anything she had ever experienced before. The pure despair would feel so liberating in its relief.
There would be no stopping, however. No crying. Not yet. Later, if she survived, she would cry it all out, use an entire week to get it all out, but not now. Not when she had to keep running. When she had to find help or safety.
She ran over the gravel in the parking lot without feeling any of the sharp pebbles digging into her feet and crossed over onto Route 51, the main drag in and out of town. The asphalt was cold and flat and she imagined dipping her ruined feet into a soothing mineral bath.
The glowing spaceship of the Alexis Diner waited in the distance. It could have been hundreds of light years away, but Mercy knew it was only a mile or two, three at the outside. If she kept up her speed, she could get there in under a half hour.
Her renewed determination faded almost immediately, however, when she neared a long, dilapidated building on her right. It was the site of a former garbage company. The sign out front was crooked as if it might fall into the road from the slightest breeze and faded so badly she couldn’t read it until she was almost upon it.
She had passed this building hundreds of times, maybe more like thousands of times, but it had always been in a car and although she had seen the sign all those times, she had never let it register in her mind.
In large block letters, it read: Murray Waste Co. Next to it was another sign, CONDEMNED KEEP OUT. Her father had explained once that the place closed down because of financial fraud and illegal dumping. She hadn’t cared, but now it felt like urgent information and she tried to squeeze anything else from the confines of her mind where information is stored that is deemed unimportant. She came up with nothing.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t stopping because this place held some secret meaning. She was stopping because there were people here.
Their voices drifted toward her from behind the building. Teenagers. At least two, maybe more.
She ran across the parking lot toward the rear of the building and tried to scream but nothing came out. Her throat was raw. It felt like she might never speak again.
Her feet slipped as she rounded the corner and ran directly into one of the teenagers. The kid was lanky, wearing baggy jeans and an extra-large sweatshirt. He tumbled backwards but moved aside to prevent a fall. Mercy clawed at his sweatshirt but couldn’t find a grip. She hit the ground.
“Holy shit,” someone said.
“What the fuck is this shit?” someone else added.
On her hands and knees, Mercy turned to look at her saviors.
Next to the baggy kid was another teenage boy but this one was wearing tight jeans and an equally snug sweatshirt. It was the same one he had been wearing at the diner so many hours ago. He had not been wearing the heavy bandage across the side of his face then, however.
SIXTY-ONE
Victor had only a handful of memories of his father. Most of these were purely mental pictures, moments his brain had preserved for whatever reason, yet Victor treasured them as if they could convey secret meaning. He recalled fights and the sounds of his parents having sex, loud and furious, but when he dared to recall any of the actual memories stored within him, the same one would always play.
Victor had been seven years old, perhaps not even, when his father came to him and said he had to go somewhere special. He picked Victor up from where he had been playing with his Matchbox cars and set him on the bed, legs dangling off, a million miles from the floor.
His father knelt before him. He was wearing his heavy winter coat with the thick, fury insides that reminded Victor of a dog. It was almost June. He hadn’t shaved in several days and he smelled stale like the fridge did when something went bad.
“Daddy’s got to do something,” he said. “He’s got to go somewhere special.”
“Why?” Victor asked.
His father’s eyes darted to the bedroom door and back to Victor. “Everyone has a calling. A purpose. Something they need to do.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t know what mine was for a long time, but I do now. I need you to know that I’m doing it for you. Protect you.”
“What about Mommy?”
His eyes went back to the door, lingered there this time. “A man has got to do what is right for his son. That is all that matters.”
“Okay.”
His father grabbed Victor around his skinny arms, squeezed. “You need to listen to me very carefully. Can you do that?”
Victor squirmed against the hold but his father’s hands tightened even more.
“Can you do that?” he asked again.
“Yes.”
“Good.” The grip loosened. “I have to leave. There is something I have to do and then I’m going somewhere special. I’m doing it for you. I will save you a place, Victor. It is your destiny as it is mine.”
Tears welled in Victor’s eyes and he wanted to scream them out. “Don’t go, Daddy. Please!”
The hands came away and Victor thought his father might slap him even though he had never done anything like that before. Victor tried to wipe the tears from his eyes and something sharp poked him in the stomach. He opened his eyes.
Daddy was holding a knife against Victor’s bloated belly.
“I could stab you right now. Spill your guts all over the floor. That would save you the burden. I could do that for you. I love you enough to do that. Do you understand?”
“Daddy, please. It hurts.”
“Shut up. Be a man. It might hurt, but you’d be getting off easy. What waits for you is so much worse. But it is your purpose. I won’t kill you, but I would. You need to remember that. Daddy loves you so much, he would spill your guts.”
The tip of the knife pushed through Victor’s T-shirt and then Daddy flicked his wrist and tore a gash from Victor’s bellybutton to his right nipple. A streak of blood that sort of resembled a crooked “J” saturated his shirt and then pain rolled in like a massive asphalt compactor.
“Scream all you want,” Daddy said. “But for Christ’s sake, be tough about it.”
Victor aged twenty-five years in a flash and gagged himself out of the shock-coma. He didn’t remember falling. He recalled only Mercy Higgins stabbing him and then running away. Escaping.
This was not the end of Victor Dolor. Daddy had given him all the advice Victor would ever need during that final interaction.
Victor screamed himself to his feet. The handle of the knife jutted from his midsection like a malformed appendage. He took it in his good hand.
He yanked the knife from his gut and relished the toughness in his scream. His legs wobbled and dizziness threatened but he would not fall down again. He willed himself forward, one small step after another, and managed an awkward stumble into the parking lot.
The wound was hot and bleeding but not so quickly that he would bleed out before he could track that bitch down and slice off her fucking head.
His car was parked behind the condemned garbage company. That was okay. He made it to the car Caleb had brought. Something he’d stolen in Pennsylvania a week ago. The door was unlocked. Victor dropped into the passenger seat and screamed again at the eruption of pain in his gut.
“Be tough,” he told himself. “Be tough.”
Just like Victor’s were in his own car, Caleb had stored his car keys in the glove compartment.
