Exponential

by JM Addison

  *

  Mara decided that caution should reign. She was torn between rushing the house to check if everything was alright with her mom and backing away in fear of who could be waiting in the house. There was no response to her loud calls of “Mom?” But rather that rush in, caution won over her mental conflict and she decided to first check the carriage house to see if her mother’s car was even here. Based on what she found, then she would decide what to do.

  There were no other cars around that she could see, so it would seem that the house was not occupied, it just unsettled her after her recent tribulation at the hands of unknown assailants. As she walked past her car toward the carriage house another car pulled in the long drive and approached her parked car. At first she thought it was likely her mother although she didn’t recognize the car. The car parked behind her car and the engine was switched off, but no one got out. From her position she couldn’t see past the glare of the windshield to identify the driver. As she waited a moment for the driver to emerge a male voice from behind startled her. In fact she jerked around so violently, she felt she as if her skin was still catching up with the sudden intense movement.

  “Welcome Ms. Chandler. We’ve been expecting you.”

  With sickening dread she identified the voice as belonging to a familiar man with a bandaged right hand. He adjusted his stance and removed any doubt as the bandaged hand came into view.

  He continued, “I trust you had a pleasant trip. We began to wonder if you were going to show up.”

  She looked around, perhaps a little wildly, while backing away from him searching her mind for a solution to this new dilemma.

  “Oh, don’t worry about getting away this time. We may have underestimated you the first time, but we won’t be so easily duped again. It looks as if you’ve injured your lip. I hope it was nothing serious”, he went on with a menacing sneer on his lips.

  She was backed up against her car. Her car was blocked by the other car parked behind. That car would have reinforcements inside. The man with the bandaged hand walked up to her and blocked any route of escape. He towered over her. He stood there a moment looking down at her. She thought she could faintly hear the phone ring inside her mother’s house. Unexpectedly, with his left hand, he slapped her hard in the face. The blow literally took her off her feet and sent her sprawling. Her mind reeled with terror as she desperately thought about some escape plan. Nothing came to her. She could feel her cheek begin to swell. As she lay on the damp November ground, she was at eye level with her temporary purse which she had again dropped during this new attack. The extreme stress was filling her with adrenaline and her intensified senses could definitely hear the phone ringing in the house.

  He contemptuously spat out, “The next time you decide to smash someone’s hand, perhaps you’ll think twice, you no-good little bitch!” As she struggled to sit up, he reached down and grabbed her by the hair and literally dragged her upright. ‘Not the hair again’ she thought. She wasn’t ready to endure another round of physical abuse. However, she could sense someone getting out of the other car. She was getting helplessly boxed in with no escape.

  Her self-defense efforts would be of little use against someone twice her size. She was always taught to go for the eyes first and if that wasn’t possible, then go for the crotch.

  She went for the crotch.

  Though tears flooded her eyes from the pain unleashed on her scalp and her right eye was beginning to swell to the point that seeing her target was becomming a challenge, she managed to land a solid kick square between the legs of her attacker.

  She expected dramatic results, but the man almost seemed prepared for it and only momentarily lost his composure. It was, however, the break she needed. She spun around, opened the driver door of her car and jumped in behind the wheel. Before slamming the door, she use the wheel for balance and reached down to snatch her purse from the ground. As the man lunged for the door handle she managed to beat him to the punch, slamming the door shut and hitting the electric lock button. By this time, another one of the thugs, perhaps the big clumsy one from the other night, joined him from the other car. While she dug through her jumbled purse for her keys she chanced a glance out the window. Neither looked happy.

  She managed to jam the key in the ignition of her little Subaru just as the big one smashed something hard into the window of the car door. She turned her head away at the last instant and felt the shower of safety glass implode upon her. As they managed to get the door lock disengaged, she managed to get the engine started. They grabbed the door handle, she thrust the gearshift in drive and stepped on the gas. The wheels spun in the loose driveway gravel, but the tires bit and she was off, heading straight at the closed door of the carriage house. From somewhere behind, she heard a gun being fired. She hadn’t noticed a gun before. Was that what they smashed the window with? Were they trying to kill her or just disable the car?

  At the last moment she swerved and drove through the yard. She had to zigzag a bit to avoid a couple of trees in the back yard. As she recklessly flew across the yard, she had to fight for control as grass and debris were thrown in every direction. On the other side of the yard she met a dirt drive that went right or left. To the left, back to the street. To the right it led to the old barn out back and into the unused farm fields.

  She spun the wheel left toward the street and instantly regretted it. From her position she could see that they already saw her plan of escape and were positioning their car to block her path by cutting across the front yard and approaching from the opposite end. The yard and the street was separated by a ditch so the only way out was via the dirt drive she was on which was now blocked or she would have to return to the regular driveway, a route that would no doubt have an apparently well-armed thug standing in the way to shoot her if she tried.

  She made a desperate turn of the steering wheel and spun the car completely around almost losing complete control. She paused for a moment hoping that the four wheel drive of her little Subaru could deal with what she was thinking and headed down the dirt track toward the barn and the fields. Checking the mirror, which was difficult due to the violently rough roadway, she noticed they were not far behind. She may have four wheel drive, but they had a much larger and faster car.

  She flew past the old barn and the dirt drive suddenly deteriorated into nothing more than an overgrown path. The fields were in their last stages of the cold November season before the first snows came. The grass and weeds were high enough that she could barely tell where she was driving. The little car slipped and swerved a bit but actually did quite well. However, another glance in the mirror revealed that she wasn’t losing them as she hoped.

  The field abruptly ended and the path made an unexpected turn to the right. She wasn’t fully prepared for the change in direction and turned a little bit too late. Unfortunately, the typical New Hampshire farm terrain was often bordered by old stone walls. She almost made the turn as the left front corner of the car caught the stone border wall. She was was carrying enough momentum when she hit that even though it was a glancing blow, it was enough to set off her air bags. This surprised the living crap out of her and through the clouds of smoke from the discharge she fought frantically for control of the car. She wasn’t able to handle the steering properly with the deflating bag hanging out of the wheel and she ended up spinning completely around and slamming backwards into an old pile a stones and rocks built up at the edge of the old field.

  She sat for just a few seconds, dazed and coughing in the smoke of the airbag propellant, and looked up in time to see her pursuers miss the same turn. Their larger car had less control and they impacted the same stone wall she hit. Only in their case it was a bit more direct and most of the front end of their car was heavily damaged. In seeming slow motion she saw the frame of the car buckle, both driver and passenger airbags blow and the windshield shatter. They even managed to do considerable damage to the wall itself. She could smell gasoline and sus
pected it was from her car since she slammed back end first into a pile of stones.

  She had enough sense to put her purse strap over her shoulder and make a run for it before they came to their senses and came after her. Crouching low, she approached the stone wall through the tall field. She scrambled over the top of the one meter high wall and sort of flopped onto the ground on the other side. She lay there for a moment and looked around. The stone wall divided the farm field where her car was and the woods beyond. She tried to get her bearings by looking around. She should be somewhat familiar with where she was, since she used to live here and had hiked about in these fields and woods as a teen.

  She sat and thought about giving herself a good kick for running into the wall to begin with. She should have remembered it was there. It’s just that with the high field grass and weeds, and the fear of pursuit, she simply forgot. She took the time to assess her injuries. Her face really ached from being slapped before, but somehow she hit the left side of her head pretty good and blood was oozing from the cut it left somewhere above the hairline. She must of bounced up and slammed her head into the doorframe of the car when she struck the wall. The air bag probably helped some, but she wasn’t wearing her seat belt so she got tossed around quite a bit. A lot of the broken glass ‘crumbs’ got inside her clothing from the shattered side window and left their mark of tiny cuts in several places. She could feel the wetness of blood in a couple of places on her back . She imagined the look of hell she must have conveyed now.

  She crept forward along the wall a bit through the tangled remains of the November underbrush that bordered the woods. She realized that she was approaching the spot where the enemy car sat. She overheard some stirring from the car and sat perfectly still, listening. She could feel the cold, wet earth seep into her clothes further.

  She heard one of the doors slam with a long string of colorfully infuriated verbal expletives. Apparently another person from within the car joined the first.

  “Just great!” came the first voice. It sounded like the same voice of the one with the broken hand that she kicked between the legs. He continued, “She’s long gone now! How could we let this happen? We knew exactly where she was going to be and when, and again, she manages to get away. How can one small girl cause so much trouble!”

  The other one, probably the big dumb one that broke her side window, seemed to just sort of grunt in response. The broken hand one said, “Does your phone still work? I don’t even know where mine went – it must have flown somewhere when we hit the wall. Call Sonner and get some reinforcements up here! She’s in these woods someplace with no transportation. She can’t get too far so we should be able to pick her up. It’s getting dark, so be sure to get some night gear. Her body heat will show up nicely on a night scope.”

  He swore some more and apparently kicked the car a few times to vent off some frustration. “I cannot believe this! We’re going to have to let Red know sometime tonight what’s going on, so we have to find her NOW before we call him!”

  She lay there a few moments not knowing just what to do. Apparently they were not giving up without a fight. Neither was she. However, she was only one amateur, they had resources, night scopes, more people, money, apparently some unknown yet compelling motivation. She simply couldn’t stay here any longer in case they started searching. She began to crawl through the brush away from the wall toward the woods. Her wounds and bruises screamed in protest. It was difficult to comprehend how much her body ached.