Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

Pope thought about it. There didn’t seem to be anything he could do. The last thing they needed was to run out of fuel in the middle of the Interstate.

The red and white lights of the service station came into view while they were still a mile or so away. Joel hauled the truck into the forecourt. Pope watched for a telltale flick of the headlights, perhaps a prearranged distress signal to be used in case of carjacking, but there was none.

The truck hissed to a stop beside a diesel pump. Pope said, ‘We’re all getting out. I’m putting the gun in my pocket, but it’s there and I’ve got my hand on it. I will use it if I have to.’

‘Yeah.’ The driver opened his door, looked across to see if it was all right for him to climb down. Pope jumped down himself and helped Nina to the ground, making no comment when she brought the violin with her. Quickly Pope led her round to the other side of the truck, where Joel had the nozzle in his grip and was already feeding fuel into the tank.

Pope watched the road as the flow continued. Vehicles were sweeping by mostly singly now, many of them delivery trucks like this one. There were no other cars in the service station forecourt. Pope had seen a clerk seated behind a counter inside the shop.

Pope looked at the digital display on the pump. The amount of fuel delivered was advancing in drips.

‘That’s enough,’ he said to Joel. The driver withdrew the nozzle, taking his time, and replaced the cap.

Pope nodded and Joel began walking towards the building. Pope kept a few feet behind, Nina at his side, the violin clasped in front of her.

The shop was like a small supermarket, its brightly lit aisles stocked with foods, pharmaceuticals and household products. Behind the counter perched another college boy like the one at the first station Pope and Nina had stopped at. This one looked fresher, as though he’d started his shift recently after a night’s worth of sleep. He watched them with mild curiosity. Pope supposed they made an odd trio, and they’d certainly be remembered later. That didn’t matter.

Above the counter a closed-circuit television monitor was split into four screens, showing various areas of the forecourt, the interior of the shop and the three of them plus the clerk. Pope watched Joel on the monitor handing across a credit card. The resolution wasn’t great but he could see nothing in the man’s eyes to suggest he was signalling the clerk in any way.

Pope kept his hand around the butt of the Heckler amp; Koch in his jacket pocket.

The clerk tore off a receipt and handed it to Joel. Joel turned and muttered to Pope, ‘I have to use the john.’

‘No.’ Pope inclined his head towards the exit.

‘Jeez, man. I always do here. I’m busting.’

‘Too bad.’

Behind Joel the clerk was frowning a little. It was time to go.

As Pope stepped aside to let the truck driver go ahead of him he noticed something about the clerk’s frown. It was no longer directed at him. He looked at the boy’s face, followed his line of sight through the glass.

At the rim of the forecourt, at each of the two points designated Entry and Exit , a car had pulled up and parked, blocking the access to and from the road. As Pope watched, men emerged from each car, crouching.

Like street lights being turned on in sequence, a silent flashing red and white light appeared on the roof of each car.

Interstate 95, between Washington D.C and New York

Tuesday 21 May, 2.35 am

Nina couldn’t be sure of the sequence of events in the next few seconds. Each separate experience was like an individual card in a deck that had been rapidly shuffled.

Strobing lights washed through the windows and across the faces of Pope and the truck driver and the clerk.

The clerk shouted something incomprehensible.

The driver, Joel, shouted, terrifyingly close to her, He’s got a gun get down he’s kidnapped us .

Pope pulled, hard, on her arm, the way she had to pull hard on the old-fashioned toilet chain in her first home, and she felt herself dropping.

From her position on the lino floor, tiny and helpless, sprawled over her violin case she saw the looming shape of the clerk above the counter, something in his hands — a gun…

She heard the ch-chak of the gun’s slide action less than a second before it was drowned out by a crashing boom directly above her, one that made her clasp her hands over her ears to shut out the noise, both of the explosion and of her screams.

From where she was on the floor Nina could see the gap in the counter giving entry to the space behind it, and she watched the clerk slam back against the racks of cigarettes and liquor bottles on the wall behind him and drop onto his butt on the floor, where he sat propped, his legs splayed, one eye staring at her, the other missing along with half his head.

Her screams seemed to engulf her, becoming the whole of her, and although she blocked her ears and closed her eyes against them they penetrated through.

Something nagged at her, through the screaming and the horror, and she realised she had to pay attention to it.

Somebody was asking her something, over and over.

*

‘Please, don’t.’

Nina rolled over and brought her legs up so that she was hunched on her heels on the floor, over the violin case.

Three feet in front of her she could see the backs of Pope’s legs. Beyond him, at eye level with her, she saw the chubby truck driver, Joel. He was kneeling, facing Pope, but looking past him and at Nina. His cap had been dislodged sideways to reveal a sunburned, peeling bald pate above the ring of scrubby hair.

His hands were clasped and shaking in front of him.

‘Please,’ he whispered again. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t kill me.’

He was staring at her. Asking her not to kill him.

She shook her head. What did she mean? She hoped he understood.

Nina watched Pope extend his hand, and for an instant she thought he was reaching to help the man up.

The gun roared and bucked slightly in his hand again and Nina fell back, hands coming up around her ears once more.

*

A half hour passed, sluggishly, like the time spent waking up from an anaesthetic. Except it couldn’t have been a half hour; it was more, Nina realised later, like a few seconds.

She was still on the floor, the violin pressed to her, but she’d crawled back into the adjacent aisle to get away from the horrors on the floor where she’d been earlier. Pope stood six feet away, slightly crouched, staring out the windows.

‘Nina.’

He didn’t turn when he said it, and for a moment she though the voices had come back.

‘Nina.’ This time his head turned a fraction, and his voice was louder. ‘Stay down but come over here.’

She heard, but couldn’t process the words.

Pope stooped and backed over to her, reaching her in an instant. With his free hand he grabbed hers and dragged her back towards the window, forcing her to duckwalk to keep up.

When they reached the wall with the windows, rows of potato chips and candy bars arrayed in front of her face, he pulled her so that she stood. She felt him step behind her. One of his hands gripped her shoulder.

The gun barrel touched her ear.

*

She’d seen it countless times in movies, and had thought it must be one of the most terrifying experiences possible. But now, with the ring of the barrel an inch from the side of her head, radiating warmth and the smell of metal, she felt nothing. No fear. No numbness, even.

His voice murmured in her hair beside her ear.

‘I know this is horrible, but I swear to you, it’s a bluff. I’m not going to shoot you. I’m not going to let those men out there hurt you. There are four of them. They’re not police. They’re your father’s men. This is the only way to keep them at bay for the time being.’