Brian Keene - Kill Whitey

Otar ducked inside the Lexus, huddling beneath the dashboard. I couldn’t see him or Whitey from where I crouched. Their driver’s side door still hung open. Quickly, I shoved Yul into the passenger seat, keeping my head low.

“What are you doing?”

“Stay down,” I warned. “And brace yourselves.”

Laying the 9mm on my lap, I dropped the car into drive and floored it. The Hyundai shot forward and slammed into the Lexus. I threw it into reverse, backed up, and then rammed them again, clipping the driver’s side door. The door snapped off. Our tires bumped up over it. We pulled alongside them, the cars scraping against each other with a horrible metallic screech.

Otar must have been stunned. Before he could react, I grabbed the 9mm, stuck it through the window and shot him in the chin. The entire bottom half of his face disappeared. I’d been aiming at his forehead. Otar flopped in the seat, his hands and legs jittering uncontrollably. Between the seats, I saw a flash of white hair as Whitey jostled to get lower. I took aim and fired again. White turned red. I think I may have been laughing. Whitey screamed.

Yul cowered next to me, sobbing. His legs were curled protectively in the fetal position, and he’d wrapped his arms around his head.

“I got him,” I said. “I got the fucker.”

“No,” Sondra cried from the backseat. “You not kill him.”

For a second, I didn’t understand what she was saying. I thought she was suddenly regretful that I’d killed Whitey. But then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Whitey sat up in the back of the Lexus and pointed a pistol at us. He was smiling. The side of his head was scarlet and gore dripped from his hair. Something dangled on the side of his head, smacking against his cheek. After a moment, I realized that it was his ear. I’d shot his ear off. It hung by just a thin strand of gristle.

Whitey spoke, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

I stomped the gas pedal and metal screeched again as the Hyundai tore free of the battered Lexus. I dropped the 9mm into my lap again. There was a gunshot, and Yul’s back window shattered, spraying fragments of glass all over the interior. For a second, I thought maybe my gun had gone off accidentally, but it was Whitey shooting at us. Sondra screamed, but I had no time to turn around and make sure she was okay. I was too busy steering us towards the exit, making sure I didn’t mow down our fleeing co-workers. The Lexus’s car door was stuck in our undercarriage and we dragged it about twenty yards before it finally came loose and clattered behind us. The Hyundai shuddered. Yul did, too.

“Oh God,” he moaned. “Oh God, oh God, oh Jesus fucking Christ!”

As we bounced out onto the road, I glanced in the rearview mirror. Sondra sat up, picking shards of glass from her hair and brushing them off the seat.

“You okay?” I asked. “Are you hit?”

“No. Am fine. But we must go faster.”

“Fuck that,” I said. “This shit ends now. I’m calling the cops.”

“My fucking car,” Yul cried. “They shot at us. Oh sweet fucking Jesus, what was that shit? Who were those guys?”

I’d never heard Yul curse as much as I had in the last two minutes. Instead of answering him, I focused on the road.

“No police,” Sondra said, pointing behind us. “Is not time.”

I looked up and saw that she was right. The Lexus was swerving out of the parking lot, directly on our ass. Whitey was behind the wheel, driving on a flat tire and missing a driver’s side door.

“Fuck,” I shouted. “What does it take to stop this guy? He’s like the fucking Energizer Bunny!”

Sondra bowed her head. “Da. He is like bunny. He keep going and going till he catch us. Is no stopping Whitey.”

“Great,” Yul groaned. “You picked a fight with the god-damned Terminator. He’ll be back.”

“Shut up, Yul.”

I focused on driving.

Things got worse.

Yul threw up on himself. One moment he’d been pawing at my shirt, begging me to stop the car, demanding an explanation, pleading with me to tell him what was happening. Suddenly, he leaned forward and threw up all over his lap. Sounded like he was choking. The stench was overpowering, but I ignored it, focusing instead on Whitey. The Russian hadn’t gained on us. The damage to the Lexus had slowed him down and I didn’t intend on giving him a chance to catch up.

“Pull over,” Yul spat. Long ropes of drool dripped from his chin. “I’m sick.”

“Can’t pull over now, man. Hold it!”

His argument was cut short by another round of retching.

“Is still coming,” Sondra said.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Whitey’s Lexus or Yul’s puke. Both were insistent. I pressed the gas pedal down as far as it would go. The engine protested and the speedometer crept to ninety. The car shook, clearly not liking being pushed like this. Behold the inherent problems with a four-cylinder engine. To make matters worse, we had less than a quarter tank of gas left. As I watched it, the needle crept lower, edging into the red.

“Damn.” I slapped the steering wheel with my palm.

Sondra leaned forward. “What is wrong?”

“We might be fucked.”

Yul vomited again. Puke splattered all over his shoes and the Hyundai’s floor. Gagging, Sondra rolled down her window. I hollered at Yul to stop it.

“Listen,” Sondra said. “Is police sirens.”

I heard them, too. They sounded like they were all around us, but when I scanned the horizon, I didn’t see any. We were on a narrow service road, just minutes from GPS and the Interstate. The cops were probably converging on our workplace right now, coming in from different locations around the county. When they learned that we’d fled, and got the make and model of our vehicle, they would spread out and search the area. Probably put up road blocks, too, just like on television. Call in S.W.A.T. or bring out the police chopper and shit. Throw down some of those spike strips. We needed to get off the road and ditch the car immediately—if not sooner.

I made a sharp left and swerved across the road, heading towards an abandoned industrial complex—the natural landscape of Central Pennsylvania. We still had GPS and places like the Harley Davidson and Starbucks plants or the paper mill, but they stood alone, tenacious islands in a post-apocalyptic landscape of shuttered factories and dilapidated warehouses, stubbornly refusing to give up the blue-collar ghost to the Chinese and South American invaders. The North American Free Trade Agreement and others like it were the tactical nuclear strikes that destroyed us in the end. Now, our state was a monument to the shattered dreams of a hundred thousand working class heroes. It sometimes seemed like if you threw a rock in York County, you’d hit a deserted industrial park. A few of them had been rented out or converted into apartments, but most of them were populated only by spiders and rats and other scavengers—homeless people, guys down on their luck, scouring the buildings for copper and aluminum and other scrap they could sell at the junkyard. A day’s work for a day’s pay—enough change for a bottle of cheap booze or some meth. These places were built with blood and sweat, but it was despair that held them upright. Maybe it’s like that all across America. I don’t know. All I know is that it was fucking depressing.

A wire-mesh fence surrounded the site, but the crooked gate hung open, damaged by previous trespassers. We barreled right through the gap. Our bumper side-swiped the rusty gate, sending it crashing against the fence. Behind us, the Lexus slowed, barely making the turn because of the flat tire. Sparks flew up from beneath the car. Whitey was running on the rim. Yet still he followed, pushing the battered car onward. Sondra was right. He kept coming and coming. The Energizer Bunny of Death.