Pipeline (15 page)

She turned at the right-hand exit, and the
back roads to home sprawled out in front of her. She lifted her
foot lightly from the gas pedal, careful not to speed nor swerve,
lest some traffic officer lie waiting with lights off, hidden in
the Fall foliage.

Fears and thoughts about her house began to
consume her, creating a jagged feeling just below the ribcage and
turning her stomach inside-out. She wondered how bad it had been
after she left. What about the fire? Was there even a house to go
back to? A vision of the strange streaks of water running down the
walls kept haunting her, a subliminal advertisement playing over
and over in her mind. She felt like a teenage runaway, wanting to
get back home but fearing what awaited her when she got there.

She wanted to call first, but she’d left her
damn phone behind in the confusion. The thought of using the phone
at Ted’s came to her five minutes after she pulled away from the
parking lot. Oh well, she thought, like the prodigal teen, she’d
just have to face the music. One way or another, this night had to
end.

Another realization came to her as the dark,
lonely road unwound beneath the purple twilight: this familiar
route was the same one David had driven the night of the accident.
She hadn’t traveled it since then, and memories of that night began
to flood her like the streaks of water that streamed down her walls
earlier. She fought to keep her mind on the road.

She gripped the steering wheel, feeling the
vibration beneath her fingers as a newly found, false courage to
face this enigma gathered inside of her. The fleeting feeling of
nothing left to lose began to erect with concrete certainty.

Her jaw opened wide in a yawn that watered
her eyes. She closed and opened her eyes and quickly steadied the
wheel. Eons of broken sleep were bearing down upon her. She thought
to turn on the radio to let the loud music revive her, but instead,
the radio turned on by itself.

* * * *

Susan Logan’s Ford Taurus pulled into the
same gravel parking lot that Tracy’s Cherokee tore out of not ten
minutes before. The filled spaces in the lot seemed to confirm the
happy shouts of a lively crowd as voices boasted from inside,
escaping the front door that continually swung open and closed.
Tracy’s jeep was nowhere in sight, but the Taurus swerved into the
spot it had just fled, a strange irony they would never know.

“It doesn’t look like she’s here,” Susan
said, parking the car.

“We’ll just have to find out,” Dylan said,
and unstrapped the seat belt.

They left the car and walked to the front
door.

The smells of black licorice, beer, and
cigarettes wafted to their noses as they stepped into Ted’s Bar
& Grill. Their eyes scanned the bar, searching for Tracy, but
their hearts dropped to their stomachs when none of the laughing,
talking, faces were hers. They moved to an open spot, and Dylan
spoke to the bartender he didn’t know.

“Can I help you?” Ted said, almost shouting
over the blaring jukebox and standing not far from where Tracy had
sat.

“I’m looking for Tracy Kimball.” Dylan used
an equally loud tempo to outmatch the music, and Ted leaned forward
with his ear as closely as possible.

“You just missed her,” he said, pointing the
stool off to his right. “She sat right there, jumpier than a queen
off to the chopping block. I don’t know what was up with her, but I
was doing something back here and when I looked up, she was flying
out the door.”

“When was this?” It was hard to hear the
urgency in Dylan’s voice over the music, and the laughter was a
chorus that grew louder through a domino effect.

“Couldn’t have been ten minutes ago,” Ted
said, turning his right shoulder to glance at the clock behind the
bar. “Like I said, she didn’t say anything, just sucked down two
beers and took off before I had a chance to say ‘so long.’”

“Did anyone here see which direction she may
have driven off in?” Susan’s question sounded a little unrealistic
to Dylan but not impossible. Ted asked aloud if anyone had seen her
drive away--no one had. Ted shook his head and shrugged.

They stepped back out into the parking lot
where the sounds of the full swing party were softly stifled. Dylan
pressed his speed dial, but there was no need. Up ahead, they saw
the team’s white van cruising the highway, coming towards them, the
turn signal blinking admission to the parking lot. Sidney was
driving and Leah was in the passenger’s side. The gravel crunched
underneath the van’s tires as Sidney thundered into the lot.

“Nice timing, Sid,” Brett said aloud. “Crack
up the van, or get stopped for speeding. That will find her a hell
of a lot faster.”

They walked toward the van as Sidney and Leah
jumped out, and the five of them stood in the parking lot, trying
to figure out the next move.

“Where is she?” Sidney’s voice belted. His
breathing was heavy and asthmatic, a result of shock, anxiety, and
the stress of knowing that a timetable to save Tracy was looming
specifically for him. The possibilities of what could happen to her
in her current state unfolded in an endless list.

“We just missed her by almost ten minutes,”
Dylan said. “You’ve got to calm yourself, Sid, we can’t—”

“There’s no time!” Sidney yelled, and the
roar caused Dylan to step backward in surprise. “We made pipeline
contact with David. I heard him and watched him type on the goddamn
screen! She saw him!” He pointed to Leah, as though the sights in
the eyes of the seer were indisputable proofs. “He’s trying to save
her, and he can’t!”

They heard Sidney tell it again, this time,
to their faces that drooped like masks of melting clay. They all
exchanged glances of worried confusion and Dylan swallowed hard,
seeing the fear in Sidney’s eyes and hearing the strain in his
voice.

“Dylan’s right, Sidney,” Susan said, stepping
forward to ease him. “We can’t find her if you go off the deep
end.”

“He won’t, but you need to listen to him,”
Leah said. “I saw David. He’s a very troubled spirit. We need to
figure out where Tracy would have gone from here.”

“Sid, are you okay?” Brett said, watching as
Sidney’s face hung down, seeming to study the gravel expanse
beneath his feet. The voices were starting up again, and the last
thing he heard was Leah speaking up for him. The voices whispered
one after another, competing in a growing mumble of ghostly
chatter.

“Sidney... Sidney... time... shortcut...
”

His head slowly raised at the two words he
hadn’t heard before, short cut. He didn’t understand. Then one of
the voices he’d heard earlier—that of the young boy, spoke fast,
almost shouting.

“Shortcut, faster!”

He lifted his head up in a state of eureka,
having been handed the missing piece of the puzzle.

“He’s listening again,” Leah shouted.
“Sidney!”

The voices died away when she shouted his
name. What the voices said had all started to make sense; Tracy was
driving home by a back road, a short cut.

“She’s taken a shortcut home,” he said.
“Where are the rural roads that lead back into town?”

“That way.” Brett said, pointing to a road
that turned off of the highway on the right-hand side. “You think
she’s there?”

“I know it. Let’s go. Brett, you ride along
and navigate.” Sidney didn’t wait for explanations; he turned and
strode back to the van with Leah and Brett trailing him.

Dylan called out that he and Susan would
follow in the Taurus, but before he could finish, Sidney mounted
the wheel of the van and slammed the door shut. The ignition roared
to life, and the tires spun gravel back at their feet as Sidney
tore out of the parking lot.

* * * *

The sound of an announcer’s voice erupted
from the radio, yet something was different. It was unlike a
regular advertisement with the happy announcer selling brand new
cars and punching incentives with the zeal of an auctioneer. This
voice was filling the jeep with ominous vibes: tones that rippled
the flesh, raised the hair, and alerted listeners that an unearthly
hand was conducting. It sounded distorted, pitchy, and started to
warp.

She pushed the power button off with one
quick flash of her finger. There was silence except the hum of the
jeep, and the winding road disappeared beneath the wheels. Then,
that smell of his cologne that pervaded the house earlier, now
seeped through the jeep, clouding around her like a mist.

A tidal wave was forming inside her stomach,
surging upward, urgently about to break shore, and a low-grade
fever heated her body, as though she’d been wrapped tight in an
electric blanket. Sweat sprayed from her forehead, drenching her
face, and she knew this was the precursor to the tidal wave. She
eased her foot from the gas pedal, seeing no one in the rearview
mirror, and pulled off to the side of the road.

She swallowed hard, each time holding it
back, hoping the wave inside her stomach would quell. Then it
seemed her whole world was turned upside down like the seasonal
scene inside a snow globe. She opened up the driver’s door, holding
on tightly lest the dizziness drop her out onto the road.

The wave spewed out in a violent gush, both
from her mouth and nose, breaking shore upon a poorly paved
back-road. The gush was followed by two smaller ones, and a dry
relief settled over her stomach. The smell of musk had been
replaced by beer and vomit. Tracy wiped her face with her shirt and
heaved the fresh, nightly air into her lungs with deep, expanding
gasps.

She looked behind her, feeling a twinge of
embarrassment, but no cars were approaching. No one had seen one of
University Hospital’s top nurses pull over on the side of the road
and puke her guts out. She seen many patients do this before,
always to the tune of relief afterward, and now she was no
different.

The sky above grew darker as she looked up.
There was no way to call anyone, but she had to get home; there
wasn’t much farther to go. She shifted out of the parking gear, and
the jeep rolled slowly onward.

There was silence while the agony of
stupidity seized her. She was a nurse, and she should have known
better than this, but she had to escape that house. The insanity of
the past few days had stretched her mourning for David into an
eternal continuum, and now there was nothing left to do but
confront and accept the circumstances. Either way, both life and
death stood frozen in a standstill, and something had to break the
uneven balance.

She increased speed with a light touch of her
foot, oblivious to the slight swerve of the wheel. Her eyelids as
they fought to close became heavy elevator doors that sprang back
open at the touch of a tardy hand or foot. They would shut with
relief, then pop back open in alert. The unexpected tidal wave had
provided a much needed peace and tranquility at the worst possible
moment, and her mind began to dull the reality of her hands
clutching the wheel.

And the radio turned on again.

It was the same haunting guitar riff she’d
heard earlier, the one by Blue Oyster Cult, the song that David
loved so much.

All our times have come...

Here, but now they’re gone...

The volume from the radio inched upward, as a
soft, white glow emanated from the dashboard. Still, her eyelids
opened and closed; she strained them open and stared at the glow.
The song played on of its haunting melody.

We can be like they are...

Come on baby... don’t fear the reaper...

We’ll be able to fly... don’t fear the
reaper...

She didn’t notice the headlights in the
rearview mirror.

* * * *

“That’s her!” Leah said from the back seat of
the van, as Sidney slowly gained on the Cherokee. They could see
the jeep lumbering ahead at a steady pace; they also watched it
swerve back and forth from the center of the road. Sidney stepped
on the accelerator to catch up, and the van hummed and purred in
response.

Dylan and Susan trailed behind in the Taurus.
They kept in contact through cell phones, and Leah glanced through
the back window as she dialed Dylan. Tracy was swerving in the jeep
in front of them she told him when he answered. He and Susan would
follow closely, and the two vehicles trailed their target up ahead
in a small parade procession through the night.

The van’s horn needed fixing, and when Sidney
blared on it, it whined and moaned like an out-of-key
accordion.

“Don’t, Sid,” Brett said. “You might scare
her into wrecking.” He sat in the front seat, navigating the route
when needed, although Sidney was already listening to some unseen
source. Brett could see it on his friend’s face every time a voice
bewitched him—he looked like someone having a seizure.

Now Sidney sat behind the wheel of the van
with his heart galloping, the sweat pouring down his face, fogging
his over cumbersome, horn-rimmed glasses, cruising faster and
faster to catch up to the runaway jeep.

“What else do I do?” Sidney’s voice cried out
in deepening frustration and for once, Leah and Brett heard their
friend sound helpless. “We have to get her to pull over!”

They inched closer to the van that was now
about twenty feet away, which to Sidney, may as well have been a
mile. Leah leaned forward, her elbows touching the back of the
front seats. She could see something happening inside the jeep.

“Does she have the interior light on?” she
asked, leaning a little closer. “Something is going on in there.
There’s light coming from the dashboard... see it?”

She pointed, and they looked closer. She was
right, and Sidney’s only response was with his foot as it stepped
on the accelerator and the van’s purr grew into a roar.

* * * *

The team’s van in front of them had shot
forward. Sidney had lead footed the gas pedal, leaving the Taurus
behind.