The Collection

backed by a veiled threat of violence.

Brian saw the woman's eyes dart quickly around, assess­ing her options. There was no place to run on the flat desert, but she was obviously trying to decide if she could make it into the Mercedes and close her windows and lock her doors in time. Or if that would even help.

He wanted to tell her to run, to get the hell away from the road, that they wouldn't leave the road to find her, that the man never got out of the car. He wanted to shift into gear and take off, leaving her there safe and unharmed.

But he remained in place and did nothing.

'Get in the car, bitch!' The violence implied in the man's voice was no longer so covert.

The woman's eyes met Brian's, as if searching there for j help, but he looked embarrassedly away.

'Get-' the man started to say.

She opened the door and got into the backseat of the Blazer.

'Drive,' the man said.

Brian drove.

None of them spoke for a long time. The landscape changed, became less sandy, more rocky, hilly canyons sub­stituting for rolling dunes. Brian looked at the clock on the dashboard. He would be just getting off his afternoon break now, walking through the hallway from the break room to his desk.

'Panties,' the man in the passenger seat said.

Brian turned his head.

Frightened, the woman looked from him to the now grin­ning man. 'What?' ·   'Panties.'

The woman licked her lips. 'Okay,' she said, her voice trembling. 'Okay, I'll take them off. Just don't hurt me.'

She reached under her skirt, arched her back, and pulled off her underwear. In the rearview mirror, Brian caught a glimpse of tanned thigh and black pubic hair. And then the panties were being handed forward, clean and white and silky.

'Stop,' the man said.

Brian pulled over, stopping the car. From the pocket of his blouse, the man took out a black Magic Marker. He laid the underwear flat on his knee and began drawing on the garment, hiding his work with one greasy hand. When he was done, he rolled down his window and reached outside, to the front, grabbing the radio antenna and pulling it back. He quickly and expertly pressed the metal antenna through the white silk and let it bounce back.

The panties flew at the top of the antenna like a flag.

On them he had drawn a crude skull and crossbones.

'Now we are whole.' He grinned. 'Drive.'

The day died slowly, putting up a struggle against the en­croaching night, bleeding orange into the sky. Brian's mus­cles were tired, fatigued from both tension and a day's worth of driving. He stretched, yawned, squirmed in his seat, try­ing to keep himself awake. 'I need some coffee,' he said.

'Stop.'

He pulled onto the sandy shoulder.

'Your turn,' the man said to the woman.

She nodded, terrified. 'Okay. Just don't hurt me.'

The two of them traded places, the woman getting behind the wheel as Brian settled into the backseat.

'Drive.'

Brian slept. He dreamed of a highway that led through nothing, a black line of asphalt that stretched endlessly through a desolate, featureless void. The voice was empty, but he was not lonely. He was alone, but he was driving, and he felt good.

When he awoke, the woman was naked.

The driver's window was open, and the woman was shiv­ering, her teeth chattering. None of her garments appeared to be in the car save her bra, which was stretched between the door handle and the glove compartment, over the man's legs, and held two thermos cups filled with coffee. From this angle, Brian could see that her nipples were erect, and he ] found that strangely exciting.

It had been a long time since he'd seen a woman naked.

Too long.

He looked at the woman. No doubt she thought that he and the man in the passenger seat were both criminals, were partners, fellow kidnappers. Since she had come aboard, he had not behaved like a prisoner or a captive and had not been treated like one. He had also not made an effort to let the woman know that he was on her side, that they were in the same position, although he was not quite sure why. Per­haps, on some level, he enjoyed the false perception, was proud, in some perverse way, to be associated with the man in the passenger seat.

But that couldn't be possible.

Could it?

His gaze lingered on the woman's nipples. It could. In a strange way, he was glad he'd been kidnapped. Not simply because he'd been given the chance to see a nude woman, but because an experience this extreme gave perspective to everything else. He knew now that, prior to that moment in the bank parking lot, he had not been living. He'd been sim­ply existing. Going to work, eating, going to sleep, going to work. The motions had been comfortable, but they had not been real, not life, but an imitation of life.

This was life.

It was horrible, it was frightening, it was dangerous, it was crazy, and he did not know what was going to happen from one moment to the next, but for the first time in mem­ory he felt truly alive. He was not comfortable, he was not merely existing. Traveling through the darkness toward an unknown destination with an insane man, he feared for his safety, he feared for his own sanity.

But he was alive.

'We killed Father first,' the man in the passenger seat said. His voice was low, serious, almost inaudible, and it sounded as though he was talking to himself, as though he did not want anyone else to hear. 'We amputated his limbs with the hacksaw made from Mother's bones and sold his parts for change. We killed Sister second, gutting her like a flopping fish on the chopping block ...'

Brian was lulled by the words, by their rhythm. Again he fell asleep.

When he awoke, both the woman and the man were standing in front of the car. It was daytime, and they were on the outskirts of a large city. Houston, perhaps, or Albu­querque. The woman was still naked, and there were fre­quent honks and excited whoops from men who passed by

in cars.

Brian stared through the windshield. The man held, in one hand, half of the woman's now torn bra, and he dipped a finger in the attached thermos cup as she fell to her knees. He placed his coffee-wet finger on her forehead as though annointing her.

He returned to the car alone.

Brian watched the naked woman run across the highway and down the small embankment on the other side without looking back.

The man got into the passenger seat and closed his door.

'Where are we going?' Brian asked. He realized as he spoke the words that he was asking the question not as a prisoner, not as a captive, but as a fellow traveler ... as a companion. He did not fear the answer, he was merely curi­ous.

The man seemed to sense this, for he smiled, and there was humor in the smile. 'Does it matter?'

Brian thought for a moment. 'No,' he said finally.

'Then drive.'

Brian looked at the clock on the dashboard and realized that he didn't know what he would ordinarily be doing at this time.

The man grinned broadly, knowingly. 'Drive.'

Brian grinned back. 'All right,' he said. 'All right.'

He put the Blazer into gear.

They headed east.