David Morrell - Desperate Measures

The opposite door was closed. No one could hear Pittman as he hurried into the dusky room. Millgate was losing strength, his effort to breathe less strenuous. Pittman reached him and eased the prongs for the oxygen tube into Millgate’s nostrils.

The effect was almost magical. Within seconds, Millgate’s color had begun to be less flushed. His agitation lessened. A few more seconds and the rise and fall of Millgate’s chest became more regular, less frenzied. Throughout, Pittman was in motion. He grabbed the IV tubes that Millgate had inadvertently jerked from the needles in his arms. As Pittman inserted the tubes back onto the base of each needle, he noticed that liquid from the tubes had trickled onto the floor. How would the nurse account for that when she came back into the room? he wondered. Then he noticed the water tracks that he had brought in from the rain, the moisture dripping off his overcoat.

I have to get out of here.

A final look at the monitors showed him that Millgate’s blood pressure, respiration rate, and heartbeat were becoming less extreme. The old guy’s going to make it a while longer, Pittman thought. Relieved, anxious, he turned to leave the room.

But he was shocked as an aged clawlike hand grabbed his right wrist, making him gasp. Pittman swung in alarm and saw Millgate’s anguished eyes staring at him.

Pittman clutched the old man’s fingers and worked to pry them off, surprised by the ferocity of the old man’s grip.

Jesus, if he yells…

“Duncan.” The old man spoke with effort, his voice thin and crackly, like cellophane being crumpled.

He’s delirious. He doesn’t know who he’s talking to.

“Duncan.” The old man seemed to plead.

He thinks I’m somebody else. I’ve been in here too long. I have to get out.

“Duncan.” The old man’s voice thickened, now sounding like crusted mud being stepped upon. “The snow.”

Pittman released the old man’s fingers.

“Grollier.” The old man’s throat filled with phlegm, making a grotesque imitation of the sound of gargling.

To hell with this, Pittman thought, then swung toward the French doors.

He was suddenly caught in a column of light. The entrance to the room had been opened. Illumination from the hall spilled in, silhouetting the nurse. She stood, paralyzed for a moment. Abruptly she dropped a tray. A teapot and cup crashed onto the floor. She screamed.

And Pittman ran.

Pittman’s brief time in the room had made him feel warm. As he raced onto the sundeck, the night and the rain seemed much more chilling than they had only a few seconds earlier. He shivered and lunged through puddles, past the dark metal patio furniture and toward the stairs that led down from the deck. At once he was blinded, powerful arc lamps glaring down at him from the eaves of the mansion above the sundeck, reflecting off puddles. The nurse or a guard had switched on the lights. From inside the building behind him, Pittman heard shouts.

He ran harder. He almost lost his balance on the stairs. Gripping the railing, flinching from a sliver that rammed into his palm, he bounded down the wooden steps. At the bottom, he almost scurried in the direction from which he had come, toward the tree-lined driveway and the gate from the estate. But he heard shouts from the front of the house, so he pivoted toward the back, only to recoil from arc lights that suddenly blazed toward the covered swimming pool and the flower gardens. There, too, he heard shouting.

With the front and rear blocked to him, Pittman charged to the side of the house, across concrete at the entrance to the large garage, over spongy lawn, toward looming dark fir trees. Rapid footsteps clattered down the stairs from the sundeck.

“Stop!”

“Shoot him!”

Pittman reached the fir trees. A needled branch pawed his face, stinging him so hard that he didn’t know if the moisture on his cheeks was rain or blood. He ducked, avoiding another branch.

“Where the-?”

“There! I think he’s over-!”

Behind Pittman, a bough snapped. Someone fell.

“My nose! I think I broke my fucking-!”

“I hear-!”

“In those bushes!”

“Shoot the son of a bitch!”

“Get him! If they find out we let somebody-!”

Another branch snapped. Behind him, Pittman’s hunters charged through the trees.

Just in time, Pittman stopped himself. He’d come to a high stone wall, nearly running into it at full force. Breathing deeply, he fiercely studied the darkness to his left and then his right.

What am I going to do? he thought in a frenzy. I can’t assume I’ll find a gate. I can’t keep following the wall. Too obvious. They’ll listen for the sounds I make. They’ll get ahead of me and behind me and corner me.

Turn back?

No! The police will soon arrive. The house has too many outside lights. I’ll be spotted.

Then what are you going to…?

Pittman hurried toward the nearest fir tree and started to climb. The footsteps of his pursuers thudded rapidly closer. He gripped a bough above him, shoved his right shoe against a lower branch, and hoisted himself upward along the trunk. Bark scraped his hands. The fir tree smell of turpentine assaulted his nostrils. He climbed faster.

“I hear him!”

Across from the top of the wall, Pittman reached out along a branch, let his legs fall away from the tree trunk, and inched hand over hand toward the wall. The branch dipped from his weight. Dangling, he kept shifting along. The bark cut deeper into his hands.

“He’s close!”

“Where?”

Moisture dropped from the fir needles onto Pittman. Even greater moisture dropped from the branch to which he clung. Water cascaded onto the ground.

“There!”

“That tree!”

Pittman’s shoes touched the top of the wall. He swung his legs toward it, felt a solid surface, no razor wire or chunks of glass along the top, and released his grip, sprawling on the top of the wall.

The gunshot was deafening, the muzzle flash startlingly bright. A second shot was so dismaying that Pittman acted without thinking, flipping sideways off the top of the wall. Heart pounding, he dangled. The rough wall scraped against his overcoat. He didn’t know what was below him, but he heard one of his pursuers trying to climb the tree.

Another man shouted, “Use the gate!”

Pittman let go. His stomach swooped as he plummeted.

Exhaling forcefully, Pittman struck the ground sooner than he anticipated. The ground was covered with grass, mushy from rain. He bent his knees, tucked in his elbows, dropped, and rolled, trying desperately to minimize the impact. That was the way a skydiver he had once interviewed had explained how parachutists landed when they were using conventional equipment. Bend, tuck, and roll.

Pittman prayed it would work. If he sprained an ankle, or worse, he would be helpless when his pursuers searched this side of the wall. His only hope would be to hide. But where? As he had swung toward the top of the wall, his impression of the dark area behind it had been of unnerving open space.

Fortunately he had an alternative to being forced to try to hide. Using the momentum of his roll, he surged to his feet. His hands stung. His knees felt sore. But that discomfort was irrelevant. What mattered was that his ankles supported him. His legs didn’t give out. He hadn’t sprained or broken anything.

On the other side of the barrier, Pittman’s hunters cursed and ran. Noises in a tree suggested that one of them continued to climb toward the top of the wall.

His chest heaving, Pittman charged forward. The murky lawn seemed to stretch on forever. In contrast with the estate from which he’d just escaped, there weren’t any shrubs. There were hardly any trees.