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  Midway into the woods she heard the cop’s voice, in the distance, talking to the day manager. “Don’t laugh! Just help me out of this thing.”

  I-95, VA: Thursday October 28, 1999

  6:25 PM

  “We’re never going to get there this way,” Allison said.

  Macy kept limping along the shoulder of Interstate 95, holding up her thumb at northbound traffic. “What else can we do?”

  Allison shook her head and trudged along with her friend, watching for police cars. They had made it to Richmond, which was almost the right direction. They had managed that in three rides. However, since the sun began setting, people seemed to ignore them. The two of them had been limping along the shoulder for hours, it felt like.

  Mileage-wise, according to the markers by the side of the road, they had made little over six miles by walking. It was too cold for a southern October, and blackened skies were dampening them with a misting rain. This last walk had been long enough that Allison was almost hoping for a police car. At least, with the wreckage they’d been leaving in their wake, a police car would stop for them. They’d be dry then, maybe get something to eat.

  Allison looked at Macy limping along ahead of her, and felt guilty for those thoughts. It wasn’t even Macy’s fight, but she was still determined to pull Allison through it.

  They went on a little longer, with no cars stopping for them, and Macy stopped and sat down on the guardrail.

  “Are you all right?” Allison asked.

  Macy nodded, but from her expression Allison could tell that Macy’s feet were in bad shape.

  “Take off your shoes.” Allison told her.

  Macy looked as if she was about to object, but then she began to undo the laces on her Nikes. She did it so gingerly that Allison bent over to help. But Macy shook her head. “Don’t touch.”

  The shoe slid slowly off of Macy’s foot and Allison nearly gagged. The sole of her blue sock was stained purple with blood.

  “Oh God, Macy. You can’t walk on these.”

  Macy stared at her sock, as if she didn’t quite expect so much blood. “Girl, without a car, what choice have I got?”

  The sock peeled off, wanting to stick to Macy’s foot. The sole was plastered by gore-stained toilet paper that had been an improvised dressing. The paper came off in brown clumps. “We have to wrap that in a real bandage.”

  There were a half-dozen slashes on the one foot, two or three on the other. They all oozed blood and clear liquid. Allison thanked God that none of them looked infected yet.

  “There’s a towel from the hotel in my bag,” Macy said.

  As Allison fished out the white towel in the misting rain, she thought wistfully of the first aid kit in the Taurus’ trunk. The car might as well be back in Cleveland now. They had come so far to just be stranded on the side of some Virginia highway.

  Allison did her best to tear the towel into bandages and bind Macy’s feet. Being stranded here was so frustrating. All they needed was one person going to DC. It was where this stupid Interstate went.

  Allison finished the makeshift bindings, and Macy pulled some clean socks over the bundle. She had to fully unlace her sneakers to get them back on. Macy stood up and wobbled a bit. Allison pushed her back down. “Walking on the shoulder is pointless. We’re either going to get a ride or we aren’t, and we’ve got another day to get there. So sit, ok?”

  “But—”

  “The ten miles we might make before your feet die isn’t going to make a difference.”

  “Your show, girl. I just felt better moving.”

  “Did your feet?”

  Macy shrugged. “So it didn’t make sense.”

  ◆◆◆

  After another half hour of worsening rain, Allison managed to flag down a car. It pulled on to the shoulder, rolling to a stop about a hundred feet beyond. The light had faded to the point that Allison could barely make out the vehicle until it started backing toward them.

  It was a boxy old Plymouth with multi-colored fenders and a coat hanger holding the lockless trunk shut. One taillight shone white through cracked plastic. It had a Georgia license plate.

  As it rolled to a stop, a man pulled himself out of the passenger-side window and sat on top of the door. He was shirtless, tattooed, and had shoulder length hair that was slicked back and glistening in the rain.

  “Hey now, it looks like you girls could use some assistance.”

  Allison disliked him instantly.

  Macy stood up unsteadily and said, “Yeah, we’re going to DC.”

  Thank you, Macy. Are you looking at the same guy?

  “Sad, Nate, ain’t it? Pretty young things stranded like this?”

  The car stopped. From inside came a bass, “Yep.”

  The man jumped the rest of the way out of the car. He wore ragged jeans and combat boots. Tattoos snaked his body. Dragons and skulls and bloody knives stretched across the muscles of his arms and chest. He smiled. Most of his teeth were stained black.

  Macy stepped back as if she realized that opening her mouth had been a big mistake.

  “Lucky for you, girls.” he said. “Me’n Nate are going to DC, too.” He giggled a little. The smell of beer drifted to Allison, even through the rain.

  “Ah, thanks anyway,” Allison said. “But I think—”

  “Don’t turn down our hospitality,” he said. “You’ll hurt Nate’s feelings.”

  The driver’s door on the Plymouth opened and the most obese man Allison had ever seen stepped out. Nate had hair and beard that didn’t look as if it had been cut, combed, or cleaned in Allison’s lifetime. He didn’t wear a shirt either, and cascading flesh made him look like a tattooed avalanche. Nate was smiling.

  In his hand he held a revolver.

  Oh god.

  “Well, if you don’t want the ride.” The thin man shrugged. “You still owe us something for stopping, right Nate?”

  “Yep.”

  The black-toothed man, the one who kept talking, approached her. Allison couldn’t think straight. The gun. She looked at the gun. If she could just teek it away.

  “Give up some sweetness for daddy.” The black-toothed man grabbed her. The world slowed, tumbling inside out. Too many things to do, think about, at once. She struggled to escape the man’s grasp and her teek was over by the gun. Macy ran toward them. Nate moved the gun. This guy’s hand was under her sweater.

  Allison tried to grab the gun with her teek as she grabbed the man’s crotch with her hands.

  “Bitch!” he yelled as she squeezed.

  Nate fired.

  Something rammed into her teek field so hard that it felt as if the bullet had entered her own brain. Her teek had only managed to grab the barrel of the revolver. She’d hadn’t time to grab the whole thing as she had Barney’s gun.

  When Nate fired, the bullet had entered her field. Like when Macy tossed a cue ball, her teek tried to catch the invader. But the bullet’s energy tore the field to shreds. It felt as if chunks were being ripped from her brain.

  The bullet lost most of its kinetic energy destroying her teek’s tenuous hold. Allison felt the lead slug slow to a near stop inside the barrel. She felt the split second where all the exhaust gasses from the cartridge had nowhere to go.

  She felt it when the gun exploded.

  Nate screamed, an inhuman sound, like a pig squealing. He was on fire. His massive beard had been ignited by the back blast from the plugged revolver. The explosion had torn his hands and arms into bloody rags.

  Allison stared at Nate, and the man on her clubbed the side of her head with his fist. She fell back on the ground, dizzy. The man turned to look at his flaming partner when Macy came out of nowhere and slammed him in the side of the head with a rock the size of a loaf of bread.

  As he collapsed to his knees, Macy grabbed Allison’s arm and yelled, “The car!”

  Allison grabbed her backpack and stumbled after Macy.

  Nate rolled across the ground, putting out his bea
rd, while the nameless man held his head and vomited between his knees.

  The car idled. Macy pushed Allison into the passenger seat, got behind the wheel, and made the transmission shudder with grinding noises as she pulled away from their two assailants.

  ASHLAND, VA: Thursday October 28, 1999

  7:15 PM

  “Yeah,” Allison said into the pay phone. “They’re on I-95 northbound, in the breakdown lane.”

  “And where are you calling from?”

  Allison hung up on the 911 operator.

  “Done?” Macy asked. She was sitting on the hood of the ‘73 Plymouth Duster, which idled in the parking lot of a defunct Shell station that sat right off of I-95. The station was boarded up, but the pay phone by the edge of the lot still worked.

  Allison nodded.

  Macy slid off the hood and winced when her feet touched the ground. The rain had gotten worse, soaking everything, but it didn’t quite soak up the smell from the car.

  Allison looked in the car and made a face.

  Macy stopped by the driver’s door and said, “You ain’t going to freak out again. It ain’t like we could’ve avoided—”

  Allison shook her head. “No, that’s not it—”

  “Then what?”

  “If we’re going to drive this thing, I want to shovel out some of the garbage.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  She reached in and shut off the engine. The ignition required the use of a screwdriver. That made Allison feel a little better. This car had been stolen long before it had fallen into their hands.

  It took them a half hour to shovel out the pit of the car. It was a mess of fast food containers, some boxes still containing things indescribable. A few old pizza boxes were so disgusting that Allison used her teek to avoid actually touching them. There was an endless supply of beer cans, liquor bottles, and empty cigarette wrappers.

  That was the innocuous garbage.

  Under the back seat they found a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun and a machete.

  “We can’t throw this out,” Macy said. “Some kid will find it and blow his head off.”

  “Give me that,” Allison said.

  Macy handed her the shotgun. Allison looked around the empty Shell lot until she found a grate to a storm sewer. The grate was heavy and iron, and the gun’s barrel fit into one of the slots.

  “What you doing girl?”

  “Need something to give me leverage.” Allison wrapped her teek around the stock of the shotgun and pulled down. The barrels of the gun pressed against the sides of the grate. The gun froze there for a moment until, finally, something gave and the stock slammed to the ground. The barrel clattered down into the storm sewer. There was a resonant clang as the end of the barrel hit something below.

  Allison put the twisted stock of the now useless weapon on top of the pile of garbage they were making.

  “Wasn’t that a little dangerous?” Macy said.

  “Didn’t point it at anyone.” Allison returned to emptying the car.

  Things got uglier. They found bags of white crystal and well used glass pipes. They unearthed a cigar box containing charred tinfoil, a dirty spoon, a Zippo lighter, rubber hose and a hypodermic needle that had traces of blood on it.

  “Ugh,” Macy said. “These guys were crawling.”

  The trunk held a cardboard box that Macy tossed without even looking inside. Allison took a peek, saw the cover on the top magazine, and wished she hadn’t.

  I’m sorry about Chuck, but not these guys.

  She wanted to wash her hands.

  The last thing they opened was the glove compartment. It was the now familiar mess of little baggies and cigarette papers. No maps, or car registration. There room left in there and Allison thought that had been where Nate’s revolver had come from. Also inside was another cigar box.

  “What do you think?” Macy asked. “More of their drugstore?”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Hey, can’t hurt to—” Macy had opened the box and was gaping into it.

  “What?”

  Macy looked up and back down at the box. She started talking a few times, gave up, and turned the box around so Allison could see the contents.

  Inside were three fat rolls of bills held together by grease-stained red rubber bands. Twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

  SEVENTEEN

  WASHINGTON, DC: Friday October 29, 1999

  2:25 AM

  With Macy speeding, they made it to the Beltway before two-thirty in the morning. They’d only paused to fill the Duster’s gas tank and have a massive order filled at a Taco Bell drive-through. Macy insisted on ordering a dozen burritos and Mexi-melts. “I ain’t stopping now but for gas. The cops must be after this car for reasons that have nothing to do with us.”

  Now that they’d reached Washington DC all they had to do was find a motel where they could hole up. The flight Dad would expect her and Mom to be on wouldn’t arrive until late Friday afternoon.

  That was if Allison was right about what her parent’s plans had been. And if the ASI hadn’t found Dad. And if the cops didn’t stop them.

  And if the car lived.

  That was the most pressing problem at the moment. The Duster wasn’t a well car. It made sounds that set Allison’s teeth on edge every time Macy shifted gears— and it wasn’t only because Macy was unfamiliar with the manual transmission. The car vibrated too much, and tried to shake itself apart whenever the car closed on sixty-five.

  Every once in a while the smell of something burning— clutch, oil or brakes— would waft from the front of the car. Fortunately, their Taco Bell order covered most of the smell.

  They were a half hour into urban traffic before Allison had finished counting the money. “Thirteen hundred and fifty dollars,” Allison said.

  “Whoa,” Macy said. “Those creeps could’ve afforded a better car.”

  Allison shrugged. “They could’ve afforded a better life.” She put the cigar box back in the glove compartment.

  “You ok?”

  Allison looked out the window. The rain had dissolved into a gray mist that turned the streetlights into cloudy haze. It was a perfect match to the cloudy gray she felt inside. “I’m numb. I don’t think I’ve got any feelings left.”

  “You don’t feel badly about those two creeps, do you?”

  “No. That’s the problem.”

  “I don’t understand you, girl.”

  Allison leaned back and closed her eyes. “I don’t feel anything. I’ve used myself up.”

  “Come on, cheer up. We’ve made it—”

  “Does that solve anything? Will it, really?”

  Macy was silent.

  “The police will still be out there, and so will those ASI people. Mom will still be missing. What can my dad do about them?”

  “I don’t know, girl. But after all this, he better do something.”

  What would he do? Allison wondered. She had grabbed for her father because he was the only thing she had to cling to. She had subconsciously built her father up into a savior. The enormity of recent events made her question her judgment. What could one man do? Even a man who knew exactly what was going on?

  And, whatever her father’s capabilities, there was still one unchanging fact; this was a man who had neither seen her or made contact with her in over ten years, two thirds of Allison’s life.

  She wondered what he would think of his daughter. Would he be proud, frightened, or appalled? Did he care about her? Or like the ASI, did he only care about what she could do? What was his relationship to ASI? Why did Mom leave him in the middle of the night?

  Lines of questions marched mutely off into the darkness.

  Allison had lived most of her life safely ignorant of her past. Now it seemed that it was a matter of crucial importance. For the thousandth time, Allison wished she had a chance to talk to Mom.

  Mom, Allison thought, I’m sorry for everything. She could have been a better daught
er. There were just so many things that never got said, and her past was only part of it.

  Dad, we’re going to show up as fugitives several times over, your daughter’s a murderess, Mom is missing, and I doubt you’re expecting Macy at all.

  “All right?” Macy asked.

  Allison nodded and closed her eyes. “I just had the sensation that my whole life was just on the tip of my tongue.”

  “As long as it isn’t flashing before your eyes. Any food left?”

  Allison fished in the Taco Bell sack and said, “Just hot sauce packets and one damp burrito.”

  “You want it?”

  Allison held the limp burrito and made a face. She passed it to Macy.

  Macy took it, and in between bites, said, “I am going to be so happy when we ditch this car.” Macy yawned and took another bite of the burrito. “I’ve got white lines running down the center of my eyeballs.”

  “Thanks, Macy.”

  “Huh? For what?”

  “Everything.”

  Macy polished off the burrito and hugged her with her free arm. “No prob, girl. No prob.”

  Macy returned both hands to the wheel as they took an exit off of the Beltway. “Now, all we got to do is find a motel.”

  ARLINGTON, VA: Friday October 29, 1999

  5:30 AM

  John Charvat woke at 5:30. The first thing he did was check the gun on the night table. Then he turned on the light. The hotel room was empty but for him. Gun in hand, he made a careful check of the room before he went into the shower, looking out the window, checking the closet, and making sure the security chain was on the door.

  Only then did he strip the briefs he was wearing and walk into the bathroom, still carrying the gun.

  Once the water began to run, the doorknob on the front door began to silently jiggle back and forth. After a few moments the door drifted open. When the door pulled the security chain taut, a pair of bolt cutters slipped in and effortlessly snipped the chain.

  When John stepped out of the shower, he had a towel around his waist and a gun in his hand. Two of the three men waiting for him had guns already aimed at his midsection. The third man said, “It has been a long time Shaggy, now would you please put down the gun?”