23 Past Tense

by Lee Child

  Shorty looked away.

  “I know,” Mark said. “Tough choice. The percentage play would be go for it. Problem is, you would never know what happened to the other person. In their final moments, I mean.”

  —

  Burke drove north. The phone died bar by bar. Reacher laid down the law. Burke was to let him out at the mouth of the track, and then go home and stay home, safe and secure. Never to return. Not saying yes and then doubling back and waiting. Not following on foot, just to see what was happening. None of that. Go home, stay home, forget all about it. No argument. No discussion. Not a democracy. That was the deal.

  Burke agreed.

  Reacher asked him again.

  Burke agreed again.

  They drove into the trees. It was already full dark under the canopy. Burke used his headlights. The twisted posts showed up five miles later. Right on time. Right where they should be. Burke stopped the car. Reacher got out. Burke drove away. Reacher stood on the road and watched him go. Eventually his tail lights disappeared, way far in the distance. Silence came down. There was thin moonlight on the road, from a gray night sky. Under the trees was darkness. Reacher set out walking. Alone in the dark.

  —

  Patty tried the door. She hoped it wouldn’t open. Not yet. They weren’t ready. They were leaning toward staying together. At least at first. As long as they could. But they hadn’t said so out loud. Not yet. They were leaning toward heading west. Directly away from the track. The opposite direction. A longer route out. Counterintuitive. Maybe a good idea. Maybe predictable. They didn’t know. They hadn’t committed. Not yet. They had debated taking a map from the car. In the end they decided not to. It was a compass they needed. They were worried about getting lost in the woods. They might walk in circles forever.

  The door was still locked.

  Patty stepped back and sat on the bed.

  —

  Two minutes later Reacher arrived at the tow truck. Its hard bulk loomed up out of the gloom. The darkness made its paint look black. Its chrome looked dull and gray. He knelt behind it and felt ahead for the fat rubber wire. He found it and logged its position in his mind. He stepped over it. He forced his way along the side of the truck, leading with his shoulder, elbow high, one side of him sliding easy on the waxed and polished paint, the other side of him getting pelted and scratched with twigs and leaves. He came out at the front and felt his way around to the center of the radiator grille. Which was the center of the track. He lined himself up and set out walking. Two miles to go.

  —

  They heard the quad-bikes start up. First one, and then another. The distant shriek of a starter motor, the nervous bark of a high-strung engine, the fast and anxious idle. Then a third machine, and a fourth. The noise beat back off the barn wall. Then a fifth and a sixth. Then all of them, growling and rumbling and buzzing, milling about, snicking into gear, accelerating away one by one, across the grass, onto the track, turning right, away from the house, toward the motel.

  For a second Shorty wondered who had gotten the bike they had pushed to the road and back.

  Patty tried the door.

  Still locked.

  The bikes formed up into what sounded like single file. They drove through the lot. Shorty turned and watched out the window. A procession. The boardwalk lights were still on. The bikes drove by, left to right, one by one. The riders were all dressed in black. They all had bows slung across their backs. They all had quivers full of arrows. They all had weird one-eyed night-vision goggles strapped to their heads. Some of them were blipping their engines. Some of them were up out of their saddles, raring to go.

  They all rode away.

  For a second Shorty wondered who had bet on the west.

  Patty tried the door.

  It opened.

  Chapter 36

  Patty pulled the door all the way open, and stood staring out, from one inch inside the threshold. The outside air was soft and sweet. The sky was dark as iron.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay here. I feel safe here.”

  “We aren’t safe here,” Shorty said. “We’re sitting ducks here.”

  “We’re sitting ducks everywhere. They have night vision.”

  “There are only six of them.”

  “Nine,” Patty said. “You think the assholes are going to be impartial?”

  “We can’t stay here.”

  Patty said nothing. She put her hand out the door. She opened her fingers. She felt the air. She pushed it and cupped it, like swimming.

  “We’ll go to Florida,” Shorty said. “We’ll have a windsurfer business. Maybe jet skis too. We’ll sell T-shirts. That’s where the money is. Patty and Shorty’s Aquatic Emporium. We could have a fancy design.”

  Patty looked back at him.

  “Jet skis need servicing,” she said.

  “I’ll hire a mechanic,” he said. “Regular as clockwork. I promise.”

  She paused a beat.

  “OK,” she said. “Let’s go to Florida.”

  They took nothing except the flashlights. They hustled out between the dead Honda and a pick-up parked next door. They tracked around room twelve, and came back on the blind side, along the back wall, to where they guessed their bathroom was. They pressed their backs against the siding. West was dead ahead. A faint gray acre of grass, and then a wall of trees, low and black beyond it. They listened hard, and they looked for lights. They heard nothing, and they saw nothing.

  They held hands and set out walking. Fast, but not running. They slipped and stumbled. Soon they were out in the open. Shorty imagined weird one-eyed night-vision goggles turning in his direction. Zooming in, and focusing. Patty thought, if they see you early, they might just track you for a spell. They fixed their eyes on the dark horizon. The wall of trees. They hustled on toward it. Closer and closer. Faster and faster. They ran the last fifty yards.

  They slipped between the first trunks and stopped dead, bent over, breathing hard, gasping, for air, from relief, with primitive joy at having survived. Some kind of ancient victory. Making them stronger. They stood up again. They listened. They heard nothing. They moved deeper into the woods. On and on. Slow going, because of vines and low stuff around their ankles, and because of stepping left, and stepping right, around all the trees. Plus it was dark. They didn’t risk the flashlights. Not yet. Because of the night vision. They figured it would be like setting themselves on fire.

  Five minutes later Patty said, “Are we still heading west?”

  Shorty said, “I think so.”

  “We should turn south now.”

  “Why?”

  “We were out in the open an awful long time. They could have been watching from a distance. They saw us heading west, so now they think we’re going to continue heading west.”

  “Do they?”

  “Because unconsciously people project spatial things in straight lines.”

  “Do they?”

  “So we need to turn off one way or the other. North or south. They can project us west all they want. We’ll never show up. I like south better. If we find a road, it’s a straight shot to town.”

  “OK, we should make a left turn.”

  “If we’re really heading west right now.”

  “I’m pretty sure,” Shorty said.

  So Patty turned what she hoped was exactly ninety degrees. She checked it carefully. She was shoulder-on to Shorty. She was sideways on to the way they had just been walking. She set out in the new direction. Shorty followed. On and on. The same slow progress. Grabby vines, and whip-like saplings. Sometimes fallen boughs, propped diagonally across their path. Which meant a detour, and a long look back, to make sure they hadn’t gotten turned around.

  Way far in the distance they heard a bike. Maybe a mile away. A short trip. It started up, it rode a minute, and it shut down again. The faintest sound. Repositioning, maybe. For what? On what basis? Patty stopped walking, and Shorty bumped into h
er.

  She said, “Do they ride them all the time, like horseback, or do they get off and approach on foot?”

  “I guess I don’t hear them buzzing around all the time, so yeah, I guess they park them and fan out on foot.”

  “Which means we won’t hear them coming. Mark was bullshitting.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “We’re in trouble.”

  “It’s a big woods. They need to get closer than forty feet. That guy was real far away. He was shit out of luck.”

  “We should turn southwest now,” Patty said.

  “Why?”

  “I think from here it would be the fastest way to the break in the trees.”

  “Won’t they guess?”

  “We can’t worry about that anymore. There are nine of them. Between them they can guess everything.”

  “OK, we should head half a turn to the right.”

  “If we’re really heading south right now.”

  “I’m pretty sure,” Shorty said. “More or less.”

  “I think we got turned around.”

  “Not by much.”

  Patty said nothing.

  Shorty said, “What?”

  “I think we’re lost in the woods. Which is full of archers who want to kill us. I think I’m going to die surrounded by trees. Which I guess is fair. I work in a sawmill.”

  “You OK?”

  “A bit light headed.”

  “Hang in there. We’re close enough for government work. Turn half right, keep on going, and we’ll reach the clearing.”

  They did all those things. They turned half right, they kept on going, and they reached the clearing. A minute later. But it was the wrong clearing. They were behind the motel again. The same gray acre of grass. A different angle. But only slightly. They were coming out of the woods about twenty yards from where they ran in.

  —

  Reacher heard motorcycle engines far in the distance. First a swarm, like a whole bunch together, buzzing faintly, right at the edge of silence, then individual machines about a mile away, some driving by, some slowing down. Not the clumsy bass beat of American machines. The other kind of motorbike noise. High revs, gears and chains, all kinds of cams and valves and other parts howling and thrashing up and down. The quad-bikes, he assumed. There had been nine, neatly parked in three rows of three. In front of the barn. Now they were out and about, revving and squirming their way through the trees.

  Hunting, said the back part of his brain.

  OK, said the front part. Maybe a protected species. A bear cub, or something. Highly illegal. Maybe that was the victim.

  Except a bear cub didn’t drive an import or hide with the blind down.

  He stopped in the dark and shuffled off the track. He stood six feet in the trees. Way up ahead he heard a bike. Not moving. Idling in place. Waiting. No headlight. Then it shut down. The silence became total again. Overhead where the canopy was thin there were slivers of steel-gray sky. Moonlight on low cloud.

  Reacher moved up through the trees, following the track, six feet from its edge.

  —

  Patty sat on the ground, with her back against a tree. She stared across at the motel. The blind side. The back wall. Where they had started.

  “You OK?” Shorty said again.

  She thought, if they see you early, they might just track you for a spell.

  Out loud she said, “Sit down, Shorty. Rest when you can. This could be a long night.”

  He sat down. The next tree.

  He said, “We’ll get better at it.”

  “No, we won’t,” she said. “Not without a compass. It’s impossible. We tried three straight lines and ended up walking a pretzel.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to wake up and find this has all been a horrible dream.”

  “Apart from that.”

  “I want to go east. I think the track is the only way. Alongside, in the trees. So we don’t get lost. Any other direction is futile. We could wander all night.”

  “They know that.”

  “They always knew. They knew sooner or later we have no alternative but to try the track. Our last resort. We should have known too. We were stupid. Thirty square miles with six guys was always ridiculous. What kind of game is that? It’s a lottery. But it isn’t thirty square miles. It’s a narrow strip either side of the track. That’s where all the action will be. It’s inevitable. They’re waiting for us there. The only gamble for them is what angle we approach from. And when.”

  Shorty was quiet a long moment. Breathing in, breathing out.

  Then he said, “I want to try something.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “First I want to see if it’s possible. I don’t want to look stupid.”

  She thought, short odds, Shorty.

  Out loud she said, “What do we need to do?”

  “Follow me,” he said.

  —

  In the back parlor Steven tracked the GPS chips inside their flashlights. They were beefy transmitters, powered by a parasitic feed from the four brand new D-cell batteries, with long antennas taped inside the aluminum cases. Currently they were moving from the edge of the forest toward the back of the motel. Medium speed. Walking, not running. In a precisely straight line, which was in stark contrast to their previous navigational performance, which had been chaotic. They had been staggering uncertainly south of west from the get-go, in a tight curling line they evidently thought was straight. Their left turn looked good temporarily, but they wandered again, almost in a circle, and then their final turn brought them back to where they had started. On two occasions they had crossed their own tracks, apparently without realizing.

  He watched. They made it to the motel’s back wall. Then they retraced their earlier steps exactly. They tracked back around the end of the building. Around room twelve. Into the lot. Past room eleven. Then they stopped, outside room ten.

  Chapter 37

  Shorty raised the Honda’s hood, and felt around under the battery. The stiff black wire, chopped in half, the cut ends like new pennies. He backed away, and walked through room ten to the bathroom. He grabbed up all the towels, a big messy bundle, and he carried them outside. He dumped them on the gravel, near the Honda’s rear wheel.

  “Check the other doors,” he said. “Get more if you can.”

  Patty started with eleven. The door was unlatched. She went in. Shorty went back to ten. He picked up the suitcase. Both hands, around the rope. He staggered out with it. He rested it a moment on the boardwalk. He heaved it down the step to the lot, and staggered with it all the way across, short uncertain steps, to the grass on the far side, the meadow before the woods. He blundered through it, his heels sinking in the soft earth, the case swishing against the seed heads. He made it thirty yards, and stopped, and dropped the case, and laid it down flat in the grass.

  Then he walked back. Patty had gotten towels out of eleven, seven, and five. Altogether they had four piles. He went back to ten’s bathroom and came out with a jagged shard of tile. Broad at the base, wicked at the tip. He dropped it on the towels, near the Honda’s rear wheel.

  He asked, “Which room had the most stuff?”

  “Seven,” Patty said. “Lots of clothes. Lots of potions in the bathroom. That guy takes good care of himself.”

  Shorty walked down to seven. He ignored the clothes and the potions. Instead he checked the wash bag on the bathroom vanity. It was black leather. He dumped it out in the sink. He found what he wanted, right there. Bottom of the bag, top of the pile. A nail clipper. The usual kind of thing. Metal. A moon-shaped pincer, and a swivel-out file.

  He put it in his pocket. He walked back to the Honda. He put the shard of tile aside. He laid the towels neatly one on top of the other, like a thick quilt. He shuffled it into position, flat on the gravel, under the Honda’s rear end. He did the same thing with the towels from five, seven, and eleven, under the Volvo, the Persian carpet van,
and the pick-up truck respectively.

  He went back to the Honda and laid down on his back. He squirmed into position. He stabbed the shard of tile into the bottom of the gas tank. Again and again. It was tougher than he expected. A flake of porcelain smashed off the tile. Shit, he thought. Please. I don’t want to look stupid . He knew what she was thinking.

  But for once in his life he got lucky. The missing flake of porcelain sharpened the tip. It added a third dimension. It made it a needle. He changed his position and seated the base of the tile in his blunt potato farmer’s palm, and he stabbed it upward, as hard as he could.

  He felt the tip go in.

  He felt a stain of gasoline.

  He widened the hole, and a minute later he had about five gallons soaked into the pad of towels. He did the same thing three more times, under the truck and the van and the Volvo. His head spun from the fumes. But he felt full of strength and energy. Full of doing, and fighting, and winning. He pulled out the dripping wads one by one and piled them on the boardwalk. All apart from one small towel, which he took with him. Soaked in gasoline. He slid it under the Honda’s battery. He poked it into crevices and draped it over bolts and brackets.

  Then he backed away and straightened up and shook his hands to dry them. He got in the driver’s seat and put the key in the lock. He clicked it on. He clicked every switch he could find. Heated rear windshield, lights, wipers, radio. Whatever. He wanted maximum load.

  He got out. He took the nail clipper from his pocket and unfolded the file. It was a thin blade maybe two inches long and a quarter inch wide, made of gritty metal, with a curl on the end, good for scraping.

  He put one arm under the hood. He bent it at the elbow, and dipped down, and twisted his hand underneath, and he slid the tip of the file into the severed space between the two halves of the stiff black wire. Between the two copper pennies. He twisted the file. He completed the circuit. Metal to metal to metal. There was a furious fizzing cascade of sparks, and the gas-soaked towel went whoomp and burst into flames, and Shorty dropped the nail clipper and snatched his hand away, and then he ran back and forth to the boardwalk, grabbing more towels, lighting them on fire from the flames under the Honda’s hood, tossing them into rooms, into eleven, into ten, on the bed, on the floor, into seven, into five, the last few anywhere, on the boardwalk, on a plastic lawn chair, outside the office door.