Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

And, oh, let’s not forget another rider.

A big dumb-ass in the trunk.

The car started up. Tad heard another car engine turn over nearby. Okay. That means there may be five. Or more. Someone has got to drive the other car, and there could be someone with him. And if I weren’t inside the trunk I could probably count them and be sure.

The car began to move.

“You know where Humper’s Hill is, boy?” the chief asked. The chief was sitting in the backseat, the automatic close to Kayla’s head. Harry was at the wheel. Joey’s body was propped on the backseat across from the chief. Sergeant Pale was in his car, following.

“Never heard of it,” Harry said. No use making it easy.

“Sure you know. It was part of one of those sound things…. All right, you listen to me. We’ll do it your way. I’ll give directions. Get cute, and your girl gets one in the back of the head…. Goddamn, your friend here stinks.”

“Being dead will do that,” Harry said.

“You’ll be stinking soon enough,” the chief said. “You thought that body on my couch was some funny shit, didn’t you? Well, when they find your bodies, and who knows when that’ll be, you’ll have this guy with you, all trussed up. And the way I’ll see it, if I’m still chief, it’ll be read like this: You killed him. You and your girlfriend. For what, who knows? But you trussed him up, killed him for whatever reason…. Fun, maybe. Just to see if you could. And you took him out to Humper’s Hill to dump him, but, goddamn if you didn’t fuck up, and the car gear slipped, and in a moment of panic or excitement you put your foot on the gas thinking it was the brake, and damned if the whole kit and fucking caboodle of you didn’t go over the side.

“Out there, there’s a pretty good drop, youngsters, and it’s my feeling it’ll kill you. And if it doesn’t, well, there’s always me climbing down there and giving you a tire iron to the head. No one will be the wiser to what happened. No connection to me. And, hey, they may never find you. Considering most people go there to get laid, you’re just gonna be something for the kudzu to crawl over.

“Another way you can look at it to make you feel a little less blue is, you’ll be part of the cycle of life. You know, the worms, the soil, all that shit. I think about death, I think about that, and it gives me some comfort. How about you? Cheered up?”

“Fuck you,” Harry said.

The chief leaned over and clipped Harry’s ear with the automatic. Harry swerved.

“Pay attention to the goddamn road. You’ve turned over your boy back here.”

Joey, legs still bound behind him with his hands, lay on his side on the seat now. He looked like an old man from the decay. His face hung loose, and parts of it were coming off on the seat covers.

“Goddamn,” the chief said, and rolled down his window.

Tad caught bits and pieces of the conversation. He could also smell Joey. The trunk was filling with an odor like a slaughterhouse.

He pulled the tire iron out from under him, then removed his belt, took out his Swiss army knife, and carefully began cutting from the belt a long strip of leather. He found a loop in the trunk lock and ran the strip through it. He pulled the loose end of the strip back and looped it around his left wrist so when he popped the trunk he could keep it from swinging open. He took the tire iron and put it in under the lock and applied pressure. It was like trying to lever the world with a toothpick.

Following the chief’s direction, Harry went the route he already knew but didn’t admit to. He thought about Tad. If he looked around, he was bound to have figured out something was wrong. Surely he didn’t just get out of the trunk and go to the movies. That didn’t make sense.

But where was he?

He looked out of the corner of his eye at Kayla. She was steaming, he could see that. She was past being scared. She was starting to get mad. He had seen that look before, when she punched his ass long ago, and the other day when she slapped him, pushed his arm behind his back.

She was pissed.

Pissed she had been found out so easy.

Pissed she had been surprised and tied to a chair.

Pissed she had been burned with cigarettes, threatened with a lit cigar to her nether regions.

Pissed she had betrayed him.

He wished he could tell her it was okay. He understood. Pain is pain is pain, and no one is that tough.

Well, maybe Tad. He had a feeling Tad might be as tough as they came.

Tad put the tire tool down and took a deep breath.

This sucked. He was going to go over a cliff in a car trunk. He had thought of a lot of different ways he might die, but that wasn’t one of them. Novel, he had to admit, but not his choice. Probably, if he were ever found, he would have a spare tire up his ass, maybe a taillight in his teeth.

The situation was, as the philosophers said, not good.

He held his phone light close to the lock. So far he had managed to put some scratches on it, but when it came to scoring: lock, one. Tad, the big old fucking shit-covered goose egg.

He studied the lock for a time, then took out his pocketknife again.

He opened the pick blade, stuck it in the lock, went to work, hoping he’d hit a combination.

He hadn’t been at it thirty seconds before he broke the pick off in the lock with an unpleasant snapping sound.

Tad folded up what was left of the pick, put the knife in his pocket, and shifted so that he was on his side, his head supported by his arm.

He said to himself: Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

After a few seconds of continued communion with the universe, he returned to the tire tool, went back to trying to quietly lever the trunk lid open.

57

When they started up the road toward Humper’s Hill, the chief said, “Stop.”

Harry stopped.

“Put it in gear, slide over next to her.”

Harry did as instructed.

The chief quickly came over the seat, fell in behind the wheel. He stretched his right arm out behind Harry and Kayla and put the gun to Kayla’s temple, rested his left hand on the steering wheel.

“Anyone gets squirrelly, I’ll blow your gal’s head all over the inside of this wreck. Got me?”

“Yeah,” Harry said.

“Figured I’d drive the rest of the way, case you wanted to take me over the cliff with you. You thought about it, didn’t you?”

Harry didn’t answer.

When the car stopped, Tad, having finally broken the lock, and having mashed the back of his knuckles, lifted up the trunk just enough for him to slide out, pulled the lid closed with the strap of his belt, and tied it off where the trunk lid snapped closed.

Then he rolled off the road like a tumblebug, out into the darkness and behind a clutch of trees. The car went on up the hill, and then a second car came up the road, lights bright.

Okay, Tad thought. I’m loose. I’m angry as a hive of hornets. And Harry is in trouble.

He put his hands in his coat pockets, found the darts again by being poked.

“Ouch,” he said, watching the second car climb up the hill.

Tad moved through the darkness, climbing alongside the road as fast as he could go. He couldn’t remember how far it was to the top of the hill, but he thought it wasn’t far. He certainly hoped so. His legs were getting tired, and he felt a little winded, and the limbs and brush were tearing at his body, and he needed to pee. These days he always needed to pee.

He took a deep breath, put everything out of his mind, continued to climb. A wind was moving gently through the trees, and he imagined it at his back, lifting him up the hill.

The chief parked the car at the edge of the cliff, put it in gear, got out, and poked the automatic through the open window. “What I’d like you to do, Mr. Sound Man, is slide back behind the wheel, and then put it in gear and put your foot on the gas.”