Life Expectancy
his chest, and down the right sleeve. Then I buttoned the coat to his throat.
One at a time, I took the ends of the cable around to the farther side of the tree and hooked one snap link through the other. I screwed the locking metal sleeves over the snap gates.
Little slack remained in the cable. He would not be able to get his hands in front of himself to try to strip off the coat. He had been essentially strait jacketed which seemed appropriate.
I checked the pulse in his throat once more. The artery throbbed strong and steady.
For a while in those days, we had a saying in our family: The only way to kill a clown is to beat him to death with a mime.
Returning to the Explorer, I put on my leather glbves. I brushed the crumbles of safety glass off the driver's seat, got in behind the wheel, and pulled the door shut.
Huddled in the passenger's seat, Lorrie pressed her hands to her rounded abdomen, alternately hissing through her clenched teeth and groaning.
"Worse?" I asked.
"You remember the chest-burster scene in Alien?"
On the dashboard lay a small black leather drug kit with two hypodermics.
"He wanted to shoot me up to make me cooperative and 'pliable," she revealed.
Rage flared in me, but nothing would be gained by letting it build into an all-consuming fire.
As I carefully returned the filled syringe to its niche and then zipped the kit shut, setting it aside as evidence, I said, "Domestic bliss through modern chemistry. Why didn't I think of that? I'm all for pliability in a wife."
"If you were, you'd never have married me."
I kissed her quickly on the cheek. "For sure."
"I've had enough adventure for tonight. Get me to an epidural."
Hesitating to turn the key in the ignition, I worried that the engine wouldn't start, that the pinching trees wouldn't release us.
She said, "Beezo was going to make a sling out of the lap and shoulder belts and haul me up to the highway like a hunter dragging a deer carcass."
I wanted to get out of the Explorer and kill him. And I prayed that we wouldn't be reduced to implementing his plan.
On the second try, the engine turned over and caught. I switched on the headlights. Lorrie cranked up the heater to compensate for the icy air pouring through the broken window.
The gap between the ancient firs that bracketed the SUV had been narrow enough to halt our backward slide; but those trees might not have us in a sufficiently tight grip to resist the forward thrust of the engine.
I eased down on the accelerator, and the engine growled. Tires spun, stuttered, spun. The Explorer creaked, protesting the hard embrace of the trees.
Pressed for more power, the engine shrieked. The tires squealed, and the creaking increased, augmented by a phantom rattle the source of which I could not place.
The Explorer began to shudder like a terrified horse with a leg trapped in a rockfall.
A hard metallic grinding arose. I didn't like the sound of it. When I eased off the accelerator, the Explorer settled backward an inch or two. I had not been aware of gaining that ground when the SUV had been straining forward.
I established a rhythmic application of the gas pedal. The Explorer rocked gently back and forth, abrading the bark on the fir trees.
Turning the steering wheel slightly to the right had no effect. When I turned it slightly to the left, we jolted forward four or five inches before getting hung up again.
I eased the wheel back to the right, pumped the pedal. A loud twangl reverberated around us as if we were in the hollow of a bell, and suddenly we were free.
Lorrie said, "I hope the baby comes out that easy." "Anything changes, I want to know right away." "Changes?"
"Like if your water breaks."
"Oh, honey, if my water breaks, you'll know it without being told.
You'll be ankle deep in it."
Because of the altitude, I didn't think that the Explorer would get far in a direct assault on the slope. Still, I had to give it a try.
The incline wasn't as steep down here as it became higher up, and we powered forward farther than I expected, deviating from a straight ascent only to ease around trees and the rare knob of rock. We had gone perhaps a hundred yards before the way grew steeper and the air-starved
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