Undecided…
A Novel Written in 30 Days
By
Chapter One
Walt woke up to harsh sunlight glaring in his eyes. He rolled
over and sat up, dusting the sand off of his face. It took a few minutes
to remember why he was sleeping in the sand, underneath a scrubby
sagebrush. The pounding in his head at first told him that he had once again
drank too much, but as the cobwebs cleared, he remembered, and the
memory brought him suddenly to complete consciousness.
Rolling over to his knees brought another explosion of pain, and
Walt was painfully reminded of the results of leaping from a moving
vehicle. Grimacing through the pain, he surveyed the surrounding desert.
Nothing appeared out of place, and satisfied that his pursuers were not
too close, at least for the
ground. Glancing around, he found a battered knapsack and hooked it with a
finger and drug it across the sand to where he was sitting. Stuck in
one of the side pockets was a bottle of water, which Walt opened and
lifted to his lips. He drank sparingly, and allowed the water to sit in his
mouth for several seconds before swallowing. This was the only water he
had until he made it to the next town, and even then, finding more
might be a close call. Every cop for miles around would be on the lookout
for him, and sneaking into a backyard to refill a water bottle might
just catch somebody’s attention. After tightening the lid on the water, he
rummaged for another few seconds and produced a sandwich wrapped
tightly in cellophane. He unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite,
deliberately chewing the dry bread and meat. When the sandwich had disappeared, he
took one more swallow of the precious water, savoring its coolness in
his mouth. Then, he buried the plastic in the loose sand, secured the
water bottle once again in its pocket on the knapsack, and struggled to
his feet.
Pain once again burst into his consciousness, but he simply
clenched his jaw and ignored it. Pain was nothing new to Walt, a rough
childhood had naturally led to a rough adolescence, progressing easily into
a rough adulthood, which culminated in the beating death of a rival for
the attentions of a rough woman. When she seemed unimpressed with his
handiwork, he put her in the same shallow grave with his first victim.
Prison seemed to be the natural destination for him all his life, and
few were surprised when his life sentence was handed down. But prison
life did not agree with Walt, rules and limits were not something he was
comfortable with. So escape became the object of his existence, and
after months of careful planning, he had finally found himself in the
laundry truck, speeding away
from the prison and into the
Making a last check of the surrounding skylines for any sign of
pursuit, he turned towards the rising sun, slung the knapsack over his
shoulder, and took the first of many painful steps towards what he hoped
was a waiting ride south to
Chapter Two
Cliff was, as usual, was utterly disgusted with his life. Warden
swollen to larger than normal size. It had been nearly ten years since
a single prisoner had even
attempted escape from
Penitentiary, and Donald B. Claremont took it as a personal insult that his own
son-in-law was primarily responsible for this one.
“Tell me again, how you let a prisoner climb into the laundry
cart and get himself loaded onto the laundry truck!” he hissed through
clenched teeth.
“Tell me again why you failed to inspect each and every laundry
cart loaded onto the truck, and then tell me again how you fell asleep
while riding in the back of the laundry truck that YOU were supposed to
have inspected!”
Cliff swallowed back the bile that had collected at the back of
his throat, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He opened
his mouth to respond, but the warden cut him off before he could make a
sound.
“SHUT UP! I don’t want to hear a word out of your stupid little
mouth! If it wasn’t for my own daughter you would not only be fired, but
incarcerated here with the rest of this scum! Incompetence on this
level is beyond stupidity, you MUST have been complicit in the plan from
the get go!”
Cliff once again opened his mouth to defend himself, but was
immediately cut off again.
“Didn’t I say shut up? Don’t say a word. If you say one word, I
will completely lose my temper, and I will kill you here and now. Get
out of my sight. Report to the search captain and tell him I said to put
you out there looking under rocks for this scumbag. And if I hear that
you let him get past you again, I WILL put you in prison here for the
rest of your natural existence.”
The warden stood up from his chair and stalked over to a cabinet
against the back wall of the office. Slamming the cabinet door open, he
snatched a glass and a bottle. Half turning to pour himself a drink, he
noticed Cliff still standing before his desk, his mouth half open as he
tried to formulate some kind of response.
“GET OUT I SAID!” Screamed the warden, and threw the glass at
Cliff’s head. It caught him right over the left eye, and he went down like
he had been shot. As soon as he hit the floor however, he jumped up and
ran from the office, and continued running at top speed until he
reached the prison courtyard.
He found a bench, and sat down, cradling his throbbing head in his
hands. A drop of blood splattered the ground between his feet, and Cliff
realized that not only was he growing a considerable goose-egg, but he
was cut as well. Judy was going to love that. Not only let a prisoner
escape and pissed off the old man, but now a big ‘ole shiner and cut to
boot. That will be nagging ammo for months to come. Cliff could already
hear her reminding him over and over again of where he would be if she
hadn’t married him, hooked him up with a job, and kept him out of the
gutter. The main problem was, she was not far off. When he met Judy,
Cliff had been so blinding drunk that he hadn’t noticed her self-centered
egotism, and by the time he figured it out, she had already bought
bridesmaid dresses and reserved the ballroom at the local hotel. Even worse
was the first time he met her parents. When Don B. Claremont discovered
that he was a set painter for the local theater company, he nearly had
a heart attack right there on the restaurant floor. Within a month, he
had been pushed through the academy, and found himself being harassed
by prisoners who only restrained themselves from outright assault due to
the knowledge that he was the warden’s son-in-law. Day in and day out,
he endured the taunting and insults at work, only to go home at night
to nagging and criticism. Utter disgust with life barely began to cover
the way Cliff felt about life right now.
The roar of an unmuffled engine brought Cliff out of his thoughts. A
brown four-by-four roared up next to the bench he was sitting on. In the
back were a half-dozen prison guards wearing fatigues and carrying riot
guns. From the passenger seat jumped a tall rawboned man wearing
instead the regular guard uniform. Captain Williams was in charge of the search party that was usually sent, half-heartedly to hunt down any escapees. Between escapes, he was also in charge of the SWAT team that was kept on site to break up any heavy riots or disturbances. Of all the guards at the prison, he seemed to have the most disdain for Cliff, perhaps because he had his eye on the warden's job, and Cliff's relation to him seemed to irk him beyond reason. He strode purposefully over to the bench
where Cliff was trying desperately to wipe blood from his forehead with
the palm of his hand.
“Cliff, boss says you are on my detail now. Climb up in back and try
not to hurt yourself.” He tossed a riot gun at Cliff, who nearly
fumbled it then, mercifully managed not to drop it.
“Don’t worry, it ain’t loaded, I’m not that stupid. I’ll give you some
ammo if I think you need it. Until then, try to stay out of the way and
don’t let any more prisoners escape if you can help it.”
Cliff nodded his understanding, then stood up and started to climb
into the back of the truck with the other guards. None of them offered to
help, and he almost dropped the shotgun again before he got in. The
only place left to sit was in the middle of the bed, at the feet of all
the other guards sitting around the edge. Just as he was getting settled
in, the truck abruptly lurched into motion, throwing him back against a
guard leaning against the tailgate. He shoved Cliff roughly back into
the center of the truck bed with his boots, and growled an obscenity.
Cliff settled the shotgun over his shoulder, propping it between his feet
and bracing his hands against the bed to keep himself in place. As the
truck roared out of the prison gates and into the desert, Cliff once
again affirmed to himself, that life, more than ever, really sucked.
Chapter Three
Walt was beginning to question the wisdom of his attempt
at freedom. Despite severely limiting his water intake, the bottle of water was
now less than a quarter full, and it was barely past noon on the first
day. He had left the prison with two
bottles in his knapsack, but one had broken when he leapt from the moving
laundry truck. His only hope of survival lay in the small town about twenty
miles directly east of the prison. Unfortunately, that
twenty miles was pure hell, with undulating sand dunes that sucked energy with
every step and blowing sand that scoured the skin. In fact, herein lay the
concept of the Death Valley Penitentiary. After the economic collapse at the
beginning of the century, tourism as an industry became nearly extinct, and
especially so for a god-forsaken place like
The sun was beginning to sink into the western horizon when Walt found some shade. The tortuous sand had given way to stony chaparral, and a tortured juniper tree sprouted from the tortured landscape and provided just enough shade to sit in. Walt took out his water bottle, but after evaluating the remaining water, thought better and returned it to its pocket. It would be better to have in the morning, to set him on his way than to waste it now. Instead, he turned his attention to his feet. The prison issued loafers he wore had survived the sand tolerably well, but as soon as he hit the rocky ground, they quickly began to deteriorate. Now, they were barely holding on, and his feet had taken a beating. Although he tried to keep a sharp lookout, twice he had stumbled into a cactus patch. Added to the bruising and scraping and preexisting cactus spines already earned by leaping from a moving vehicle, one more voice in the chorus of pain didn't make much difference. Walt inventoried his situation with a rising feeling of dread. Careful planning had never been his strong suit, and this latest adventure would not go down as one of his best.
He had managed to stash two water bottles and a couple of sandwiches stolen from the cafeteria in the laundry room where he worked. Then it was simply a matter of waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. This opportunity took the form of the warden's own son-in-law, who had been given the highly distasteful job of inspecting the dirty laundry being loaded on the laundry truck each day and then riding with it into town. It was said that the smell of the dirty laundry for an entire prison had a tendency to leach into one's skin and become a permanent part of the unfortunate guards own personal aroma.
Walt had noticed that unlike the other guards, who thoroughly enjoyed dumping each cart out on the floor and watching the inmates reload them, Cliff would simply give each cart a cursory poke with his nightstick and kick the sides a few times. Walt spent all of his remaining smokes to bribe two other prisoners to start a fight during this process, and one more to pile dirty laundry on top of him while the guards broke it up. Sure enough, after a few half-hearted pokes and kicks, the unusually heavy laundry cart was loaded onto the truck, then Cliff climbed inside with the carts, found a pile of laundry that didn't smell as bad as the rest, and drifted off to sleep.
Unfortunately for Cliff, the cart he chose was not the one containing the escaping prisoner. Also unfortunately, the one in which Walt had stowed away was closer to the back door. Finally, although this was less a matter of luck than it was a matter of a helpful inmate with Walt's last pack of smokes tucked safely away in his pocket, the door was unlocked (Which was a duty that Cliff had long ago delegated to the inmates out of pure laziness.) By the time Cliff woke to the sound of the truck tires skidding to a halt on the dusty road, Walt had managed to come to a stop, and after struggling to his feet had managed to disappear over a nearby sand dune. The driver had noticed the door swinging open in his mirror and stopped immediately, but it was too late. Walt had made his escape. Neither the driver or Cliff spent too much time searching for an escaped prisoner, they both simply assumed that the door had come unlatched on the bumpy road. This gave Walt another hour before his absence was noted, when his shift in the laundry room was over and he was nowhere to be found. It was nearly dark before a careful search of the prison proved that Walt was no longer in the prison, and too late for an immediate search. Cliff had no clue what had happened until he arrived at work the next morning, where he was ambushed by the warden as soon as he cleared security at the gate.
Walt leaned back on the sand, bunching the knapsack underneath his head for a pillow, and watched the stars appear in the sky. The pain subsided to a dull ache as his fatigued body drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Four
Everyone had always joked about how Cliff was able to sleep anywhere, but the worst part was how true it was. He had managed to drift off to sleep sitting on the bed of a pickup truck with a shotgun leaning against his shoulder, bouncing across the desert in search of a convicted killer. When the truck screeched to a halt, Cliff tumbled up to the front of the truck where another guard kicked out with a boot and shoved him roughly back to the center of the truck. Cliff scrambled to recover his weapon, but someone had already snatched it up.
"Don't hurt yourself loser, I'll take care of this for you. Why don't you take something a little more your size."
The guard handed him an automatic pistol. Cliff looked at it for a second, debating whether or not to take a stand. Finally, he snatched the weapon, mumbling under his breath.
"what was that loser? You want to make an issue of it? You're lucky I didn't leave you without a weapon at all."
Cliff was not inclined to argue, he had always found himself tongue-tied when confronted with a fight of any kind. This time, he felt doubly intimidated. His head throbbed where the glass hit it, and now he had a dull ache in his back where he had been kicked. In no condition to argue, he shrugged his shoulders and turned away. He climbed down from the truck, then tucked the pistol in his belt. Captain Williams had walked a few steps away from the truck, and was standing at the top of a nearby dune, surveying the landscape with binoculars. The guards were beginning to form a rough formation, and Cliff fell in to the last place in line, feeling out of place in his guard uniform next to the desert camouflaged fatigues of the others. Not sure what would happen next, he looked over to the Captain, who had finished his recon and was headed back towards them.
"Gentlemen,
you know the drill, take a canteen, radio and ammo. Fan out and maintain visual
contact with your left and right. Mahoney, you have the left flank,
He turned away from the guards, and they all started moving at once. Cliff was still quite befuddled and unsure what to do when Captain Williams suddenly seemed to remember that he was there.
"Oh yeah, Cliff, stay here and watch the truck. There is a radio inside on the dash, and some water in the toolbox in the bed. Try not to hurt yourself, and for heavens sake, if you see this guy, don't try to confront him or anything stupid. Just get on the radio and call for help. We'll come back to get him."
Cliff nodded at this sudden stroke of fortune. Trudging through the sand looking for clues was not nearly his idea of anything like a good time. He stood next to the truck as the guards spread out and moved off, shotguns held casually, like a group of bird hunters on opening morning. When their outlines began to blur with distance, Cliff opened the door to the truck, and climbed in. He thought about turning on the truck and cranking the air, but naturally, they had not left the keys. So he cranked the windows down, and stretched out on the seat. As always, sleep came easily, but as he tossed and turned trying to find a comfortable position, the pistol in his belt dug into his side, and he absently pulled it out and dropped it on the floor. A hot dry breeze stirred his hair and cooled him enough that he soon settled into a heavy sleep.
Walt had started ignoring the mirages and hallucinations created by his overheated brain. Much like his short experimentation with hallucinogens, he was too realistic to spend much time either enjoying or fearing such obviously imaginary demons, so they soon faded into the background of his mind. For this reason, when he topped a dune to see the prison SWAT truck parked a few hundred feet ahead, he barely missed a step. This vision failed to dim as he neared it as had all the others, and he was close enough to touch it before he began to realize that it was real. He reached out a tentative hand and brushed its dusty surface, still wondering with half his mind that a hallucination could be so real. Finally his groggy mind grasped the fact that he was standing next to a real truck, belonging to the very prison from which he had just escaped. His first instinct was to turn and run, but blind panic was quickly overridden by an idea which screamed from the depths of his bodies desire to survive. There may be water somewhere on the truck. Life-giving water which would quench the thirst which threatened to destroy his sanity. This thought gave him renewed strength and clarity of thought, and he searched his memory for a hint as to where it could be found. His eyes rested on the toolbox in the bed, and suddenly a vision of fatigue-clad guards directing inmates in loading a cooler filled with ice and water spurred him to frenzied action. Leaping into the back of the truck, he wrenched the lid open, and oblivious now to the possibility that his pursuers could be nearby he gasped in pleasure at the sight of that same cooler, its sides covered with beads of condensed moisture. He opened the cooler and plunged both hands into its icy coolness, coming up with two beautiful bottles of water. At first his frenzied mind froze at a method to open a bottle without letting go of one or the other. His mad desire nearly drove all reasonable thought away, and for a split second, he stared at the bottles, grappling with an unreasonable loathing to let go of either one. Finally, he dropped one back into the ice, and twisted the top off of the other. He upended it over his cracked and bleeding lips, pouring as much outside his mouth as in. He gulped and gasped and choked until his dehydrated stomach retched at the sudden freezing moisture. He vomited unashamedly into his lap, and then immediately finished pouring the bottle into his gasping mouth. Having either spilled or vomited most of the first bottle, he tossed it away and grabbed another. Some semblance of reasonable thought was returning now, and he forced himself to sip this one slowly, and to re-cap it after only drinking a quarter.
Feeling the strength returning to his body and mind, he suddenly remembered the situation that he was in. He turned in a small circle, surveying the surrounding landscape, looking for signs of the prison guards that he knew must be nearby. He saw the evidence of their departure in the muddle of boot-tracks leading away from the truck on the side of the road opposite that from which he had come, but nothing else to indicate that they had ever been there. Understanding finally the good fortune upon which he had stumbled, Walt quickly went into action to take complete advantage. He unslung the knapsack from his back, dumped out the empty bottle and the last, half-eaten and stale sandwich. He stuffed as many water bottles as the battered bag would hold, then noticed a box of freeze-dried rations in the far corner of the tool box. He tore the box open, and filled the pockets of the knapsack with as many as he could cram in. He filled his pockets as well, and then jumped down and moved towards the open cab.
He pulled the door completely open, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Cliff jump upright and crabwalk backwards across the seat until he smashed his head against the doorjamb. The apparition which had woke him was as terrifying as anything he had ever seen in a horror film. All exposed skin had been burned to a deep shade of purple, where it had not already cracked open or blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and, due to his own surprise at finding Cliff sleeping in the cab, were also wide open and appeared to have lost all reason. The inmate uniform that was once a blue denim was shredded in places, and most had some blood stains where the skin beneath had been ground off by the road. Cliff's panicked flight continued and he turned himself and managed to crawl out of the window where he fell to the ground with a dusty thump and managed to knock the breath out of his lungs. As he lay there on the ground, working to catch his wind, he saw a pair of feet clad in a pair of shredded prison-issued loafers jump down from the other side of the truck and begin a determined path around the front end of the truck. Cliff, paralyzed by fear and pain, could only lay there gasping and watch. When Walt rounded the front of the truck, he was holding in one hand the pistol which Cliff had dropped on the floor of the truck.
Chapter Five
Walt's first instinct was to gun the guard down where he lay gasping on the ground, but then he recognized Cliff, and he lowered the gun to his side.
"Never got to thank you for helping me out the other day Cliff." Walt smirked.
Cliff just lay where he was, feeling light-headed and
weak. How in the world had a sham detail like guarding the truck turned into a
life-threatening situation like this? And why was he having a harder time being
afraid of impending death than he was fearing the
certain confrontation with his father-in-law and his wife. Suddenly, he
realized that he had nothing to fear from the spectre
of death standing over him. Death would be a welcome respite from a life
composed of nothing more than a string of spectacular failures.
Painfully, he worked himself up into a sitting position, and leaned his head
against the truck. In this sudden
Just as Cliff reached this insane
Cliff turned back towards Walt, fully intending to rise to his feet and challenge him, in the hope that he would raise the gun and fire. But Walt was no longer standing at the front of the truck. In the instant that it took Cliff to turn his head, Walt had taken two long strides and brought the barrel of the automatic down in a vicious chop. He had been aiming at the soft spot at the base of Cliff's skull, but his sudden burst of insight had caused him to turn his head at the same instant that Walt aimed his blow, and instead of crushing his skull, it merely glanced off the crown of his head. Still, Cliff was instantly and blissfully unconscious, and for the second time that day, blood streamed from his head. Walt felt a fleeting second of disappointment that he had missed, but his objective was no longer simply to kill, but to prevent him from calling for help, and unconsciousness served that purpose just as well. He quickly stripped off his clothing, and replaced his own tattered denim overalls. Once again fortune smiled down upon Walt, as Cliff's shoes were a very close fit. Had Walt's feet not been cut and swollen, they may have been much too large, but by the time Walt was finished gingerly squeezing them in, he was grateful for a little bit of wiggle room. Finally, before leaving, Walt rummaged through the tool box and found a large hunting knife in a sheath. With this he slashed all four tires, and then dumped the ice chest out on the ground and punctured all of the remaining bottles. As he walked away, he gave the prostrate form of Cliff one remaining backwards glance.
"I really would have loved to kill that guy..." he thought to himself, as the truck disappeared behind a sand dune.
Chapter Six
In high school, Cliff had not been much different from
his adult self. Shy, quiet, and somewhat lazy.
Although he had the intelligence to earn good grades, he never completed enough
homework to do more than pass. Other than a passing interest in sports which
always petered out a few weeks into the season, he showed up for school because
he honestly had nothing better to do. Most classes he slept through, the
ringing of the bell served only as a signal to wake up, wipe the drool from his
face, and stumble to the next napping spot. Then, in his senior year, something
changed, at least for a time. He met
For the first day of his high school career, he stayed awake
for the rest of the class, and actually managed to learn something that day. As
the days went on, they grew closer and closer, and by the time graduation came
around, they were actually discussing applying to the same college and finding
a place to live together. Cliff allowed himself to maintain a fantasy of
proposing, but could never find the courage to bring up the topic, or to even
enter a jewelry store. Then, as many youthful romances do, this one came to an
end when
Cliff now thought that he had died. He was in a wonderful
place, some sort of a garden, with beautiful flowers, shrubs and trees growing
in a random profusion that was far more beautiful than anything he had ever
imagined. Songbirds winged overhead, and a rabbit nibbled contentedly at the
grass at his feet. As he looked around, he noticed an old-fashioned wrought
iron bench next to a gurgling fountain. Seated on this bench reading a book was
a beautiful young woman with long brown hair. She was wearing a flowing white
dress that managed to accentuate her shapely figure, rather than hiding it.
Cliff gasped as he recognized
“Wake up you worthless piece of crap before I pound you into the sand with my bootheel!”
Cliff jerked awake, and there, inches from his face
instead of his high-school sweetheart, was the chiseled face of Captain Williams.
Instead of
Captain Williams came face to face with Cliff again, his rancid breath making Cliff’s stomach heave with nausea.
“So I take some pity on the poor loser, give him a chance to do something as simple as sit in a truck for a few hours, and what happens? Some worthless human waste puts the safety of my entire team at risk. Oh, and by the way, no longer are we looking for a guy with no water or food and wearing inmate coveralls, now we are looking for a convicted killer with several days worth of water, food, wearing a guard uniform, AND... “ Captain Miller paused here to spit in the sand between Cliff’s feet.
“…armed with a 9MM Glock with a 15-round
magazine. I do share credit between you and
The guard who had taken Cliff’s shotgun earlier was
standing in front of the rest with a guard on either side clasping one of his
arms. His face was burning red and he looked even more murderous than the rest,
if that were possible. Captain Williams turned away from Cliff, and addressed
“And since you two teamed up to create this little fiasco, I have in mind a way that you can also share in the solution.”
He walked away from Cliff, and stood in the center of the angry semicircle of guards.
“What we have
here is a guard without a uniform, and a guard who needs a good dose of
humility.
At this, Cliff’s heart skipped a beat. Although Captain Williams had never liked him, he never thought that he would do something like this.
“Cliff, since you let this human cesspool go in the first place, and then proceeded to supply and arm him, you will stay out here in the desert until he is found. The good news is that you will get to wear some clothes, the bad news is that you get to keep all of the water that your friend left here for you.” He held up a single water bottle without a cap. It was less than halfway full, and what looked like crusted vomit was stuck to the sides. It was the bottle that Walt had first pulled out of the cooler, and which he had abandoned in the back of the truck when his stomach rejected the sudden influx of ice-cold water.
“And since I am not a murderer, unlike the man you seem to have befriended, I will leave you with some gifts out of the kindness of my heart. First, I will leave this radio. Don’t try to call for help, the dispatcher is aware of your assignment, and will not send help unless you state that you have the escapee in hand. And don’t try lying either, he has been ordered to verify by hearing the voice of the criminal before he will believe you. So be very careful with my second gift.”
At this, he turned and took from a nearby guard the same riot gun that he had thrown at Walt the day before. After handing him the gun, he reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a single shell. Holding it in front of Cliff’s face, he sneered:
“And just to make sure you don’t hurt any of us, we will drop this on the road a few hundred yards away. I hope you find it, because it is the only one you get. And I take back what I said earlier today about hurting yourself. Once we are out of the way, you can do whatever the hell you want to do with that scatter gun, in fact, hurting yourself would be one of my preferred courses of action.”
At that
“Better get out of that uniform quick, or I’ll leave you here with Cliff AND his loaded shotgun.”
Chapter Seven
Walt hadn’t felt this good since the day before he killed
his girlfriend and her would-be suitor. With a sufficient supply of food and
water, decent shoes and some rest, he felt confident that he could make the
small town of
He was somewhat worried the this friend might fail him, she was after all, a junkie. And it was common knowledge that junkies were by nature one of the most undependable groups of people on the planet. But she was the only plan he had, if she fell through, he would make another plan. No use spending a bunch of time pondering things over which he had no control right now. The sun was rising on his second full day of freedom, and he felt pretty good today. A thousand aces and pains all clamored for his attention, but he was able to effectively smother them all with a long drink of cool water. He still had more than a half-dozen liters of water in his bag, and plenty of food, so he allowed himself a small celebratory breakfast of freeze-dried peaches and beef jerky. When he had finished, he stood up, carefully surveying the surrounding terrain for any sign of the search party. He knew that they would begin stepping up their search, knowing that he had water and food. In addition, knowing that he had a weapon would mean that they would be less likely to attempt to capture him alive, and more likely to simply shoot on sight. He had stripped all of the insignia from the guard’s uniform, and wore it wrong-side-out just to be sure. Once again setting his face to the rising sun, he strode out purposefully, confident of the possibility of a real bed in an actual house by nightfall.
Cliff was not so comfortable when he awoke the next
morning. Having slept where he passed out the day before, he
woke to muscles and joints screaming their protest at such an extended stay in
such an unnatural position. He moaned and stretched his arms painfully.
He struggled to his feet and slowly straightened his back. After a few minutes,
he was able to move more or less like normal, although the crick in his neck
was certain to remain for most of the day. Finally, he turned to the task of
putting on some clothes.
He still remembered the day he found his father slumped
over the picnic table in the backyard of their suburban
Since that day, the sight of a gun had always had the ability to bring that day back with unexpected clarity, and he tended to do all he could to avoid them. This was one of the chief arguments he had made to Judy when she came up with the idea of getting him a job working for her father at the prison. But then, arguments with Judy rarely produced anything except another victory for Judy, and this one had been no different. He imagined that he was being noble, facing down one of his primary fears in order to support his new wife, but he realized that this was just another rationalization for another abject failure to ever stand up for himself.
Cliff realized that he had been standing there staring at the shotgun for several long minutes. Pulling himself back from his thoughts, he cradled the shotgun in his arms and started plodding slowly down the road again. He only took a few steps however, before he stopped again. A terrifying realization had just dawned on him. He had naturally just began walking back towards the prison, but then he remembered what awaited him there, assuming that he made it. Another humiliating and possible painful confrontation with the warden, and assuming that he survived that without any more injuries, he could look forward to going home to another few hours of hell with Judy. Where should he go then? What should he do? The weight of the shotgun in his hands registered in his brain, and the memory of Captain Williams rage-swollen face reminding him that injuring himself with the shotgun would be preferred. He remembered the near ecstasy that had engulfed him when he thought that he was about to die yesterday. He stared at the shotgun for long minutes, trying once again to capture that feeling, the joyful knowledge that the light at the end of the tunnel was only inches away, but nothing came. He even reversed the shotgun, intending to place the barrel between his eyes, but as soon as he saw that gaping hole of death, his stomach lurched with sudden nausea, and he dropped the gun to the sand at his feet, then turned and retched. His empty stomach had nothing to vomit however, and so he just suffered through a series of painful dry-heaves. When that had cleared, he realized that although death seemed to be a quick and painless solution, he had neither the courage or the strength to initiate it himself. His hatred of guns, the memory of his father, and his own weak will combined to make that impossible. This realization left him still in the same quandary however. He could not bring himself to even consider returning to the prison for more abuse, but neither could he persuade himself to end his own miserable existence. He could strike out for town and hope to hitchhike out of town and try to start a new existence somewhere else, but twenty miles of torturous desert made that an unlikely choice as well.
Then, the solution came, and he was surprised that it had taken so long to arrive. The only way out of the desert alive was through the prison, and the only way that he could return to the prison was after capturing the escapee. This solution had two acceptable outcomes. If he did manage to find and capture or kill the convict, he could return to the prison as a hero, and avoid any further punishment by the warden or Judy. He stood there, motionless for a few minutes reveling in the vision of the warden shaking his hand, of Judy welcoming him home and not nagging or criticizing him for at least a few hours. Suddenly happy and feeling like he had a purpose for the first time in years, he bent over, picked up the shotgun, and then, reality hit. He had absolutely no clue how to find a convicted killer in thousands of square miles of desert. As usual, Cliff’s life was all ideas, and no solutions. Once again, Cliff went from hopeful and motivated, directly to discouraged and depressed, in an instant. At least, thought Cliff, I am on familiar ground. With a disgusted sigh, Cliff hunched his shoulders, and moped on down the dusty, rutted road towards the prison and certain humiliation. At least life was consistent.
Chapter Eight
Walt was a simple creature. Although he was a convicted murderer, he was not naturally a vicious or malicious creature, he was nothing more than a product of his environment. His mother had been a prostitute, and his father was any one of many possible johns. Pregnancy meant little more than a few months of unemployment for his mother, and she walked out of the hospital a few hours after giving birth, leaving her child in the nursery. Social services took responsibility, and Walt bounced from foster home to group home until at the age of fourteen, he took his last beating from a drunk foster father and ran away. For a while he lived on the streets, shoplifting for food and sleeping wherever he could find a safe place. He didn’t waste much time wondering why others had better lives than him. Such philosophical pondering was quite beyond him. This was just what life was, and all of his intellectual strength was focused simply on surviving. He learned ways to get what he needed, which stores had tight security, and from which ones he could more easily provide for his needs. He learned to recognize which people would be more likely to give up their wallets without a fight, and which would actually have something in their wallets to spend. He was not vindictive, if his victim gave up their wallets willingly, he let them go. Energy spent injuring someone without cause was energy wasted. If they seemed reluctant, he learned the most efficient way to injure them enough to change their minds. He had a few encounters with the law, spent some time in juvenile detention, then some time in jail after he got old enough. He learned to hate the confinement, the rules, the restriction on his freedom. He also learned to look for ways to escape.
One day, while walking past a construction site, a foreman desperate for some cheap labor offered him fifty bucks to carry some scrap lumber to the dumpster. He complied, and returned the next day looking for more. For the first time in his life, the concept of earning money instead of taking it entered his consciousness, and he was soon a regular employee at the construction site. He never aspired to anything higher, but his new standard of living introduced him to another concept, that of leisure time. The other workers invited him out for a drink after work, and although he had never enjoyed any of the mind altering substances he had experienced so far in life, he did find that he enjoyed the company of others, particularly women. One of the barmaids took a particular liking to him, and it was not long before they had developed a relationship of sorts. Walt would come to the bar after work, drink a few beers and talk to her during her breaks. After the bar closed, he would go home with her. There was no real talk of commitment, for Walt this would have been a foreign concept, while she had had her share of commitment, and was no longer interested.
For this reason, it was a strange feeling that rose up in
Walt’s mind when he noticed a strange guy at the bar talking and laughing with
the woman. That night, she told him that he should just go back to his place,
making some excuse about having company and not having room enough. Walt had
never before really felt jelousy, in fact, would have
had a hard time finding the word to describe what he felt. One thing he did
understand however, was the desire to hurt this
interloper, who had disrupted the enjoyable rhythm of his new life. He waited
until he saw the man leave, a few minutes before closing time, then followed
him outside. Killing was not on his mind, he was simply following an
instinctive impulse to fight for what he felt was his. As soon as he landed the
first punch however, a cold fury took hold, and his only thought was to break
and punish. He came to himself a few minutes later, the limp body of the man
lying in a lifeless heap on the ground. His face was an unrecognizable mess,
and his neck was oddly twisted, with the forehead nearly touching the chest. He
was standing over the body, marveling that he had caused so much damage when
the woman came out of the bar. When she saw him standing there, she started to
yell, telling him that she was not his property, that she had a right to go
home with whomever she chose, but then she saw the body. Indignation and anger
quickly morphed into unreasoning fear. In the instant that she turned to run
back into the bar, Walt realized that he had committed murder, and that if she
called for help, he would go to prison or worse. He caught her just before she
got to the door, wrapping one arm around her body and one around her neck. He
really did not intend to hurt her, he only wanted to keep her from going
inside, she struggled, and he tightened his grip, until suddenly, he felt
something break and she went limp. He didn’t try to revive her, in his simple way, he knew that it would be futile. The important thing
now would be to get rid of the bodies. He dragged her first into the brush
behind the bar, then the man. He covered them with some trash and leaves, then walked home. It never occurred to him that he should
not go back to her place. This was simply where he lived, where he slept.
Ultimately a creature of habit, there was nowhere else for him to go. When the
police knocked on the door the next morning, he opened it with knuckles still
bloody and scarred from beating the man to death. The trial got little
publicity, more people from the bad side of town killing each other was after
all not really news, and his public defender put no more effort into defending
Walt than he did himself. The one victory for the lawyer, although Walt may
have disagreed, was to plea bargain down from first degree murder to second.
Guilty of two counts of second degree murder, he was sentenced to two
consecutive fifty-year terms. The death penalty would have been way to much trouble, even for the prosecutor, and the sentence
was handed down without disagreement from either side. Prison was much
different from jail, and the idea of spending the rest of his life here chafed
Walt’s animal instinct for freedom. Every
Walt had not made as much progress today as he would have
liked. His progress was being impeded by the helicopters that were criss-crossing the country in search of him. Each time he
heard the sound of one approaching, he had to find some place to hide. Up to
now, he had been lucky to find enough brush or terrain to hunch down for a time
and wait for the chopper to pass. In one frantic dive for cover, he had ripped
the knapsack open, and a few of the bottles of water had worked their way out
of the hole before he noticed. Normal procedure for an escape from Death Valley
Pen called for more of a body search than an actual manhunt. In the dozen or so
attempts made in its history, only one person had actually made it to the
nearby town of
Cliff was lost. The road he had been following was, he
thought, the main road. However, he was not so sure now. Where he had left the
search truck had been at the edge of the sand dunes, and by heading back
towards the prison he should have been getting deeper and deeper into them.
However, he was getting into more and more brushy country littered with rocky
debris. Worst of all, he was thirsty. In fact, he was beyond thirsty. He had
never imagined that he could be this thirsty, not without also being dead. His
tongue kept sticking to the roof of his mouth, and his lips had cracked in
several places. He had not had any water since yesterday morning, and if he did
not get some soon, he was sure that it wouldn’t matter whether the warden or
his wife were waiting to punish him. Maybe this was the best way,
death would end this suffering as well. But in addition to being a coward,
Cliff had a very low tolerance for pain. He was beginning to hallucinate, and
more than once he had broken into a stumbling run towards what looked to be
cool ponds of water but finally turned out to be mirages. To prevent himself
seeing them, he found that if he half-closed his eyes, he could focus directly
on the ground in front of him. Although this made for tough going, at least he
wasn’t tortured by the false hope of water ahead. Stumbling along through the
rocky terrain with his eyes half closed practically guranteed
that he would take a tumble sooner or later, and of course it happened sooner
than later. He fell face first into a pile of rock,
splitting his already cracked lips wide open, and scraping the skin off of his
knuckles where they had been wrapped around the stock of the shotgun. After
laying there cursing hoarsely for a minute or two, he rolled off of the rocks
onto a sandier area, and sat up to assess the damage. He licked the blood off
of his lips, perversely thankful for the small moisture it provided for his
parched mouth. He pulled a few rock fragments from the skin of his knuckles, then just sat there, not having the strength to go on.
“Maybe this is where it ends.” He thought to himself. Just as he thought this,
he noticed something out of place a few feet ahead. Something
that looked too clean to have been out in the desert for long, too bright to be
natural. He shuffled closer on his hands and knees, his curiosity
overpowering his surrender of a few
Chapter Nine
Walt woke with a start. The cool night air brushed against his sunburned forehead, sending cold shivers down his spine. Not sure what had awakened him, he sat still for a few minutes, listening to the night sounds. Having been an urban creature for his entire life up to this point, he had adpated very well to the wilderness. Just as in the city, every place has its own particular range of sounds, smells, and feels. By concentrating for just a few minutes, it was usually possible to pick out the one sound, smell or feeling that was out of place. In the city, it might be a car idling by more slowly than normal, or the sound of running footsteps where most were no more than a fast walk. The wilderness had constant noise, although the differences could be more subtle. Then Walt isolated it. The constant sound of crickets had ceased. Instead of a steady rhythm, only the sound of the night breeze rushing through the trees could be heard. Crickets stop singing for many different reasons, but for Walt, the presence of another human was the worst case scenario for now, and so he chose that one as his guess. Remaining perfectly still, he continued to listen for any further sound. Finally, he picked out a sound between puffs of breeze. It sounded like someone coughing, or choking. No matter what the person was doing, and why they were making such a sound was beyond Walt's sphere of interest. The fact that another human was out here in the desert made him nervouse. Not many humans wandered in this environment without a specific purpose, and right now, he was the most specific purpose he could think of. He cautiously slipped the pistol from his waistband, and checked the safety. Leaving it on safe, but resting his thumb on the lever, he shifted his weight to his feet. Here he paused again, to listen again for the sobbing, choking sound in order to get a bearing on its direction from his location. When he was sure that he had located it again, he slowly straightened. The sides of the gully were not much higher than his own head, so he kept himself from standing fully erect by bowing his head and bending his back slightly. Moving to the side of the gully in the direction of the sound, he straigtened until he could just see over the side. A few hundred yards away, he saw the source of the strange noise. A human figure sat on a rock, his shoulders hunched over and his head hanging in his hands. He could see the shoulders rocking up and down, as if with uncontrollable sobs. In the darkness, he could not make out anything about what the person was wearing, but he could clearly see the familiar outline of a short-barreled shotgun propped against the person's shoulder. This then, must be one of those searching for him, marking him as a danger to be avoided. Walt's curiosity was peaked however, but the apparent distress of the searcher. Why would a prison guard be alone, in the middle of the desert in the wee hours of the morning, sobbing? Perhaps he had been seperated from his group. Regardless, Walt did not think that his group would be far away, and that boded ill for his own situation. Being a simple creature, Walt did not spend much time wondering, but decided that the time had come to put some distance between this odd searcher and himself. Before the rest of them returned and began a careful search of the surrounding area. Hooking his knapsack with one hand, he returned the pistol to his waistband, and quietly moved on up the ravine towards freedom.
Cliff had never experienced such a conflict of emotions in his life. To return to his life, to continue to endure the daily punishment inflicted by his wife and her sadistic father was more pain than he could convince himself to endure. On the other hand, he had the means at hand to end it all, to stop the pain and leave this whole miserable existence behind, if only he could find the courage to do it. He could wait for the desert to do it for him, but down that path was only more physical pain and suffering, nearly equal to the mental anguish that awaited him at home. The final path, and the one he saw as the easiest and best, was out of his reach due to his lack of skill. To track down the killer and confront him, hoping to commit suicide by escapee would be the best. A quick and painless death, not inflicted by his own hand would be the best of all worlds. But the ability to find another person in this wide open desert was one he did not nearly posess.
The mental strain of having four possible plans, each of which with its own unsurmountable obstacles was too much for him, and he found himself sitting on a rock sobbing uncontrollably. What had he done to deserve such a dilemna? His life had been one of actively avoiding difficult choices, rather than making them. Bouncing along, taking the path of least resistance, he had managed somehow to survive, if only barely. After high school, he half-completed at least a half-dozen college applications, but never submitted a single one. Finally falling into a job with the local theatre company, he spent his days doing menial labor building sets and cleaning the aging theatre building. At night, he followed the rest of the workers to a local bar, and there spent all of his money erasing the pain of a pointless existence. He was never anything more than a mere spectator, much as the rest of his life. He would watch the others interact, listen to their stories and jokes, speaking only when spoken to. Not that he wasn't friendly, he just never thought that anything he had to say was worth hearing, and didn't want to face ridicule for saying anything stupid.
One night, after cashing his paycheck on the way to the bar, he noticed a new face in the crowd at the bar. A woman with a slender body was sitting alone. Her face was somewhat sharp and unattractive, but what Cliff noticed more than anything else was that she was alone, and people seemed to be making a deliberate effort to avoid her company. He knew nothing about her, but in his drunken mind, mistook this avoidance for a sign that she might be as lonely as he was. Always looking for the easiest course, he also thought that if nobody else was talking to her, he might have a chance of going home with her. If he had thought about it for a second longer, he might have talked himself out of it, but tonight, he was feeling particularly lonely, since it was payday he had been able to afford something more than beer and was a little drunker than usual. He got up from the table, and staggered across the bar to where she sat alone at the bar. One of his coworkers from the theater tried to grab his sleeve as he went past, guessing his destination and purpose, and wishing to warn him away from her. But for once in his life, Cliff had chosen to go for something, and could see nothing in the world but her thin, sharp features and the screaming tight bun her dirty blonde hair had been tortured into.
He almost backed out at the last minute, but when she turned and saw him standing there, she gave him a smile, and asked if he would like a seat. Cliff had guessed correctly on most counts, she was incredibly lonely, she was in fact looking for someone to take home. However, the things he didn’t know, and the thing that his friend was trying to warn him about, was the fact that she was a known control freak, that she had run more than one potential suitor off by attempting to dictate every single facet of their lives. One who had been suitable meek and took her abuse without much protest had been run off by her father, who was a prison warden known for his own abusive personality. She was lonely, very few people could stand having even a short conversation with them. She instantly began noting faults and issuing commands for fixing them. No polite suggestions from Judy Claremont, anytime she noticed something wrong with someone, she let them know exactly what it was, and how they should fix it in no uncertain terms.
Cliff was just the type of man she was looking for, he had no plans for improving his life, and if possible, was the only person in the room lonelier than Judy. The first thing she told him was that he drank too much, and that they should leave and go back to her place. Flabbergasted that his plan was going so well already, Cliff could see no reason to disagree. He knew that he drank too much, and going to her place was exactly the reason that he had stumbled across the bar. He followed her out, got into her car, and by the time he woke up the next morning, she was wearing an engagement ring. At first, it seemed like exactly what an aimless person like him was looking for in a relationship. But soon, he realized that she was the most annoying person that he had ever met, and he tried everything he could to squirm away. But she seemed to have a prescient ability to detect his plans and she thwarted them before he even started to put them in place. One day, he showed up to work at the theater, only to be told that he was no longer employed there. When he walked back out, Judy was waiting for him. She herded him into her car and drove her to the Correctional Solutions and Products (“CSP Corp, working to isolate criminals from society”) officer academy. There he met his future father-in-law who ensured that the instructor understood that Cliff was to pass the training as soon as possible, so that his daughter would not have to live in a minimum salary lifestyle. Cliff suffered through every conceivable torture the instructors could imagine, especially when they figured out that he was no more inclined to complain to the boss about abuse than they were to complain that he was completely unsuited to the job of a correctional officer. The day after he received his diploma in the warden’s office (he had faced near open rebellion from the instructors at the academy when he suggested that Cliff be awarded his diploma at the regular ceremony) Cliff found himself standing before the local justice of the peace agreeing to the last thing he wanted to do. A pre-wedding discussion with the warden of what would happen if Cliff said anything else had ensured that Judy was not disappointed again.
The day after that, Cliff was began the most miserable chapter of his so far painful life. Prison guards who hated him on sight for his relationship to the boss, prisoners who treated him with less respect than they showed to each other, followed by a return to the never ending criticism and venom spewed by a wife who sadistically enjoyed finding new reasons to attack him.
Not having any the confidence required to attempt an escape, and terrorized by the thought of who her father would send after him, Cliff endured with a defeated silence.
Then came the day that he reported to work and found the warden standing just inside the gate where the transport bus dropped off the oncoming shift. There, in front of everyone, he ordered Cliff to his office to discuss his part in the recent escape. That was the last time that Cliff could remember not having a throbbing headache, could remember wearing clean clothes, and could remember not being thirsty, hungry, and the last time he didn’t yearn for death.
Realizing that he was starting to shiver again, Cliff stood up and began wandering aimlessly again. Being dehydrated, malnourished and sleep-deprived seemed to have thrown his internal thermostat out of whack. Although the temperature never dipped below the high 60’s at night this time of year, he started to shiver anytime he stopped moving. The half-light provided by a half-moon didn’t provide much to navigate by, and he was continually tripping on some rock or plant that was hidden in shadow. So it was not with a great deal of surprise that Cliff took a step and somehow the ground was no longer there to support him. He tumbled to the bottom of a deep ravine nearly headfirst. On his way down, he smacked his already throbbing head against something hard, and finally, mercifully, and for the second time in as many nights, he spent the rest of the night unconscious.
He woke the next morning, his mouth full of dust and his head throbbing from a new lump somewhere near the back. He wondered to himself how many times a person could be knocked out in a 24-hour period and not sustains some sort of brain damage. Although a coma was somehow a comforting thought right now. He rolled to an upright position, and worked on focusing his eyes. There, in front of him was a shallow overhanging bank that created a very small shelter. Underneath this shelter was an empty water bottle, identical to the one he had so miraculously found yesterday. For an instant, he was terrified to think that he had punctured his own bottle and the precious liquid had leaked out overnight. His hand slapped the cargo pocket on the leg of his fatiques, and the heavy weight of the half-full bottle reassured him that he was at least that lucky. He crawled forward to where the bottle lay, and it was then that he saw the imprint that a body had left on the ground. Further investigation revealed the tracks of someone who had stood up and walked away on up the ravine. His head buzzing, Cliff quickly guessed who this mystery person may have been. Somehow, after all of the misfortune of the past few days, and in fact his entire life was beginning to turn around. First he stumbled on the bottle of water, and now, he had stumbled upon the trail of the escaped convict. His delirious mind had failed to make the connection between Walt and the full bottle he had found yesterday, but today, he finally got it. For whatever reason, his own aimless wandering had brought him along the same path the Walt was using to make his way out of the desert.
Suddenly, he felt a burst of energy. The light at the end
of the tunnel was back. He just might accomplish his goal of committing suicide
by convict. In this
First though, he had to find Walt! He snapped himself out of his reverie, found where the shotgun had come to rest in his fall last night, and set out. He could clearly see where the tracks continued up the ravine, and he hurried along it, every now and then marking where the man had dislodged some rocks from the side, or where he had sat down to eat or drink. He was giddy with achievement. For the first time in his life, Cliff had a certain goal, and a plan to achieve it. As the sun rose higher in the sky, Cliff stopped and drained the last of the water from the bottle in celebration. Before nightfall, he was sure he could catch up to and capture Walt. And the anticipation of success was something that Cliff was not quite accustomed to, but he was learning very quickly to enjoy.
Chapter Ten
Judy was in a perfect rage. After not seeing Cliff get off the transport bus at the end of his shift as usual, she had called her father to check on him. When he explained that Cliff had earned himself some extra duty that would be keeping him for a couple of days, she made sure that he understood how inconvenient that would be for her, and how much she would like to see her husband get off of the next bus that came from the prison into town. Unused as she was to having her demands not met, she was furious when the next two busses came and went without a sign of Cliff. After a couple more phone calls to her father during which he made obvious excuses for not being able to contact Cliff, she took it upon herself to climb aboard the next bus herself and ride out to the prison. Although she had no official authorization to enter the prison, the bus driver was well aware of her identity, and provided nothing more than a token protest to allowing her on the bus. She sat in the first seat, obviously fuming all the way out to the prison. When she arrived, she shoved past the security guard checking ID for those getting off and went straight to her father’s office. He was sitting at his desk, his customary whiskey glass in hand, talking in hushed tones to Captain Williams. She knew the second she came in that they had been discussing her, by the way that they both jumped to their feet and tried to act innocent. She lit into her father without even acknowledging the Captain’s presence, and by the time he got her to calm down and have a seat, he had managed to slip out the door.
“I think it may be time to break the news to you sweetheart.” Warden Claremont said in a timid voice. He was glad that Captain Williams had left, he hated to have his men see him confront his daughter. She was the single person on the earth that could make him feel like a disobedient child, and he knew that that image would not go over well with the hardened guards and criminals.
“Your husband went missing in the line of duty. We think he may have been killed while searching for an escapee who managed to get his hands on a gun. Cliff volunteered for the search party and then never returned after going alone to investigate a likely trail.”
Judy glared at her father for a full minute before she was able to hiss a reply through clenched teeth.
“Do you really think that I am that stupid? Do you think that I would believe that first of all, Cliff would ever in his life volunteer for anything? Do you think that I would believe that you would ALLOW him to volunteer for anything requiring that much skill? He is an idiot, a spineless weakling. Why do you think I married him?”
The warden did not really have a response to this, but he couldn’t stand her icy stare. He began to mumble something about a search party looking for him, but she cut off that excuse as well.
“Do you have a body? I can’t collect life insurance unless you produce a body, and that is even if I can convince them that he died in the line of duty. Can you support that at least? And not with some sad little story about ‘investigating a likely trail’. That doesn’t even sound like a good lie! You have six hours to produce for me either a live husband or a body. Otherwise, I will… I will… “
Judy was not often speechless, but she could think of no real threat to hold over her father’s head. She usually brought up the possibility of not knowing his grandchildren, even though she doubted that the few times she and Cliff had been together was enough to produce offspring. However, with the possibility that Cliff was dead, she couldn’t realistically bring that up. Unless, she was already pregnant, which he could not prove or disprove. With that thought, she suddenly burst into tears.
“I’m sorry Daddy, I’m just worried that my child might be born without…”
She stopped in mock surprise at what she had just pretended to blurt.
Warden Claremont liked to consider himself a hard man. A man who dealt with criminals day in and out, and a man who was able to spot a liar when he saw one. But he had a soft spot for his daughter, the only family he had in the world, and this soft spot manifested itself as a blind spot as well. He bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
“Sweetheart, compose yourself. We are going to go out looking for your husband right now. If he is out there, we will find him.” He punched a button on his desk and spoke briskly to the secretary:
“Janice, get Captain Williams back up here. Tell him to prep the chopper to go out again. I and my daughter will be going with him.”
Judy seemed mollified by this, at least she was getting her way with her dad, even if she had been extremely annoyed by not having anyone at home to push around for the last few days.
Once up in the chopper, Judy began to get a real appreciation of the real harshness of the environment in which she lived. The undulating sand dunes stretching away from the prison walls, the rugged hill country covered with volcanic rock all gave the impression of another world from the air. In a few minutes, Captain Williams directed the pilot to circle and spoke into the microphone for the warden and Judy to hear:
“Here is where he was last seen. We separated into several small groups, each man was supposed to stay in visual contact with the next man on either side. Understand that at this time, we thought we were just searching for a body, otherwise, we would have stayed closer.”
He directed the pilot to move slowly away to the west, maintaining an elevation of only a few hundred feet.
“We were about a mile from the starting point, everyone was reporting in regularly, when suddenly someone reported that Cliff had disappeared.” Captain Williams delivered his lie with the practiced ease of a traffic reporter discussing a traffic jam.
“We immediately converged on his area, and found signs of a struggle, but no sign of either man. We later found Cliff’s gunbelt, missing the ammo and gun so we assume that the escapee managed to take that from him.” Warden Claremont had been working on this story with Captain Williams ever since his return from the ill-fated search party. They had rehearsed every detail, and had even completed all of the official paperwork to report a missing guard. Only the men on the search party and the warden knew the truth, and the members of the party were more than happy to keep quiet about what they knew, since they considered themselves to have been betrayed by Cliff that day.
“Since then, both men seem to have vanished off of the face of the earth. We haven’t seen anything. We have scaled back the searches however, and are now concentrating on patrolling the nearby roads and towns, hoping to catch anyone who makes it out of the desert alive.”
Judy’s face was a stone mask. Inside, she was still much more angry at her father for withholding information from her than she was at Cliff for apparently getting himself killed. Truthfully, Cliff was good for two things to her. He provided an outlet for her urge to dominate and intimidate, and a prison guard was automatically enrolled in a generous life insurance program specifically geared towards those who died in the line of duty. However, disappearing in the line of duty would be hard to justify to the insurance company, since without a body and evidence that he was doing his job, they could just as easily claim that Cliff was a co-conspirator in the escape and therefore was not entitled to any payments. The first was the reason she had been mad at her father for not telling her where Cliff was, the second was the reason she was mad now. Knowing Cliff and his reluctance to stand up to anyone or anything, she had no doubt that if he had come face to face with a convicted killer on the loose that he would have come off second best. However, without a body, his death was nothing more than a major inconvenience, since she would both not collect the insurance, and would have to find another willing fool to keep around and torture.
As Judy mulled over her situation, she suddenly noticed the helicopter pilot gesturing wildly to Captain Williams. He turned towards him, and the pilot indicated that he should switch his headset from the intercom to the radio. A look of stunned shock came over his face, and he shouted something angrily into the microphone. Judy couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, and the warden seemed just as confused. The captain reached over to the warden’s headset, and twisted the switch on the side, then spoke into the microphone again. The same look of shock came over the warden’s face and he began shouting into the microphone so loudly that Captain William’s face twisted in sudden agony as his eardrums were assaulted with a stream of profanity at maximum volume. Judy had had enough of being an ignorant bystander, so she reached out and grabbed her father’s collar with both hands and screamed at the top of her lungs:
“What in the hell is going on?” The warden said something back, but she couldn’t quite make it out. She screamed again for him to repeat it, and Captain Williams helpfully reached over and twisted the knob on the warden’s headset back to intercom just in time for Judy to hear his scream:
“It’s Cliff. He thinks he has found the guy. Thinks he is going to take him down himself. What in the hell is wrong with that guy?”
Chapter Eleven
Cliff was on a roll. First, he had stumbled onto a full
water bottle at just the right
He had followed the man all through the morning, seeming
to always find another footprint just when he thought he had lost the trail.
For once in his life, his instincts were serving him well. Whenever he would
lose the trail, he would just stop for a
Finally, after a few hours of tracking, he began to hear the sounds of traffic on a highway. He felt a stab of panic, hoping that the man had not been able to get a ride. Then he remembered the traffic signs that were posted every few miles warning motorists that there was a prison in the vicinity, and not to pick up hitchhikers. At least there was a good chance that nobody would stop to pick him up. Then he thought of the extra patrols that would no doubt be traveling up and down the road, looking for just such a person trying to catch a ride. Both the prison searchers and the highway patrol would be on high alert for anyone trying to catch a ride. He doubled his pace lest some other lucky person found the escapee first and stole his glory, or his bullet.
Walt heard the highway long before he saw it, and knew
that he had veered way too far north during the night. The highway ran almost
directly north and south until it hit the town, at which point it veered almost
directly east towards
Cliff could not believe his luck. He had spotted the man.
No mistake about it, he had been carrying the same ratty backpack he had when
they had met back at the truck, and he was definitely wearing Cliff’s uniform,
although it appeared to be wrong side out. Cliff had even been close enough to
make out the shape of the pistol tucked into the back of his waistband. He had
brought the shotgun up, but even Cliff knew he was out of range of buckshot. He
also knew that his lone shell was still in the cylinder, and in order to get it
into the chamber where he could fire, he would have to work the pump slide,
which would make too much noise and attract the man’s attention. Cliff watched
him as he climbed up a ridgeline, keeping the bead at the end of the gun trained
on the middle of his back. Never in his life had he ached to injure another
human as he did now. He hated this man with an intensity he had hitherto
reserved for his wife and her father. In fact, all of that hate was included in
the feelings he felt for this killer. His finger tightened on the trigger, he
imagined that he had a rifle instead of a shotgun, and that he would squeeze
slowly to send a bullet speeding into that hateful body. Suddenly,
the shotgun dry-fired, the sudden click startling him out of his reverie.
Simultaneously, the convict dropped to the ground and disappeared from Cliff’s
sight. His mind struggled to understand what had happened. Was his hate intense
enough to kill someone just by thinking about it? Had the gun really fired and
taken the man down? Or had he heard the click of the firing pin falling on an
empty chamber and suddenly dived for shelter? Cliff’s heart raced as he saw his
fantasies dashed in an instant. What to do? Should he jump and run after him,
try and run him down and finish the job? Or should he wait to see if he would
break and run on his own, giving Cliff a chance to stay on his trail? Cliff
stood up, and in a hunching run, began to hurry towards the last known location
of his quarry. At any minute, he expected to hear the pop of the pistol and
feel the thudding impact of a bullet, but nothing came. Then, as he gained the
top of a small hill, and his angle of observation changed enough, he saw the
body of the convict laying prone at the top of the
ridgeline. He skidded to a halt, huffing and puffing at the sudden exertion,
and began to wonder again if he had suddenly obtained some sort of
psycho-kinetic power to kill people over long distances by merely concentrating
enough hate. Then he noticed his head swiveling side to side as he surveyed the
valley ahead, and reality settled back in. He was not dead,
neither was he hiding from Cliff. He had merely dropped to the ground to avoid
being seen by someone over the ridgeline. As Cliff’s breathing slowed, he again
heard the sound of traffic, much nearer now, and realized why Walt had dropped
so quickly. The highway must be just over that ridge, and Walt was thinking of
a way to either get past it, or to get a ride from a passing car. Either way,
he was stuck where he was for a time at least, and Cliff was still unknown to
him. He still had the upper hand. Euphoria once again gripped him, and he
settled back to watch and wait. As he sat down, something thumped against his
thigh, and he remembered the radio that he had been given when Captain Williams
abandoned him at the truck. He had not even turned it on, had quite forgotten
about it in fact. Now, it occurred to him that he should call someone, just to
be sure that someone knew where he was and that, however the coming confrontation
turned out, whether he met the light in the tunnel and died, or whether he
killed the killer, that he would get proper credit, and someone would
eventually know what had happened to him. He crept back down the hill, until he
was out of sight, and, he hoped, out of earshot of the man. He quickly pulled
the radio out, and turned it one. He tuned it to the emergency channel used by
all prison personnel, and, just before he thumbed the mike, imagined for a
Chapter Twelve
Judy’s mouth gaped open in disbelief. What her father had just said may as well have been another language. For a second, she was sure that she had heard him say that Cliff was about to capture an escaped convict. She had been so sure all along that her father was lying about the reason he had been missing that she had developed her own theory and it had become fact in her mind. He was in a shallow grave somewhere after finally pissing her father off enough to have him carry out his threats. Not only could she not conceive of anyone being stupid enough to send Walt anywhere near an escaped convict, but the idea of him actually cornering and confronting one was so far beyond the pale of reality that her mind would not even attempt to grasp it. So she decided that she had misheard her father, and must ask him to repeat it.
“What did you say? I can’t hear a thing! Did someone find the body? Can we go back and get off of this damn thing now?”
The warden, still not quite believing this turn of events himself took a few seconds to respond.
“No, Cliff is alive. He found the convict, and he says he is about to take him down. No way that is possible, he must be delirious.”
Then turning back to the captain, he screamed:
“Can we get a location? Where is he? We have to get there NOW!”
While he had turned away from Judy, she had been fiddling with the knobs on her own headphones, and had figured out how to tune in the radio transmissions. What she heard turned her blood cold with fury. The very much alive sound of Cliff’s voice was coming loud and clear over the airwaves.
“Nah, I have no clue where I am, but it doesn’t matter, I am taking him myself. I don’t need any help. I will try and figure out where I am after I get him. Just back off or he’ll disappear again!”
Captain Williams started to answer, but Judy’s screeching voice drowned out anything he might have started to say.
“CLIFF! KNOCK THIS STUPID CRAP OFF NOW! You are not going to try to capture anyone! What in the hell makes you think you can do anything like that? You are a weak, cowardly waste of human flesh. Why in the world would you think that you can do anything right? Tell us where you are so that we can come get you.”
In her unthinking fury, she had forgotten all about the
life insurance policy, about him dying in the line of duty. All she could think
about now was the fact that he was out there, somewhere, not obeying her. How
dare he get involved in something dangerous like a manhunt for a convicted
killer? Didn’t he know that she needed him at home in order to feel superior to
something? Didn’t he know how lonely it was to live in a world where nobody
wanted to be around you? Didn’t he know that the night he staggered over and
blew his stinking beer breath in her face that she was only seconds away from
running out of the bar in humiliation? Every time someone avoided her eyes, or
ignored her greeting she wanted to burst into tears. But that was unthinkable,
for that would reveal weakness, and if she had learned nothing else from her
father, it was that weakness was something to be exploited, something to be
used to your advantage. Then Cliff had arrived, one big pile of weakness. Next
to him, nobody would notice any hint of weakness in her. Add to that the fact
that he was the first person who had even tried to talk to her and you had the
best idea she had ever had. She immediately convinced him to leave with her,
and spent the next few years of her life making sure that nothing he did would
ever be good enough. Making damn good and sure that he never
had a
Now she found herself without control, without complete knowledge of his situation, and it galled her beyond her ability to bear. She would bend him back to her will, she would convince him the return with the very force of her voice.
Cliff stared dumbfounded at the radio. It had gone silent
after its raucous outburst, but he still felt as if it had bitten him with
venomous fangs. His hand even felt cold and stiff gripping it in his hands. HER
voice had come from it, HER screeching, awful, life-stealing voice had emanated
from this harmless looking device, and for a
“ANSWER ME YOU PIECE OF SHIT! WHERE ARE YOU AND WHY ARE YOU NOT ANSWERING!”
Cliff jumped as if stung. It had happened again, it could
not be his imagination, it must be real. How she had
managed to get on the prison radio network just to nag him was beyond him, yet
here she was. At the
He sat there, trembling as if with cold, his knuckles
white where they gripped the radio. The plastic case cracked with the tension,
Cliff not quite having the strength to crush it, but nearly so. At that
“Cliff, I know you are probably frustrated, probably angry, but we all know that you can’t possibly do anything like this without help. Tell us where you are, and we will come and get you. I will find you a different job, one where you don’t have to put up with this kind of thing. A better job for someone like you.”
The honey dripping tone of her voice was worse than the screeching fury. Once she began using that voice, she seemed to just suck the life out of any argument he tried to come up with. Sucking the life out of him, sucking his will, sucking his very desire to resist. Suddenly panicked that she would be able to take control of him even over the miles of radio waves, the cold numbness consuming his body exploded into a fountain of hot rage. He drew back the hand holding the radio and hurled with so much force that his shoulder exploded in pain. As the radio flew away, he gave voice to his frustration, his hate, his pain. Never in his life had he felt so powerful, so free, and for long minutes, until his lungs gave their last ounce of breath, he vented the bile that had festered for so long. When he ran out of breath, he sucked in a huge, gasping lungful of air and screamed again. His head was throbbing again, in time with his shoulder and his lungs and throat were protesting at the sudden abuse. Cliff did not care. He was free, and he welcomed the pain as the price paid for his freedom. After a life spent avoiding pain, avoiding the possibility of success by being paralyzed by the possibility of failure, after a life spent pleasing everyone in the world but himself, Cliff felt free. He raised both hands to the setting sun and taking another lung bursting breath of the evening air, he screamed once more, until lights exploded in his eyes and he collapsed backwards to the ground. He lay there waiting for his vision to clear, enjoying the feeling of absolute freedom. After a few minutes however, he returned to reality, and remembered the reason for his sudden courage. He cursed himself as twenty kinds of fool, both for even calling on the radio, and for making so much noise. Certainly Walt would have heard all of the ruckus, and would be either coming close to investigate, or more likely, running as quickly as possible in the opposite direction. Now that he had a purpose and a direction in life, he was loathe to lose it. He quickly gathered his senses, found his few things and hurried carefully to the place where he had seen Walt laying at the top of the ridgeline. Daylight was fading fast as the sun continued moving towards the horizon, but he could easily pick out the marks left on the ground where Walt had lain to survey the scene. Cliff laid on the ground in the same place, and noticed, as had Walt, that the most likely place to cross the highway or to try and get a ride would be where the road climbed back out of the small valley. Cliff quickly set off in that direction, all caution to the winds. Walt knew that he was there, of that he was certain. But he still had the element of uncertainty. Walt would not know how many or who was chasing him, and would be more likely to evade than to turn on his pursuers. Cliff was once again riding the euphoric wave of success, and almost as an afterthought, he paused for a second and worked the pump slide on the shotgun. As the shell slid into the chamber with a solid click, Cliff knew that the miserable portion of his life was over. Soon he would be either dead or standing over the dead body of the man ahead of him, and he really didn’t care which.
Walt was approaching the dugway when he heard the first scream. At first he thought it was some sort of animal being tortured. The pain and suffering contained in the sound was almost tangible, and hardened as he was to the suffering of others, it sent a chill down his spine. Whatever it was immediately followed the first scream with another, and then another. Each succeeding scream carried less a message of pain, and more of rebellion or anger. When the final one died away, he found himself more than a little frightened at what was out here in the wilderness with him. It may have been human, but the elemental animal emotion he had heard left him with enough doubt to remain nervous. He had never been superstitious, in his life everything had had a simple, normal explanation and he had not spent much time hearing about supernatural beings. So he was not frightened on that level, but for a man on the run, anything out of the ordinary brings with it the possibility of being captured or killed and so his instinct was to distrust anything.
Not wanting to find out what it was, he picked up his pace towards the junction of the road and the ridgeline. Putting some distance between himself and whatever it was was exactly what he wanted to do.
A few minutes later he reached his goal. The ridgeline
had been sliced away to allow the passage of the road, and Walt climbed
carefully to the crown of one of the sliced edges, overlooking the road. It was
full dark now, and he was not much worried about being spotted. Unless someone
stopped and deliberately aimed a light in his direction, it was very unlikely
that he would be seen. He surveyed the area, considering his next move when
something caught his eye. A few hundred yards after the road passed through the
cut, there was a gas station on his side of the road.
Walt was elated. A gas station was very likely to have a pay phone, and a pay
phone was exactly what he needed to find to contact his friend and have her
come out and get him. If he was able to get her out here, he could get on his
way to
Walt scrambled down the last few feet of hillside in the dark behind the gas station. He was feeling lucky. He still had not seen anyone stop at the station, but he was still being cautious. Any business in the area had most likely been notified to look out for an escaped prisoner, and wearing a prison guard uniform, even wrong side out would definitely attract attention. It had been quite a while since Walt had looked in a mirror as well, but he was very well aware of the four days growth of beard and the peeling sunburned skin on his face. Walking boldly into a convenience store would definitely not be the best idea.
He had reached the rear of the station now, and stood there listening for any sign of life. All he could hear was the low buzz of the insects and the passing cars on the highway. He crept to the corner and peered around. He could see through the corner windows to the front of the store where the single pump was. It was the old kind without a digital display, so it gave no indication as to whether or not the store was open. Leaning farther out, Walt spotted the pay phone. It was right out in front of the store, just on the other side from the front doors. While using it, he would be in plain view of passing cars, and of course, anyone in the store as well.
He scanned the front of the store and saw another bad sign, literally. A tattered Closed sign faced him from the front window, meaning that the side reading “Open” was facing the street. That meant that more than likely, someone was on duty inside, and would definitely notice him using the phone. He went back around to the dark side of the station and slid down the wall to a sitting position. What now? He had no idea what to do next. Before he had much time to devote to that thought, his hearing suddenly registered the sound of an approaching helicopter. It had been a good while since the search helicopter had flown over, but he knew that there could only be one reason for one now. He looked around frantically, looking for somewhere to hide. He was too far from the woodline to hope for shelter there, and besides, the steep hill would be too time consuming to climb, leaving him exposed the entire time. There was no dumpster, at least on this side of the building, but suddenly his eyes seized on a dark spot on the back wall. The back door of the building was a mere ten feet away, and if it was somehow unlocked, he might be able to get inside. If there was someone in there, he would just have to make sure that they were taken care of. He rushed towards the door, found the handle and yanked. Naturally, it was locked. He looked at the door carefully for any indication of how he might break it open. The sound of the helicopter sounded nearly overhead now, and panic was rising in his throat. If he was spotted, it would be over in minutes. No way he could outrun a helicopter, and with his location known, he would be surrounded and killed in a matter of minutes. In a fit of desperation, he yanked on the weathered door. It groaned outward, but held. He braced his foot against the doorjamb and strained backwards again. Something snapped, and with a groan, the door creaked open a few inches. It was apparently not used often, and the hinges were rusty and stiff. He strained backwards, the protesting door sliding another few inches outwards. He turned sideways and started into the door, but his knapsack snagged on the jamb. He quickly stripped it off his shoulder and dropped it on the ground just outside the door. He could now see a spotlight playing over the terrain behind the building. Finally making it inside the building he considered for a brief second reaching out to get his bag, but decided against it and yanked the door closed instead. It came, frustratingly slow, but finally the gap closed then disappeared. Just as he got the door closed, the helicopter roared overhead at low altitude, its rotor wash shaking the old building. He stood in the pitch blackness for a minute, not understanding where he was. Finally, he made out a line of light on the floor indicating another door into the main part of the store. He must be in some sort of closet or something. He wondered again if anyone was in the store, but a few seconds later, his curiosity was satisfied when the door was yanked wide open and a high-pitched voice cracked with age screamed:
“Don’t move or I’ll blast you in two!”
Chapter Thirteen
Judy sat at her father’s desk sobbing. She was still in shock that Cliff had ignored her. Never in their three years together had he ever given her any kind of resistance that she wasn’t able to quickly overcome. Her father was not sure what to say, so he sat in a chair by the window and sipped a glass of whiskey. After Judy had gotten on the radio, there had been no more transmissions from Cliff. The signal from his radio died altogether, and it was assumed that he had turned it off. After returning the warden and Judy to the prison, the chopper had refueled, picked up several men from the SWAT team, and returned to the area to search. The handheld radio Cliff had used had a limited range, so they knew that they had been pretty close to him when he called. The possible area where he may have been located was pretty close to the highway, so patrols on the highway were doubled, and the highway patrol began making random stops and held out the possibility of a roadblock.
All of this took a few hours, and by the time everything was set in to action it was full dark. Nonetheless, the helicopter went out, crisscrossing a circle drawn around the position of the helicopter when it received the transmission with a diameter about as large as the estimated range of the radio. Regardless of the limited range, the circle still ended up being nearly ten miles in circumference, and the search was expected to take all night. At one point, the pilot thought he saw some movement next to a run-down gas station at the extreme south end of the circle, but by the time they circled around and got the spotlight on the area, it was deserted. A call was made to the highway patrol, who promised to dispatch an officer to the station to investigate. When they arrived, they found the place deserted. The owner, a scrappy little wisp of a woman was known to keep irregular business hours, and so nobody was surprised that she may have gotten bored and simply closed up shop and gone home. Just to cover all bases though, an officer was dispatched to her home. Nobody answered the knock, and the car was not in the drive, so that lead was declared dead.
At the prison, Judy and her father were served a reheated
meal from the prison cafeteria, but neither had the stomach to eat much. The
warden had a hideaway sofa in his office, and he had it made up and sent Judy
to bed. He had a cot made up in his secretary’s office, and spent a sleepless
night tossing and turning on the narrow mattress. He was also very disturbed
and nervous, not quite knowing what to expect at any
When he left Cliff in the desert to die a horrible death, he did it with the full knowledge and permission of his boss. Although no order was ever given verbally, the two had worked together long enough to understand each other perfectly in a situation like this. But when Judy entered the picture, the captain became nervous. She was an unknown quantity who seemed quite unpredictable. Her performance in the helicopter was the final nail in her father’s coffin, from that minute, Captain Williams began plotting the downfall of the warden. The only problem was making sure that nothing hit himself on the way down.
Walt’s eyes squinted into the harsh fluorescent glare. His mind raced, trying frantically to come up with some plan, some way out of this mess. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he began to realize just how hopeless it was. A tiny old woman wearing a stained and faded “Kerry-Edwards 2004” t-shirt was standing in the doorway pointing a double-barreled shotgun at his stomach. She was only a step or two away, and he briefly considered a sudden dive at her feet, but the resolve with which she was gripping the butt of the gun, and her white knuckles on both triggers told him that his best course of action was to play it cool. He had never been good with words, but his muscle would not do him much good if one or both of those barrels suddenly discharged.
“You that boy
that escaped from the prison the other day aintcha?”
it was more a statement than a question. Walt was not sure if he was expected
to answer or not, so he just kept staring into those watery eyes, hoping to get
at least a
“Well, I don’t love the coppers too much, so you lucky on that count. I aint gonna turn you in right away. I figger some o’ them pigs out there to the prison have just as much cause to be locked up as most of you crimnals, so I’ll give you about thirty seconds to convince me that you aint no raperist or child molestor or dirty politician. Otherwise, I’ll blow you in half and call the cops to come clean up the mess.”
Walt had never been accused of being good with words, even under the best of circumstances. Now he was dumbstruck, the pressure of those two gaping black holes chasing all rational thought from his mind. Finally, he was able to mumble a response:
“Ma’am, I ain’t never raped no one, nor molested any kids or anything
like that. Really, I accidentally killed my girlfriend and this guy that was hittin’ on her, and they sent me up to prison. I never
meant to do anything more than beat on ‘im a little,
but they dint want to hear any of that at the trial so I just shut up and let ‘em do what they wanted. Honest, I am just trying to get to
Before he could go on, the shotgun was lowered to the floor. With a sparkle in her eyes, the old woman chuckled: “kilt your woman and her lover huh? I guess that’ll do. Caint say’s I blame you, I might have done somethin’ like that when I was younger too. Bastard shouldna been standin’ there I say!” She aimed the barrel of the shotgun away from him and carefully lowered both hammers then lifted the shotgun to her shoulder.
“Come on, you look like hell. How long since you had decent food to eat?”
She turned and walked up the hallway, leaving Walt to pick his way through the cluttered storeroom. He hesitated at the end of the hallway, not wanting to go out into the front of the store where he would be visible from the road. The old woman had just flipped the Open/Closed sign around so that “Yes, We’re Open” now showed to the inside of the store. She then flipped a switch next to the front door, killing the street sign. Finally, after turning a deadbolt on the door she turned to him and said:
“Let’s go. I’ll run you into town where they won’t be lookin’ for ya’ so hard. Then I’ll get ya somethin’ to eat.”
She walked back towards him, still carrying the shotgun over her shoulder. She stopped a few feet from where he stood just inside the hallway.
“If’n you don’t pick up that bottom jaw, some bird’s gonna come along and shit on it. Don’t worry, I aint gonna turn you in. If I wanted to do that, I would just split you in half a minute ago and called them to come and clean up the mess. Don’t worry, youre safe with me. I hate all them pigs anyway.”
With that, she pushed past him into the hallway, then instead of turning right into the storeroom from which Walt had just emerged, she turned left into what appeared to be an office. Walt followed her in, looking around the room while he waited for her. On the opposite wall was another door, presumably another exit. She stopped at a desk stacked high with dusty piles of paper, and opening a drawer, removed a set of keys. With the keys she unlocked a gun cabinet and deposited the shotgun inside. She then turned to a coat rack behind the desk and pulled off a worn leather jacket. Then, as she was about to turn towards the door, she slapped her forehead and turned to Walt.
“Damn, what an idiot I am, you aint going nowhere wearing that pig’s uniform. Even wrong side out I can tell what it is. Let me find something else to wear. Hang on.”
She walked back out to the store area, and Walt stood there feeling more than a little confused. In a minute, she was back, pulling the price tags off of a bright red T-shirt that proclaimed proudly above a picture of a dachshund “I’m a Wiener!” She tossed the shirt to Walt, who quickly removed the filthy guard uniform shirt and replaced it with the t-shirt. It felt good to have a clean shirt, even if the rest of him was still completely filthy. She then directed him to the restroom to wash up. She even brought a pack of disposable razors and shaving cream, and he trimmed his four-day old beard. It was just long enough to shape into a goatee, in the hopes of changing his appearance just a bit more. With the final addition of a baseball cap bearing the image of the trucker mudflap girl, Walt looked a little more like a tourist and less like an escaped convict, not to mention feeling a little more human.
“C’mon dude, we gotta run. Surprised the pigs aint stopped by to check on me already. We been foolin’ around here for half an hour already.” She barked at Walt, already heading back towards the office. He followed, and just before she opened the door, he cleared his throat and asked:
“Ma’am, why are you doing this? I mean, I appreciate it and all, but really, isn’t this a lot of risk to take for someone you don’t know?”
She grinned a wide grin, showing a goodly number of missing teeth. “Two things you need to know about me,” she said. “Never call me Ma’am again, my name is Joanie and I hate anything and everything to do with cops. As long as you don’t rape women or children, and the cops hate you, I’m your best friend. Now let’s go before this place starts to reek of bacon.”
Walt grinned, probably for the first time in years, pulled the brim of his trucker cap low over his eyes, and followed Joanie out the door. Come to think of it, it had also been a long time since he had called anyone friend.
Chapter Fourteen
Cliff’s euphoria was wearing off. He was still thrilled
to be doing something dangerous of his own accord, especially knowing how angry
it was making Judy and her father. But it was dark, and
getting cold, he was out of water again, and hungry. His head was
throbbing again, along with most of the rest of his body. His shoulder in
particular had stiffened to the point that he could barely move it. Throwing
the radio with that much force had most likely torn some muscles or worse. A
week ago, he would never have imagined persevering through such trials, but
enough of the hatred still burned inside him that he kept trudging on,
following the ridgeline. He had long ago lost any daylight to see signs of the
trail, and was now going completely on his belief that Walt would follow the
ridgeline to where it met the road. His head hung low, his left hand clasped
the shotgun while his right was stuck into his waistband to keep it from
swinging. Each time he moved that arm, pain exploded from his shoulder, and
without any material to make a sling, he had to improvise to immobilize it. A
while ago, the prison helicopter had made several passes over the area,
searching with its spotlight, but he had easily found cover until it passed.
After it left, he moved on again. Stumbling along in the dark, he nearly fell
down the steep cut where the road passed through the ridge, but caught his
footing at the last
He reached the bottom and was now walking level with the
road. The gas station sat nestled in an arm of the main ridgeline, which curved
around the far side of the builing before dwindling
away to the valley floor just beyond it. The headlights of an approaching car
panicked Cliff
At that
“Joanie!” he gasped, gesturing wildly with one hand while he scrabbled at his waistband for the pistol. Joanie’s head whipped around, and she immediately grasped the danger of the situation. As Walt’s hand came up with the pistol, she reached over and yanked the light switch out and slammed the accelerator to the floor. The sudden glare of light blinded Cliff, and caused another second of hesitation. The sudden explosion of shots from the quickly retreating car brought him back to his senses.
Walt pointed the pistol at Cliff, and pulled the trigger three times in quick succession. Three holes appeared in the front windshield, and Joanie screamed in pain at the concussion of the muzzle blasts in the tiny confined space of the Beetle. Cliff felt something buzz past his head, then something punched him hard in the gut. The impact caused his entire body to flinch, and he involuntarily pulled the trigger of the shotgun. The recoil hit his injured shoulder almost simultaneously with Walt’s last bullet. The slug actually went through the fiberglass stock first, absorbing most of the force. Acting purely on instinct, Joanie yanked the wheel of the small car to the right just as the double-aught buckshot destroyed one of the headlights. Fortunately they had already cleared the building, and the car whipped around to face south, nearly in the middle of the highway. Joanie slammed the clutch and the brake to the floor, yanked the gearshift into first gear and released the clutch. In her haste she nearly stalled the engine, but luckily, the engine coughed, hesitated, and started moving. She moved quickly through the gears, the small engine screaming its protest at this mistreatment. When the car finally reached its max speed of around sixty, she looked over to see how Walt was doing. He was hunched over his right leg, his face an ashen white.
“Walt! What’s wrong?” She gasped. Walt straigtened slightly and showed her his torn and bloody pant leg.
“I guess he got me after all.” He muttered. He knew that the injury wasn’t necessarily life threatening, but the bone was definitely shattered, and he was feeling faint already.
“We’ll get you into town quick, I know someone who won’t ask a bunch of questions.” Joanie reached over and patted him on the shoulder.
“Meanwhile, you gotta put some pressure on it or you’ll bleed to death.”
Walt nodded weakly, and put both hands on the wound. Joanie looked at his pale face, grimacing in pain, and said a small prayer to a god she didn’t believe in that he wouldn’t die.
Officer Mulroney of the California Highway Patrol was having a hard time staying awake. The hot desert breeze blowing in through his half-open window wasn’t really helping either. He was sitting on a speed trap at the bottom of the cut at the north end of the small valley. Motorists had a tendency to let gravity take control of their cars coming down the incline, and he always had good luck sitting here waiting for them to zoom by. He was dozing however, since it had been a good half-hour since the last car had zoomed past. Suddenly he jumped to full alertness. He was almost sure he had just heard gunshots, at least one, maybe three others very quiet and muffled. Was he just dreaming? Or were there some rednecks out somewhere spotlighting coyotes? Either way, he had better move around some and check it out. Also, he didn’t want to be caught sleeping again, he had nearly lost his job last time…
Cliff lay on the gravel of the parking lot, drifting on a
cloud of near-contentment. He had accomplished his goal hadn’t he? Either kill
the escapee, or be killed. He was not really even aware that he had fired the
shotgun, it had happened so fast, and coming simultaneously with the shots that
wounded him, in his mind, he had not even taken the shot. He felt somewhat
disappointed at this, but not too much. His hatred for the man was gone now,
somehow confronting him, even in the darkness had been
the catharsis he had needed, and the compulsion to follow him to the ends of
the earth had abated. He was waiting now to die, to feel the last of this
earthly pain recede, to meet the light at the end of the tunnel that he had
envisioned so many times over the past few days. Then, he thought that he could
see the light, but for some reason, it looked like two. Was there supposed to
be two lights at the tunnel? As he lay there pondering this unusual development,
one light winked out
“Yeah dispatch, I have a man with a gunshot wound, it looks like he’s wearing a prison SWAT uniform, may be that missing guard they’ve been looking for. There are also signs of a car leaving here very recently, put out an APB for an old VW Beetle heading south, I’m pretty sure that’s what that old bat that runs this place drives.”
Cliff was confused. Was this the angel sent to guide him to the other side? Why was he talking like a cop? As Cliff pondered the similarities and lack thereof between cops and angels, he slipped away as the red and blue lights of an ambulance became visible just over the horizon.
Chapter Fifteen
Joanie’s knuckles gripped the
steering wheel tightly. What she had thought was a minor adventure had just
evolved into a major crime and possible life and death situation. In the blink
of an eye, before she even had time to consider what was happening, she had
gone from cop-hater giving an escaped felon a ride in to town to an accessory
to murder. She kept reviewing in her mind the way the dark shape at the station
had crumpled to the ground like a deflated ballon
when the shots rang out. No way someone could survive being shot like that, he must be dead, or quickly dying. And here, in her
car, was another man, possibly bleeding to death. She had barely noticed the
shotgun blast in her haste to get the car out of the line of fire, but
apparently, at least one pellet had penetrated the empty front compartment of
the car and struck her passenger in the leg. As she neared town, she began to
get nervous. How long before someone found the body in the parking lot of her
gas station? Her car was not the most anonymous one in the world, and with
bullet holes in the windshield and hood, how hard would it be to make the
connection? She could always claim to have been taken hostage, but that seemed
a little bit cowardly, and she had always made an extra effort to avoid feeling
that way. Back in the sixties, as a student at Berkely,
she had been at the very center of the protest movement. Her hatred of rapists
and cops had originated after one protest at which she had succeeded in being
one of those hauled off in handcuffs. However, for some reason, instead of
being thrown in the paddy wagon with all of the others, two of the officers
stuffed her into a patrol car, and drove off alone. Two hours later, she
finally made it to the station, humiliated, sore, and with an absolute hatred
of all cops as well as anyone who chose to seek sexual satisfaction in the
suffering of another. As much as she held law enforcement in disdain, she never
made a conscious effort to break the law. Despite the belligerent attitude she
displayed to anyone in authority, she was still terrified of the thought of
being arrested again, and so her protest days were over. She bounced around
aimlessly for a few years, before falling in love with and marrying an older
man who ran a gas station out in the middle of nowhere near
For this reason, she was able to survive the economic
crash just after the turn of the century, and stayed in business even after the
tourists stopped coming to
A few days ago one had stopped by in an official car,
which was unusual. He came in and handed her a flyer about an escapee that they
thought might be headed her way. She insulted him and tore up the flyer in
front of him, but privately paid attention and began keeping her shotgun loaded
under the front counter. Joanie had never before felt
in real fear of the few punks who came in to hold her up. She usually ended up
befriending them, and they left with some money in their pockets and a few days
worth of food. The criminals who held her up were usually not that smart
anyway, with a forty five minute drive to the nearest town either way, it was a safe bet that a clean getaway was unlikely.
Nevertheless, she had not asked the prison official what the man was in for, a
fact that she slightly regretted. That way, she could have known whether to
shoot on sight, if he was a rapist, or to welcome him in and offer assistance.
But to carry on a conversation, even that brief would have been more than she
could stand. So she had thrown a few more insults at him, reminded him of the
location of the door, and encouraged him to make good use of it. Then, she
mostly forgot about the whole thing until the night that she was sitting in her
store, her feet up on the counter and her eyes half shut. She was trying to
read a book, something some old politician had written about the earth coming
to an end if the environment wasn’t cleaned up when she heard that cursed
helicopter approaching again. At almost the same
Joanie had dropped the book, her feet hitting the floor at almost the same time. She stood up, grabbed the shotgun from under the counter, and hurried back to the storeroom. As she turned into the hallway, she heard the hinges screech again, and the door slam closed. The helicopter was now directly overhead, and so close that the building was shaking. So it must be the escaped prisoner they were looking for, and he was almost definitely in her store, hiding from the cops. Well, he could soon be her best friend, unless he was the other kind of scum that she hated. She pulled both hammers back on her side-by-side double barreled 12-guage, and yanked the door open.
“You still with me?” she asked her ashen faced passenger. He nodded weakly, then said in a voice barely loud enough to be heard over the roar of the engine:
“If they catch us, you act like I took you hostage. Aint no reason for you to get caught up in this just for trying to help me. I’ll point the gun at you and all, but I’ll surrender before it gets too stupid, I promise.”
Joanie smiled, she had been thinking exactly the same thing, but was glad that he had come up with it first.
“Sounds like a plan. But I don’t plan on getting caught, not tonight anyway. Hang on, I am going to take this off road for a while, I have a suspicion that this road is going to get pretty porky here in a minute.”
It took Walt to understand what she meant by ‘porky’ but then he remembered her pet word for cops was ‘pig’ and understood that she wanted to get off the road to avoid the cops. As if in response to their thoughts, on the far horizon there appeared the flashing blue and red lights of an emergency vehicle.
“Damn, the road I was looking for is still about a mile off, can’t wait for it now. Hold on!”
Joanie reached over and pushed
the light switch in, killing the remaining headlight. Instant darkness
enveloped them, and Walt had a sudden
Soon, Joanie spotted the darker line of brush stretching out on either side, and she started slowing the car. It would be tricky getting down there in the dark, but she knew every inch of this road like the back of her hand, she had been driving it for over thirty years after all, hadn’t she? She found the place she was looking for, and pulled the car off the road. The emergency vehicle was close enough now that Joanie could see that it was an ambulance, but there were several other vehicles close behind that one, flashing red and blue also, which had to be cops. She bumped slowly down the slope, until she hit the sandy bottom of the ravine where she turned left back towards the road. As soon as she pulled into the large culvert, she cut the engine and rolled down her window. Within seconds, they heard the sound of the ambulance roaring overhead and saw the weird red and blue shadows splashing across the desert. The first vehicle was quickly followed by two more in quick succession, and then a third without lights. After a few minutes of quiet, Joanie climbed out of the car and crept back to the edge of the road. No sign of cars in either direction, but the sky in the east was noticeably lighter than before. It was hard to believe that it was nearing morning already, but she knew that she needed to get on the road even more urgently. Driving around in a bullet riddled car was very likely to draw some very unwelcome attention to herself. She hurried back to the car, and starting it up, backed it out of the culvert and up the ravine until she could pull it back up and onto the highway. Once again she raced through the gears, speeding through the gathering dawn with her one headlight off. A short distance down the road, she pulled off the road again, this time on to a wandering dirt track that veered away from the road. She drove with her heart in her throat, until the car disappeared over a small rise and was no longer visible to the road.
Sometime during the trip, Walt drifted off to sleep. Joanie wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or not,
but decided not to stop driving. She kept her headlights off, not sure whether
the helicopter would be searching for her or not, but knowing that with each
passing
Chapter Fifteen
Cliff was happy. He was back in the garden, once again
conversing with