Walking After Midnight (6 page)

A man lay on the pavement not far from the mortuary’s front door. He was sprawled on his stomach, one arm stretched in a kind of pathetic appeal above his head. He was naked, motionless – and his head rested in a dark, sticky pool of liquid that Summer had no trouble guessing was blood.

„You killed him!“ she gasped before she thought.

„And if you don’t mind your p’s and q’s, you’ll be next,“ growled the voice in her ear. Head swiveling to stare at the body even as she was forced up and into the passenger side of the van, Summer shivered as her terror reawakened with all its earlier force. The icy frisson that exploded along her nerve endings felt almost familiar. Had there ever been a time when she was not afraid for her life?

„Scoot over.“

He was sliding in behind her, crowding her out of the seat nearest the door and into the driver’s seat. The van’s interior was black vinyl, and it had only the two bucket seats. The space in the back was given over to cargo. By the small overhead light that came on automatically as they entered, it was possible to see that quilted gray furniture blankets lay over whatever the van carried.

The passenger-side door clicked shut, and the light went off. Summer was left alone in the smelly darkness with her captor, who casually draped his left arm along the back of her seat. The scalpel was in the fist that rested just below her left ear.

„Behave yourself, you hear?“ The tip of the scalpel toyed with her earlobe while Summer stopped breathing. „Hear?“

„Yes.“

The arm around her shoulders was removed, and the scalpel went with it. Her breath escaped in an audible hiss as he settled back in his seat, the scalpel now held in his right fist, which rested negligently on his bare right knee. The threat had been withdrawn – for the moment. But his gaze never left her as he massaged his left thigh, seemingly trying to dig his fingers deep into muscles that pained him.

Summer wondered how long it would be before she ended up like the man on the pavement. Bile rose in her throat.

„Drive,“ her captor said, and handed her a set of keys.

Summer took them without a word. Fortunately there were only four keys on the simple metal ring, and from the GM logo on the longest it was pretty obvious which one fit the ignition. Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, she bent, squinted, and tried to insert the key into the lock.

Her hands were trembling so badly that she couldn’t quite do it. Casting fearful little sidelong glances at the man beside her, she jabbed at the ignition a second time, then a third, in vain. Panic assailed her as he quit massaging his leg. He leaned toward her; she could not prevent herself from looking at him. Just inches away, menace gleamed at her from the bloodshot slit that was his eye.

„Get us the hell out of here
now“

His tone galvanized her. Summer willed her hands to steadiness and thrust the key at the ignition again. Thank God, this time it slid home. He sank back in his seat. Taking a great swallow of air, she started the van, shifted the automatic transmission into reverse, and stepped on the gas.

The van squealed backward with such force that she was almost unseated. Her instinctive reaction was to slam on the brake, which she did, throwing both of them backward, then forward. Her chest crashed into the steering wheel. Grimacing, rubbing her breastbone, she eased away from the hard plastic ring. That hurt. She reached for her seat belt, then thought better of it. Her seat belt would only slow her down should a chance of escape present itself.

„Damn it, don’t do that again.“ Recovering his own balance, his right hand pressed against the dashboard for support, her captor glared at her. The scalpel winked at her from his left fist. If luck had been smiling on her, the jolt should have caused him to inflict a mortal wound on himself with the weapon he used to threaten her. But then luck, at least her luck, was never that good.

„I didn’t mean to do it,“ she said, and took another deep breath to steady her nerves before shifting into drive.

As her fingers curled around the handle that operated the automatic transmission Summer just happened to glance out the passenger-side window beyond him. She was shocked to see the mortuary’s front door burst open and three men spill out into the spreading fan of light cast by the front hall’s chandelier. For an instant she gaped. There were no other cars in sight. Where had the men come from? They had not been inside the mortuary when she was taken hostage and forced outside, she was sure of that, so there remained only one possibility: Even while she thought she was lying through her teeth to her captor, there must really have been men out back.

Who were they? Would they help her? Should she try a scream now?

Alerted by something in her expression, her captor’s head swung around. Like hers, his gaze fixed on the tableau being enacted before their eyes. The men spotted the shape on the pavement and ran toward it. Even as they reached it, it was clear from their body language that this was not the corpse they sought. They stopped, almost bumping into each other, for a moment of milling confusion. One of them glanced up and caught sight of the van, which, thanks to Summer’s rocket-speed reverse and frantic braking, was now idling motionless some two hundred feet away. He elbowed his pals, who also glanced up. Their faces were pale, featureless ovals in the moonlight.

„There he is!“

„He’s getting away!“

„Get him!“

The almost simultaneous jumble of shouts came as the trio glimpsed her captor through the window. Open-mouthed at the incongruousness of it, Summer witnessed the headlong charge of clean-cut, respectable-looking middle-aged white men in suits – pulling pistols from holsters beneath their jackets as they ran.

„Hightail it!“ her captor yelled. Not waiting for her response, he kicked his left leg across the intervening space and tromped down hard on her foot – and the gas.

Losing her grip on the wheel, Summer was thrown back in her seat as the van shot across the parking lot like a missile.

Firecrackers applauded. Something slapped into the side of the van. Once, twice, three times, with the sound of a hand smacking into flesh. What on earth…? A bullet. A hail of bullets, to be precise. Of course. The sharp pops belonged not to firecrackers but to gunfire. Her mind might be functioning a little slowly just at present, but it still functioned.

Having finally deduced that she faced a new source of mortal danger, Summer ducked, throwing her arms up to protect her head.

„Goddamn it, woman! Get your damned hands on the wheel! I can’t bleeping see!“ He straddled the space between the seats, balancing on the edges of both, his left foot still smashing her foot and the gas pedal beneath it to the floor. His hands were on the wheel, and his head was cocked to one side as he peered desperately through the darkness at the road.

Too stunned to respond even to her captor’s tooth-rattling roar, Summer continued to cower. Seconds later she was thrown hard against the door as, cursing like a juvenile delinquent on a bad night, he yanked the wheel hard. As her shoulder slammed into the door, her single coherent thought was, Please God, let it be locked!

Apparently it was, because it held.

Grabbing for the far edge of her seat and encountering his leg instead, Summer grabbed hold and clung like a two-year-old confronted with a strange day-care center as the van took the turn on what felt like two wheels. Then they were streaking along the narrow black-topped lane that led away from the mortuary through the cemetery and up to the main highway.

„Get your hands
off
my leg, get ‘em
on
the wheel and
steerl“

This time the command got through to her, either because she feared for her life if he continued to drive, or because his bellow was right in her ear. Her bruised and terrorized body sprang into action independent of her mind and she straightened, releasing his leg. He didn’t move, though he relinquished the wheel as she grabbed it.

His left arm moved to hug the back of her seat. Her shoulder butted into his side as she drove.

The van weaved wildly all over the road. His foot still crushed hers, forcing the accelerator to the floor. The speedometer needle jumped past sixty and kept on going to seventy, eighty, and beyond. Tall pines, treacherous curves, and black ragged ditches of unknown depths along both sides of the lane flashed past, menacing them. Running without lights as they were, visibility was limited to perhaps twenty feet. Everything beyond that distance was a blur of darkness.

Somehow the van managed to stay on the road, kept from crashing only by Summer’s heroic efforts. As she wrestled the wheel – if the van had power steering it was the worst power steering with which she had ever come into contact – it occurred to her with chilling force that having her throat slit was one of only many ways she might die that night.

„Get your foot off the gas! You’re going to kill us both!“ she gasped, terrified anew by the sudden pinpoint of glowing bright red that she glimpsed through the darkness. She knew this road well. The lane ended in a traffic signal at Route 231, a busy highway favored by eighteen -wheelers and locals alike – and the light was red. Without lights, the van would be practically invisible to an approaching vehicle.

„Stop!“ she shrieked when it became clear he had no intention of complying. She kicked him, shoving her bare left foot hard into the muscle of his calf. If only she hadn’t taken off her shoe! Not that a rubber-soled sneaker would have had much effect. His calf was so hard, it hurt her toe.

The weight of his foot on hers didn’t ease by so much as a fraction of an ounce. She might as well have kicked a tree trunk for all the good it did. At the speed they were going – Summer couldn’t even bring herself to glance at the speedometer again – there was no way they were going to make the perpendicular turn. Trying would probably only worsen the inevitable crash; the van would tip onto two wheels, then flip over – and over – and over.

Hands frozen on the wheel, Summer stared appalled at the intersection toward which they raced. In what she was convinced were the last few seconds of her life, she spared a longing thought for the seat belt she had decided against wearing. One more thing she would do over again if permitted the chance. With her track record, they would probably chisel
If only
on her gravestone. It would be a fitting epitaph.

„Hang a left,“ he yelled.

Summer barely had time to thank God that it was the middle of the night and 231 appeared to be deserted before the T-shaped intersection was upon them. Her eyes grew huge in anticipation of disaster as she accepted that he wasn’t even going to permit them to slow down. Dread rendered her totally unable to move. All she could do was cling to the wheel, staring through the windshield in horror at a ditch, a fence, and a gendy sloping field full of sleeping cows that suddenly materialized direcdy in front of them. A few more seconds, and those huddled bovines would be tomorrow’s ground beef.

„I said hang a left!“

Summer still couldn’t move. Cursing, he grabbed the wheel again, jerking it forcefully to the left. Tires squealed, the van skittered toward the unsuspecting cows – and miraculously righted itself, clinging to the blacktop with barely an inch to spare.

Elsie and her pals were safe.

Which was more than she could say for herself. Another mile or so, and they would be nearing the city limits. Even at this hour, there would be traffic in town. Given the speed at which they were traveling, a crash sooner or later was all but inevitable.

Headlights appeared in the rearview mirror. The twin pinpoints of light were perhaps a mile or so behind them, at the mortuary lane’s intersection with 231. As there was no reason for any other vehicle to be on the private road to the mortuary at that time of night, the logical explanation was that the three men and their guns had located a car in which to give chase.

Summer didn’t know whether to feel glad or scared. The optimistic part of her nature focused on a possible rescue from the monster beside her, but instinct warned her that the men behind them were not necessarily the good guys.

One very telling sign was that they had shot at the van with her in it. Her shock-benumbed brain grappled with that thought for a second before reaching the obvious conclusion: Good guys or bad, they seemed perfectly prepared to harm her to get to him. Another route to her imminent death was identified: If the posse behind them caught up, they just might kill her captor
and
her as well.

Who was he? Who were they? What in the name of heaven had she stumbled into? Oh, God, she didn’t want to die. She wanted the man beside her, and the ones in the car behind, just to disappear. Zap!

Where was the Terminator when she needed him?

Again something in her expression must have alerted him. He glanced in the rearview mirror and cursed. Easing up on her foot just long enough to shove her leg aside, he stomped on the accelerator again without her foot to run interference. While she fought to keep it on the road, the van hurtled around a curve, out of sight of the chasing car. Without warning he jerked the wheel – and the vehicle was suddenly airborne.

Summer screamed as the van jumped a ditch, broke through a plank fence, bucked across a just sprouting soybean patch, and plowed into a towering thicket of slender cornstalks. She had just an instant to register a looming, bus-size contraption of yellow-painted steel before they were upon it. She didn’t even have time to close her eyes as the van crashed into the side of a combine that some hurrying-in-to-supper farmer had very thoughtlessly left smack in the middle of his field.