Mortal Prey

going,” and he grabbed Sally’s arm and Rinker screamed, “Run, or I’ll kill her, I’ll kill her, run out the tunnel, run…”
    They ran.
     
    WHEN SHE’D SHOT the man, he’d dropped his keys and Rinker pointed the gun at the mother and said, “Where’s the car, where’s the fuckin’ car?” And the woman pointed at the Dodge minivan and Rinker dragged her leg to it, her leg wasn’t working, but she hopped and dragged and popped the door on the van, and screamed. “Get in, get in or I’ll kill you. Get in.”
    The mother and kid got in and Rinker screamed at them to lie in the footwell on the passenger side and they crawled into it and she cranked the engine and eased out of the parking slot and accelerated away, then slowed, took a corner, took another, and was on the street, driving out.
    A helicopter hung overhead, but it stayed behind her, and then another one came in, and then she was on the next street and she saw a man behind her, running, and realized that it was Davenport and accelerated, turned a corner, accelerated again, two blocks, turned again, and again, Davenport long gone now, said to the woman in the footwell, her voice like a chain saw, as ugly and vicious as she could make it, “You stay on the fuckin’ floor or I’ll blow your motherfuckin’ brains out. You stay there, you hear? I’m gonna stop, and I’ll be right outside the car.”
    The woman whimpered as she pulled the car off the street. She probably wasn’t more than ten blocks from the shopping center, but Davenport had seen the van, she thought, and she had to get out of it.
    There was a bar off to the left, and a man was walking out, toward a lonely orange pickup truck that appeared to have been hand-painted. She pulled in beside it, said, “You stay down, hear? Or I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”
    She pulled herself out of the truck, felt her feet mushing as though she were wading in pudding, realized that one shoe was full of blood, that her butt was wet with it, and dragged her leg around the back of the truck to the driver’s-side door, where the man was just getting in.
    She came up, and he said, a little startled, “Hello,” and she pointed the gun at him and said, “Get in.”
    “Oh, hell…Yes.”
    He got in, and she said, “Crawl across. Make it fuckin’ snappy.”
    He crawled across, and she said, “Drop the keys on the driver’s seat.” He did, and she shot him in the head, and he fell back dead against the window.
    She shouted at the minivan, “I told you to fuckin’ stay down,” and fired another silenced shot through the van’s window, shattering glass but hitting nothing else, and as the mother cried out, Rinker crawled into the truck, fired it up, backed it out, and started away.
    Three blocks out, watching the mirrors, she hadn’t seen any sign of Davenport. She took a corner and stayed on back streets, driving a checkerboard pattern away from the shopping center. Once, down a larger street, she saw the lights of a squad car flashing back toward the shopping center, and she crawled on. She thought about trying to make it back to Honus Johnson’s, but then realized that they had the Benz, and they’d be over there. She had to do something…. A wave of nausea crawled through her on the front edge of a bigger wave of pain, and she thought, I’m shot. Jesus, I’m shot.
    She didn’t remember hearing a shot, but she remembered falling down, and then seeing Davenport….
    A stop sign came up and she stepped on the brakes a little too firmly, and the dead man beside her slumped forward into the footwell. Another wave of nausea. She realized that even if she wanted to go to Johnson’s, she wouldn’t make it.
    Had to find a place. Had to think…
     
    LUCAS RAN UNTIL the van turned out of sight, then ran some more, pulling his phone from his pocket as he ran, called Sally to tell her about the van, but Sally didn’t answer the phone, and he ran some more and called Mallard, who did answer, and told him about the van and he heard the choppers lifting higher and then one moved over him and hit him with the spotlight, and he waved it off and it held him for another ten seconds as he waved frantically, and then it drifted away….
    Nothing was working. He never saw the van after it turned, and finally a cop car caught up with him and he flagged it down and the cop had no idea that anything was going on, but got on his radio, and nobody he called knew what was going on, but Lucas got a lift