The Exquisite Corpse Volume 2 – Part 5: Nothing But Darkness

Chapter 13

5:30 p.m.

Ronald Reagan Turnpike

Near Sweetwater, FL

Troy’s monkey-shit brown Hyundai smells of stale fast food.

20 minutes into their escape, a gas tank light flashes an intermittent red E.

“We need gas,” Katja says.

April grunts. “Give me directions. Where’s the nearest station?”

“Ahead, four, five miles.”

They are running in the dark, lights off, the road barely visible in front of them. They knew the helicopter had landed, and so far, it wasn’t visible. Maybe it hasn’t taken off again? They check the rear view and side mirrors: no vehicle behind, no lights in the air. April is counting on getting farther away, putting enough distance between their vehicle and any pursuit, so that they can get lost, camouflaged in traffic. She runs the engine as hard as possible, but it’s a Hyundai. It acts as if anything above 55 would cause it to shake apart. They can see the overhead sign atop a pole declare GAS in bright illuminated letters.

“Is there a highway, a well-traveled road nearby?”

Katja shrugs. “Maybe?” Katja had never paid attention, had never really driven anywhere on her own. Her father’s men had usually driven her for ‘reasons of safety.’ Safety from what, she was beginning to learn.

“First, we get gas,” April pulls into the station, “then we get lost.”

The pumps are a no name brand, self-serve. “Check the glove compartment for some money, anything. I don’t want to gas and dash. Best not to get the cops on us too.”

“Allow me.”

With a flourish deserving of a magic trick, Katja reaches into her pocket and pulls out a shiny black credit card. “Don’t go anywhere without it,” she smiles.

A search of the glove compartment yields an X-Acto knife, a small caliber .22 five shot knock off, a box of bullets, and a few crumpled bills. There’s some loose change in the middle armrest compartment, along with a pair of binoculars. Troy’s measly treasures.

“Useful?” Katja asks, handling the gun.

April laughs. “If we were planning on shooting rats down at the city dump, maybe.”

“There’s also this,” Katja says, suddenly serious. She tosses the small box over. “Ribbed for your pleasure,” she grins.

“Troy is one considerate man, first his car, now this.”

Opening the box, April notices half the condoms gone. “Troy’s a player.”

Both girls say, “Mrs Q!” and start laughing.

In the store, April tosses Gatorade, granola bars, beef jerky, chocolate, three burner phones, a handful of $25.00 prepaid phone cards, and a three-fold state map on the counter.

“Road trip?” the sleepy-eyed clerk asks.

“You bet,” says Katja.

They add a pair of cheap sunglasses, two t-shirts – one that brightly yelled – “These Colors Don’t Run”, and the other – “Keep on Truckin’, Mama.” They also grab two long sleeve zippered sweatshirts and some flavored lip gloss. It’s a large pile. April throws on two empty two-gallon plastic gas containers.

“Planning on doing some grass cutting?” the somewhat less sleepy-eyed clerk asks. “Sure am,” Katja says, plunking down the card. “After the road trip.”

The card goes through.

They fill the car and the gas cans, which they place in the trunk. Then they set off, following the attendant’s directions to the main road.

***

Just as the Hyundai departs, the now wide-awake clerk receives a phone call.

“What? Who? Is there something wrong with the card, I mean my butt is on the line here… okay, so the card’s good. Yeah, two of them, they just left here, I think they’re headed to the highway…”

***

The entrance ramp looms directly ahead. The girls begin their access and head a whirring sound somewhere above. Twisting their heads, they can see the helicopter’s running lights. A searchlight jerks around, unsteady, highlighting the sides of the road. April stands on the accelerator. Suddenly, in the rear view, April sees the flash of two distinct sets of elevated headlights, two oversized SUVs, she guesses. Those vehicles barrel forward. The Hyundai’s straining engine drowns out the whirring. There are too many cars up ahead. They’ll have to merge into heavy traffic on the highway.

One of the large SUVs bangs the Hyundai’s bumper. The lane beside them has a small space, but a Chevy truck, approaches quickly in that lane, trying to prevent them from merging. April swears, and with a swerve, fills the space, forcing the Chevy over. The ball-cap wearing driver gestures wildly and shouts. Shots begin to rain down from the helicopter, pinging wildly through traffic, kicking up solid chunks of roadway concrete. The Hyundai lurches further, losing itself in the traffic. April watches behind as a vehicle spins out, hits another, which hits another. Soon there are distant flames. The helicopter moves away from the chaos and up into the darkness.

“Do you think,” Katja says, “that they think…?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know what to think.” April pauses, “Strip open one of those phones. It’s time to call Joyce.”

Chapter 14

5:45 p.m.

Ronald Reagan Turnpike

Outside Sweetwater, FL

Sarah knows the way to the Tiger Lady’s place.

“I used to fuck a guy who works for her,” she tells Joyce.

It shouldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes to get out there from here, but some kind of fiery pile-up has traffic stopped going in the opposite direction, and the rubberneckers and emergency vehicles mean their side is just creeping along, too.

The sun presses down into the blacktop and the Tercel’s A/C was shot. Sarah digs a car wash flyer out of the pocket in her door and fans herself. Joyce is used to the heat.

“I saw a TV show about a guy who kept tigers once,” says Joyce. “He was a nut job.”

“I only met Mrs. Q once. That’s what they call her, Mrs. Q.”

“Is there a Mr. Q?” asks Joyce.

“Not that I know of. Troy, that’s the guy I knew, he told me she’s mostly into women, but will basically fuck anything when she gets in the mood. She likes to watch, too. Gave me $500 to let her sit in a chair in the corner of her own bedroom while Troy fucked me on her bed.”

“Anything else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know anything else about her? If she’s hooked up with The Outlaws she’s not stupid, and she’s not sweet. What about security? Were there guards? Cameras?”

“Not that I remember,” Sarah says. “Oh, well, I didn’t see it, but Troy said there was a dungeon under the house.”

“A dungeon?”

“I know. It sounds like a joke. I assumed he meant a basement, maybe with S&M shit. Troy was always trying to make himself sound like a badass. He kept this shitty little pistol in his glovebox. Liked to call it his ‘cannon.’”

Joyce considers this. If The Outlaws used Mrs. Q’s place as a hideout, they might also use it to store things, like cash or drugs. And people, like Annalisa. Before she disappeared, the rich girl was crying about Satanism and chainsaws, and Joyce knows that Flint Ingersoll’s old lady fancied herself a witch.

“You think Annalisa knew where Barry was keeping that heroin?”

“That’s my understanding,” says Sarah. “I have no idea what she saw in him.”

Traffic starts moving. Joyce is looking out the window, but Sarah can’t see her eyes behind her dark glasses. Who is this woman? Had she gotten lucky, hooking up with her? What chance did she have of getting that heroin on her own? And what chance did she have to get Helen back if she didn’t have the money to get an apartment so she could show the judge she had a steady place to live? Was this hard woman in her passenger seat her ticket home? Or a ticket to some fresh hell?

“He must have had her thinking she was some kind of queenpin,” Sarah says finally, musing. “Girls like that, all the money in the world, but no power. No control. It’s all daddy’s purse strings, daddy’s shadow. She thinks she’s running wild, but she’s just reacting. I bet she’s never had anything she could really call her own. Anything she earned. I bet she does know where it is.”

“And she doesn’t strike me as a person who will hold up under the kind of questioning The Outlaws are likely to engage in.”

“Especially in a dungeon.”

“Especially in a dungeon,” Joyce agrees.

There’s a sandwich shop at the turn-off to the tiger sanctuary and Sarah pulls in.

“I need to pee,” she says.

“Keep going,” says Joyce.

“I’ll just be a minute.”

Joyce pulls out her gun.

“Jesus!”

“That your daughter there?” says Joyce, motioning to the photo of Helen.

Sarah nods.

“What’s her name?”

“Please don’t hurt me.”

“I’ve got a daughter, too. Her name is April. She’s 20-years-old and she was kidnapped this morning. If I don’t come up with one-million dollars by tomorrow, the men who have her will start cutting off her body parts.”

“Jesus.”

“I don’t have time to fuck around. I don’t have time to worry about whether the cashier in there is on Flint Ingersoll’s payroll and has our description and is going to call Flint and tell him where we’re headed. I need to get to this tiger lady and see what I’m dealing with and I need to do it now. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Good.” Joyce lowers her gun. “Now drive. You can pee behind the car when we get there.”

Chapter 15

Ronald Reagan Turnpike

6:05 p.m.

April grips the steering wheel with her left hand while punching her mother’s number into the cell with her right. The call goes right to voicemail.

“Damn, God damn, shit,” she curses. She hits redial, getting the same result. She hands the phone to Katja. “Keep redialing. If someone answers, give me the phone – fast.”

Katja does as she is told.

                                                                        ***

Joyce and Sarah near the entrance of the tiger sanctuary, classic rock still blaring from the radio. Ted Fucking Nugent, ‘Cat Scratch Fever’. Joyce chuckles at the irony. When the song ends, she hears a faint buzzing from her backpack. Her phone, she realizes. The number isn’t one she recognizes. There were 17 missed calls from it – someone obviously trying to reach her. The phone buzzes again. She answers.

“Hello?”

There’s a moment’s hesitation.

“Mom? Mom? It’s me.”

“April? Where the fuck are you?”

“I… We escaped.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Katja, Dervishi’s daughter. We’re on the freeway, on our way out of Homestead.”

“Jesus Christ, that’s where we are.”

“Mom, who is ‘we’?”

“Never mind. Are you going north or south? “

“North.”

“Good, stay on the phone.”

April hears her mother tell someone to turn the fuck around.

“Drive until you get to an exit,” her mother tells her.

***

 “What the hell are you doing,” Sarah screams.

Joyce points the pistol at her.

“Pull over,” she orders.

Sarah does as she is told and Joyce collects her .38.

“Get out,” Joyce orders.

Sarah starts to argue as she exits the car. They are on a rural road; kudzu grows thick on both sides.

Joyce gets out of the passenger seat.

“What about the money?” Sarah asks.

“Don’t need it anymore. My daughter escaped. That means I don’t need you anymore either.”

Without hesitation, without caring that she is about to make a little girl an orphan, she shoots Sarah in the face. Quickly, she rolls the body into the roadside brush and drives away.

“Mom,” April screams. “Are you okay? Who’s shooting?”

“It’s okay,” Joyce says. “Where are you?”

“Coming up on exit 34.”

The day has turned to nothing more than a red smear in the west. Night is coming on fast. Darkness is their friend.

Checking the GPS on her phone, Joyce sees that April is only 20 miles away. If she makes a right off the freeway, the road will dead end at a canal. Perfect, she thinks.

“Take the exit and go right. I’m 15 minutes behind you. Slow down when you get on the secondary road. And stay on the phone.”

Joyce stabs the accelerator. Traffic is light, she stays in the slow lane doing just under 85.

Damn, she thinks. Could it be this easy? Meet April in a few minutes and be on their way? But to where?  She’s tired of running and doesn’t know where to go next, doesn’t know who can help her at this point. But, the thought of having April with her gives her hope. She realizes none of what she had done in her past was a game. Even though her enemies played ruthlessly – and for keeps.

All she wanted was to retire, stare at a lake, read good books and sip good bourbon in the afternoon. She had that life – briefly – but now it seemed so long ago.

Her thoughts are interrupted.

“Mom, we took the exit.”

Joyce sees a sign saying that she is two miles from the exit.

“I’m right behind you. Drive to the end of the road.”

April continues down the back road, the Hyundai’s headlights illuminating nothing but darkness. Minutes later she sees lights behind her.

“Mom, is that you?”

“Yep, I see your taillights.”

Joyce pulls up behind the Hyundai, turning off the headlights. She grabs a roll of duct tape from her pack.

“Get what you need from the car,” Joyce says.

She helps the girls load their gear into the back seat.

Then, she tapes the gas pedal to the floorboard, reaches through the window, shifts into drive. The Hyundai bucks forward, gets airborne as it breeches the lip of the canal. There is a loud splash and as the car sinks, the only trace is a dim glow from the headlights.

Joyce then points a pistol at Katja. Hands the roll of tape to April.

“Tape her wrists, ankles and mouth.

“But…”

“Just do it,” Joyce orders.

Only when Katja is bound and stashed in the back seat do Joyce and April hug.

“Everything will be okay,” Joyce tells her. But the words sound hollow, both knowing they may not be the truth.

***

They return to the freeway and continue north.

“Let me use that phone,” Joyce says to April. “Smart move, using a phone that can’t be traced.”

She dials a number. A man answers on the second ring.

“Hello, Zygmund,” Joyce says. “The tables are turned. I have Katja. If you want to forgive that debt that has nothing to do with me, you can have her back – and you must promise there will be no retribution.”

There is a moment’s hesitation. Then laughter.

“I will hunt you and your daughter down. And your death will be brutal.”

“Yeah?” Joyce says. “I’m tired of this shit. It works both ways, Zygmund. You of all people should know that.”

She grabs the pistol, turns and empties it into his daughter.

“Come for me and you will die the same way.”

She ends the call and drives on through the night.

To be continued…