Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  Sam took a breath of the cool morning and embarked on a stroll. He grinned fondly while Legs got up on the knee that would hold her and tried to limp away. He arrived by her side and walked along, nodding as if with encouragement. Curly’s blood had sprayed him, wetting the neckline of his T-shirt. Legs hopped and staggered and cried, shrieking strange sounds.

  I stood, took maybe two steps.

  Arms wrapped around me from behind, skinny but so, so strong. “Don’t,” Johnny said in my ear.

  “Don’t!” I hollered at the absolute top of my lungs. “Sam, don’t, she didn’t do anything!”

  Her knee caught a bad angle. She went down, and where she landed, she simply curled over, like the dirt was her childhood bed. She looked right at me. Quiet hiccups made her shoulders jump.

  “Pretend to faint,” Johnny whispered.

  But I stayed locked with her. Her stare was saying: “I don’t need to be afraid, do I? I’m daydreaming, right?”

  I made mine say: “Yep, you’re watching a bad episode of CSI, and you turned to see what’s happening out the window. It’s fine, you just checked out.”

  The shot startled her. Her eyes widened—surprise more than pain. I felt it, too. A distinct shredding, into the arm, through the chest, out the other side, opening a compartment for life to flow out of.

  “Faint,” Johnny said, hissing it.

  Sam was walking toward us. He had hulk shoulders, high and furious. “What did I say?”

  I slumped. I committed completely. I went fainting one better—I was dead.

  “Put her down.”

  I was dead, so I didn’t hear how Sam’s feet pounded to a stop inches from where Johnny was setting my corpse to the ground. I didn’t hear the blow connect, just Johnny’s grunt, his fall.

  “I forgot,” Johnny said.

  “What did you forget?”

  “I don’t look at her. I don’t talk to her. I don’t touch her.”

  “Did you touch her?” A click. “I’ve got three left, did you touch her?”

  “No, she slept. I stayed outside.”

  “Then why is she here?”

  “The gravel under the tires, it was loud. I came running when I heard it. The short one kicked me in the balls. She was making a phone call; there’s a cell in her back pocket. We should hurry.”

  “Are you telling me what to do?”

  “No.”

  “Say, ‘No, Sam.’”

  “No, Sam.”

  “What’s wrong with the car?”

  “Transmission’s stuck. I can fix it.”

  “How long? Say, ‘Five minutes.’”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Get started,” Sam said. “I’ll take care of these.”

  I imagined Sam getting a solid grip on Curly’s ankles and pulling. Don’t picture it, I told myself. That sound could be anything. It doesn’t have to be Curly’s ruined head picking up grit like a wet mop.

  It faded, giving way to clicks and maneuvers with metal—Johnny messing with the car’s transmission. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Kat—sorry, I have to call you that or I’ll get confused. Kat, you can’t cry.” Johnny knelt beside me and began untying his right shoe. His eyebrow had split down the middle, but he was focused, disciplined. He jerked his sneaker off, peeled the insole out, held up two black capsules. “These’ll hit you hard.”

  I gulped the pills, hyperventilating.

  “Good,” Johnny said, throwing a glance in the direction of the house. “They’ll take a while to kick in. Until then, no matter what, you’re asleep. I mean it, you’re sleeping. Okay?”

  “He-his guh-hunna ki-hill uh-hus.”

  Johnny put a hand over my eyes. “We’re . . . we’re in the mountains. Nobody around, just us. I lit a fire in the fireplace. You made hot chocolate.”

  I lost it. I actually went to the mountains. Me and Johnny, on a couch, in a room with a spectacular view. I had a mug of Swiss Miss. The fireplace blazed.

  So Sam’s heavy feet hitting gravel, passing me—they were the wood, crackling as it burned. A minute later, Legs being dragged.

  “Good,” Johnny said. “That’s good, Kat.”

  It was good. The Sierras wearing their white winter beanies. Our seclusion so complete, so perfect. We needed to put another log on. The fire was going out.

  Fourteen

  It ain’t me. Creedence Clearwater Revival, ha! It was going to be a good day. Even if my body seemed to be a boneless pile, strapped into a car’s front seat.

  “Turn that up,” Sam said, from the back.

  A dirty hand on a dial complied. Numbers on a sun-bright clock read 4:42. Johnny, in the driver’s seat, glanced at me sideways. He raised one finger off the steering wheel and looked in the rearview mirror. The cut on his eyebrow had sealed into a hard line. It connected now to before with cruel efficiency. I felt my heart pop to the memory of gunshots. They were so vivid it felt like they were happening in the car. I would have thrashed or screamed or freaked out somehow, except now I knew who the man in the backseat really was, what lived behind his endearingly tone-deaf and slurred sing-along with the radio.

  Johnny reached to the dash, grabbed the bag of sunflower seeds. He put them in his lap and swirled them. Two objects hilled out from the gray shells. They were thirty-five-millimeter film canisters. He picked one, popped the top, tipped it. A glob of black capsules fell out. He shook them all back in, save two. He tossed a single seed in his mouth then reached over, fed me the pills. My throat was bone-dry, but I got them down.

  Our tires bounced on the shoulder. Johnny guided the car back onto the road, bulleting through terrain the color of rust. Slabs of rock in stand-alone walls, cracked soil like broken leather. My seat was leather. This wasn’t the same car. I ruminated on what state our plates were from now, on what song would play after “Fortunate Son.” On the mental image of Sam crooning to the roof of the car, his eyes shut, savoring the sound of his awful singing voice and therefore not seeing when Johnny slipped me the downers. On whether the dead girls were back in their hometowns yet, or if they were spending a few hours’ quality time in a sterile room, prone on cold metal beds, their youthful perkiness covered in clean sheets.

  I was sure I’d be joining them soon. I saw no possibility of escape, and my drug hangover had annihilated all my capacities to search. Having just swallowed another dose, it seemed too soon for the meds to be taking effect. And yet they spoke to me. “Come with us,” they said. “We’re your escape.” I let my head sag, shutting my eyes.

  “Is she awake?” A mean fug of liquor filled my nostrils. “Did she move? It looks like she moved.”

  “Yeah,” Johnny said. “A little.”

  “She’ll wake up, right? Say ‘She’ll wake up, Sam.’”

  “She’ll wake up, Sam.”

  Clumsy fingers tugged the skin of my face, as though trying to mold it. “I didn’t mean to scare her.” His voice cracked. He sounded drunk, but it was more than that: plaintive preteen boy not liking what was for dinner. “I didn’t mean to.”

  Johnny waited for his line. None came. “She’ll be okay.”

  “Right. You’re right.” The seat belt tightened across my front, over my thighs. “I didn’t have a choice, did I?”

  “No, Sam.”

  “No. No, I didn’t. They slutted up to me all night so they could tie me to the bed and steal our car. That isn’t appropriate. Kat would never do that, would she?”

  “No, Sam.”

  “Say ‘Never, Sam.’”

  “Never, Sam.”

  “She’s a good girl. She’s her daddy’s sweet baby girl. She just needs time. Then she’ll take us to my money and decide she wants to stay. It’s understandable she’d have misgivings, but I did nothing wrong. They were whores.” He seemed to draw strength from the word. “Whores, Johnny. We don’t need more whores. We’ve got enough whores, right?”

  “Right, Sam.”

  “Good boy. Tell me if she moves again.” />
  “I will,” Johnny said.

  Creedence faded. I went with it.

  It wasn’t full blackout. I’d surface to wind that skimmed cool across my forehead, a powerful whiff of Stove Top stuffing, musical snippets getting cut together into discordant classic-rock medleys. The sedatives had turned me into a calculator where only the clear button worked. I’d slip into recent, terrible events, then reset to zero. I’d experiment with questions: Where am I? Are my arms and legs attached? What do I do now? Back to zero.

  How much time is passing? I didn’t want to wake, but it was happening.

  Sam had moved to the driver’s seat. He grinned at me like: Good morning, sunshine. He took a can of Dr Pepper from the cup holder, sipped. We were parked at the curb of a side street that fed into a one-way, its four lanes scattered with taxis and a few nontaxis. Palm trees reached third and fourth floors of enormous buildings.

  My body shook like it was trying to expel something stuck in a gear. I was yapping random syllables, pulling and pulling at my door handle. The childproof locks were engaged. My vision got fuzzy.

  “Kat? What’s the matter?”

  My fingers hurt. Sam’s mitts appeared, and he tore my nails from where they were digging into the armrests. I searched for Johnny. He was sitting back on his heels, picking at the carpet. Showing me the part of his hair in a clear signal: “Look at him. Don’t look at me; look at him.”

  “All right,” Sam said, unbuckling my seat belt. The car creaked. He folded and slid to the passenger side, putting me on his leg. It should have been much more of an operation than it was. I should have struggled, but I was flaccid, and his solid iron shape gave me a shape. He breathed the sour reek of yogurt gone bad. “Is that better?”

  Twenty feet away, a yellow cab cut off a Hummer. They took turns honking. Others got in on the game. I found it familiar. Relaxing. I observed the chaos, pretending Sam was background noise. “Yes,” I said.

  “Tell me what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours. Gimme the skinny, Minnie.”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “The feds are at the cabin.” Sam poked the police scanner with his toe. “Your cop tipped them, and it’s intriguing to me. Why would that naughty little girl call your cop?”

  “Blaine had cards in his coat pocket. I could’ve dropped one.”

  Sam rubbed a firm, slow circle on my back. “Why wouldn’t she dial 9-1-1?”

  “I don’t know, Daddy.”

  “Ooh, I like that. Say it again.”

  “I don’t know, Daddy.”

  “Just ‘Daddy.’”

  “Daddy,” I said.

  He pressed a line of three kisses up my neck. They pricked like thorns. “I believe you. I believe in you. Do you believe in me? Say ‘Yes, Daddy.’”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “I love you. Daddy loves you. What do you say?”

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  “Now tell me what had you so upset a minute ago, and Daddy will fix it. Is it Johnny? Did Johnny—”

  “No.” I turned. I had to sell this.

  Sam had a sunburn. He’d started to flake and peel, revealing baby-sensitive pink underneath. It dawned on me that that’s what he’d resembled all along: a baby, a record-breaker-big baby. And a happy one right now. All his teeth were on display, and all but a few had been drilled, filled, colloided. His breath was fetid and horrible, and he didn’t care. Perhaps it was possible to be too at-home in the world. To see it as a show that’s just for you. Then there’s no ethics, no core. There’s only what you want.

  Sam wanted a sweet, innocent child.

  “I’m really tired, Daddy,” I said. “It’s like I’m running the miles instead of watching them go by. Y’know?”

  He shook his head. Shaking it like: Wow—wow, this love I feel.

  “Do Daddy a favor. Reach down and get that bag on the right.” The grocery sacks were in the legroom of our seat. “That’s it. Johnny, come join us.” He dug in the bag and brought out a trio of masks. They were cheap plastic, a thin white band to hold them on. Sam became Bugs Bunny, with trademarked chubby cheeks, threatless buck teeth, ears that stuck up.

  I was coming apart. I’d never thought that an apt expression before, but now it was perfect. I was splitting at some molecular level. I turned back to the street. I heard Sam say, “Kat gets the cat,” and my peripheral vision got lost as he slid a mask on me.

  Johnny was negotiating with the driver’s seat, getting his legs to fit. Sam handed him Tweety Bird. “How you doing, buddy?”

  Johnny gave a thumbs-up, setting the canary on the dash.

  “Nyehh,” Sam said. “Time to wake you up, doc!” He rattled the grocery bag. I didn’t theorize about what he was getting, how it’d wake me. I grinned at a guy playing air drums on his steering wheel. I wondered what he was listening to.

  Sam dangled the baggie he’d taken from the girls for safekeeping. He oscillated it two feet from my eyes, as if trying to hypnotize me. His other arm came around, and I watched his expertise at the process. He extracted the mirror, held it flat. He poured such a measly quantity of dust on its surface that there seemed no way it would have any effect. The razor slashed its own likeness, creating three short dashes. Sam tented his fingers under the mirror, holding it like a waiter, and shook a dollar bill from the baggie, already rolled into a tube. “Go ahead.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Thank you, though.”

  “Katherine.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You’ve slept for more than twenty-four hours, and that is enough.”

  I made no move to take it.

  “Have you ever done this?” he said. “Is that why you’re nervous?”

  I nodded wretchedly. I was nervous because I knew that coke’s not dose-dependent. No matter how small the amount, it can kill you.

  “Watch Johnny.”

  I was grateful to watch Johnny, for any reason, for any length of time. Even if he was taking the mirror and the tube and snorting, not missing a crumb. His head inclined subtly, as if telling me to just do it, as he gave Sam the stuff back.

  “I’m fine, really,” I said.

  Sam’s voice honed to an edge. “Take it.”

  In the mirror was Sylvester the Cat, my eyes showing between two lines of white powder. I pinched the tube and lodged it in a nostril, bent to the mirror and sniffed, moving with the straw. Sandpaper on my sinuses.

  That’s the last seminormal thought I had before the cocaine blew through every synapse/organ/system, popping to a morning gone white-bright! I went to move my neck, and it jolted, my body as or more alive than my mind, going three thousand miles a minute, sea to shining sea and back again. At our right was the entrance to a bank—corporate behemoth, large lobby. I breathed fast as Sam took the last hit. He sealed the accessories with the cocaine and had me return the bag to the floor.

  “I’m proud of you,” said Bugs, the sight of him a nauseating jitter and jive. “I couldn’t be prouder, you stopping those girls. Johnny told me you did, that you both did. Daddy’s so proud of you.”

  Sam reached in his pocket and gave Johnny a teeny-weeny gun. Johnny accepted it as one would a pack of cigs. Sam fitted his paw to Johnny’s delicate jawline, and Johnny turned his head, kissed Sam’s palm. The gesture looked sincere. Sam opened our door, sneaking out from under me. I landed on the seat. The car door slammed, and I watched as Sam’s wide body squeezed through the bank’s narrow entrance.

  Johnny’s hand closed over mine. “Why did we stop them?” I asked. “Why’d we stop the girls, why didn’t we just let them go?”

  “He’d have been mad.” Johnny hit a button on his door. The childproof locks disengaged with a synchronized click. He kissed my knuckles, tenderly. He pointed. “See that street on the left?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get to that street. Follow it. Run in one of the big hotels. Put the gun down first.”

  “I don’t have a—”
r />   “Run inside and start screaming, okay?”

  I touched Johnny, same as Sam had, though my arm shook so badly I sort of slapped him. “Come with me.”

  He manipulated my fingers ’til my index stuck out, used it to tap his temple. “I can’t.”

  He put my hand between both of his, pulling my arm to a downward angle. I was about to ask what he was doing when my whole shoulder kicked. The sound was too huge; I didn’t hear it. His jeans shredded on his calf. Blood appeared there by bad magic.

  Johnny didn’t scream, but his expression did. “Run,” he said.

  A hot wash of adrenaline joined the cocaine. I clawed the door open and tripped into the street. Tires squealed. A nudge at my knees made me fall on a hood. The car’s driver got out—suit, tie, spray tan, angry. “What the hell’s your—”

  I raised the gun. He paled and ran up the lane line. He looked back. “Take it!” he cried, hands above his head. “Take the car!”

  I went to the driver’s side. The car window showed me Sylvester the Cat. I took him off and threw him so he was smiling at me from the passenger seat.

  I jerked the transmission to drive, heard the peal of my tires before I knew I’d pressed the pedal. I seized a hole in the traffic left by somebody moving too slow. I heard a horn bleat, and a woman called me names. I goosed the gas and went left, sparing a sec to check the rearview, where the bank shone beacon-like and a car was still waiting in the no-parking zone. I gunned for a lucky green arrow. I looped around a median doing forty, skewering between surprisingly few compacts and minivans and airport shuttles, mild impacts rollicking me around in the driver’s seat, until the many, many lanes opened wide and let me through. There were fountains shooting stories high, more neon signs than I’d ever seen. I paid them little attention, because ahead another sign said highway; I took it. A sign for an exit to another highway, and I took it. I kept taking exits until I was on a forgotten road with no one on it and nothing around it. I rolled down all the windows and turned on the radio. “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner. I belted along, ad-libbing with the gospel choir singing backup. More songs should have gospel choirs singing backup. I laughed, checked under Sylvester. The gun was there. Beside it was a cell phone, flipped shut and shining silver. I put the mask back over it.