The Slab

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  She had to fight back a wry laugh. “You weren’t supposed to be out here in the first place, remember? You’re supposed to be sitting in some nice safe motel room coordinating things.”

  “I know, I know. We’ve been over all that.”

  “Right.” She was willing to let it go at that.

  “I wonder what Larry and Dieter are up to,” he said. “Haven’t heard from them at all.” They’d agreed to only use cell phones in the case of extreme emergency, since they didn’t want to risk giving the authorities any signals to hone in on. “You think this counts as an emergency?”

  “I wouldn’t bother them yet,” Penny said. “Surely they’ve heard the helicopters. If it looks like we’re going to get caught, then you can call and give them the word to get out.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably best,” Mick agreed. “That’s what I’ll do.”

  “That’s good,” Penny said. She walked fast, almost at a jog, as long as they were in the wash and obstacles were few. At one point, they surprised a coyote out for its evening hunt and the beast loped away into the brush, casting occasional glances back over its shoulder to be sure they weren’t following. But otherwise, the nighttime desert was as empty as it was dark, which Penny thought was strange. There should be bats, she thought, and kangaroo rats, ground squirrels. Something. For as pristine as the bombing range was, and as many birds and lizards and snakes as she’d seen during the day, there wasn’t really as much fauna as she’d expected, and very little sign of the large animals, like mule deer and bighorn sheep, that she knew inhabited the area. And tonight was the quietest she’d seen it yet, with none of the nocturnal critters who should have been out and about. She thought it might have had something to do with the presence of all the people on the ground, far more than was usual.

  And she thought it might have something to do with the electric taste in her mouth, the taste that seemed to grow ever more intense as they neared the cave.

  ***

  The stars were cold pinpricks against the night sky, and the thin sliver of moon provided precious little light, so Lucy heard the road before she could see it and saw it only when she was practically on top of it.

  From a mile away, or maybe a little more, she had heard the unmistakable rumble of a big rig rolling along. The noise had spurred her to new efforts. She had been going since afternoon, when she had taken the knife and canteen from her second victim of the day and struck out across the hills, heading south, getting her bearings from the sun and sticking to as straight a course as the landscape would allow. Since the sun had gone down, though, and the sky darkened, progress had been more difficult and she had been on the verge of giving up for the night when she heard the truck. Renewed, she pressed on through the dark desert, trying her best to dodge the cholla and ocotillo and broad, sharp-tipped yucca leaves that lurked around her.

  Finally, she staggered out onto the surface of the roadway itself, its black asphalt shedding the heat it had stored from the day, and fell down to her knees, placing her palms on the road as if to reassure herself of its solidity. The road meant civilization. Safety. She felt herself beginning to weep, and sniffed it back.

  It was just a road, she knew. She had no idea where it was, or where it led, or how well trafficked it was. For all she knew, the truck that had passed was the only vehicle that would come along all night. The next one might contain her kidnappers. It wouldn’t do to ascribe too much power to a simple strip of tar.

  Lucy needed some rest. As much as she’d have loved to just start walking along the road, she could just as easily walk ten miles in the wrong direction, straight toward those who were certainly still pursuing her, and kill herself from exhaustion in the process. So instead of walking, she found a spot in the desert, a dozen feet from the road, sheltered from it by darkness and the mass of a spreading creosote bush, and lay down.

  The passing of a car woke her. She scrambled to her knees just in time to see its taillights disappearing in the distance. Damn it! she thought. She cursed herself for not having woken up on its approach. It was a passenger car, by the looks of the lights, low to the ground. Not the SUV she’d been snatched in. She needed the sleep, but if a ride could be had, that would be good too. She moved closer to the road, and sat instead of laying down. After a few minutes she rested her head on her knees and dozed again.

  When she snapped to alertness again, it was because she heard the drone of a vehicle in the distance, growing nearer. She hurried to the roadside and put the rifle down in the dirt, just off the edge of the road. The stolen knife was tucked through her belt, its handle hidden by her shirt, so she didn’t bother trying to disguise it any further. Then she checked herself, as carefully as she could. She knew she was a mess, her hair a tangle rivaling that of Brer Rabbit’s briar patch, her skin filthy and torn, her clothes ragged. But the ragged clothes, at least, could work for her, if the vehicle’s driver was a heterosexual male. She grabbed the ripped neckline of her tight top and tore it farther, exposing an expanse of breast. If she’d had time, she would have taken her pants off altogether, but the car’s headlights were already splitting the darkness and heading toward her. She stepped onto the edge of the road and began waving her hands frantically.

  The headlights swooshed across her and passed on. But as soon as it was past her, its brake lights flashed and then glowed as it shifted into reverse and backed toward her. The car, a small Japanese model she couldn’t even identify in the dark, came to a stop right next to her. In the dark, she saw the driver lean over and pop open his passenger door.

  “Sorry I passed you,” he said. “When I saw you there, I thought I’d fallen asleep and was dreaming or something.”

  He was a white guy in a business shirt and khakis, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard. His eyes looked puffy, as if he had in fact been sleeping, but he had a smile on his face as he looked at Lucy. “That’s okay,” she said. “You stopped, anyway. Can I get a ride? I’ve had kind of a rough day.”

  “Sure, sure, no problem,” he said. “Get in.”

  She turned away and stooped down, grabbing the rifle off the ground. Keeping her body between him and the gun to block his view of it, she backed into the car. She gave her ass an extra wiggle as she did, figuring he’d be checking that out anyway. At the last moment, before she was fully in the car but while she could still maneuver, she turned and pointed the weapon at his head.

  “I hate to do this,” she said. “You seem like a nice guy and all, and you did stop for me. But someone will stop for you, and you’ll be fine, and you’ll have a great story to tell your kids. So you need to get out of the car now.”

  “Wh—are you kidding me? You have got to be fucking joking,” he said. His voice was quaking, though, and she saw his knuckles whiten against the wheel.

  “I’m not joking,” she said. “I told you I’ve had a bad day, so don’t push it. Get out, and leave the keys where they are.” She nudged his temple with the rifle’s barrel. “Go.”

  He moved his left hand robotically from the wheel to the door handle and opened his door. “That’s good,” Lucy said. “Keep going.”

  The guy slid from the driver’s seat and stood up in the middle of the road, next to the car. He looked half-amused, as if she were going to start laughing any moment and invite him back into his own car. But that wasn’t happening. “Close the door,” she instructed. He did.

  Keeping the gun pointed at him as well as she could, she shifted into the driver’s seat, reaching over and closing the passenger door as she did so. She slammed down the door lock button, and at the same time he began pounding on the roof and window. “You can’t do this!” he shouted. “You can’t just leave me out here!”

  She didn’t bother to answer, just dropped the rifle across her lap and the passenger seat and stepped on the gas. In just a few seconds she couldn’t even see him in the rear-view mirror any more. She felt bad about stealing his car—she’d told the truth about that. But, frankly, she thought, I
need it more than you do right now.

  She wondered how he would adjust the story when he told it. Would she be sexier? More cruel? Completely nude? Maybe she’d be turned into a vicious gang of female thugs.

  At any rate, she had a car. She still didn’t know where she was, but that could be fixed, if she could only stay awake. She stayed on the road, going in the same direction the guy had been traveling. After about twenty minutes, this road intersected a wider road, so she turned right onto that road and drove for a while longer. Finally, up ahead she saw the glow of an all-night gas station and mini-mart, sitting by the side of what looked like a major freeway. The gas tank was three quarters full, and she didn’t have any money anyway, so she pulled up to the side of the building and let herself into the washroom. There was no mirror and only the cold water worked. She let it run and washed herself up as best she could, using a rough paper towel to dab at her various wounds. When she was somewhat awake and dried off, she went back outside and looked at the map posted in the mini-mart’s window. Someone had conveniently written YOU ARE HERE and drawn an arrow with a blue ball-point pen on the map, so she learned that she was ten miles from the Mojave Desert town of Blythe, and that the freeway she could hear was the I-10.

  The guy working behind the counter inside the mini-mart had noticed her and blatantly stared at her as she studied the map, but she wanted to avoid talking to him because she knew that police would come around asking questions at some point, and she didn’t want him to be able to tell what direction she was going, or what her destination was. But the more she glanced inside, the more she realized just how hungry she was. And the shop was full of food. Making up her mind, she went inside and strode confidently to the counter, feeling his gaze measuring her as she did.

  “Hi,” she said. “I don’t have any money, so we can do this a couple of ways. You can take pity on me because I’ve been kidnapped and had to escape, and I’m really hungry, and give me some food. Or I can go back out to my car and get my gun and shoot you. Your choice.”

  The guy—a kid, really, younger than her, with an acne-pocked face and spiky hair, a Metallica T-shirt underneath his polyester red, white and blue uniform shirt—didn’t take his eyes of her. His lips curled into a smile. “Show me your boobs,” he said, nerves cracking his voice.

  “What?”

  “You got some big boobs. Show me them and you can take whatever you want to eat.”

  Lucy shrugged and rolled up what was left of her tank top, then popped her breasts free of her bra. She didn’t really mind people looking—there had been times when she’d have flashed this guy for the fun of it, just to see the look on his face. And, by comparison to what she had just escaped, this barely registered on the scale of degradation. This was nothing but commerce, goods for services. She let him have an eyeful and then put them away.

  “Niiiice,” he said. She ignored him and went to the heating trays where she grabbed two burritos and a foil-wrapped burger. From a cooler she snagged a few plastic bottles of water. A box of Cheez-its, a few napkins and a tray of mini-donuts completed the menu. She waved her handful of food at the guy and walked out. Getting into her stolen car, which she had discovered was a dark green Nissan Altima, she had another thought. She put her loot on the passenger seat and went back inside.

  “I need to make a phone call,” she said. “I need some change.”

  The guy punched open his register drawer and scooped out some quarters, which he handed her, the smile still on his face and his gaze still on her chest. She closed her fist over the coins. “See you in your wet dreams,” she said, and went back outside, to the phone booth at a corner of the lot. Chunking a few quarters into the slot, she dialed home. After several rings, her mother answered.

  “Mama, it’s me, Lucia,” she said. “I’m okay, I’m fine.”

  “Oh my God, Lucia, where are you? Are you all right?” The poor woman sounded frantic. Lucy could already hear her voice wavering, and figured tears would be running down her cheeks within seconds.

  “I’m fine, mama. I’m coming home.”

  “Oh, good. When? Do you need anything? Your brothers, they—”

  “I’ll be home sometime tomorrow,” Lucy told her. “I don’t know when. I have some things to take care of first. Tell my brothers not to worry about me. I’m fine, I just need to do some things before I can come home.”

  She hung up then, cutting off her mother’s urgent pleadings. It wouldn’t do to talk for long—she might be talked out of doing what she knew she had to. So she left the phone and returned to the Altima and started the engine, then unwrapped the first burrito and began eating that with one hand as she steered out of the gas station and up the freeway onramp with the other.

  She hit the 10, merging with the few other cars that were on the road at this time of night. Moving back toward civilization felt strange, as if she’d spent months in a foreign country and had just been deposited back home. The familiar—taillights ahead of her, lane markings on the road, green signs with white lettering—were new and wonderful. She felt like a child who’s discovered a lost barrel of favorite toys in the back of a closet.

  But after a few miles, the novelty wore off as a new wave of exhaustion hit her. She rolled down her window, letting a blast of cold air wash over her face. Even with that, she could barely keep her eyes open, and she knew she had to sleep. She pulled off the freeway at the first exit and took a narrow two-lane road into the desert until she found an empty stretch of wilderness. Here she crawled along until a rutted dirt road presented itself. She took this path until she was out of sight from the paved road and shut off the engine and crawled into the back seat, hugging the rifle to her like a stuffed animal as she went to sleep.

  ***

  The desert at night, out where no city lights cast an umbrella glow over the sky and blocked the stars and moon’s reflected luminescence, reminded Ken of Illinois nights of his youth. At night it was easier to feel a part of nature. The works of man were harder to see, and they felt less important, insignificant really in the face of all those stars and planets, all the boundless space around, all the rocks and hills and plants and creatures nature provided. Man, if he tried hard enough, could cause a species to become extinct. But he’d never learned how to create a new one.

  Continued flashes of insight throughout the night had kept Ken on what he believed was the right course. Any time he lost the tracks or was confused by another set of footprints, he could summon an image of the trail from Hal’s point of view, and from those, determine which path Hal had chosen.

  Hal’s course seemed random at first, as he meandered around the landscape. But eventually it became clear that he was always moving, however indirectly, toward the east, toward the Chocolates. This suspicion was confirmed when Ken saw a vision of the USMC’s DANGER signs at the line that separated their bombing range from the canal and ultimately the Slab. Ken hesitated a moment—he should have called the Marines at this point. They’d want their own people on it, though, he reasoned. Which would mean flying in from Yuma and wasting precious time during which Hal could be freezing, or dying of exposure, or stepping on unexploded ordnance. No, there was no time for that. He ignored the imaginary line and continued his pursuit.

  Once the signs were behind him and out of sight, he had the epiphany about how much this was like those long-ago days, running outside at night, through fields of corn or long grass, playing baseball on a summer night, catching fireflies or crickets in jars, laying back on a blanket and counting the endless stars in the sky.

  Now, though, he walked through a different world. He’d been in the military, though that was decades past. He could barely imagine what kind of technology flew above this bombing range every day. Stuff that would have seemed absurd in the science fiction stories he read as a young man. Tom Swift’s Triphibian Atomicar would have paled in comparison to a modern fighter jet, he knew.

  It wasn’t, he thought, that he didn’t like change, so much as that h
e despised the increasing rate of change. Once, things had made sense to him. When he’d been a boy in the middle of the last century, he’d understood life. In so many ways, the nation seemed to grow up with him, gradually and at a steady pace a person could keep up with. It wasn’t like the sixties had just suddenly hit. They came on slowly, with television and Hugh Hefner and Madison Avenue leading the way, breaking down little by little the standards and mores of the Eisenhower years; and Elvis and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones kicked the changes in the pants, made them come a little faster, those and the assassination of JFK; but still you could keep up with things, you could anticipate the era of the hippies, the Summer of Love, that had came from someplace and you could trace the connecting lines, Ken thought, and Civil Rights and Vietnam hung over that whole era as constants, bloody and divisive but always there like a security blanket and they led into Nixon and Watergate and the scandals, and that seemed to Ken to be when things started to speed up a little; he turned around and Gerald Ford was President and then he turned around and it was Carter and there were American hostages overseas and a general malaise which was undeniable but which Americans didn’t want broadcast; he turned around and it was Reagan and arms for hostages, Iran-Contra, a booming stock market and greed ruled and it was all about Me; he turned around and Reagan was gone but Bush was still there, Bush who had called Reagan’s economic vision voodoo economics and now it looked like he was right because Reagan had spent until there was nothing left to spend and then some and the economy collapsed and idealism was out of fashion; he turned around and Bush got Noriega and pushed Saddam back; he turned around and Bush was gone and there was Clinton; he turned around and rap was called hip hop and people wore their hats backwards; he turned around and everything was digital, personal computers and the online world fueling another boom, and once he had been in a men’s room while a broker sold stocks on a cell phone standing at a urinal taking a loud piss; he turned around and Gingrich had led a revolution; he turned around and you needed to press a button to unlock your car and you couldn’t get a person on the phone without listening to a menu, which had once been something you looked at by choice; he turned around and people were screaming about oral sex, calling for blood, and civility was out the window, seemingly forever; he turned around and there was an impeachment hearing; he turned around and a flawed election failed the nation; and he turned around and no one cared about what had happened because they cared about movie grosses and someone named Chandra Levy; and then he turned around and it was September eleventh and terrorists attacked American shores, and he turned around, and he turned around, and he turned around.