Dirty Harry 03 - The Long Death (4 page)

The Pontiac blasted through the woods, shattering its headlights, ripping off branches and pulverizing rocks underneath.

Tom tore the wheel to the left, then to the right, narrowly missing tree trunks both times. He found himself careening right toward a wall of bushes. The car rammed through, its tires spinning on empty air. It leaped over a ditch and smashed down into a bumpy field.

All four shock absorbers were shot simultaneously. The springs were driven through the bottom of the casing, and the casings were driven through the body of the car. One tire exploded out, while another tore half off the axle. The hood tore open with such force that it cracked the windshield.

The rain coming through the broken window woke him up. Tom Stillman felt warmth on his forehead. When he opened his eyes, he saw a curtain of crimson. He didn’t panic. He was too dazed. He raised his head. Through the red fog he saw the cracked glass and the upside-down Firebird design of his car hood looming up beyond. He wiped at his eyes. The back of his hand came away bloody but his vision cleared.

He looked out the side window. He saw the woods and the jagged tear in the foliage where his car had come out. He tried to open his door. It wouldn’t budge. He looked back at the locking button. It was up. He tried to push the door open again. It still wouldn’t give. The effort made him woozy. He remained still for a moment with his head down. He heard a moan.

He turned around and saw Danny lying across the back seat, semi-conscious. His hands were away from his ruined face and the blood was bubbling over his opened mouth. Their crash must have ruptured something, Stillman realized. He looked above his dying friend through the broken rear window. In the distance there were some lights. He could see them plainly. There were some multicolored lights illuminating a rustic-looking building.

His view was slowly interrupted by a cream color. Tom squinted into focus the face of the girl. She had risen up from her position on the floor. Incredibly she seemed unharmed by the chase. But she retained the blank, pained expression the boys had found her with.

It made sense, Stillman reasoned painfully. The girl hadn’t been badly injured by the crash because she was so vacuous, so wasted. She probably went limp during the worst of it, he figured, so she avoided the worst of it. It was too bad Tom couldn’t claim the same. There was pain in his every movement. He tried to get up, but the wooziness hit him again. Instead he leaned back in his seat and let his head loll sideways. He found himself staring into six tiny eyes.

He blinked. The six eyes were getting bigger and brighter. The fuzz left his head completely. They hadn’t escaped, he realized. The van was still coming for them. He turned his head quickly. The action almost cost him his consciousness again. But he held on long enough to lock eyes with the girl.

“Run,” he said. “Run to the building and get help.” He looked from her to the building out the rear window and back again. “Go get help,” he pleaded.

Barbara slowly turned around. The building came into sudden sharp focus. She didn’t know why but she abruptly wanted to get to the structure more than anything else in the world. Almost instantaneously she forgot about the two boys and pulled herself inexorably toward the light in the distance.

The girl scrambled out the back windshield, rolled to the ground, found her footing, and began to stumble off across the field. Tom watched her go, then rolled his head back to look out the side window. The van hadn’t sped up after the girl had climbed out of the car. With any luck the Pontiac blocked the van’s view of the escaping girl. Tom Stillman smiled. In his dazed, wounded state the girl’s safety had taken on paramount importance. Ever since the rear window had been shot in, the young driver had written himself off. There was no way he could get away from a van full of killers.

So he replaced his own importance with the girl’s safety. Almost unconsciously he had decided to save her at any cost. And this was it. Danny was bleeding to death on the back seat, and he himself had a concussion or something like it. But the van was still just crawling its way toward them, seemingly oblivious of the girl’s progress toward the building at the edge of the field.

Tom leaned back, closed his eyes, and smiled. He waited, expecting to hear the van’s engine coming closer. Instead he heard a crackling noise coming from inside the car. He looked around quickly, fearing a fire had broken out. The noise was coming from beneath the dashboard, but there was no sign of flame. The only new color was the red of two lit-up numbers on the CB. Stillman saw that the mike had been jarred loose and the power turned on by the crash landing.

“The quarry has been cornered,” a calm, clear voice came from the radio speaker. “The product is on the way.”

Stillman started at the sound. The message could have meant many things, but a chill of dread crept through his mind. It wasn’t over yet, he realized. These people weren’t after him, they were after the girl. And if they were after the girl, they must’ve been aware of her leaving the Firebird. To complete the picture, they wouldn’t be approaching so slowly if they were worried about the safety of the building in the least.

Ignoring his addled pain, Stillman clawed at his seatbelt strap, using it as leverage. “Danny!” he shouted, “Danny! If you can hear me, get out! Try to get away!” Tom pulled up and started to crawl out of his open side window.

The cool night air and the rain swirled around his messed-up head. They washed the dried blood from his face and gave him new strength. He was halfway out when he saw the girl halfway across the field.

“No!” he shouted. “Don’t!”

His voice boomed out and seemed to roll across the field in an echo. As the soundwave reached the girl, she hesitated. After another second, she turned.

“Not that way!” Tom continued to shout, holding onto the seat-belt strap with one hand and waving from side to side with the other. “Run into the woods! That way!”

As he shouted he saw the silhouette of a figure move toward the rear of the car from the side. The assailant moved in silently, looking like solid, dark mist. Something the shadow brought up shone slightly in the moonlight.

Danny Barnes had become accustomed to the excruciating pain. He had heard his friend’s voice shouting. He had not made out the words, but he had gathered the strength and the momentum to sit up. He rose in the back seat as the shadow shoved a long, blue-metal rod through the open back window. The end of the rod completely covered Danny’s ear. The shadow’s hand moved and Danny’s head disintegrated.

It was like science fiction. Tom hadn’t heard a thing before he saw his friend’s head puff up, split open, and spread out in every direction. It was as if someone had taken the lid off a food processor while it was mixing cranberries. The red liquid and dark solid matter splattered against the dashboard, the windshield, and Tom’s pants. He saw a little spit out of the windshield’s long crack.

All the strength went out of him, and he let go of the seat-belt strap. But he didn’t fall. His arms hung down and his legs kicked out over the gore-splattered seat, but he stayed balanced on the side windowsill. The pain and pressure across his neck told him why. A thin wire wrapped under his chin was holding him up. And the two hands holding the wire kept pulling it tighter and tighter. Tom wanted to shout at the girl to keep going, but an overwhelming feeling of drowning interrupted his words. He died marveling at the sensation.

Barbara watched both boys die from across the field. She couldn’t comprehend everything that was happening, but she could understand the horror. She knew they were being murdered horribly. She knew the killers would come after her next. The only thing she didn’t know was who she was and why this was happening to her. Patches of memory would appear before her mind’s eye, but she couldn’t put them together. And worst of all, she knew she had the solution somewhere in her mind but something was keeping her from it. The same something that was keeping her from forming words.

She spun around and continued across the field toward the building. Once inside she could scream. She would get attention and be taken away. The killers couldn’t get to her then. She decided to keep going and keep fighting the thing that was clouding her mind.

As she ran and the rain poured down harder, Barbara began to remember. First, she could picture her own face. After that, the haze at the corners of her vision dissipated. The pain in her legs changed from distant throbs to sharp stabs. She didn’t know where she was, but she knew it was a field. She realized she had been drugged and that was stopping her from talking. But she also knew it was wearing off.

She pushed herself harder toward the building. She saw a door along a side wall. Hardly able to control her cramping muscles, she slammed up against it, feeling a thumping throbbing from inside. She clutched the door latch in both hands and twisted. The door swung open almost effortlessly.

Barbara fell from one nightmare into another. The rain and terror were replaced by undulating light and a huge volume of sound. Ignoring the sensual chaos, she threw herself inside and slammed the door. The noise of the closing door was distant. The noise of a screeching, throbbing beat had superseded it. Barbara focused on the interior of the building and saw a large room filled with people. They were everywhere, and they were all moving. They performed in a multicolored semi-darkness, moving constantly in flashes of dark light.

Dazed, confused, nearly exhausted, Barbara moved toward them. She hobbled through the shimmying crowd, but they couldn’t see her terror. Her shoeless feet weren’t unusual since many other girls had thrown off their shoes to dance better. The drops of blood that fell from her battered body were lost on the pulsating red, blue, and green lights of the dance floor. The rest of the light show neatly masked her bruised skin, since it colored everyone’s flesh with blankets of yellow, purple, black, and white. And the loud, driving music drowned out her pitiful, pleading mews.

Barbara fell back against the disco wall, her mind fogging and tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn’t get anyone’s attention. They were all in their own worlds. They wouldn’t notice another weak, seemingly stoned-out punk rocker. Barbara felt her legs giving way when a hand reached out and rested on her arm.

A soft voice whispered something in her ear. She turned toward the sound, relief flooding her brain. The first thing she saw were gentle brown eyes set in a calm face with high cheekbones and dark hair. She turned to run but another person stood beside her. It was an affable, stocky, bald man in a two-piece suit. He smiled down on her. She tried to move forward, but their hands were all over her. The bald man had her in a bear hug. The gentleman had his arms around her shoulders.

They were slowly but definitely forcing her to the back of the room. Both kept up a steady flow of soothing conversation as they moved, allaying any suspicions the apathetic but active dancers might have. The pain in Barbara’s head built up increasingly the closer they got to the rear of the room, until it almost became too much for her to bear. She opened her mouth to scream.

The gentleman grabbed what was left of her hair and pulled back. He rammed his own open mouth on hers and pushed his tongue down her throat. The bald man let go of the couple and opened a door. Wrapping his arms around her and maintaining the choking French kiss, the gentleman pushed the girl through the opened door. The bald man quietly closed it behind them.

Inside, Barbara was suddenly free. The arms let her go and the wet slimy mouth disappeared. She looked around wildly. Everywhere around her were the dancing people. She could see them through wall-high panes of glass that made up the room. She ran up to the transparent wall, slamming her legs against a thigh-high set of electronic equipment. She leaned over the machines, banged her fists on the wall, and screamed.

The volume of the scream was extremely loud, the pitch was extremely high, and Barbara nearly fainted with happiness that she had finally gotten it out. She blinked the tears out of her eyes and waited for a reaction. Nothing happened. She watched in horror as the dancers continued as if nothing had happened. It made her mind snap back.

She remembered everything—who she was, what had happened to her, and what it meant that the dancers couldn’t hear her. In shocked resignation she looked behind her.

She was in a soundproof disc jockey’s booth. A disc jockey’s booth filled with the latest electronic gadgetry and the latest in one-way glass. She could see out, but no one could see in. No one could see her except the gentleman, another pair of men, and the seated woman at the disc jockey’s turntable.

“Please,” Barbara said hoarsely, “please don’t bring me back to the cave.”

The gentleman smiled. The two other men looked to the seated woman. That woman ignored Barbara while she gave her instructions.

“She’s been touched,” the woman said, as if Barbara was a bird, who had fallen out of the nest. “A more permanent disappearance will have to be arranged.” She looked down intently, then “tsked” with her tongue on the back of her upper teeth. “A tape is running. The music will not have to be changed for another forty-five minutes,” she said to the room more than to any particular person. “I think we can find a way to turn this inconvenience into a benefit.” She looked from one man to the other. “Go ahead,” she finished lightly.

Barbara ran for the door. The gentleman caught her right arm, spinning her to face the other pair of men. They charged her, pinning her to the wall. The man on the left pulled out and flicked open a switchblade. With a quick swipe, he cut her hospital gown all the way down the front. They pulled her to a console as the cloth fell away from her like an opening night curtain. The console was shaped so that her back arched over the top, exposing her torso completely. Barbara made little noises of struggle, but she was still too shocked to get a grip on herself.

The grip was supplied by the gentleman, who secured both arms behind her. She sealed her lips together and closed her eyes as the other men began taking off their pants. She started gasping as the first man approached her. He kicked her legs apart like a rude cop about to frisk a suspect. He leaned over her and started to work.