Until You Are Dead (5 page)

"Cyclone!" Freddy shouted.

"Tornado!" Willis corrected.

Zinc had shuffled around to face them, a silver revolver dangling at his side in his right hand. His thick features were knotted in confusion. "Whadda we do?"

"Let's get in the barn!" Freddy yelled. Fear raised his voice an octave and glittered in his eyes.

"That'd be suicide," Willis said.

The wind was with them again, pressing hard against them so they had to lean into it. As they watched, the tractor began to roll, then gained speed as if someone were driving it, and disappeared into the high corn. The big Chrysler the two men arrived in was broadside to the wind and began to rock violently on its soft suspension.

"There's a storm shelter there by the house," Willis said, holding Andrew tight to him, "but it's only big enough for two!"

Andrew looked up at him, realizing what was going to happen. He began to scream.

Zinc bolted and ran for the raised, square wooden door set in concrete six inches above the ground. He flipped open the door and leaped inside, the door slamming behind him in the wind.

Andrew's screams were like the wail of an emergency siren.

"Stay where you are!" Freddy yelled, waving the gun at them.

"You can't leave us out here!" Willis pleaded.

"Just like a good ol' boy to give shelter to his city cousins!" Freddy said, grinning like death in his terror as he held the gun on them and backed to the wooden door.

"For God's sake, man! We'll be blown into the next state!"

"He better not have locked this thing!" Freddy said with sudden panic, as he tugged the door up and open and flung himself inside out of the wind.

Immediately Willis scooped up Andrew, who'd become silent, and sprinted for the house.

Inside, he opened a window to equalize pressure in case the tornado hit, then ran to the door to the fruit cellar, opened it, and scrambled down into the small, musty space, shoving Andrew ahead of him.

The tornado ripped and roared above them, threatening to reach down with a finger of whirling destruction and pry them from their meager shelter.

They stayed there, huddled together, until the angry howl of the tornado had given way to silence.

When they emerged from the cellar and ventured back outside, Willis saw that the tornado had cut a wide swath across the south end of the cornfield, following almost exactly the same course as the one that had struck a few years ago. Usually when tornados blew through, they stayed on the other side of the highway; something about rising air from the river a mile to the west. Quite a few shingles had been blown off the house roof, and one of the barn doors was open and hanging crookedly on its remaining hinge. If the tractor was okay, that was the extent of the damage.

"What are we gonna do now, Grampa?" Andrew asked. He no longer seemed frightened.

"Phone lines'll be down because of the tornado," Willis said, "so we can't call. Guess the thing to do is get the truck outa the barn and drive into town and fetch the sheriff, if he's not too busy. Then we'll drive back here, get what's left of them two fellas outa the well, and try to find enough of the chess set so we can finish our game."

Andrew said, "I think I remember where all the pieces were."

I
t don't matter a whit to me. Nothing does. I wasn't supposed to be hauling that load. The schedule had me bobtailing my Kenworth tractor back to Saint Louis instead of pulling 60,000 pounds in a new trailer on a special run to Philadelphia. It's all the same to me. The trucking company knows it and that's why they gave me the unscheduled run. Because I don't live by any schedule or set of rules. They say Ruddy Kane don't give a damn if the sun drifts away like a red balloon, that he don't care for anything or anybody, including himself. They're pure right.

A big flatbed hauling steel pipe in the opposite direction on the divided highway had told me over the GB that it was clear of bears over his shoulder all the way to Allenville, so I was cutting a fat path, holding the big Kenworth well over the legal limit and damn near pushing the pesky four-wheelers into the slow lane where they belonged so I could pass. You get no argument out of anyone you outweigh by over thirty tons.

Just past the Route 19 cloverleaf I saw the hitchhiker, standing well up on a grade that I had to gear down to climb. He was a square-shouldered guy with a blondish beard, wearing a long-sleeved old army fatigue jacket despite the eighty-plus heat. One of his feet was propped up on a beat-looking black suitcase painted red at the corners. As I passed, he braced himself against the coming backwash of the big truck and made a sweeping motion with his thumb, already looking past me for the next vehicle. The company's got a rule against picking up hitchhikers. I pulled two quick blasts out of the air horn and let the grade help me slow so I could steer onto the shoulder and wait.

He had almost a half a mile to run with the old suitcase, and I sat watching him in the right-hand mirror. A string of four-wheelers swished by me on the left and headed like bright-colored darts toward the crest of the rise. The big diesel under the hood rumbled like it wanted to give chase.

The hitchhiker was breathing hard when he reached the truck. Even over the rumble of the diesel I could hear him panting as he opened the passenger-side door and hoisted his suitcase up onto the floor. The cab's seat was higher than he'd thought, and I reached over and grabbed him by the wrist to help him in. He seemed to resent that as he pulled the door shut with a slam and settled back in the upholstery. I dropped the Kenworth into low range and steered back onto the highway, working through the gears as I took the rest of the grade.

"Ruddy Kane," I said by way of introduction. "Where you headed?"

"Far as you're goin' in this direction."

He hadn't given me his name. That should have clued me. Up close he was a scruffy-looking little guy with a twice-broke nose and a U-shaped scar on his forehead. Too bad he couldn't grow that beard over the rest of his face.

"I'll be turnin' north at Seventy-seven," I told him.

"My name's Brogan," he said, as if he'd thought it over. I nodded like Brogan was everybody's name. "I'm headin' east to get a job."

"What do you do?"

"Most anything."

What he was best at was being vague. I caught a faint mildewed odor from his wrinkled fatigue jacket and faded
denim Levis, and I recognized what that scent might mean. I'd slept outside on the ground before.

The hell with it. None of my business.

"You had supper yet?" I asked Brogan.

He looked sharply at me and shook his head no.

"Place up there around the next curve I usually stop at," I told him. "Dale's Speed Grill. They serve top hamburgers fast and so are the waitresses."

Brogan said nothing, dug his hands into the baggy pockets of his jacket.

We took the curve and I saw the big neon hamburger on the roof of Dale's, bright red and green in the fast-fading light. The restaurant was small and kind of dumpy-looking, but it was neat and clean inside, and almost everyone who traveled this highway regularly made it their meal stop if they were in the area.

I slowed the Kenworth, waited for a station wagon to pass, and edged into the right lane. There were half a dozen road rigs parked in Dale's big graveled lot, and a Highway Patrol car nosed up against the side of the low building.

Brogan's hands came out of his jacket pockets. The right one held a revolver. I couldn't say I was surprised.

"Keep right on drivin'," Brogan said.

I hit the accelerator and glanced at him as I shifted gears. "To where?"

"Wherever I tell you."

He pressed the barrel of the gun into my ribs to show me he was sincere. I saw Dale's bright neon hamburger fall away and disappear in the right outside mirror.

"The law on you?" I asked.

Brogan looked at me from beneath the curved scar on his forehead. You could've chilled beer with his eyes. "You don't need to know nothin' except how to drive this hunk of iron."

I made high range and considered. "And when you don't need me for that anymore, you don't need me at all."

He held the gun out where it would attract my eyes. "You scared, Mr. Driver?"

"Some." I concentrated on my driving with half my mind while the other half wondered just who this mildewed little desperado thought he was.

"Stick to the speed limit!" he ordered, purposely working the pistol barrel on my ribs to produce pain. I edged back to within the law.

"Somethin' you oughta know," I told him. "I'm haulin' explosives. Quick-dry cement and blasting powder for a big engineering project in Pennsylvania."

Brogan shrugged. "If it wasn't safe, you wouldn't be haulin' it."

"It's safe as long as I'm on smooth highway. Otherwise it could blow a fifty-foot crater in the ground. I thought you should know that in case you got plans to take this rig anywhere it's not supposed to go."

Brogan's grin was yellow in the glare of oncoming headlights, crooked in contrast to his pale level eyes. "I'll tell you when it's time for you to know my plans. This thing got plenty of fuel?"

"I topped the tanks just before I picked you up," I told him. "That should add to the explosion if anything goes wrong."

He ignored me, still grinning, and settled back in his seat with the gun still pointed at me.

We drove for almost an hour that way, without talking. When we reached the Route Twenty-two intersection I veered gently right and downshifted for a steep grade. Brogan didn't move beside me. He might have been sleeping, sitting the way he was with the back of his head against
the upholstery. I got the impression maybe he wanted me to think he might be asleep so I'd try to get tricky.

Now that the sun was down the evening was cool, so I cut the air conditioner and rolled down a window. That caused Brogan to stir, nothing more.

The Highway Patrol weigh station was ahead on the right. As we approached I saw that the barrier arm was up and the station was open. There were two rigs waiting to drive onto the scale, where a trooper we called Rock Face Evans would be waiting to record their axle weights to make sure they weren't beyond the legal limits. I didn't slack speed as I went past.

We'd gone another four miles before I heard the siren.

Brogan sat up straight, swiveled his head. He couldn't see behind us from where he sat, but I could see the flashing red lights in my rearview mirror.

"State Patrol," I said. "Want me to stop?"

The gun barrel raked down my ribs. "I want you to drive," Brogan snarled, "like you never drove before!" He was some pumpkin.

I worked the gears and took us up to seventy. Wind screamed around the mirrors and diesel stacks and Brogan looked a little alarmed. I checked the mirror and saw that we were being pursued by two cars now. They were half a mile back and closing.

"No way to outrun 'em," I said. The sirens continued to wail behind us over the sound of the wind. I took us up to eighty. Brogan began to squirm in his seat.

"If you don't want to get caught," I told him, "there's only one thing to do."

I yanked on the wheel and we were off the pavement, bouncing across the wide grass median toward the other two lanes of the divided highway.

"Get us back on the road!" Brogan shouted. "The explosives!" He jabbed with the gun.

The truck hit a grassy rise, jounced to the side, wind and sirens still screaming at us. There were some small trees along the center of the median. Brogan's eyes were as wide as his gaping mouth as we mowed down the trees, picking up speed. Dust and a few leaves swirled inside the cab. "They can't follow us!" I yelled as the truck bounced back onto cement and we roared easy in the westbound lane with the right wheels on the shoulder. I took us up over ninety. The diesel howled.

"Gawdalmighty!" Brogan screamed.

Oncoming headlights flashed past us at a combined speed of a hundred and fifty. Brogan was staring straight ahead, sitting so stiffly pigeons might have lit on him. I looked over at him and spit on his gun hand, holding the wheel firm as the side of the truck shot sparks as we scraped the concrete rail of an overpass.

We both saw the roadblock ahead, two cars with flashing lights, parked to block the highway, distant small figures running in the shadowed red glare. On either side of the highway at that point the ground sloped up at close to a forty-five degree angle.

"We can go around 'em!" I called over the wind and the roar of the diesel.

Brogan was shaking now, the gun forgotten. I laughed at him. The world's Brogans don't like being laughed at, but who does?

"It's a roadblock!" he screamed. "You're crazy!"