden framework, like an old mineshaft. As I hurtled towards it, in my wing mirror I caught a glimpse of him storming out of the gun range. At first he gave chase on foot. Then, when he realised he wasn’t going to catch me, he just stopped and pointed – as if he was marking me, or cursing me.
The cat, of course, was going absolutely ballistic.
chapter 44
We flew off that mountain, my cat and I. The road up had been full of twists and hairpins and switchbacks. The tunnel down was a straight drop, like the final section of a rollercoaster. For a moment we seemed to linger at the top, hanging in space. Then we were falling, falling, falling. The tunnel was narrow, barely one lane, and had granite walls lined with veins of iron. We swooped through it, feeling the G-force pull on our faces, pin us to our seats. At the bottom we shot out on to the highway, carrying all that momentum with us.
Up at the shooting range, evening had been lingering. But once we got down to the plains the sun fell from the sky like a buckshot bird. Day became night and the world went dark. We’d come out on a straightaway and I drove in the middle of the blacktop, straddling the centre line. It was marked by white dashes that streaked towards us like tracer bullets.
I watched the rear-view, the wing mirrors. I kept imagining I’d seen something back there, and then, finally, I did. On the road behind us the beam of a single headlamp appeared, slicing through the night like a knife. It was a mile or two back, and getting closer. The cat had seen it too. She arched her back and snarled her wildcat snarl.
‘I know, cat. I know.’
I stomped on the gas, jamming the pedal to the floor. The speedometer crept up past a hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty, a hundred and sixty. Being a Neon, it maxed out at a hundred and seventy klicks. The engine began emitting this weird, high-pitched mechanical hum. The whole car shook, rattled, shuddered. I clung to the wheel with both hands, keeping my elbows locked and my arms rigid. I wasn’t even driving any more. I was just trying to hold on. It was like riding a giant missile that could explode beneath me at any time.
I checked the rear-view. The headlight was still there. It hadn’t gotten any smaller, but it hadn’t gotten any bigger, either. Apparently he could only go the same speed as me.
‘Thank God he’s got a Harley,’ I said, ‘and not some Kawasaki crotch-rocket.’
I kept flooring it. After half an hour of our deadlocked race, the headlight vanished. I figured he’d given up and turned around. I eased off the gas, dropping back to a hundred.
‘That’s it, cat,’ I said, patting her back. ‘He’s gone.’
She let out a low growl.
We plunged on through the night, rolling over a series of camel humps that rose and fell like waves in a wine-dark sea. I power-puffed a cigarette to settle my nerves. Beside me, the cat sniffed at the stolen bottle of mezcal, sussing it out. In the dimness the blue glass glimmered magically, and the liquor inside sloshed around to the motion of the car, making the snake undulate. There was about three quarters of a bottle left. I told the cat what I’d done out on the shooting range to get it.
‘How do you like that, cat?’ I said. ‘We tricked him good.’
She didn’t seem impressed. She was still antsy. She kept lashing her tail around and turning in circles on her seat. Then she got up on her hind legs and braced her paws against the backrest, peering at the road behind us.
‘We lost him, cat. Relax.’
She wouldn’t, though. She started making a strange grumbling sound, deep in her throat. It got louder and louder. Too loud. I looked at her. It wasn’t just her making the sound. I rolled down the window and the noise increased, like the drone of a lawnmower.
Or the engine of a Harley.
It was him. He emerged from the darkness behind us, his face lit up by the glow of my tail-lights, his features cast in red. He was still wearing his sunglasses. He must have been following us in the dark, driving blind – like a complete psychopath.
I screamed, making the kind of sound you only make when you’re startled and terrified at the same time. The cat jumped down into the footwell to hide, and I hit the gas, hard, like a cowboy heeling his horse. The Neon leapt forward. I pushed her to one-seventy again, but he kept pace. I couldn’t lose him. All he had to do was follow me until I stopped.
‘Or until we run out of gas,’ I whispered.
I had about a quarter-tank left. Our only chance was to hope he ran out first, or to reach a town. He wouldn’t kill me in front of witnesses. At least, I didn’t think he would.
‘I saw that town from the pass, cat,’ I said. ‘We might make it.’
She glared at me from the floor as if she blamed me entirely – which was fair enough, considering I was entirely to blame. I checked my mirrors again. He was still there, all right. Since he was dressed in black, you couldn’t really see his body. You could only see his face, malevolent as a demon’s, hovering in the darkness. Also, in his sunglasses you could see the reflection of my tail-lights – these two little red dots, trained on me like laser-sights.
If I couldn’t outrun him, there was no point in trying. I dropped down to seventy-five. I’d once heard that seventy-five is the most fuel-efficient speed. I had to conserve every drop of gas I had. It was on now: a war of attrition between me and the shadow behind me.
Beneath my palms the steering wheel was greasy with sweat. My neck was stiff and I had a brain-crushing headache. At some point I’d started huffing whippets, to keep me awake and alert. We’d been driving for hours. He’d stayed locked to my bumper the whole time, as if attached with a trailer hitch, accelerating or slowing down to match my speed.
Time was measured by the slow movement of the needle on my gas gauge. It crept counter-clockwise, like an hour-hand going backwards. It sank into the red, slowly, slowly, and my heart sank with it. Pretty soon the fuel light came on. That was it – the chequered flag of my fate. I slumped back in my seat. The cat made this plaintive mewling sound.
‘I know, cat,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry to have fucked things up for us in this hideous way. You were right and I was wrong.’
She clambered into her usual position on the passenger seat. I guess she wanted to go out with dignity, not cowering in the footwell. I reached over to scratch her ears. She licked my hand. Then she bit it gently, as if to say, I always knew you were a hopeless loser.
‘We must be close, cat,’ I said. ‘We must be just out of reach.’
That was when I saw the lights. They appeared way out there in the dark, little pinpricks of colour against the matte black landscape.
‘Holy shit, cat,’ I said, leaning forward. ‘You see that?’
She meowed. She’d seen it, apparently. The only problem was, the biker had seen it too. He shouted something I couldn’t hear. Then he revved the throttle, making it rattle like a gattling gun, and tried to overtake us. As he did, I veered across, obstructing him, and he had to fall back to avoid being sideswiped. That pissed him off, all right. The next time I looked behind us, he’d drawn his Magnum. He waved it one-handed above his head, brandishing it like a sword. I was thinking, he can’t really be crazy enough to start shooting at us, can he?
He started shooting at us.
I heard the first blast and saw fire blossom from the end of the barrel. It scared me so badly I nearly crashed the Neon. She lurched back and forth like a drunken donkey, while he kept shooting, before I got her under control. Maybe all that swerving made us harder to hit, or maybe he was only firing warning shots. I don’t know. But he’d missed us. I half-turned in my seat to look back. He was fiddling with his gun, now, trying to reload it on the fly.
‘We’ve got to distract him, cat,’ I said. ‘Mess up his aim, somehow.’
I started throwing things out the window. I threw beer cans and empty canisters of whipped cream and liquor bottles and basically anything I could
get my hands on. He fell back a bit, forced to slalom between the obstacles, but eventually I ran out of stuff to throw. That was when the cat gave me an idea. She started scratching at a plastic bag tucked beneath the passenger seat. It was the one I’d stuffed full of eagle feathers.
‘That’s genius, cat.’
The biker was coming up behind us again. I grabbed the bag, held it out the window and shook it. All the feathers fluttered backwards, like a swarm of moths. He drove right into the swarm. Feathers smacked his chest and face. Some stuck to his clothes, and a few got caught right in his mouth – as if he’d swallowed a canary. He wobbled on his bike.
‘Fall, you son of a bitch!’
He didn’t fall.
We were close to the town now. I could see the shapes of buildings, the gleam of street-lamps. But my Neon was making strange noises, coughing and sputtering, running on fumes. Behind us, the guy had managed to steady the bike. He closed the gap again. He was no longer waving the gun around. He was holding it level, taking aim. His face was full of murder. I only had two things left on my passenger seat: the bottle of mezcal, and my visor.
‘Goddamn it,’ I said.
I picked the visor. I turned on the flashing lights, those beautiful lights, and flung it out the window. It spun in the air, twirling colours, like a flying saucer slicing across the sky. The wind caught it and carried it back at him. It settled in the middle of the road, right in his path. The guy wavered to avoid it, then dropped away and merged with the shadows.
‘He fell for it, cat!’
By then we’d reached the edge of town. Above the road a yellow Shell sign appeared, with a digital display for the prices of diesel and propane and gasoline. I slowed down to turn off. As I did, I heard a staccato burst of engine-noise from behind us. It was him again. He roared past on my left, burning a wheelie and whooping like a coyote. He must have taken a final pot-shot, because my passenger window exploded. A shower of glass splashed over me, stinging my face. I was so shocked I misjudged the turn and hit the kerb. The Neon bucked wildly, tossing the cat up off her seat. The brakes locked, and we slid forward on tractionless wheels. Time stretched out, elasticising. I was aware of the cat hanging in the air beside me, as if we’d drifted into a field of zero gravity. A dumpster at the side of the gas station floated towards us. Just before we hit it, I thought, we’re going to hit that dumpster.
