Continued from here. Table of contents for ease of navigation here.
(The Story so far: Colin and Bernie, wearing Alfred E. Neuman masks, are driving down Blande Blvd. Bernie is driving; Colin is shooting people across the median. It’s really quite horrible, and this is why no one would agree to publish the book.)
20.
In front of Alan Jancewicz a Dodge Caravan suddenly started to swerve. There were rapid exploding noises. That Mercury Zephyr was approaching from the other direction.
“There are two people in that Zephyr,” he explained to his mother. “You can only see one, but look how low it’s riding. It can’t be a heavy weight in the trunk because the front left wheel is the lowest.”
His mother did not answer because she was screaming. The loud noises started again. The Zephyr sped closer and for a moment Alan was looking directly at a rubber freckled face before the window shattered.
The whole car went red as he closed his eyes.
21.
As more information came over the transom, it started to sound less ridiculous and more horrific. Campbell stopped dropping the knowledge bombs he’d taken off his wife’s Snapple caps. He still chainsmoked, faster and faster.
The dirt: A man in a rubber mask, possibly resembling Alfred E. Neuman, driving an old red coupe, has been shooting an automatic weapon at random across the median at southbound cars on Blande Boulevard. There was nowhere to turn off, no place to hide, no way, even, to warn motorists.
Oberman wove along I-81. Exit to Blande. “Left lane for southbound,” Campbell said.
“If the perp is shooting across at southbound traffic, he’ll be northbound.”
“How are you going to catch him—”
But Oberman veered right.
22.
Sometimes when the sun is bright and you close your eyes the light through the eyelids makes everything red. Maybe that was what was happening?
But then Alan opened his eyes, and no, there was blood in them. There was blood everywhere. His mother was slumped over, leaning forward like an off-duty marionette. Her shoulder belt held her up.
But what did Miss Gerri say? Keep your eyes on the stage, Alan. He looked away from his mother to see what was unfolding through the windshield. The car was still moving, that was one thing. It was in fact moving quickly and perhaps accelerating. Directly ahead a blue 2016 Toyota Camry was sliding into the median guardrail, bouncing off and spinning. The driver lolled and bled. Marionette.
Never had Alan been and never would Alan be allowed to drive a car. He knew the theory though; he knew all about how to drive a car. He’d watched a lot of YouTube videos. The first things he did was in fact intuitive. He reached out with his left hand and grabbed the steering wheel. Whipping it to the right he arced around the Camry. The car wobbled precariously. He was going too fast. Ahead he could see a slalom of crashed, perhaps overturned vehicles.
Alan could see, very clearly, the pickle he was in. Blood kept trickling into his eyes, but he could see: that there was no way to stop. If he stopped, another driverless vehicle would just come zipping down the road and crash into him from behind. How many people had thought they were the lucky ones and gently slowed to a stop to avoid the pileup only to get hit from behind? Piled in.
The second pickle was that Alan’s mother’s foot was apparently on the gas pedal, and he couldn’t reach it to knock it off without unbuckling his seat belt, something he knew he was never supposed to do while the car was moving. Between him and his mother was an emergency brake. He reached across his body and with his right hand pulled up the emergency brake.
It smelled bad, the skid, as the Volvo lurched sideways. Alan jerked the steering wheel. He squeaked to the left of a 2008 Chevrolet Silverado, coming up against the railing. The car started to rebound off it, but Alan dropped the brake back down, or “off,” and drew the wheel towards him, keeping tight on the railing. Sparks flew up on his right. So many cars had bounced off the railing that there was a clear corridor for a ways here, if you kept close enough. He rode the railing past a large knot of wrecks, and swung hard to the left, jerking up the emergency brake again. If he could get the Volvo to swing around into the lee of this knot, it would be hard for anything except a tractor trailer to plow through everything and reach him here.
As the Volvo swung around, Alan saw a woman bleeding from her side, staggering around behind a 2009 Hyundai Sonata. He shifted into park and skidded partially around her before sliding to a stop. She could only stare at him, and he knew, as he locked eyes with her, that he should say something comforting to her. But the only thing he could think to say was, “In your face.” She probably couldn’t hear him anyway. It was a miracle he could hear anything with all the blood in his ears.
“In your—” he started and passed out.
23.
Oberman came down the highway offramp, sirens blazing, and pulled directly across Blande, blocking it off. There was a long straightaway leading up to him.
Campbell was on the mic, trying to figure out where the other police were coming in. Oberman hopped out of the car, whipped out his badge and held it up as the first distant vehicle billied in closer. His hand was on his gun. He waved, with the badge hand, to the side of the road.
The car slowed to a stop in front of him, and the window eased down. “Pull over! Turn off your engine and wait! This is an emergency!” Oberman barked. He used the voice he usually reserved for second warnings. Just then Oberman could make out distant gunfire from the south. He took his hand off the gun and quickly waved the car on, around the patrol car. Another car was approaching, and in Oberman’s estimation it was too close to him to be the source of gunfire. He gestured it through but then, when another one came, he waved this car over to the shoulder to be safe. “Stay there, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
He wondered for a moment if he should be heading towards the gunfire (which had now stopped)—but what was he going to do, ram the car? Shoot the tires out with his pistol? The perp should be pulling up any moment now. He sent one car after another to the side of the road. One of them had to be the one. And between the patrol car across the road and the civilian vehicles lining up along its side, no one was going to be breaking through this roadblock. Then all Oberman would have to do was check each car. Across the street ambulances went roaring south.
24.
Colin eased up. As he shifted his weight, Bernie’s head began to peek slightly up over the dashboard. “Keep down,” Colin shouted, “but look up ahead. There’ll be a red rag on a stake marking a break in the trees. Turn there. Run over the stake.” His last words were drowned out by gunfire as he sprayed another couple oncoming cars. Was it too much to hope for that no one would see them turn off the road? “Slow down! The stake!”
“Is it my turn?”
“We’ll switch seats here,” Colin said, as he ducked in the window. Settling down on the overcrowded passenger seat, he pointed them out, the stake and the rag and the overgrown trail. The car jounced along the grass and the dirt and the shrubs, around the bend, behind the trees. Colin was pulling the magazine free, snapping another one in place.
The man in the Alfred E. Neuman mask unhunched its shoulders at last. He slowly sat straight up, cricking, first, his neck, back and forth. The mask turned towards Colin, who now had the rifle casually held across his lap, the bumpstock against his biceps.
Colin briefly squeezed the trigger.
The gun bucked. A bullet hit right below the mask, where the rubber flapped open against his collar. A flower of blood opened up. As the gun pulled up, the bullets drew a line right up the Alfred E. Neuman. The rubber billowed back and forth. It held most of the blood in, though a sequence of fine sprays misted back through the bullet holes. Colin leaned over and turned the keys. The car died.
That was more like it, to be honest. He wished they’d all felt like that.
But they hadn’t, and now there was a lot to do quickly. Colin set the rifle, facing backwards, in Bernie’s limp hand, his thumb in the trigger guard. He opened the passenger-side door. The ground looked firm enough, just last year’s dead leaves. A garbage bag in his hand, Colin stepped gingerly out. He set the bag down and unzipped his coveralls with two hands simultaneously. The coveralls fell to the floor and he snapped them up. He dropped them into the bag, extracting, at the same time, the hooded windbreaker, which he draped over his arm.
The next step he had marked as optional, but he hadn’t heard any sirens yet, and so he went for it. Leaning back into the car he grabbed—one, two, three, four—tape holders. One was partially shattered; one was still full of unfired magazines—such a waste!—and Colin shook those free. The tape holders went in the garbage bag. Slam the door. And he was off.
As he raced through the woods he slipped the windbreaker on and zipped it up on the run. Only when he pulled the hood up did he realize he was still wearing a mask. He pulled it off and stuffed it, as he ran, into the windbreaker pocket. Deep into the pocket—if it fell out that would be fatal.
Down the embankment in a flurry of dead leaves thrown up around him and whipping around in his wake. Only as he skidded up against the parking lot did he remember another reason he’d wanted the Incident to come off earlier: there’d have been fewer employees at Choice Pizza, fewer eyes to catch him coming out of the woods. He silently cursed Bernie and his arbitrary time changes.
But no one, as far as he could tell, saw Colin as he ran behind the dumpster. One flick of the thumb to unchain the bicycle and then he sped through the rear lot, out through the front lot, out into morning traffic along Route 434. One hand held the trash bag tight; it snapped back and forth in the wind. The hood of his windbreaker kept threatening to blow off, but he leaned forward, head down, and it never did.
Half a mile along he turned into the supermarket lot; there was a trash can outside the recycling room, he remembered, for people to drop in any cans and bottle that could not be recycled. The garbage bag went in, followed by his gloves. This was not even suspicious, really. And anyway, the supermarket was so far from Blande, by car at least, that the police shouldn’t think of checking this trash can until long after it was emptied. He biked away, with traffic. At a light he checked his shoes and his hands to make sure there were no drops of blood, but he was clean. His face and neck the bike’s mirror revealed to be clean as well.
Just a few more miles to his car, all of it downhill. If somebody had stolen it, or stolen the tires—it would be hard to explain, wouldn’t it? But he skidded to a halt in front of an intact vehicle. He took his time easing open the levers and removing the front wheel. He was just a guy who drove down here and went for a ride. Much-needed exercise. The bike went in the back seat and Colin went into the front seat. He had no weapon on him. He had nothing to tie him to Bernard Feldstein, or Blande Boulvard, or the Incident. All he had to do was not act suspicious. He pulled his wallet out of the glove box, slipped it into his front pants pocket. Seat belt snapped in place, he eased into traffic.
Continued here.