Dirty Harry 03 - The Long Death (3 page)

“Jesus,” Danny cried, pulling away from the crazed girl, “she bit me!”

“Leave her there, leave her there,” said Stillman. “She’s an escaped nut!”

Barnes looked down at the girl, now crying on the ground, as Stillman began to move hesitantly back toward his car.

“Come on,” Tom repeated. “My dad is going to kill me when he sees the damage.”

“We can’t just leave her here,” Danny contended. “Look at her.”

Stillman watched as Barbara began to pull herself toward the side of the road, cowering in terror.

“She’s not going to hurt anybody,” Danny said.

“All right, all right,” said the driver, coming back. “Let’s get her out of here and over to a police station, OK?”

“OK,” said the other boy, already moving toward the huddled feminine figure. Danny gingerly touched the girl’s shoulders. Tom moved around her legs, carefully avoiding any proximity to her raw, swollen feet. He didn’t want to get caught if she suddenly kicked out. As Barnes tried to get her up, Stillman look a good hard look at her.

“Hey, she’s quite a looker, isn’t she?” he remarked.

Danny looked at her naked hips then up at his friend’s face.

“Pull down the skirt, huh, and help me with her, will you?” he demanded.

“OK, already,” Tom complained, tugging at the hem of Barbara’s hospital outfit. She looked up when his fingers touched the cloth. As he covered her pelvic area with it, she relaxed. After that, the Barnes boy had no trouble bringing her to her feet.

“We won’t hurt you,” he told her, standing in the rain. “Come on, you’ll freeze out here.”

They brought her over to Tom’s Pontiac and opened the back door.

“I’ll get in with her and try to find out where she’s from,” Danny said.

“Good luck,” Tom replied, quickly sliding into the front seat behind the wheel. “Now let’s see if I can get this thing started again.”

Everyone settled in as Tom revved the engine. It caught hold and roared into a sputtering life. Danny stared at Barbara’s face intently as she lay back, licking her lips and gulping. She was a beautiful girl, he thought, looking from her pretty profile to the strange wound on the back of her neck. It looked like a slight indentation—a bruise of many dark, swirling colors.

He looked down her well-shaped profile. The rain had made the gown all but translucent. He saw the breasts and waist perfectly outlined. They would heave up and down as she breathed deeply. He found himself thinking that it would be a shame to take her back to a hospital.

Tom put the car into gear and turned around. “Where to?” he asked.

“She was running in this direction,” Danny said, tearing his eyes away from Barbara’s figure. “Go back the way she came,” he finished, pointing forward.

“Right-O,” replied Tom, releasing the brake and pressing down on the accelerator.

When Danny turned his attention back to the girl, she had stopped sucking in air like a drowning woman and was lying back peacefully with her eyes closed. The rain had washed her face clean, and the heat in the car was already bringing some color back into her cheeks.

“Who are you?” Danny asked the still figure.

Barbara opened her eyes and turned her head toward him. Danny saw that her eyes were a light, liquid blue. But there was no comprehension in them.

“Who are you?” he repeated. “Where are you from?”

She continued to look at him with an expression that mixed innocence with ignorance. She opened her mouth slightly, but no words came out. She seemed surprised by her own silence. She opened her mouth wider. Danny could see the muscles in her neck working. But still no sound came out.

“We could always bring her home as a pet,” Tom suggested from the front seat, looking at his friend’s progress in the rearview mirror. “Wouldn’t the guys at the frat love that.”

Danny was about to reprimand him for his callousness when the girl began to react to what the driver had said. She looked quickly from the back of Stillman’s head to Barnes’ face, her eyes widening. Her mouth moved, but still there were no words. She gritted her teeth and swallowed. Nothing. She began to get upset. She grabbed the back of the driver’s seat and shook it in frustration.

“What is it?” Danny asked her, gripping her shoulders again. “What’s the matter?”

“Get her off the seat, get her off the seat!” Tom yelled, the car swerving because of his surprise.

Danny quickly gripped her wrists and pulled her back. “There, there,” he soothed. “Take it easy.”

But his words only seemed to make the agitation worse. She began to buck in his grip, squealing incoherently.

“Jesus,” Tom compained, “keep her quiet, will you? I’m going to hit the CB and find out if anybody else knows about her.”

So saying, Stillman reached for his radio rig and set the wavelength. Danny wrapped his arms around the girl and held her against him. Her cries had diminished to a pitiful growling sound.

“Breaker, breaker, one-nine, anybody know about a lost girl proceeding north on Route 15? Over.”

Stillman’s only reply was static. Barbara stared at the CB, then started to screech.

“Shut her up!” Tom yelled, one hand on the wheel, one hand on the mike. “I can’t hear a thing!”

Danny held her struggling form with one arm and put the other one over her mouth. As her kept her down and pressed her cries into a turbulent hum, Tom repeated the message. Barbara watched from the back seat with wild eyes. Again, there was no reply.

“There’s nobody on the road for miles in this mess,” Stillman concluded, disgustedly slamming the mike back onto the rig. “Let’s drive onto 101 and find a state police station.”

They moved forward, Tom doing his best to drive his wounded car through the rain, and Danny doing his best to calm his jittery passenger down. As soon as Tom had put the CB away, Barbara had stopped yowling. Danny had let her go, and she had slipped down to lie on the seat, convulsively crying.

“Whoo,” Danny breathed, leaning forward to rest his arms on the rear of the front seat. “She’s pretty, but out of her head.”

“I told you so,” said Tom. “What’s that?”

Stillman pointed and Barnes looked in that direction. Coming up the road was a big dark vehicle, outlined by six separate headlights dotting its entire front.

“Jeez, it looks like a UFO from
Close Encounters,”
commented Danny, as he watched it weave up the winding back road toward them. “What about it?”

Tom looked out the passenger window. Then he looked back at the oncoming vehicle. He switched on his headlights’ high beams, then switched them off again. “Hey, we’re on the right side of the road and so are they.”

“So what?”

“I don’t mean the right side of the road,” stressed Stillman, “I mean the
right
side of the road! They’re on our fucking side!”

Danny pulled himself over the front seat. “What are you talking about?”

“They’re on the wrong side of the road, goddamn shitheads.”

Danny looked closer. Sure enough, the vehicle was tooling through the rain directly at them.

“Pull over,” he suggested to Tom.

“Hell,” Tom replied, “I’ll go around ’em.” With that, Stillman pulled the car over into the left lane. Immediately after, the van moved over to straddle the double yellow line.

“Pull over!” Danny shouted.

Tom swerved to the right side and hit the brakes.

“No!” screamed the girl.

Both men whirled to look at her. Barbara’s face was screwed up in intense pain, as if the one word had been torture to get out. The car’s deceleration had dumped her between the front and back seat where she huddled, her mouth still desperately working.

“They’ll . . . kill . . .” she managed to choke out. “Kill.”

Tom looked out the front windshield. The six-eyed machine was still barreling toward them. Danny put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“They’ll pass. Let them pass.”

Tom looked at the girl’s expression, then back at the approaching vehicle. “I don’t care what you think,” he said, “but I’m getting out of here!”

The Firebird’s engine roared its might to the wet night skies again, bit into the dirt by the side of the back road, and burned rubber backward. Its butt swung back onto the road just as Stillman spun the wheel and hit the handbrake. The big Pontiac swung around to face the other way. The driver stomped on the accelerator and sped off ahead of the chasing van.

Danny looked out the rear window. “It’s right on our tail! It didn’t slow down at all!”

Stillman swore under his breath, and looked in the rearview mirror. “I told you that chick was trouble,” he mumbled, returning his gaze to the road with determination.

“It’s just a bunch of joyriders,” Danny said unconvincingly.

“Like hell,” Tom retorted, beginning to weave back and forth across the narrow roadway. “They’re after her.”

“That’s crazy,” the boy in the back seat said, looking at the girl, whose eyes were closed again. “It makes no sense.”

“What makes sense,” Stillman spat, “is that we picked up a drugged girl in the middle of nowhere and as soon as we gave any sign of it on the CB, this monster behind us shows up.”

Danny turned. Three of the vehicle’s six eyes glowed into his face. “It’s right behind us!” he shouted, turning back. “It’s keeping right up with us!”

“Shit,” said Stillman. “It must have incredible horsepower. Probably gets minus four to the gallon. I need a hill. Where’s a fucking hill?”

Barnes knew what his friend was trying to do. If he could get on an upward incline the Firebird could take off, but the heavier van would have to shift down into a lower gear. But as far as he knew, they were on the wrong side of the hill. “It’s all downhill from here,” he said, then swung around to look at their pursuer just as the rear windshield exploded.

To Danny, it seemed to crack everywhere at once, sending the sound of lightning ripping through the car. Right afterward came the thunder—an ear-punching boom coming from the pursuing van. Then the glass flew in. Dozens of bright, sharp, whirling pieces spun into Barnes’ face. All he saw was yellow and white stars, and all he felt was pain. He smashed back into the rear of the passenger seat, breaking its lock-back device and driving himself over into the front of the car. The rest of the glass fell onto the seats, harmlessly showering Barbara’s bowed head.

Tom had instinctively ducked when he heard the sound and only turned in time to see Danny hurl himself down, his hands clutching his face. The wounded boy rolled toward the driver’s seat, streams of blood beginning to drool between his fingers. Stillman wrenched his attention back to the road, slammed down the accelerator, and tore the Firebird into overdrive.

The sportscar responded by leaping away from the van like Road Runner speeding away from Coyote. Tom clamped his hands onto the thick wheel in the ten and three o’clock positions and drove like a man possessed. He ignored the rearview mirror, glancing only occasionally at his friend twisting in the back on the passenger seat.

“Danny!” he yelled. “Danny! Can you see? Are you all right?” He heard Barnes gasping for breath. “Come on, man,” he continued, “can you see?”

“Fuck,” said Danny. “Oh God, it hurts.”

“Come on!” the driver shouted. “They’ve got guns, Danny. We’ve got to get out of here. I need your help!”

Danny just kept moaning.

“Come on!” Stillman repeated. “Stop it! I need your help!” He leaned over and grabbed one of Barnes’ wrists. He pulled, and Danny’s hands dropped from his face.

One eye was destroyed. It drooled from the socket intermingled with the blood. The rest of the face was lacerated. One side of his nose was pulpy. His bottom lip was split. Skin hung off his chin and cheeks like crimson streamers. The horrible face was framed in the yellow headlights of the chasing van.

Stillman had a hard time holding down his dinner. He had a harder time controlling the car. It careened completely across the road to the left and scraped along a stone wall. It ran over three mailboxes before Tom was able to get it back on the road again.

By then the major damage had been done. His sudden loss of control had reduced his speed so the van was able to creep alongside. He bounced off the stone wall only to bounce back off the side of the van. He drove forward at sixty miles an hour, two wheels on the asphalt and two wheels on the dirt and grass.

Tom swung the wheel and slammed the van broadside again. The big dark vehicle didn’t budge. He swung it once more and held the Firebird there. The two machines ground against each other as they rocketed down the last section of the hillside road.

They were coming into a slightly more populated region, Stillman realized. If he could just hold on for a few more miles, he would be in civilization again. Then he could get help.

Danny had slid down to crouch on the floor of the back seat. Tom couldn’t see the girl, but she hadn’t made a sound since the rear window blew in. And Tom couldn’t take the time to check up on her. He was having enough trouble just staying on the road. He turned the steering wheel another time, trying to edge the van aside. But even with all the Pontiac’s power, the larger vehicle drove firm. Stillman couldn’t push it over and he couldn’t get around it.

A garbage can suddenly loomed up in his headlights. It rested near the road, right in front of the car. Tom couldn’t avoid it, so he drove right into it. The container flew out in front of both racing machines, scattering junk all over the road and the windshields. The shit was so thick that Tom had to flick on the windshield wipers to clear the last of the stuff away.

Through the spoiled milk and other rancid liquid, he saw a parked car. A parked car right in front of him. Surprised and shocked, Stillman acted instinctively. He slammed on the brakes, pulling his car behind the van. The Firebird swerved out to the right, pointing the Pontiac right at the woods to the left of the roadway. Tom saw a space between two trees. He drove for them.

The car hit the slight roadside incline, vaulting across the remainder of the space in midair. It smashed down between the two target trees and tore off into the forest.

The trip got worse from there. Stillman took his foot off the accelerator completely since the wood was growing on an incline. An incline that sent the car bouncing down its face at forty miles an hour. The car leaped across the rocky ground, dribbling Tom’s head against the car’s ceiling. The wheel bucked in his hands as he furiously tried to keep the car from colliding with any obstruction.