David Morrell - Desperate Measures

At once his pistol no longer worked. In dismay, he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The.45 felt off balance in his hand. Its slide remained back, its firing chamber open. Heart sinking, he understood. He had used all his ammunition. He had more in his jacket pocket, but his pursuers were so close that there wasn’t time for him to reload, and he didn’t have confidence in his ability to remove the pistol’s magazine and refill it in the dark.

Not while men were shooting at him.

Not while he was on the run, which he immediately began doing, scurrying uphill through the murky forest. Several times he bumped painfully against trees. In the darkness, he failed to see deadfalls and stumps and tripped, losing his balance, hitting the ground. Each time, he ignored his pain and surged upward, moving faster, harder, spurred by the noises of gunmen chasing him. Flashlights blazed. Men shouted.

Pittman strained to figure out where he was. He had entered on this side of the valley-that much he was sure of. But there the trees had stopped on a ridge, giving way to grassland that sloped toward the meadow. Here the trees were at the bottom of the slope. In which direction was the grassy hill? He had to find it. He had to get to that ridge. Because past the trees and the fence beyond it, Jill was waiting with the car.

“I hear him!”

“Over there!”

“Spread out!”

Pittman raised his right arm to shield his eyes from needled branches. Enveloped by darkness, he climbed with less energy, his legs weary, his lungs protesting. He kept angling to the right, choosing that direction arbitrarily, needing some direction, hoping to reach the grassy slope.

Without warning he broke free, nearly falling on the open hill. Hurry. Got to reach the top before they’re out of the trees, before they see me. His only advantage was that he was no longer making noise, snapping branches, crashing through bushes, scraping past trees. But the gunmen were definitely making noise. Pittman could hear them charging through the underbrush behind him, and responding to an intense flood of adrenaline, he braced his legs, took a deep breath, then struggled up the slope, its incline becoming steeper, its wet grass slippery.

Briefly his senses failed him. The next thing he realized, he was lumbering over the top of the ridge, men were yelling below him, their flashlights silhouetting him, and then he was past the ridgeline, entering more trees, colliding with the fence, clutching it, gasping.

“Here!” a man yelled behind him, flashlight bobbing.

Pittman strained to climb the wooden fence, dropped to the other side, and staggered ahead, enveloped again by trees.

“Jill!” His voice was hoarse, his words forced. “Jill, it’s me! It’s Matt!”

“He’s not far ahead!” a man yelled.

“Jill! Where are you? I can’t see you! It’s me! It’s Matt!”

Flashlights reached the fence, their beams stabbing into the darkness, revealing Pittman among the trees.

A bullet nicked his jacket. Another singed his hair.

Gunshots roared among the trees. Pittman didn’t understand. His pursuers had been using silencers. Why would they have taken them off? Why would they want to make noise?

They didn’t. They hadn’t. The gunshots came from ahead of him. The men were sprawling on the ground behind the fence, yelling to one another to turn off their flashlights, to stop making themselves targets. Bullets struck the fence. The shots continued from ahead of Pittman.

“I’m here!” Jill screamed.

Pittman saw the muzzle flashes from the pistol she fired.

“I see you!”

“Stay down!” she yelled.

Pittman dropped to his hands and knees, scurrying among bushes, reaching her.

“Hurry! Get in the car!”

He opened the passenger door and flinched as the interior light came on, revealing him. After diving in, he slammed the door shut and watched in amazement as Jill-who was already in the car and had been firing through her open window-turned the ignition key, stomped the accelerator, and rocketed from a gap in the trees onto the narrow, winding country road.

“Thank God, thank God,” was all he could say. The words came out between his urgent attempts to breathe, his chest heaving, falling, his body shaking as sweat streamed off his face and soaked his clothes.

The Duster skidded around a sharp corner. Expertly controlling the car, Jill immediately increased speed. The car’s headlights revealed the twists and turns of the tree-flanked two-lane road.

Quickly Pittman turned to see if headlights followed them.

“Not yet,” Jill said. “They have to go back and use the lane from the school. The gate’s two miles away. By the time they get onto this road…”

She reached another straightaway and again increased speed.

“Thank God,” Pittman continued to murmur. “When I didn’t see you, when I yelled but you didn’t answer…”

“I didn’t know what to do. I heard shooting from the school, then something that sounded like fire alarms.”

“Yes.” Pittman caught his breath, explaining.

“I heard car engines,” Jill said. “Then there was shooting among the trees, and suddenly you came over the fence, stumbling toward me, yelling. The flashlights behind you, those men chasing you… All I could think of was that I had to distract them. You told me that to fire the pistol I didn’t need to cock it. I only had to pull the trigger. I didn’t bother trying to aim. I just leaned out the car window, pointed the gun up, and started shooting. My God, it holds a lot of bullets.”

“Fifteen.”

“And it jerks, and my ears are ringing from the noise.… When I saw where you were, I pointed the gun away from you and aimed toward the fence.”

She braked, steered sharply around a curve, and pressed harder on the accelerator.

Pittman shook his head in amazement. “Where did you learn to drive like…?”

“My father’s a nut about Porsches. One of the few father-daughter things he ever did was teach me about racing. If this car had a clutch and a standard shift, I could really show you about gaining speed around curves.”

Pittman’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“And you’re bleeding,” Jill said.

“What?”

“There’s blood smeared on your face, your hands, and your clothes. You must have scraped yourself on that wall or running through those trees. Or else…”

“Say it.”

“I hope you weren’t hit.”

“No. I don’t feel any pain.”

Jill stared ahead, speeding under a covered bridge.

“I said, I don’t feel any pain.”

“That’s not always a good sign.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes a wound traumatizes nerves in the area and stops them from sending messages.”

Shaking worse, Pittman felt along his legs, his torso, his arms. “Everything seems to be all right.” Surprising himself, he yawned and realized that he’d been doing so for quite a while. “What’s wrong with me? I’m worried I might have been shot and yet I can’t stop yawning.”

“Shock. The adrenaline’s wearing off. Your body’s telling you it needs a long rest.”

“But I don’t feel sleepy.”

“Right.” Jill turned on the car’s heater.

Pittman yawned again.

“Just to humor me,” Jill said, “why don’t you crawl in the backseat, stretch out as best you can, and close your eyes for a while?”

“The backseat. That reminds me.” With difficulty, Pittman squirmed into the darkness of the backseat and zipped open his gym bag.

“What are you doing?” Jill asked.

“Reloading. Hand me your pistol. I’ve got other magazines from the gunmen who were at your apartment. I’d better reload yours, too.”