by Brook Wilder
Joel swung one leg over his bike, adrenaline still pumping through him, distracting him as he grabbed the handlebar, revving the engine and kicking up the stand before gesturing for Carla to hop on behind him. It was heaven and torture all at the same time as she slid onto the bike, her arms once more coming around in an embrace that made her entire front plaster against him. He groaned at the feel of her but the sound of the rumbling engine drowned it out. He was grateful for that because she was right. It was the time or place. Not yet anyways. Now, as soon as they got back to the clubhouse, well, that was another story altogether.
Joel turned the bike around, heading it down the long drive and not even bothering to look back as he finally breathed an easy breath, leaving the farm and the office and that bastard Maurice behind. He had a feeling that it would be a lot harder to leave the memories of what had happened, just how close he had come to losing her, behind as well but it was a start in the right direction. And they were both still alive, so it was a win-win, really.
They had just made it to the end of the drive when he felt Carla tense behind him. That feeling that had burned in his gut when they had first left the clubhouse, the one that told him something bad was about to him, fired to life again and he cursed quietly and vehemently.
“What is it?” he asked, his eyes still glued to the precarious gravel driveway in front of them.
“Maurice. He–He left the office. I couldn’t see everything, but I think…Joel, I think he’s following us.”
“Fuck!”
“Joel, he’s never going to let us get away with the recording. He’s not going to let us expose him like that, not if he can help it. Not if he can stop it,” her voice was panicked and he hated the note of fear that laced through it.
“Don’t worry. We’ll stick to the original plan and head back to the clubhouse.”
“What if he chases after us?” she asked, holding on even tighter to him and he wished that he could hold her back, hug her to him and convince her that everything was going to be fine.
“Don’t worry, Carla!” he repeated, having to yell over the sound of the wind and engines, “We follow the plan. Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”
Joel wasn’t sure if she believed him or not. Neither said another word as Joel pulled on to the highway headed back towards the clubhouse but it was apparent ten minutes later when the sound of a revving car engine broke through the tense silence that Maurice wasn’t giving up. Worry ate at Joel at the realization that instead of losing the bastard, Maurice was actually gaining on them.
Carla’s heart was beating so fast that he could feel her rapid, panicked pulse through the leather jacket and he wished he could console her, but every ounce of focus was locked on staying ahead of Maurice.
He actually managed to put a little distance between them at first but it was all lost when he pulled off on to the exit and the winding, mountain roads full of switchbacks and precarious turns. He heard something rattle unsettlingly in the bike and for the first time since the tense chase started she spoke.
“What was that, Joel?” she yelled in his ear and he shook his head.
“I’m not sure. Sound like it could be something in the engine, or…shit!” Joel jerked the bike to one side as it rattled again, harder this time and he risked a glance back to see Maurice right on their tail. Fear made him press the engine even harder, trying to gain some breathing room, whatever he could, but it wasn’t until it was too late that he realized where the rattling was coming from. It was the brake line. Maurice must have tampered with it before confronting them in the office to make sure they couldn’t get away if they ended up surviving him and his gun.
With another curse, he tried to slow the motorcycle down, the speed reckless now on the precarious, twisting road. But there was nothing he could do. The brakes were shot. Fear and dread like nothing he’d ever known filled him and he turned to look back at Carla, burning the image of her face in to his memory.
“I love you,” he said.
“Wha–” Carla didn’t even have time to form the whole word before they were skidding off the side of the road and into the rocky, tree lined ditch. Joel watched as Carla was thrown to one side while his body was jerked towards the other. He had a moment to think of just how beautiful she really was, like an angel sent down from heaven, before he collided into the trunk of a massive tree and the whole world went dark.
*
Carla blinked her eyes open slowly, painfully. The sun was already setting behind the mountains, casting them into blue and purple shadows but even the dim light left sent agonizing spikes pounding through her head. She felt like someone was plying a jackhammer to her frontal cortex. To her entire body, now that she thought about.
She knew she was lying on the ground because she could feel the gravel and hard rocks poking through her clothes and jabbing into her skin. It hurt to move but it also hurt to stay still and she had to bite back a groan as she rolled to one side.
She knew she was on the ground, yes, but she didn’t know why. Carla turned her head but didn’t see any nearby buildings or landmarks and it made her nauseous to try so she stopped, instead just focusing on moving her toes and fingers one by one. Nothing seemed broken but it was too hard to tell. Her entire body felt like a mass of scrapes and bruises and aches but none seemed sharper than any other. That had to be a good sign, right?
Finally, she was able to prop herself up enough to sit, swinging her legs around and the world seemed to right itself a little, rather than the slow, dizzying spiral of when she’d been laying prone. Carla took a deep breath, looking around and that’s when her gaze fell on him. Joel.
It all came back in a rush. Going to the office, finding the evidence, the confrontation with Maurice and Maurice’s gun. Joel had stopped him, he’d saved them and they had gotten away on Joel’s bike but something had been wrong. Maurice had chased them and something had gone wrong with the bike. Then they had crashed.
Well, at least she had an answer now as to why she’d been laying on the ground, but she couldn’t take her eyes away from Joel’s form. He wasn’t moving. In fact, he almost didn’t seem to be breathing at all and that realization sent pain more terrible than anything else she’d suffered ricocheting through her.
It propelled her up and she started a shambling half run, half stumble to where he was laid out on the other side of the street. His motorcycle was spread out, strewn across the pavement in more pieces that she could count and she had to stop her mind, her thoughts from concentrating on the horror of it. She could only focus on one thing, that Joel was okay. He had to be. She wouldn’t accept anything else.
Before she could take more than a few steps, though, another sound caught her attention. A car screeching to a halt, a door slamming. The sound of labored breaths and heavy footsteps running down the road towards them.
A moment of hope shot through her. Someone had seen the accident and stopped to help them. But that hope died a quick and painful death as Maurice, the left side of his face bloodied from the early fall, came into view. And he was right by Joel.
“No! Leave him alone!” Carla tried to call out, but her lips felt swollen and unwieldy and her mouth felt full of cotton.
“I’m not going to mess with your precious boyfriend, Carla, he already took care of himself for me,” Maurice giggled then, bending down to pick up the gun that had been thrown from where Joel had tucked it to land in the grass. He stood again and slowly turned towards her and the look of absolute hatred gleaming darkly in his small, piercing eyes froze her on the spot.
She couldn’t run, she was too injured and she wouldn’t make it far before getting a bullet in the back. Her only option was to try and talk him out of it. Maybe she could reason with him. Hah, that would be the day. What a hilarious thought. Reason, with the mad man pointing a gun at her face.
“Why are you laughing? Stop laughing!” Maurice said, waving the gun at her and it drew Carla up short. She hadn’t even realized s
he had been. She opened her mouth to say something, anything to try and say her life but she was too late. She could see it in his eyes, she could see it in the way his finger tensed on the trigger, squeezing it, squeezing it.
She closed her eyes, waiting for the end. There was a pop and she knew the bullet was coming. She knew it was all over.
Chapter 35
Carla wasn’t sure how long she stood there, half kneeling with the gravel of the road gouging into her soft skin. That pain was just a whisper compared the scream of the rest of her body, and that was nothing compared to her shattered heart.
It was dark behind her eyelids and time seemed to stretch out. She knew Maurice had pulled the trigger, she’d heard the sound of the gun, and she knew she was going to die at any minute. What she didn’t know what why it was taking so damn long.
With a gasp, she opened her eyes, peeling them back and was shocked to see Maurice there, staring at her with as much shock and surprise as she was sure was in her own expression. With a snarl, he held up the gun again, pulling the trigger again and again and the empty barrel spun each time, but no bullets came out. It was empty. Somehow, some way, it was empty.
But still he kept trying and then she was laughing again, at the joy of being alive, somehow miraculously alive despite being shot at multiple times by a maniac. And she was also laughing at the continuous look of shock that Maurice wore on his stupid face.
“He must have removed the bullets,” he was saying over and over to himself. He scurried over to where he had picked up the gun, swiping his meaty hands through the grass, uselessly searching for the missing bullets and all the while she laughed. “He must have…somehow he must have…”
Maurice growled then, a pure animal sound of rage and frustration and he looked so much like a pig just then, rooting through the grass and shrieking like a little piglet that she started giggling even harder.
Carla knew, in the back of her mind, that she was losing it. That she was past the point that pure will and strength and adrenaline could take her and all that she had left was the spark that still burned dimly inside her. The spark that Joel had put there, had fostered, had loved and encouraged. Yes, she was losing, and she was probably going to die any moment at the hands of a deranged psychopath, but at least she’d go out laughing. He couldn’t take that away from her.
More enraged than she’d ever seen him Maurice finally turned to her. He tossed the gun aside to land with a heavy thud in the grass next to Joel’s still prone body. He didn’t waste any time with words this time around, just lunged at her with his fingers splayed out and curled like talons and a snarl twisting his features into a nightmare image.
Carla screamed then, kicking backwards, trying to get away, but every movement was pure torture and she only made it as far as the ditch before she stumbled. It took every ounce of strength she had to pull herself back to her feet and she pushed herself to keep going, to keep running, to keep moving no matter how badly it hurt. And it did. It really did.
The agony of it made stars explode in odd shapes in front of her eyes and made her body feel so heavy it was like she was moving through quicksand. And she wasn’t moving quick enough, not nearly.
Maurice was right behind her. She could feel his presence like a deadly snake at her back and she cried out when his fingers tangled in her hair, pulling her up short. He tugged, hard and only once but it was enough to make her scream out in pain as it felt like he was ripping off her entire scalp. Pain writhed through her, bringing sudden nausea with it in an intense wave. She dropped to one knee in the grass, trying to catch her breath, to clear her head, to fight back the bile that was trying to force its way through her throat.
“Leave me alone!” she shouted at him with as much force as she could muster which, to tell the truth, wasn’t nearly as much as she would have hoped. “Let me go.”
Her words seemed to fall on deaf ears, though because Maurice, if anything, tightened his grip on her hair, dragging her back further. Carla grit her teeth, fighting against the pain, fighting against him, but it seemed like every move she made he countered it.
She kicked out a foot, trying to connect with his shin but he skittered out of the way of her heavy boot. She struggled once more to get away, using all of her strength, that little that was left to her after the accident to pull against his grip on her. But nothing seemed to work.
With a scream of rage and heartbreak and fear she turned on him, turning until she was standing there face to face with the man who wanted to kill her, who had probably killed Joel. The thought brought pure agony with it and it fueled her on as she did the last thing she could think of.
With all of her body weight, and every ounce of power she could muster, she dug in her boots, ducked her shoulder and rammed it straight into his solar plexus. Maurice made a gasping sound as the wind was knocked out of him and Carla felt a moment of triumph as he wind milled backwards, finally releasing her hair.
She didn’t wait to see how much damage she had done, she just took off towards the road. Her only hope was to find a passing car, a good Samaritan that would pick her up and take her to safety. Carla knew she would be doomed if she got lost amongst the cliffs and rocky crevasses of the surrounding mountains.
Hands wrapped around her a moment before what felt like a ton of bricks hit her from behind and she flew to the ground. Carla skidded a few feet on the loose gravel on the side of the road, but she barely felt it. As she turned around quickly, all she could feel was overwhelming fear as Maurice jumped on top of her.
She tried to scream, tried to call out for help as hopeless as it was but suddenly she couldn’t make a sound. Maurice’s hands were wrapped around her throat and he was pressing her down into the pavement and rocks. Panic set in as she tried to get him off of her, to get him away. Carla bucked her entire body, spurred on by terror and the knowledge of her certain death but her injuries made it almost impossible to fight back. So, she used the only weapons she had.
Carla curled her fingers into talons and swiped at his face.
“Fucking bitch!” Maurice growled at her and she was taken aback by the look shining in his dark eyes. She could see it now, it was there, plain for the whole world to see. There was something broken inside of him that would never be fixed. His face was beet red and his expression an animal’s wild snarl and it had her scratching out again. And again, and again.
Anything she could do to get herself free, and it worked for a moment. He loosened his grip just enough for her to draw a precious, life-giving breath but then he was back, his fingers around her throat pressing even harder and she clawed at them, at his arms, at anything she could reach but he didn’t react.
She could feel it. Her lungs struggling for oxygen that wouldn’t come, her body wracked with painful, jerking seizures as it tried to gasp for air but it didn’t come. The whole world seemed to darken around the edges, narrowing until only a pinprick of light was left and in that pinprick was a face she never thought she’d see again. Joel.
Carla knew then that her body was giving up, even though a part of her still fought on. As long as there was a chance she would keep fighting for her life but that chance was growing slimmer and slimmer and now Joel was smiling softly down at her. His mouth was moving, trying to tell her something but she couldn’t hear it. But she felt it. As her world began to stop turning, she felt those words move through her like an explosion.
I love you.
Tears ran down her cheek unheeded as her heavy eyelids fluttered, flashing Maurice for a second but she shied away from that and back towards Joel. In her mind, she reached out to him with one hand.
I love you too, Joel. So much. So much more than I can ever say. And then her whole world really did seem to stop.
There was a sudden, deafening bang that sounded, cracking through the air just above her and she felt a warm wetness soak through her side. Carla froze for a moment, her oxygen starved brain searching for answers but they didn’t come.
Finally, she blinked open her eyes to see Maurice, his expression no longer in a rictus of hatred and violence, but of shock, and beyond that a flicker of fear. He jerked once, still above her, before slowly loosening his grip on her injured throat and rising up like a wounded bear, crying out one last time before toppling to the side, still half on top of her.
With a shriek, she tried to push his mass off of her, desperate to get away from any part of him but she could barely move, could still barely breathe through her swollen throat. And she was confused. Slowly, she turned her head from where she was still laying on the side of the road where Maurice had tried to strangle her and there he was.
Joel. Just standing there a few feet away, as bloody and beaten as she felt but standing nonetheless even if his leg did look like it was at an odd angle. And clenched in his hand, pointed straight at where Maurice had just been, was the gun. He must have reloaded the thing, but the logistics were too much for her confused mind to understand.
