He heard movement, turned, thinking: I’m getting old.
He started to duck.
But he was a heartbeat too slow.
The chief swung a large limb and it caught Tad on the forehead, knocked him to the ground. Tad tried to get up, but the chief hit him again, this time behind the neck. Tad hit the dirt like he lived there.
The chief hit him another time, in the head.
Another time.
He tossed the limb aside and leaned against the car, took in some deep breaths.
“Pale,” he said.
Pale didn’t answer.
The chief bent over him, saw the dart in his throat. He pulled it out, flicked it away. He lifted Pale’s head. “Sergeant, you with me, man?”
Pale blinked his eyes. Blood ran out of the ruined one, blossomed like a ripe strawberry on his neck.
“I said, you with me?”
Pale said, “He put my goddamn eye out!”
The chief could see that now. There was blood all over the place. “Yeah, man. He did. Can you get up?”
The chief helped him. Pale pulled the dart out of the back of his hand, tossed it aside, put that hand over his eye.
“Sit in the car,” the chief said. “You got some first-aid shit, right?”
“Glove box. But there ain’t no eye in there. Man, God, fuck, it hurts.”
“All right. Come on.”
The chief walked him around to the driver’s side, helped him in. “My gun. It’s on the ground,” Pale said.
“Sit there a minute,” the chief said. “I’ll get the gun, the first aid.” The chief closed the door, hurried to the other side of the car, stopped to kick Tad in the head, looked around until he saw the automatic. He picked it up, opened the door on the passenger’s side, climbed in.
“God,” said Pale, his hand over his ruined eye. “I hurt bad. I’m fucking blind. My eye. It’s gone, man. Gone.”
“You go home, gonna be hard to explain.”
“Oh, God. I don’t know what to do. That fucker. I hope he’s dead.”
“I believe he’s dead and then some. Pale, look at me.”
Pale looked.
The chief lifted the automatic quickly, put the gun to Pale’s blind eye, and pulled the trigger.
58
When the car went over, Harry thought, this is some shit, and he thought maybe if they hit certain spots, he was going to get a flashback replay of what had happened to the other couple. It was a thought that ran through his mind, then he remembered they had been dead when they went over, or so it had seemed in his previous visions. And besides, the gunfire at close range had kicked his eardrum wicked hard, made it difficult for him to hear himself yell. Which he was doing.
He and Kayla banged together, flew against the glass and all about the car like Ping-Pong balls. The car hit on its front bumper, did a headstand, and went completely over, partially crushing the roof in, knocked the flapping trunk lid off, finished a complete flip, and came to rest with the nose of Harry’s car smashed up against a tree.
There was a flutter of images, weak, like a dying bird trying to lift its wings a last time, and then there was the darkness.
Harry lay there blinking, turned his head to the left. He was lying partially on the dash, partially draped over the steering wheel.
He hurt, and though he wasn’t hearing all that well, something inside of him had come undone and all the sounds of horror and misery and destruction were moving about in his head, bumping together, and he felt all of them, and they made him sick. He lay there not moving, feeling all the terrible things there were to feel until they slowly began to subside.
He was so tired of being afraid.
“I’m sick of it,” he said aloud, “and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
He was staring out of the windshield of his car. The glass was spiderwebbed. There was a tree in his view. He had seen the tree before, a few days back. He realized he was on top of the car where he had had the visions.
Thank goodness for this big-ass tree, he thought.
Cautiously Harry rolled off the dash, tried to get some kind of balance, but the angle made it difficult. At first he thought Kayla had been thrown from the car, because the back right door was open, almost knocked off, and he didn’t see her. He did see Joey through the open door, though. He was positioned with his head against the ground, his neck bent like a wire hanger. He was supported on his knees, his legs still bound up behind him.
Harry leaned over the front seat and saw Kayla on the floorboard of the backseat, lying facedown. Not moving.
Harry coughed, spit up some blood. He hoped it was from something banged inside his mouth, not inside his gut. He leaned over and touched her. The car shifted to the left.
“Shit.” With the ringing in his ear, he couldn’t even hear himself speak. He called Kayla’s name a few times, but she didn’t move. Again, he could hardly hear the sound of his own voice. Had no idea if he was yelling or whispering.
Carefully he climbed over and fell against the backseat. The car creaked, shifted more to the left. Harry pushed his weight slowly to the right, lay on the seat, put his hand on Kayla’s back. He could feel her breathing.
He tried the door on his left. It opened. He got hold of Kayla and pulled her out of the car, onto the slope. It was a little precarious, but the slope wasn’t too radical there, had some shape to it. He could keep his footing, could lay Kayla out fairly straight, her feet drifting a bit toward the bottom of the hill.
Lying there on his back in the dark, Kayla beside him, looking up the hill, he could see the shape of tree limbs overhanging the slope, and he could see spotted between them ragged rips of night sky; stars, like the silver tips of straight pins, poked out suddenly as his eyes become accustomed to the night.
His thoughts were rattled. He wondered about the chief. He had had hold of him as they went over, but he didn’t see him lying about. Had the bastard gone all the way to the bottom?
He thought he heard a kind of snapping sound up the hill, but his hearing was still messed up. He felt as if his balance was off as well; the hill seemed to tilt precariously. He turned and looked at Kayla, lying in the vines and leaves. She was breathing heavily now, one arm was twisted funny, and he could see something poking up under her cop shirt. Her eyes fluttered but didn’t open.
Harry leaned over her. “Can you hear me?”
He couldn’t hear himself, but he hoped she could.
Her eyes came open and she moved her mouth. Harry thought the word was
“I can’t hear well, but I want you to listen. I’m going up the hill. See what’s going on. I think you’re going to need a doctor.”
Harry unbuttoned her shirt, moved it aside carefully. There was a rip in her side, and a rib was poking up through the wound.
“All right. It’s not bad.” He tried not to lie too obviously, tried to look certain, like someone who knew. He wasn’t sure how she was doing or even how he was doing. “I don’t want you to move. I’ve got to go up, see how things are. Got to get you a doctor. Don’t know if I should move you again.”
He didn’t say what he was thinking: They may come down to finish you and me.
He couldn’t just sit and wait. He had to go up and see how things were, on the sneak. Had to get Kayla a doctor. And if there was a chance, any kind of chance at all, he had to kill both of those sons of bitches. An unlikely event, but it was all he had; it was the thing that gave him juice.
He was lucky, the hill might have taken care of the chief and he was lying at the bottom of it all, wadded up
