by Earl Emerson
“Maybe not, but there’s no fucking way they took him to town. You need to get your head out of your ass.”
Stephens was too tired to take umbrage at the remark, even as Muldaur was too exhausted to guard his words. They were all exhausted.
One by one they grew weary of watching the progress of the fires and wandered into the abandoned mining area. Giancarlo sat on a small boulder and tended to the bandages on his leg while Zak dropped to one knee and helped him.
Stephens hunkered on the ground and bit into an energy bar.
Leaving the rifle next to his bike, Muldaur sat on a patch of brown grass that poked through a slag heap. “The Land Rover crashed. The little guy. I forget his name…”
“Ryan Perry,” said Stephens.
“He’s dead.”
“What?” Giancarlo stopped fiddling with his bandages.
“Scooter crashed the Land Rover,” said Zak. “We’re pretty sure Perry died in the wreck. If he wasn’t dead when we saw him, he is now.”
“And Scooter?”
“Scooter was fine,” said Muldaur.
“He had a broken collarbone when we left him,” said Zak. “Along with some scrapes and bruises.”
“So how did you two get beat up?” Stephens asked Muldaur.
“Scooter and I had a disagreement,” said Muldaur. “It went on for a while.”
“I crashed,” added Zak.
“It must have been a doozy.”
“It was.”
Stephens continued to make inquiries, as if more information could somehow make their circumstances less dire. Zak had seen the same psychological mechanism at play in the fire department whenever anybody got hurt badly. Glean the details—the more, the better—and once you had them, digest them, make your assessment, then convince yourself it couldn’t have happened to you because you would have done things differently. It was part of the universal human impulse to distance oneself from tragedy using rationalization and self-deception. Zak wasn’t very good at it simply because every tragedy he’d seen in the fire department was one he quickly became convinced would visit him at some future date. He knew he was at heart a pessimist, and he knew his pessimism was rooted in the car accident when he was eleven, yet he felt helpless to change his nature or even try.
They would rest in the mine pit until the coast was clear or the fires came too close and forced them to move farther up the mountain.
45
Muldaur stretched out in the shade and took a nap. Giancarlo choked down an energy bar, drank most of his water, and began praying. Zak emptied his jersey pockets and lay on his back, his brown legs in the sun, his upper body in the shade of the trees near the pit. He hadn’t realized how frazzled he was until he was horizontal. He figured they’d ridden, he and Muldaur, more than seventy miles, and including yesterday had done at least ten thousand feet of climbing.
All morning they’d been moving so fast he hadn’t had time to think through the repercussions the day might impose on the rest of his life, but with this respite, the rest of his life was all he could think about.
Zak couldn’t escape the feeling this entire mess was his fault. Scooter had engineered the Jeep trip so he could harass, embarrass, and possibly do physical harm to Zak—but Scooter’s belief that he could get away with it was rooted in Zak’s inaction during the past two months when Scooter had been stalking Nadine.
The moment he saw Scooter and Chuck on the side of the mountain that morning he should have retreated to a safe haven. After Nadine left the night before, he should have convinced the others either to ride back into town in the dark or move the camp to another location—anything except remaining passive and letting events dictate their destiny.
Zak couldn’t help seeing this from the point of view of the authorities, for surely everything that had happened would be judged by outsiders: police, district attorneys, defense lawyers, judges, relatives of the deceased—the ever-growing number of deceased—and newspaper readers and television news junkies all over the Northwest. Eventually this would be graded by strangers, and there would be two competing stories, of that he was certain. He didn’t know precisely what Scooter’s story would entail, but he knew it would be attested to by every one of his friends. Their clique stuck together.
As he lay on the ground in a dizzying stupor, Zak underwent a series of epiphanies, recognizing behaviors and parts of his history that looked and sounded to outsiders totally different from the way he had always pictured them in his head. Certainly he was a dedicated firefighter, an athlete a couple of notches below national caliber. He was socially skilled but uninterested in pursuing much social interaction. He cast girlfriends aside with a casual abandon that amazed his friends and sometimes himself. Even though his sister had lived with him for more than a year and his father for almost three years, he was basically a lonely individual, or at least he had been before Nadine showed up. Even during the times when he had a girlfriend, he’d been lonely, yet he never quite knew why.
In many ways loneliness was his defining characteristic. And now that the chase across the face of the mountain had eased, he realized the only time he hadn’t felt lonely was during the weeks he’d known Nadine. Funny how one person could become the whole world. Zak recalled what Muldaur had said earlier in the day while they were climbing. “That girl’s the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just the way you’ve been since you met her. It’s like you’ve bloomed.”
“I’ve had girlfriends before.”
“Yes, you have, but they never made you happy.”
“No, they never did, did they?”
Muldaur was right. Zak never found anybody who would make him happy, probably because he never thought he deserved happiness. In the year after Charlene’s death, when his parents’ marriage dissolved, he’d become a believer in the fragility of relationships. Zak had always marveled that so many of his friends, co-workers, and acquaintances lived their lives in the sure knowledge that somewhere a mate was waiting for them, thinking that if they hadn’t found that mate yet, it was only a matter of time, while Zak had grown up assuming he would live the bulk of his life alone.
Prior to Charlene’s death, his family was so normal and centered that in retrospect it seemed to Zak like a fantasy: two devoted parents, a stable home, meals lovingly served, happy moments shared. They even had family night once a week. They would order pizza, play games together, and enjoy one another’s company. Zak had forgotten about family night until a few weeks ago when Stacy mentioned it.
The whole thing got sucked down the drain after Charlene died. Zak couldn’t count how many times his mother talked about that night, never once openly accusing him, though he knew what she was thinking. He always knew what she was thinking. And what made it even worse was that she knew he knew what she was thinking. Over the last eighteen years, Zak had relived those minutes thousands, if not tens of thousands of times—though, curiously, he hadn’t thought about it much since he’d pulled Nadine out of her overturned Lexus. But then, this morning when he failed to check Ryan Perry for a pulse, it all came back in an avalanche of personal recrimination. He’d failed Charlene and he’d failed Ryan Perry, too.
Charlene had always been the good-natured sister who tried to put a damper on any strife in the household, and after she was gone he’d missed her badly. That night she begged him to help her, and then, when she realized he was too terrified to crawl back into the car again, she’d given him a look that imbued an expression of pity so pure, so unrelenting and immediately forgiving that Zak never forgot it. Nor had he ever forgiven himself for being on the receiving end of it.
Everything that had gone wrong in his life, his father’s life, his mother’s, and Stacy’s could be traced to that one simple act of cowardice.
Zak had gone to a psychologist several years back to work it out, and the psychologist told him all the things he already knew on a rational level: He was
a child when it happened. He couldn’t expect to take on the responsibilities of an adult at eleven. The odds were that anybody else outside the car that night wouldn’t have rescued Charlene, either. In fact, others had been there and hadn’t rescued her. He’d been placed in a position no child should be placed in. And what if, asked the psychologist, who was a kindly but rather tight-lipped middle-aged woman with prematurely graying hair, what if he’d gone inside the car and it had burst into flame with Charlene and him inside? Wouldn’t that also have destroyed the family? Nothing he heard or said in the counseling sessions alleviated any of Zak’s guilt or changed his basic perception of the world.
Oddly enough, as a firefighter, every time he made a successful entry into a wrecked car it made things worse, because each entry was an example of how easy it could be.
After his father left and his mother drowned herself in religion, Zak figured it was his fault. When she drowned herself in drugs—his fault. Zak even blamed himself for his mother’s cancer. Hadn’t scientists tied disease to stress and despair, and wasn’t it possible his mother’s torment had altered her body chemistry enough to invite the cancer in? As many times as Zak told himself he couldn’t live other people’s lives for them, he was sure the total disintegration of his family had been all his doing.
And now Al was living with him, and although he paid rent, on those months when he came up short, Zak did not press him. Nor had he asked his sister for money. He felt it was a privilege to take care of his father and sister.
Until a few minutes ago Zak hadn’t viewed his history squarely. He hadn’t thought of taking in his father and sister as penance for a crime he’d committed at eleven. He hadn’t thought of himself as trying to rebuild the family unit he felt responsible for destroying. He hadn’t fully realized that every time he responded as a firefighter to the scene of a car accident, he was not only trying to prove to himself that he wasn’t a coward, but also trying to change the outcome of that first car accident in his life. It was a shock to realize how blatant his penance was and how blind he’d been to it. He was twenty-eight years old and was still trying to atone for an event that had taken place when he was eleven. All these thoughts had been rattling around in his brain for years, but it wasn’t until now, on a day when there was a good chance he might die, that they began to make sense.
Zak listened to Giancarlo snore and to Stephens as he tried repeatedly to get his cell phone to work. Somewhere in those minutes he realized he’d fallen into a light sleep and was actually listening to himself snore, too. It was hard to know how long he’d been dozing when the walkie-talkie crackled. “We’ve got them.”
“What did you say?”
“Commando Two to One, we can see them.”
“You’re not supposed to be on the air.”
“Come on down. We’re watching them right now. They’re in some sort of pit below us.”
“Have they spotted you?”
“If they have, they’re not moving.”
Muldaur was the first to speak. “Just everybody don’t fuckin’ twitch an eyelash. Just stay where you are.”
“Everybody hear that?” Zak asked. “Everybody awake?”
Stephens and Giancarlo grunted.
“Can anybody see them?”
“No, but I’m going to move around now,” Muldaur said. “Real slow. The rest of you stay still. This could be a bluff.”
Stephens said, “What if it isn’t?”
“Then we’ll find out soon enough.”
Remaining flat on his back, Zak listened to Muldaur as he ambled over to the bikes. “Okay,” said Muldaur. “I see them. They’re up the hill where that old road cuts across the mountain above us. Don’t anybody look. He’s got binoculars on us.”
“Are they going to shoot?” asked Giancarlo.
“I don’t see a gun, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. There are two of them. I think it’s the guy and the chick.”
“They must have driven up the main road right past this place,” said Zak.
“I vote we get the hell out of here,” said Giancarlo. “If they leave somebody with a rifle up there and send another vehicle to the mouth of this road, we’ll be finished.”
“Before we move, we gotta decide where we’re going,” said Muldaur.
“We’re sure as hell not going up,” said Zak. “Because they’ll be coming down.”
“It’s been almost two hours since we were down at the lake,” said Muldaur. “It’s going to be a lot smokier now.”
“I don’t see any other option,” said Giancarlo. “Unless you want to shoot it out with them right here.”
Before they could move, the walkie-talkie hissed again. “Do you have a rifle on them?”
“Yep.”
“Think you can hit one?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then hit one. We’re going to drive down. If we see them on the road, we’ll run right over their stinking bikes. I didn’t want to do it this way, but they haven’t given us any choice. We’ll never get out of these mountains alive until we eliminate them.”
“When do you want me to shoot?”
“Anytime, Fred.”
They were scrambling for their bikes when the first bullet whistled into the mine pit. Zak grabbed the walkie-talkie, slung the CamelBak hydration pack onto one shoulder, and was sprinting while pushing his bike through the saplings on the overgrown road when the second bullet ricocheted off the rocks a few feet behind him. The slug made a pleasant whirring sound as it ricocheted into the hot afternoon air, sounding like a wind chime being tapped lightly by a pencil.
46
Zak ran his bike down the mining road behind the other three. By the time he swung a leg over the saddle, Stephens had already reached the main road and was sprinting down the mountain. Burdened by the rifle across his handlebars, Muldaur was quickly overtaken by Zak, while Giancarlo was already out of sight on the descent. Giancarlo was slowest on the way up and the swiftest on the way down.
As they sped down the mountainside, Zak could hear a truck not far behind. Instinctively he scrubbed off speed and waited for Muldaur.
“Go ahead,” Muldaur screamed. “Don’t wait for me.”
“Dump the gun!” Zak yelled.
“Like hell.”
The sound of the truck’s tires and brakes on the dirt road was growing louder. “Can you stay in front of them?”
“I’ll have to, won’t I?”
“Remember before the corner at the bottom there’s a drainage ditch. If you get across that ditch okay, you can carry your speed onto the flats.”
“Where are you guys going when you get to the bottom?”
“No idea.”
“Hopefully, I’ll be right on your tail.” Zak had gained so much distance on Muldaur during their conversation that he could barely make out his last words.
Behind them the truck skidded on a patch of gravel. They could hear the tires sliding, then some banging as the vehicle struck rut after rut on the unimproved road. Zak still didn’t know which truck it was, or whether Scooter was hanging out a window with a rifle, but it didn’t matter. He could feel the hot wind on his face and in his hair. In their rush to leave, all except Stephens had forgotten their helmets at the mine.
At each of the shallow rain-diversion culverts engineered across the road, Zak dropped his weight down onto the shocks and jumped up at just the right moment to hop the culvert at full speed. Stephens and Giancarlo were both out of sight in front now. The shallow rain ditches that obstructed the road every couple of hundred yards would play havoc with the truck’s undercarriage, while a good cyclist with some nerve could jump them without losing any speed at all.
The descent took longer than Zak thought it would, but then time played funny tricks when you thought you were going to die. Even though the events around him seemed to have sped up, this descent was taking forever.
When Zak whizzed down the last leg of the hill and carved the curve that fed onto the
flats, feeling the g-forces as he hit the dip, he spotted Giancarlo far ahead. Between them Stephens was glancing back over his shoulder.
Zak caught Stephens in the woods on the Lake Hancock plateau, Stephens pulling in behind, drafting, letting Zak do the work. Zak pedaled hard for a good minute before swinging to his right so Stephens could take a turn, but Stephens pulled over with him and remained in Zak’s slipstream. Giancarlo had been too far out in front for Stephens to catch, so Stephens had waited for Zak, who now put his head down and steamed along, towing him up to Giancarlo in less than half a mile. Muldaur was closing in, too. It showed just how strong Muldaur was that he could make up that much distance once they hit the flats. The truck was still out of sight.
It was smokier and windier than an hour earlier when they’d last been on this plateau—bad enough that the air seared Zak’s throat with each breath. The poisons would affect his legs if they hadn’t already, slowing him down and making the ride even more painful than it already was.
They passed the cutoff to the lake in a blur and were heading through thick woods toward the three-way intersection near the edge of the mountain. The road was flat in these woods, so the bikes quickly lost any advantage they’d had over the chasing truck.
Zak heard the truck reach the bottom of the hill, tires slapping at the potholes. It was coming right up on them. It was going to run over them.
All four cyclists were bunched together now, Giancarlo in the lead.
As the truck grew louder, Giancarlo detoured into the woods on a single-track game trail Zak hadn’t noticed. One by one they veered into the woods. Closing in fast, the truck sounded as if it were going a hundred miles an hour. The driver was clearly determined to kill them. Zak followed Giancarlo, while Stephens, who’d been behind Zak, grew anxious about escaping the road in time to avoid the truck and came up alongside him on the narrow trail, nearly forcing Zak into a tree. The clumsy maneuver came close to bringing them both down.
Once in the woods, Zak stopped and watched Muldaur dive off the road a split second before the Porsche Cayenne rushed past at around fifty miles per hour. The SUV missed Muldaur by three feet at most. Obviously, the plan had been to run him down—to run them all down. The Porsche braked hard, skidded in the dirt, and reversed. By then the first three cyclists had traveled thirty yards into the woods. Muldaur, who’d gained a mere ten yards, threw his bike down and stood behind the bole of a tree, the rifle braced against the tree and trained on the road. When he fired, the gunshot was incredibly loud in the woods. For the longest time, nobody moved, the Porsche idling in the road in a skein of dust and smoke. The bullet had shattered the rear windows on either side.
