Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

That would likely be the last chance Abby would have to move.

The generator caught on the second pull and clattered to life, belching out a cloud of exhaust. The kid plugged in a space heater, and the ceramic coils inside glowed red.

“Damn power outages,” he said. “They’re a bitch out here in the woods.”

He straightened, reached in his back pocket, withdrew a plastic mask, and pulled it over his face. It looked like the masks the fire crews wore at the speedway when they knew the fumes and smoke might threaten their lungs.

Abby understood things then. The kid intended to get plenty of booze in their bloodstream and let exhaust fumes fill the room; when it was over, he’d untie them. They’d look like a couple of clueless dead drunks.

“It’s not worth this,” Abby said. “Whatever you think we understand... we don’t.”

“I agree,” the kid said, voice muffled by the mask. “Want to stop me? Tell me the truth about who has seen those phones.”

Abby said, “This was why he didn’t roll the van.”

“Pardon?”

“I wasn’t wrong. Ramirez was attempting to hit them the whole time.”

“Remarkable detective work,” the kid said. “Keep this one around, Hank. She’s brilliant. She walks into your house, sees you tied up by a man with a gun, and suddenly realizes that there’s trouble afoot.”

He took a step closer to Abby and lowered himself so he was eye level with her. “Tell me who knows about the phones.”

“I already did.”

The kid shrugged and adjusted the generator’s choke until the engine was fighting between firing and flooding. The exhaust smoked blue in the white light of the lantern.

Her thumb tightened on the key fob, but she didn’t press it yet. If the kid intended to use the gun, he wouldn’t have gone through the effort of hauling the generator in here. The carbon monoxide from the generator wouldn’t knock them out for a while yet, even in a small space. Abby had time. Not much; it was going to be an awfully small window of opportunity and she’d have to move awfully fast, but she still had time.

“This is a stupid idea,” she said. “It won’t fool anyone. You want police to believe we just got drunk and passed out with the generator running? You’ll get caught. You’ll go to jail.”

The mask muffled his laugh. “You’d be surprised how many friends I’ve got around jails,” he said. “Some in cells, some in uniforms.”

Who the hell is this kid? “They’ll be able to tell that Hank had been tied up,” Abby said. “It’ll be obvious.” Her words came slowly and thickly, but the kid seemed to give them careful consideration. Then he spoke in a gentle voice, as if breaking news that it pained him to share.

“I don’t think you two are important enough to warrant intense scrutiny from a medical examiner.” He lifted his free hand, palm out, to make it clear that he’d meant no offense. “Now, I might be wrong. But... two hill-jack insurance investigators sitting in a shitty cabin, power out, heater cooking, and their blood full of alcohol? No, I don’t think it’s going to get the level of forensic study that you’re hoping for.”

“There’s a generator plug on the back deck,” Abby said. “Hank installed it. Nobody will believe we sat here with it inside.”

The mask nodded up and down. The voice from behind it said: “Your critique is duly noted.”

“It won’t work,” Abby said. Her tongue felt thick against the roof of her mouth. Too thick for just the whiskey.

Time’s running out. The window’s closing, your fuel is low, your tires are bad, and all these other assholes have more money under the hoods, but that doesn’t matter because you’ve got reflexes, you’ve got instinct, you’ve got...

She came back to awareness with a jerk, her subconscious kicking her awake.

The kid smiled. “Getting tired, Abby?”

“No.” And she wasn’t anymore; that last jolt of adrenaline had cleared some of the fog, but she knew she was running out of time fast. “I’m just telling you that this won’t work.”

“It seems I’ll have to try it simply to settle this debate.”

The foggy feeling from the whiskey was blending with the acrid fumes. She stared at the bottle and wondered whether she could grab it and slam it into the kid’s skull without getting shot. Wondered whether her motor skills were deteriorating as fast as her speech.

Going to have to try soon.

“How much did you already have, Hank?” Abby said, and Hank blinked sleepily at her and then refocused.

“It’s a bad deal,” Hank said thickly. “Shouldn’t have called you. Knew better. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t give up yet, champ,” the kid said, and his eyes flicked toward Hank.

Abby thought it was the best chance she’d get.

She punched the remote start on the key fob twice, taking care not to move the rest of her body. There was a slight lag, and then the motor growled and the running lights blinked on.

When it happened, Abby turned toward the sound with surprise, even though she’d been counting on it. It was this that sold the trick. The kid originally turned toward her, but when he saw Abby’s surprise, he, too, looked toward the yard. Then he leaned across the table to push back the window blinds.

Abby rose and grabbed the neck of the whiskey bottle. She didn’t pause to draw the bottle back or change its position, knowing that time was short; she simply swung it up in one continuous motion, aiming for the kid’s face. She moved well despite the fogginess in her brain, and she was sure the strike was going to work.

The kid’s speed was incredible.

Where his head had offered a clear shot, nothing but air waited.

Abby’s momentum carried her forward. The bottle flew from her hand and shattered off the wall in a cloud of glass and whiskey, and then she fell to the floor beside Hank’s chair. The kid had somehow pivoted and leaped in a single fluid motion, avoiding the contact and also maintaining his balance. He pointed the gun at Abby’s face. Above the mask, his eyes were bright with amusement.

“You’re quick,” he said. “Better than I’d have guessed.”

All of their attention was on each other, so when Hank moved, it surprised Abby as much as the kid. Hank’s chair lurched sideways and the hand that had been left untied so he could drink suddenly locked over the kid’s forearm.

The revolver fired; the shot went wide, the bullet sparking off the generator’s engine block. Hank overbalanced and fell, but he kept his hand on the kid’s arm and so they both went down while Abby tried to rise. Hank hit the floor with a splintering crack that Abby hoped was the chair and not his arm. The kid landed on the other side of Abby, twisting while he fell, composed and nimble. He would’ve made a clean landing if Abby hadn’t gotten in the way by sheer accident.

Her rising shoulder caught the kid’s knee and knocked him off balance, and when he fell, his gun hand landed squarely on the glowing grill of the space heater.

The burn achieved what neither Abby nor Hank had been able to — it made the kid finally drop the gun. Even as he howled in pain, though, he was already reaching for the weapon with the other hand, absolutely relentless.

Hank just beat him, managing to roll onto his side and over the gun. He was still bound to the chair, his free arm dangling uselessly now, clearly broken. He couldn’t have picked the gun up and fired it even if it had landed in his fingers. But he’d covered it with his body, and he looked up at Abby, his eyes wide and white, and said, “Run.”

Abby scrambled to her feet and started toward Hank, but he repeated his command, and this time it was a scream.