The Siege (26 page)

And here they were, acting like long-term lovers, talking as casually as people did before AIDS about finding a motel and shacking up! It wasn’t just crazy. It was
insane
! He didn’t know her at all. Emotional commitments take time!

“God-fucking-
damn
it!” he whispered hoarsely as he drew his jacket cuff roughly across his eyes. He kicked his feet viciously at the ground, sending a wake of leaves flying into the air. They drifted down in a rattling shower, and it was only on the fringe of his mind that it registered that he had kicked something other than leaves. He distractedly looked for the object he had kicked when he glanced down at the ground, but when he saw what was there, his heart almost stopped.

“Holy Mother of—” he whispered as he knelt and looked at the object. The light was dimming so fast, and he realized with a dash of chills that maybe even a minute or two later, it would have been too dark for him to see it. He might have missed it! His hands were shaking as he knelt down and reached out tentatively to pick up the object.

He had recognized the tape recorder instantly! He and Angie had picked it out for Larry as a Christmas gift three years ago. It was a Sony-Micro voice-activated dictating machine. For years, Larry had complained to Dale (and everyone else in the office) that he hated taking notes and typing them into a report. The dictating machine had been Angie’s idea, and Larry had loved it.

“Holy Mother of God!” Dale repeated. As soon as he said it, there was a faint click, and the tape spools began to turn. “Testing, one two three,” Dale said, looking at the slowly turning tape.

He stood up slowly, examining the machine, found the rewind button, and snapped it. The tape spun sluggishly for a few seconds, then stopped with a jerky drag. When Dale pressed play, the tape began to turn, but the voice that came from the small speaker was tinny and distorted.

“… mother… of God… Testing… one—two—three…”

Dale didn’t think it sounded at all like his voice. He pressed stop/eject, and the transparent lid clicked open. He removed the micro-cassette and held it up to the fading light in the sky. Everything looked fine on the tape, but the recorder itself was another story. The outside was scuffed, and one corner had chipped off, probably from the impact when it had hit the road.

“But why was it
here
?” Dale said out loud, glancing the length of road from where he stood to the rock and the cleared swath where Larry’s car had gone off the road. “Why this far away from the crash?”

He heard the car door open, and saw Donna stand up. Leaning over the car roof, she called to him, “Hey! It’s getting kind of lonely down here, you know.”

“Yeah… yeah,” Dale shouted back. His voice echoed with a strange reverberation that, oddly, reminded him of how it had sounded over Larry’s damaged recorder.

Had Larry tossed the tape recorder out of the car window, knowing he was about to hit the rock at Casey’s Curve? Dale wondered. He was trying frantically to picture what might have happened out here last Friday night, but his mind kept coming up blank.

Had someone else, maybe one of the policemen investigating the scene, found it and then later dropped it?

Had there been someone else, either driving with or following Larry? Someone who Larry wanted to keep from finding the tape?

The answer might be right here
, Dale thought, slapping the cassette into the palm of his hand. The first thing to do was to listen to the whole tape. Maybe the answer he was looking for was right in Larry’s own words!

Donna was still leaning over the car roof, watching him as he walked back to the car. The darkening loneliness of the road sent a wave of shivers up her back, and she wished to God he would hurry up so they could get the hell out of there.

As he walked, Dale popped the tape back into the machine and, squinting to find it in the dark, pressed the rewind button again. The tape spun slowly in fits and starts, and it was obvious there wasn’t enough power left in the batteries to keep it going. After spinning for a few seconds, the tape stopped abruptly. A small red light with the word
Battery
printed below it winked on like a tiny, angry eye.

“Shit!”

“What’d you find?” Donna asked when she saw he had something in his hand.

Dale showed her by pressing eject and holding the small cassette tape out to her.

“Larry always had the habit of dictating his notes while he was on the road,” Dale said. “I found this way the hell back there, almost at the crest of the hill.”

Donna looked up the road, then back at Dale.

“The batteries are just about dead, though,” he said, pointing to the red warning light. He flipped the recorder over, found the battery lid, and slipped it open. “Looks like we need four double A’s.”

Donna shook her head and said, “Well, we’re not going to find them out here. Let’s drive back into town and see if they have some at the Mill Store. Wait a sec. Don’t you have a cassette player in the car?”

Dale shook his head. “Wrong size tape. These are the small ones that are used just for dictating.”

They got into the car, and Dale had just started the engine when a pair of bright headlights suddenly came up on them from behind. The glare in the rear view mirror stabbed his eyes. He switched the mirror to night-view and then paused, staring at the headlights. After a moment, he realized the headlights weren’t getting any closer to them.

“What the—?” he muttered as he craned his neck around and looked back. The trees on both sides of the road narrowed down into a sharp V with the bright set of lights at the bottom point.

The vehicle sat there at the crest of the hill, its lights washing down on Dale’s car and illuminating the large rock in harsh relief. Dale waved his hand, signaling for the driver to take off his high beams, at least, but nothing happened. The car just idled there at the crest of the hill.

Dale had the sudden, sinking feeling that the car behind them was a hawk, and he and Donna were the rabbits that should have sought shelter. His breath caught in his throat when he turned to Donna and said, “I don’t like this!”

“Neither do I,” Donna said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Dale eased the car into reverse and backed out onto the road. As soon as he started to turn, heading his car back toward town, the headlights suddenly shot forward.

“Shit!” Dale shouted as he jammed the car into first, pressed the accelerator to the floor, and let the clutch pop out. The tires kicked up dirt and gravel, sounding like tearing paper as the car leaped forward with a loud squeal. Larry’s recorder fell off the dashboard to the floor, but Dale held tightly onto the tape.

As his car shot forward, Dale clicked on his own headlights, flicking his eyes back and forth between the road ahead and the headlights that were suddenly very close to his rear bumper and closing in on him fast!

“What the Christ is this?” he said, glancing at Donna as he slammed through the gears and negotiated the curving road ahead.

Donna’s face looked sheet-white as she put her elbow up on the back of the seat and watched the car behind them. She grimaced, and a low moan escaped from her throat.

“I have no idea who it could be,” she said. Her voice twisted tightly every time the headlights loomed closer.

“Well, it sure looks like they don’t want us on the road here,” Dale said. He pressed down on the accelerator as hard as he dared, but the twisting road kept throwing its own surprises at him. He could feel a knotted tension winding up into his shoulders, and the back of his head began to tingle.

“It sure as hell isn’t the cops,” Donna said, still staring back at the car. “They’d have their blue lights going if they wanted you to pull over.”

“If it was official, I guess they would,” Dale said. “It’s a big car. I can tell by how far the headlights are spaced.” He jerked his hand back and forth, taking the curves as tightly as he could, hoping that his smaller car could outmaneuver the big car behind them.

“I think it’s—I don’t know,” Donna said, straining to see behind the glare of light. “It looks like some kind of limo or something.”

As they started rounding a particularly sharp curve, the car behind them suddenly pulled up close to their rear bumper, so close, in fact, Dale muttered something about they would be touching if his bumper had one more coat of chrome. The headlights behind them suddenly started flashing rapidly on and off, creating a strobe-light effect inside the car and on the road ahead. A wave of dizziness swept over Dale as he focused as hard as he could on the scrolling road ahead. He suddenly realized that whoever it was behind them, doing this was probably the same person who had done exactly the same thing to Larry!

A numb pain started to spread up the back of his hand holding the cassette tape, and Dale kept telling himself that, if they survived this, he would learn everything he needed to know once he got new batteries and played Larry’s tape.

Larry had known something and whatever it was, it was so important that someone had arranged for Larry to die at Casey’s Curve.

“But I’ve got the tape, you bastard!” Dale suddenly shouted, shaking his hand that held the cassette. “I’ve got this, and I’ll be goddamned if
you’re
going to get it!”

Donna’s eyes were two large ovals of fear, glowing with the reflected light of the car close on their tail. Her soft whimpering had grown louder, but it was barely audible above the racing whine of the car’s engine.

“What’s the road like up ahead?” Dale asked suddenly. He was managing to keep a slight lead on the pursuing car, so he was beginning to relax. As far as Dale was concerned, he could race like this all night. Still, he didn’t want to get caught by surprise if there was a dangerous stretch of road ahead.

Donna shook her head furiously. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean, Christ, I haven’t lived around here in years! I can’t remember!”

“We’re heading into Haynesville, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well… What’s the road like?”

“Christ if I know!”

The headlights suddenly darted up close again, and the driver started flashing the high beams, but Dale kept his jaw firmly set and his eyes on the road, ignoring the distraction. They passed a few houses along the side of the road, but so far, there was no sign of a cop anywhere.

They were rounding a gradual curve at a high speed, and Dale was confident he had control of the car, but then the unexpected happened: A deer shot out of woods, and when it saw the oncoming cars, with lights flashing madly, it froze stock-still in the middle of the road.

“Ahh, shit!” was all Dale had time to shout. Donna let out a long, warbling scream that was buried when Dale laid his hand down on the horn and didn’t let up on it as the car fishtailed around the curve. When the tires swerved onto gravel on the right side of the road, he thought he was going to lose control. He had a vivid instant of looking into the deer’s eyes, two wide, glistening pools, reflecting cold, green light, and he braced himself, waiting for the impact.

Donna’s scream slid smoothly up the scale until it was nothing more than a high-pitched screech. Dale ground his teeth together, waiting for one of two things to happen: he would either smash his car against a deer, or the car behind him would give him that extra little nudge he needed to carve his own trail into the woods. No doubt, that trail would end with a thick-boled tree where the deer ought to be, and he and Donna would sail face-first through the front windshield.

But neither of those two things happened. By some miracle, Dale swung around the deer, and as his right foot gently pumped the brakes and he fought for control of the car, he suddenly became aware that the lights had winked out of his rear view mirror.

“Mother-humper!” he hissed between clenched teeth as he downshifted and brought the car to a skidding stop. Dust swirled like fog up around the car, but with barely a pause, he slammed the car into reverse and spun the wheel around. He gasped when he looked back along the road.

The deer was gone, had disappeared like smoke into the woods. The car that had been trailing them was also gone, vanished without a trace. One second it was there, right on his bumper, and now… puff! Gone! The surrounding woods were as silent as the forest before dawn.

Dale slouched back in the seat and let out a deep sigh. “You okay?” he asked, turning to Donna, who was on the floor beside him.

She looked up at him with scared-rabbit eyes. Straightening up, she ran her hands down her sides, as though checking to make sure she was all there. She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly, then reached for a cigarette and lit it.

“Where the Christ did he go?” Dale asked. He suddenly felt like Ichabod Crane must have felt when he crossed the bridge and the Headless Horseman had suddenly disappeared. How could it be over so quickly, so completely? And they weren’t dead!

Donna shook her head and blew out a thin stream of smoke. She was simply marveling that she was alive and not wrapped around a pine tree, bleeding to death.

Dale suddenly leaned close to her, his face contorted. “What were you saying? Something about this stretch of road being
haunted
?”

Donna shrugged, still finding it impossible to speak.

“It’s weird,” Dale continued, more to himself than to her, “how it just isn’t there. Like it didn’t really happen or something.”