Читать книгу Undertow - R.M. Greenaway - Страница 4

Bitter End

Lance Liu was beginning to believe he wasn’t dead after all. He hurt all over, couldn’t see too well, couldn’t seem to move. But if he was dead, he would be pain-free, wouldn’t he? And probably serene, and looking down a tunnel of warm, bright light. He was distinctly being or doing none of that.

So he had survived. He blew out a shaky breath. He blinked at the murk above, all dark and dribbly, spattering erratic raindrops on his face. The tree was pissing on him, like it hadn’t done enough already. All around was tall grass, bushes. The bushes made him nervous. Would sure be nice to have his vision back. Damned shenanigans.

What had his mom always said?

Coming events cast their shadows before them.

Or I told you so.

After tonight, he was going to make some major changes in his life. Maybe return to church. He wanted to bring a hand to the side of his head and feel the damage, but couldn’t. Tried to shift his legs and couldn’t. Just needed to calm himself a bit. He tried to pray, stretched out under the giant tree that had smacked him twice. “Dear God …” he whispered, doing his best, because his best was all God required. “Forgive me my —” but a noise stopped him. He listened hard.

A car sped past above, wet tires on wet road. Was that the noise he had heard? He struggled to turn that way. He shouted out, “Hey! Help!”

The car was gone. Didn’t see his vehicle down here, didn’t see trouble, wouldn’t come to his rescue. Nobody would come to his rescue. The panic surged through him like a low-grade electric shock. He couldn’t keep lying here. He needed to get back to the family, make sure they were safe. He managed to flop a knee, up and down, and up again. Good. Not paralyzed.

He made more resolutions as he worked his other leg back to life and flexed his hands. Never rise to a taunt again.

That was what put him in this ditch. Taunts. The SUV dripped privilege, just glared cash, a big, boxy black-and-chrome Hummer telling him I’m rich; you’re a blue-collar shithead. All he had wanted was to level the field, make a buck, and take that guy down a notch. No face-to-face confrontation. No bloodshed. No harm done.

Didn’t happen that way.

* * *

How did it happen? Lance picked up the tail in Deep Cove, as instructed. He was led around town a bit, stopping at the liquor store and a KFC, and finally hitting the Upper Levels. All good, just two trucks tootling along the highway. Where it went wrong was the Hummer taking an off-ramp up a sparsely trafficked two-laner, leaving Lance exposed and vulnerable. Which would have been a really good time to back off. And he didn’t.

The Hummer sprinted away, topping a hundred in a sixty zone. Lance did his best to keep the vehicle in sight, trying to tail without looking like a tail. The Hummer swerved hard through a hairpin. Lance took the curve more cautiously, but his tires still squealed. At which point he was hit by an epiphany. “I don’t need this,” he declared. He dropped back so the Hummer’s wide-ass tail lights ahead shrank and converged into the darkness. “We don’t need this. Nobody needs this. I’m calling it off. Not just this, but all of it. Pack it in, moving back to Cowtown, with or without you, man.”

The you, man was Sig, the Sig Blatt in his mind, his business partner and pal. Moving west was Sig’s idea, just like this Hummer business. The Sig in his mind was peeved, a pale, blotchy face telling him to stay on that Hummer’s ass. Lance switched him off and spoke to Cheryl instead, the other reason for this move.

Cheryl’s pressure was more a passive insistence. A prairie girl who thought it would be so cool to live on the very edge of the Pacific Rim. “See what I’m doing here?” he told her. “Never had this kind of baloney in Calgary, did we?” He’d been based in Airdrie, not Calgary, but from this distance, way over here on the west coast, Calgary and Airdrie pretty well converged to a point on the map. “And all this so you could wade in the waves. Well, you waded, didn’t you? Then you said it was cold and dirty and you wanted to go home. One flippin’ day at the beach. Big moves like this don’t come for free. D’you have any idea what that walk on the beach cost us?” He made up a number. “Five hundred dollars a millisecond’s worth of walk on the beach. No way, princess. I’ve had it. I’m gonna beg Ray for the job back, and we’re outta here tomorrow.”

Sig popped back into view, still griping. But in the end Sig would pull up stakes, too. He would follow Lance back to Morice & Bros. Electric (1997) and their cheapskate boss Ray Duhammond. Sig would get it, eventually. They just weren’t cut out to be businessmen.

The tail lights were back in sight, for some reason, and growing larger. The Hummer had slowed right down. Lance did, too. He slapped at his jacket pockets, then the seat beside him piled with receipts, grubby boxes of connectors, a tangle of hand tools. He found his iPhone and thumbed the home button. A colourful, glowing line indicated his phone servant was listening. He snarled at her: “Siri. Call fucking Sig.”

Red blazed at the side of the road ahead and to his right, smeared by rain and darkness. The Hummer had pulled over and was parked on the shoulder. Lance drove past, not giving a fig anymore who was in that Hummer or what he, she, they, or it was up to. Siri apologized and said she didn’t understand his request. He started to repeat, “Call Sig,” without the F-word, but headlights popped up in his rear-view mirror, pitched and straightened and expanded.

The Hummer was beginning to scare him.

It was now coming up on his rear, and by the way those headlights were spreading like a couple of supernovas, it was coming fast. He sighed in relief as the Hummer pulled into the oncoming lane and tore past. Passed on a solid line, it was in such a hurry. Why the rush? There was nothing up here but forest, rock wall, and more forest.

He didn’t care. He was off the case. He slowed further, on the lookout for a good place to pull a U-ey, and in the distance, red dots flared. The fickle-hearted Hummer had put on its brakes. Again. A knot tightened in Lance’s gut. White lights glared. The Hummer had thrown itself into reverse and was moving. Seemed to be moving fast, too.

Lance swore aloud. He flashed his high beams. He leaned on his horn. He tried steering forward into the oncoming lane, but the road was narrow here, and the SUV was wigwagging, hogging the centre, blocking him.

This wasn’t a freak accident. It was an attack.

He shifted into reverse and pressed the gas, scudding backward into the night, but the Hummer came at him fast and straight. Lance veered toward the shoulder, but the white lights followed. A car’s length, half — “My God!” They were going to connect. Or he would be sandwiched by somebody coming around the dark curve behind him. He was looking ahead, behind, over his shoulder. On one side the road fell away steeply; on the other he sensed the slope would be milder, and aimed in that direction. He crossed into the oncoming lanes, felt tires hit gravel, and gravity took him.

Tall grasses scraped the chassis as he slid to a stop, spiking the brakes and twisting the wheel. The truck swung to face downslope and rocked to a standstill.

Lance’s headlights shone on dark woods. He was tilted awkwardly to the right, boots pushed against the manifold to keep him upright. Getting the driver’s door open would be tough, and getting the truck back on the road tougher still.

But the fate of his vehicle was the least of his worries. He had two options now: reach for the knife in the glovebox or get out and run.

In the end, his usual half-assed indecision lost the day for him. He opened the driver’s door when he should have left it locked, leaned across the centre console, wedging his elbows among slithering junk, and grappled for the glove compartment hatch, when a soft voice behind him made him jump. The man from the SUV was here — who else could it be? — standing close. He had stepped up onto the running board and pulled the door wide open, letting in the wet, chilly night. The man leaned in, asking Lance in a kind voice if everything was all right. But it wasn’t kindness, really. It was sugar-coated sarcasm, and Lance redoubled his efforts to get his buck knife.

The glovebox hatch flipped open, but too late. He felt the weight of the man leaning in as though to climb on top of him, felt fists grab the leather of his jacket and tug. Lance gave up on the knife and flipped around with a rough idea of kicking the man off, shouting, “What the fuck d’you want, man, wha’d I do?”

He was dragged out into the night and released. He staggered upright.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” the man said. He stood too close, eyes fixed and intense. “What’s with the follow?”

He was a stocky white guy, a few inches shorter than Lance. But a bull. A fine drizzle touched Lance’s face. His truck was idling at his back, and up the bank and across the road the Hummer was, too. He could smell the drift of exhaust, could see the confusion of headlights and tail lights, and the SUV’s hazards blinking. He could hear his own door alarm pinging. The lights lit up the forest downslope behind them. The trees stood about like a crowd of cold-hearted onlookers, tall, dark figures topped with shuddering leaves.

There was a third person here, he realized, giving her a double take. She stood just up the bank. He couldn’t see her face, but her presence lifted his spirits. Women always kept the peace. She wouldn’t let anything bad happen. He gave her a weak smile. He flagged her a signal to say he was innocent, that he really could use some help down here.

She didn’t move.

He tried for a chummy tone with the guy. “I’m new in town, man. Electrician, just starting up. I was heading out to Horseshoe Bay to meet buddies, right? Took the wrong turnoff.” He forced a laugh. “It’s a friggin’ maze, this town. All these ramps look the same. Figured we’d loop back down to the highway soon enough. Latched onto your tail lights, hoping you’d lead me out. Can’t blame you thinking I was following you, bud. Just a misunderstanding.”

“Except I seen you before,” the man said. “Didn’t I, now?” He was older than Lance, in his mid-forties, probably, and carried a big gut. He had a round, buzz-cut head and fussily groomed beard. The fat gold chain around his neck, the diamond in his ear, and the glossy black SUV up on the road said he was over-the-top flush. He was also angry, and maybe stoned, too. Eyes fierce but empty, like an overdosed gamer after an all-night binge. But it wasn’t games he was whacked on. Definitely some chemical worming through his brain. And that was bad news.

Lance looked at the woman in the shadows, about as helpful as a hood ornament. He said to the man with the diamond in his ear, “No way, man. Wasn’t me you saw, or if it was, I sure wasn’t following you. Company I work for, we got a huge fleet.”

In truth, it was a fleet of two: the canopied Chev he drove and Sig’s Ford.

He slapped at the logo on the door of his truck — L&S Electric, which stood for Lance and Sig, two prairie guys trying to break into the big-city market — and made up a number. “Yup, twenty-four of us out there on a slow day.”

The man said, “Give me your phone.”

“Why?”

“’Cause mine’s dead, and we gotta call you a tow truck, don’t we?”

His manner had changed, relaxed, lost the sarcastic edge. He sounded amused, and it dawned on Lance that he was just another shit-for-brains bully, pushy but harmless, playing mind games. Even the spooky-eye thing was an act.

“Hey, not necessary.” Lance tried for a chuckle as he straightened from what he only now realized was a cower. He adjusted his twisted jacket. “Was a huge misunderstanding, man. You guys go on your way, and I’ll call me a tow.”

“Yeah, but listen, I’d feel a whole lot better if you did it now. Don’t want to leave you in the lurch down here.”

The guy sounded apologetic now, smiling. Maybe he was afraid of a lawsuit, wanted to leave things at a no-hard-feelings level. Lance gave an uneasy shrug. He pulled out his iPhone and keyed in the code. The phone unlocked, and he opened his contact list for the BCAA number, to call for road service — and only then it occurred to him that no man with a diamond in his ear, driving a top-of-the-line Hummer, would let his cellphone die. Guy would have it hooked to a charger like life support. And the girlfriend would have a phone on her too, wouldn’t she? Pink, studded with rhinestones. These were not phoneless people. The thought came simultaneously with the grab. The phone was taken from him, and he couldn’t grab it back. “No,” he moaned, understanding the enormity of what had just happened. He had surrendered all his contacts to this freaky bastard, handed Sig over on a platter. Worse, much worse, his home address, Cheryl and the kids. His darling Cheryl, his beautiful tot Rosalie, and his little boy, Joseph.

The man was waving the phone overhead like a winning ticket, looking up at his girlfriend. She shouted something, and it sounded like either go on or don’t.

Lance received a rough shove and stumbled away from his vehicle.

Another shove, and he was careening through tall shrubs, low weeds, down on his knees, up on his feet. Pushed again, and he was into the trees. He fought back, swung loose and hit nothing. He turned to flee, but all too late. He wasn’t a fighter or a planner, and this guy was. The guy was telling him as he dogged after him that this was what he got for messing with people’s lives. Lance tried to bellow, but it came out a whimper: “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He was backed up beside one of the huge trees, straight as a telephone pole. No branches within reach to grasp for leverage, nowhere to hide. “You gotta believe me, mister. I’m from Airdrie. I’m an electrician. I don’t know you from a hole in the wall, I swear.”

The man reached out, grabbed him by the ear, and shoved his head sideways into the tree.

Stars showered against crimson. Lance heard himself scream out in pain and terror. He flailed his arms, tried to kick or step back, but he was dazed, and the man had that hellish grip on his ear, and was saying again this was all his fault. Lance cried out to be left alone and instead was pushed again into the tree, hard. His right ear and scalp were hot and wet, beyond pain now, and he knew the man was going to slam him till his skull cracked open and his brains spattered like a melon against the corrugated iron of the tree trunk. His legs buckled. He felt himself sag, his body parts thud to earth, and sprawl. He lay a moment on the sloping ground, trying to curl into himself, to protect his body from whatever would land next, a boot or fist or rock. His thoughts raced and scattered. He was done for.

The impact didn’t come. Just a pattering of words. The man leaned over him, a dark shape without definition. He was saying something low and complicated, almost conversational. Lance could make no sense of it. He closed his eyes, and now there was silence, a nothingness. Then the swish and crunch of feet wading through weeds, uphill and away. The man was leaving.

Maybe to grab a gun, to finish this off.

Lance blinked furiously to clear the blur, but the blur remained. He heard two car doors slam. And, God, he heard the SUV drive away. Hope flowed over him like a cool tide.

He gave himself a minute to lie still, reflecting on this clean slate, his mistakes and resolutions, and how fiercely he would be hugging his family tonight.

But what was that? Again he held his breath, tilting his head to listen. There, a new noise that didn’t fit with the shush of grasses and leaves rustling in the wind. Not close, but not far, a furtive crunching heading this way. He became stone still. Something was down here with him. A creature, a killer dog released by the man in the Hummer? He blinked again. He could make out nothing but a blue-grey haze criss-crossed with grass blades, and the shapes of bushes. The thing came slowly, snapping branches underfoot, and it wasn’t a dog. By the sound he knew it was big as a rhino. Bigger. It was a mastodon, and he lay in its sights. Maybe it was harmless. Maybe if he yelled, he would scare it off. He tried to scrabble his legs, but couldn’t. Couldn’t roll over or curl a hand into a protective fist. Couldn’t shout. It was near now, wasn’t slowing. The bushes were thrashing. He had pissed his jeans.

He managed to cry out to the one who always made things right. She gathered him up when he fell and fixed all his screw-ups, and he needed her now so badly. “Mama.” But she was back in Airdrie, so far away. He would have given all he had to see her smile right now, to feel her forgiving embrace.

A smile erases a million worries.

The creature was on top of him now, all black and oily and obliterating the sky. He reached out to touch it, and his heart, his pounding heart … He squeezed his eyes shut, bellowed, and was silent.