by Andrew Post
Mel said, “You didn’t want to go through the traffic stop because you thought I might say something. Like, I don’t know, this crazy person is holding me against my will.”
“Now she’s got her thinking cap on. Too bad I thought of that first.”
Every second she remained in this car brought her closer to Felix.
Mel turned her head, slowly, nonchalantly, peeking out of the corner of her eye at the gun Brenda had hanging out the open front of her coat, dangling there in her under-arm holster. With how pitted county road 17 seemed it was going to be for its entire length and how Brenda kept leaning forward, straining to see what lay ahead in the weak glow of the car’s single headlight, Mel could have the gun in a second. And from there demand that Brenda pull over and let her out.
Mel told her hand to move but it didn’t listen to her.
Of course, Mel lived in Chicago and that’s where they were going. Why jump out now and leave yourself helpless to the podunks who might drive by? New plan. Let her take you to Chicago and once there that’s when you make your escape.
“Stop,” Brenda said.
“I wasn’t doing anything.”
“You were. You were scheming. You make this face when you think, like you’re trying to hold in a sneeze.”
Mel was not aware of that about herself.
“I would’ve thought what he did to your uncle might’ve changed your opinion.”
“You mean him killing my uncle because you told Merritt I’m still alive? Is that what you mean?”
“Believe me or don’t believe me, Felix would’ve had it done either way. Even if it means murdering an innocent person lying in a hospice bed, he will not let himself be called a liar.”
“But if he still thought I was dead, which he most likely did before you told Merritt I wasn’t, then—”
“Does any of what’s happening make sense to you? If it does and you’d like to break it down for me, I’m all ears.”
Brenda made faces too, mostly scowls, but a few were slightly different. What he was doing hurt her. Mel didn’t think something like that was possible.
“All right, so maybe he wouldn’t have killed your uncle if I hadn’t said what I said. That is a possibility.”
“Is that your way of apologizing?”
“You said your uncle was sick. He probably didn’t feel a thing.”
“Is that your way of trying to make me feel better?”
“Fuck’s sake, Mel. Look. Though I can’t say I’m speaking from experience on this, I imagine a bullet was quicker than whatever it was he had.”
“Glioblastoma multiforme.”
“Sure. That. I’m not about to suggest that you try to find it in your soul to forgive Felix or some other quitter shit like that, hold on to your hate for him, absolutely, but maybe, as far as your uncle stepping out goes, try looking at it like what happened, awful as it was, as possibly better than him lying around in pain waiting to die.”
Mel thought about that for a moment. “No, I still think it’s fucked-up you told Merritt I was alive. You’re still partly responsible.”
“Fine. Stay pissed. You’re worse than my youngest.”
For most of a mile, the only sound was the rumbling of the tires on the poorly plowed road. There was nothing to see except what the single headlight could vaguely illuminate, a suggestion of a road, a sketch of snow. Otherwise it was darkness, in all directions, like they weren’t in rural Wisconsin but puttering along the abyss of outer space.
“Did you ever call your husband?”
“Yes. I did. Thank you for your concern.”
“I can’t imagine you being around kids.”
“Honestly, I can’t either.”
“Did something happen? Are they okay?”
“Do you give a shit?”
Mel decided to leave it alone.
The car started to make a sound that Mel identified at once. But given that it was the kind of vehicular mishap that only lets you know something bad is about to happen right before it does, Mel didn’t have a chance to tell Brenda to pull over before the wheel jerked in Brenda’s hands, the headlights swung to the right, and the car veered into the ditch and buried itself into snow up to the side mirrors.
* * *
Merritt felt unburdened, peeled of all unnecessary clutter. Doubts and worries, any concern he’d had about what others thought of him, any compulsion to try to come off as normal or well-adjusted or anything else he wasn’t and could never be, all that was gone now. He was without a mother, without a home, without gainful employment, and after what he said to Felix on the phone, Merritt’s savings were probably now a thing of the past too. He no longer saw the road as a long band of meaninglessness. His road had no places to pull over or be forced over. His road had cement balustrades ten feet high that made his road into more of a trench than a road and with it too narrow to turn around, that left only one way to go: forward.
That was all metaphorical of course. He was back in his home state, moving at a cool seventy miles per hour, and there were plenty of places to pull over, an endless stream of distractions in the form of fast food joints and tourist traps and movie theaters and porno stores and bowling alleys and bars and fireworks outlets and strip clubs and strip malls and tobacco shops and roadside attractions and scenic lookouts and in every town 94 took him through he passed at least one Mega Deluxo if not two or three, but he had no use for any of those things. He was beyond them, now that he was on his road.
It smelled like an abattoir inside the Neon, but he’d stopped consciously detecting it some time ago. Being covered in drying blood was likely what was helping with that, exposure breeding familiarity. Thickening puddles of what Mike Olson had left in the Neon’s back seat. Dots of it across the windshield on the inside. Evidence of everything Merritt had touched, the knobs of the radio, the steering wheel, the latch of the glove box, the door handle, the window crank. A box of biological evidence on wheels. On Merritt himself, too. Mike Olson under his fingernails, staining the front of his shirt and pants, the tops of his shoes, the spaces between his teeth. Merritt scratched behind his ear and felt a crustiness to his hair as well: more Mike. The young man had gotten everywhere.
Also, the blood of his neighbor from back at the motel who’d been so rude to him, but it was hard to tell what blood had come from whom – it was all the same color, after all.
The police would be called and find that man’s body lying in the bathtub covered in little cuts – and, all right, a few bite marks from when Merritt got impatient – and they’d do what law enforcement always does, run and tattle that tale to the news, saying the serial killer had gone and done it again, that big meanie-head.
That imaginary person they were putting those crimes to, Merritt and Brenda shared them. That unidentified culprit was a joint being, split right down the middle, almost like Merritt and Brenda had made a child together. Our little one, who’d come along – there’s that phrase again – out of the dark, born from the night, and knocked on the front door of our lives. Merritt pictured the living embodiment of their shared trespasses as this child with wisdom beyond its years brimming in its eyes, covered head to toe in red, dripping with the stuff the same as he, its father. He sees it open its mouth to say hello and only more red spills out.
Merritt realized he’d driven a few miles immersed body and mind in the daydream and put both hands on the wheel, as slippery as it was.
The endless tumble of snowflakes rushing at his headlights parted on his windshield, cutting through them like a bulldozer down a crowded sidewalk.
Three hundred and twenty miles to Chicago, a sign read.
He passed, first, the place where Mike Olson’s car had run out of gas and then, a few miles on, the motel where Merritt had taken him. The place was still crawling with journalists, those lacking the boldness to ever fathom a
creature such as him could stalk the earth alongside them, spoon-feeding this idea they only half understood to the soft-headed masses sitting at home who were probably equally appalled, none of whom had ever looked in the mirror and tried to see the animal that stood there, only the name they’d been given, the bolted-on label you are a person, above creatures, when in reality they could be so free if they only looked under, around, beneath, beyond, and remembered they had claws, remembered they had fangs, and remembered the reason they had those things.
He used to think of himself as a megalodon amid pollywogs but only now did he feel the explosive trueness within that allegory. It wasn’t some ego thing anymore. It was factual.
His father and brother seemed to have parted ways with him after his metamorphosis was complete. Merritt liked the idea that it’d scared them both too much to be willing to stick around and see any more, that even past further harm as they were, they still feared for their dead hides. Now he was alone in the car – on his road – and he did not mind it one iota. No need for the radio to be on either. He did not need anything to fill the silence. He didn’t need or want his idle thoughts and daydreams pushed down anymore. He now happily lived in them. Everything, all incoming stimuli, equally real and unreal simultaneously, the road – his road – building itself before him, nonexistent until he needed it to appear. No more lying to himself. The scared little boy inside him who felt he should always work to keep those things clearly designated was now dead.
The car climbed the gentle grade of a hill and, cresting the other side, he saw flashing lights down ahead. Stretching toward him away from those lights were other lights, red ones, standing in a long line of pairs. People letting themselves be corralled, to be nipped and barked at by the badge-wearing sheepdogs. Looking for those who have imbibed too much celebrating the holidays or doing some roadside questioning to find Merritt and Brenda’s red child.
It doesn’t matter either way. They won’t need to sense your outlaw lineage to know you’re out meaning the world harm tonight. The inside of this car, and yourself, are painted with the overwhelming proof of your savagery. Besides, it’d take too much time killing them all. Find a way around this.
Merritt used his turn signal and crossed to the county road 17 and turned on his high beams, pedal to the floor.
Chapter Ten
Brenda stomped the accelerator, throwing snow in a high arc ahead of Amber’s Civic, but they did not move. “Get out and push.”
“The control arm broke,” Mel said. “I heard it.”
Brenda let up off the gas. Smoke leaked out from under the hood. “I suppose if anybody would know. Go push anyway. We have to try.”
“Brenda. There’s no point. This car isn’t going anywhere. I know what I’m talking about. Even if we do manage to get it back on the road, with a busted control arm you won’t be able to steer. Unless you want to just go around in circles.”
“Fuck. Fuck.”
Mel kept quiet and let Brenda vent her rage.
“Why would I ever expect Amber would keep her car in working order? Goddamn it.”
And then Mel saw Brenda’s rage reeling back like a wave retreating. It didn’t come back as a second, more powerful crash but stayed in, a deep breath locking it fast within. It was like a switch with her. And for Mel, a terrifying display of an almost inhuman level of self-control.
Facing ahead at the stretching plane of snow-covered fields, Brenda said, “If you were lying to me before about not having another phone on you, consider this a free pass.”
“I don’t have one,” Mel said.
Brenda had to shoulder open the driver-side door. “Then it looks like we’re walking.”
Unable to get out on her side, Mel climbed across the driver’s seat and spilled out into the snow and mud. The wind screamed, firing sharp particles of ice at her eyes. Loose snow whipped and spun across the desolate country road. She could see a farmhouse a few hundred feet down, almost indiscernible, standing nearly as dark against the otherwise unbroken blanketing of frozen blackness all around them.
Brenda yanked open the back door and started setting their things on the ground. Her own suitcase. Mel’s bag. The cooler full of human blood. But then Brenda looked at that a moment, so innocuous on the outside but far less so once open, and placed it back inside the car, hip-checking the door closed.
“What happens when somebody finds that?” Mel said. “If they match it to Chaz Knudsen, they’ll think she did what you did.”
“Then let’s hope Amber will run far, far away. And if she does get caught, maybe it’ll teach her to take better care of her car if she’s going to let people borrow it.” Brenda snatched Mel’s bag off the ground and shoved it at her chest. “Your shit. You carry it.”
Mel’s equilibrium still wasn’t co-operating and apparently her ability to catch things wasn’t either. It knocked the wind out of her. As she struggled to squeeze her cast through the strap of her bag, she said, “So what now? We’re just going to walk the rest of the way?”
“Oh, you’re absolutely right. What was I thinking? Let’s use my spare car. Let me just pull that out of my ass,” Brenda said. “Get moving, shithead.”
“So we’re back to shithead now? You’re done calling me Mel?”
“Walk.”
They had gotten no more than five steps from the car when they heard the distant growl of an engine. Mel turned around to see Brenda had already stopped and was looking back. On the horizon, a hemisphere of white. Then the car cleared the hill and Mel squinted, the twin blue-white lights feeling like they were piercing her concussed brain. The driver had to see them, but wasn’t turning off his high beams, each snowflake glowing like an ember.
Mel watched Brenda let her suitcase drop to the side of the road. She drew her gun and held it behind her back. She raised her free hand to block the blinding light. Mel stood in her shadow, a few paces behind, the cold wind suddenly feeling so much colder.
The car slowed and came to a stop a few yards from them. Its idle was rough, several components rattling, sounding like the whole thing was on the verge of shaking apart. Mel could identify a lot of cars just by the shape of their headlights. These were perfectly round, which wasn’t too common among modern cars anymore. A Dodge Neon, maybe.
Startling Mel, Brenda shouted to the driver, “Mind giving us a lift? We broke down.”
The driver did not shut off his engine and left his high beams on to burn those they’d come across – while not allowing himself to be seen.
Mel whispered at Brenda’s back, “This doesn’t feel right.”
Brenda did not respond. But Mel could see her hold tighten on her gun behind her back, her index finger curl inside the trigger guard.
The engine shut off. The car lurched, backfired with a puff of smoke. The headlights remained on. Mel heard one of the doors open, a moan of a rusted hinge. A crunch of a foot being set onto the snowy asphalt. The hydraulics squeaked. She could only make out his rough shape now as he stood behind his headlights, towering over his car. A head and shoulders, the rest lost, obscured by the light and the open driver-side door. The driver said nothing.
Brenda tried shouting to him again. “Our car broke down. Could we bother you for a lift?”
With the car now off, her voice carried, the echo hitting Mel’s ear once, then twice, and was silenced with the next blast of cold wind.
The driver remained where he stood and said nothing.
Both the dark shape of the driver and Brenda moved at the same time, a mirrored movement, both lifting their right arm to point what they held in their hand at the other. The breathy snaps of Brenda’s silenced pistol were answered with a deafening three-round burst from the driver, a patter of metal hitting metal, the rounds striking the back of Amber’s defeated Civic.
Mel threw herself into the ditch. Brenda dropped and got behind their half-buried c
ar.
The driver opened fire again, but this shot sounded different – one single booming blast. The side windows of the Civic exploded, broken glass raining on Brenda and Mel. Then a second blast and the car sunk a fraction lower as its punctured tire hissed.
Brenda rose up and fired through the car. Thuds of the bullets hitting the driver’s vehicle, glass shattering. An immediate reply from the driver’s automatic weapon, laying into the Civic. The side mirror shattered. The seats’ padding turned into a storm of shredded foam. There was no other protection than their dead car and it wouldn’t be long before it would cease to stop the bullets.
A few seconds where only the wind made any sound.
Brenda was looking at Mel. She nodded past her, down the road. Mel turned and looked. The farmhouse, standing in the dark a few hundred feet away. No cover between it and their hiding place. Mel shook her head. Brenda held up three fingers. Then two. Then one. Brenda rose from hiding and shot at the driver.
Mel did not see if her aim proved effective. Leaving her bag behind her, Mel fought the slippery snow and climbed out of the ditch and onto the road and broke out in a run toward the house. A three-round burst. The muzzle flashes projected her shadow onto the house, toward temporary safety. The snow jumped at her feet. She could hear the bullets whiz just ahead of her head, missing her by mere inches. When she reached the house, she went around to the side, her lungs on fire.
She listened. The reports of Brenda’s silenced gun sounded like someone clapping their hands from this distance. The immediate response from the driver was one thundering boom then another and then more three-round bursts. Mel peeked around the corner of the house. She saw them both, ducking then rising up and firing and ducking again. Then another lull of silence fell and Mel heard the clanking and ratcheting of the driver reloading. Brenda must’ve heard it too because she abandoned the Civic and came charging across the yard toward the house. But instead of coming to where Mel was hiding, Brenda cleared the front porch’s steps with a leap and without breaking momentum threw herself against the door, crashed through, and slammed it shut behind her.
