John Gilstrap - At all costs

The desperate tone and frantic look were new to Travis. He’d never seen his father so distraught. Whatever was happening, it was far more serious than anything that had ever happened to them before. Terrified, he found himself running down the hallway, distantly aware of the fact that running was against the rules.

His dad had a gun! And he looked ready to use it. He looked anxious to use it. What the hell is going on?

As they charged together down the glossy, linoleum-tiled hallway, Travis had to take two strides for every one of Jake’s. They reached the end and exploded out into the sunlight, taking a hard left and sprinting toward the hill which led to the street.

“Are we running from the police?” Travis gasped as he struggled alongside Jake to climb the grassy slope.

If only you knew, Jake thought. “I’ll explain in the car.”

Jake scaled the steep slope with long strides, his feet slipping on the damp grass. He fell hard, face-first, but lost only a second or two before he was back scrambling up the hill. Two steps forward, one step back.

Travis slowed after two falls, but Jake grabbed a fistful of his backpack and yanked hard. “Run, goddammit!” he hissed.

As they cleared the top of the hill, Jake nearly cheered when he saw the van, still running, still where he left it, still on an empty street.

Back on flat ground, Travis continued to run, but Jake yanked him to a stop. “No, walk now. And get in the van.”

“Whose car is this?”

“It’s ours. Now get inside.” Jake quick-walked his son to the rear double doors and pulled them open.

“Where do I sit?” It was a cargo van, for crying out loud! No chairs, no windows, just two lines of parallel shelving running down each side in the back. All the way to the front, Travis could see his mom behind the wheel, looking even more terrified than his dad.

“Just pick a spot and get in,” Jake told him, pulling him forward by his arm.

Again, Travis wriggled free. “No,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.” None of this was right. These people weren’t his parents. They looked the same, but these were not his parents. He felt as if he were living some science fiction movie, where alien invaders take the form of other people. Fear gripped his insides, and he refused to move. Not until someone told him what the hell was going on.

“Travis, there’s no time for this. Now get in.”

“You’re scaring me!” Travis shouted, loud enough to draw attention if anyone was listening.

“Get in the goddamn van!” Jake grabbed his son in a bear hug.

“Put me down!”

Carolyn was ready to panic, her eyes never moving from the spot at the head of the street where the cops would rematerialize any minute. “Oh, God, Travis,” she pleaded. “Don’t yell!”

In a flash, Jake realized the futility of the struggle, and he let the boy go. “Listen to me, Travis,” he explained urgently. “I know this scares you, and that none of it makes sense, but you have got to get into the van, and we have got to get moving. The police think we’ve done something that we’ve never done, and they are just a block away from us right now.”

“Jake, hurry!” Carolyn was coming unglued.

He ignored her. “I promise I’ll explain it all as soon as we’re down the road a bit. But right now you’ve just got to trust me. If you don’t get in the van right now, your mom and I will be killed. It’s that simple.”

Travis’s mind reeled. Whatever happened to detention slips and lectures from Mr. Menefee? Those were problems he could comprehend. Whatever happened to just getting the shit kicked out of you by Terry Lampier?

“Please, Travis!” his mom begged. She was frantic.

This was wrong. He should just run away-toward the cops, not away from them. His brain screamed these things at him, even as he climbed inside the van and allowed himself to be swallowed up in darkness as the doors closed.

“Oh, honey, please hurry,” Carolyn begged as Jake opened the passenger-side door. She pulled away from the curb the instant her husband’s butt landed heavily in the seat. After completing a sweeping U-turn that brought the front wheels of the van over the top of the curb across the street, she aimed the van toward the Confederate Trail and on toward safety.

“Watch your speed,” Jake warned. “Shoot for two miles over the limit.”

“Somebody tell me what’s going on!” Travis insisted.

In the side-view mirror, Carolyn saw a cop car turn the corner at the top of the hill. “Shit,” she spat. “Here they come.”

Jake whirled in his seat and saw the flashing blue lights in the distance. “Damn.” He struggled out of his seat and crouched behind Carolyn’s headrest to get a look at what she saw in the mirror. “Okay, listen to me,” he said quickly. “We can bluff our way out of this.”

“How?” Panic had turned Carolyn’s voice reedy.

“By being friendly,” Jake soothed. “Listen, they’re not looking for a van, they’re looking for a Subaru or a Celica. They’re not looking for you, they’re looking for me.”

“They’re looking for both of us.”

Jake shrugged, noting the edge of competitiveness in her voice. “Well, both of us weren’t in the school just now. Hey, it’s the best hunch I’ve got. Who knows? Maybe they won’t even pull us over.”

Crouched low, Jake duck-walked back to his son, who looked absolutely terrified. “God, Dad, what’s happening?”

Jake looked at Travis for a long moment, wracking his brain for a simple answer. “We’re escaping,” he said simply. “And as frightening and unfair as it might seem, you’re a part of it.” If Travis appreciated the candor, his face didn’t show it. Jake reached up to one of the shelves and pulled down two green wool Army blankets. “Here,” he said. “Get under this, and don’t make a sound.”

Travis eyed him warily. “Why?”

Jake scooted in closer, until he was nearly nose-to-nose with his son, and grew suddenly very intense. “Travis, listen to me, okay? Things are pretty desperate right now. You can’t keep asking me to explain everything as it happens. Just do it for me. We need to stay invisible.”

Travis’s sky-blue eyes grew wide and wet. Poor kid was scared to death and didn’t even know why. But he nodded and slipped the blanket over his head.

“They’re pulling me over,” Carolyn announced from up front.

Jake dropped to his hands and knees and crawled to the rear corner opposite the one occupied by Travis. With the Glock still out and ready, he covered himself up to his chin with the blanket, noting the sound of the tires crunching gravel as they pulled to a stop on the shoulder. “Remember, Travis,” he whispered, “not a sound.”

The green blob nodded.

“And you remember, Carolyn,” he whispered loudly, “you’re Carrie Durflinger now.” As an afterthought, Jake reached up and locked the back door.

Carolyn inhaled deeply through her nose, held the air, then let it go silently through pursed lips. This newest strategy wasn’t part of the plan, but she supposed it made sense. After Jake’s visit to the school, the police would be looking primarily for him, right? And they’d be looking for him in a different car. This little exercise merely bet their lives on the assumption that the cops wouldn’t make the connection. She started shivering again. The stakes were way too high.

Her first and most immediate problem, she realized, was the. 380 in her own hand. Certainly, she didn’t want it out in plain sight, but there wasn’t time to put it away. She compromised by slipping it under her right thigh, thoroughly unconvinced that she’d be able to use it even if she had to.

As she pulled the van to a stop, the police cruiser stopped with her, pulling in close to her rear bumper. She could see the flash of two badges through the cops’ windshield. For the longest time, they just sat there, lights flashing their frenetic displays, but no one moving.