Terminal Island

Chapter Nineteen

PISMO BEACH



Shit. Picking up a chair, Henry uses it to clear all the broken glass from the window frame, then he sets down the chair and stands on it so he can lean out the window. For the moment the coast is still clear.

Climbing outside, Henry hurries to the end of the building and sneaks a look up the stairs just as the little yellow buggy scoots through the inner fence and starts charging down the ramp. It’s them again—Lenny and Squiggy. They look like they know exactly where they’re going. Bastards. Someone must have reported him, or maybe he set off a silent alarm when he broke the window.

Henry is strangely unafraid, but well aware that he is in serious danger: If what he thinks is true, they’ve already killed so many people that one more will just be a drop in the bucket. But is it true? Is there any other possible explanation? Because if he’s not fighting for his life, then it’s a whole different set of rules. He doesn’t want to make any more mistakes. In the fading heat of his outburst, Henry’s confidence is wobbly: he’s jumped to conclusions before.

Ruby and Moxie! Now the fear strikes, sharp as an axe in his gut. If these people do kill, and are conceivably likely to kill him for what he knows, it follows that they must also kill his family. And like a fool he has given himself away already, by talking about coming here to any number of people, as well as complaining to the cops. If they’re all in on it…

All right then.

Ducking down low, Henry just manages to slip under the boardwalk before the ATV has a clear view of the whole lower expanse. As he hunkers there in shadow, the vehicle rumbles the boards overhead and stops short at the condo door. Henry can hear the men talking as they dismount, leaving the engine running as they survey the broken window.

“What the f*ck, man!”

“This shit is f*cked up; I am so gonna nail the f*cker that did this!”

“He is dead.” Unlocking the door, the man shouts in, “You hear me, you cocksucker? You’re dead!”

“We just better find his ass, that’s all I can say.”

“We’ll find him. He’s got no place to go, and Pulga’s watching the gate. Cover the window, I’m going inside.”

The ATV driver unlocks and kicks open the door. After a few seconds Henry can hear muffled shouting from within, though he can’t make out the words. The man posted outside leans in the broken window and says plaintively, “That motherf*cker. The queen bitch is gonna tear us a new a*shole when she sees this.”

As they are talking, Henry arrives at a dreadful yet inescapable conclusion, one he has no time to properly consider, but must act on with total commitment, right now, or lose the chance forever:

Numb with disbelief at what he’s doing, he boosts himself up to the deck and scuttles crablike to the idling all-terrain vehicle.

Shitshitshitshitshit…

The man at the window stands sideways to Henry, his lanky profile sharply defined against the dark interior. Broken glass clinks underfoot as he shifts his weight, leaning in to see better. The battered yellow ATV sits midway between them. Moving closer and closer, Henry is exposed for all to see; the slightest sideways glance from that man and he will be pinned like a deer in the headlights.

All right all right…

Scared to breathe, Henry reaches the ATV. Its engine burbles quietly like a slumbering cat, every detail of the thing heightened to brilliant clarity. Suzuki. As if in a dream, Henry throws his leg across the machine’s leather saddle and dares to take his eyes off the man just long enough to scan the controls—he hasn’t ridden anything like this since he was a teenager. Trusting to hazy memory, he kicks it in gear, any gear, and guns forward.

As soon as the ATV starts moving, Henry can hear someone shouting, “No you don’t you whore!” Out of his peripheral vision he can see the man sprinting toward him, but is too busy trying to hang on and keep the vehicle upright to worry about pursuit—the thing does a small wheelie and Henry’s heart jumps with it, thinking it is about to flip.

A rough hand grabs at the back of his shirt—“Gotcha!”—but Henry applies a burst of speed and breaks loose. Barely in control, he weaves drunkenly between the row of false condos and the steel railing overlooking the sea. He is moving in the opposite direction he should be—away from the handicapped-accessible exit ramp—but it can’t be helped; it’s the direction he was pointed. Over the engine he hears snapping sounds from behind—gunshots? Then a voice yelling, “Not at my ride, dumbshit!”

Henry comes to the end of the building and a second flight of stairs going up the hill. There is no vehicle ramp here, but he has no choice—he has to get off the exposed deck. Shifting down to first gear, slowing to a crawl, he turns sharply and takes the stairs.

For a second Henry thinks he has made a horrible mistake. The fat-wheeled buggy rears up so steeply on the first few steps that it seems to be on the verge of tipping backward—he remembers such a thing happening to him years ago on the dunes of Pismo Beach, spilling him into the sand—and he leans forward across the handlebars to lower his center of gravity. It works, barely.

As he settles into a lurching rhythm, Henry realizes it won’t get any steeper; he can make it…unless he does something stupid, like adding more speed. Which is exactly what he must do if he wants to get away.

The men are coming up fast, blazing on foot while he’s putt-putting along like somebody’s wheelchair-bound granny. Concentrating furiously, he tries accelerating, lifting his butt in the air as the saddle jounces and bounces beneath him.

Faster…faster…come on, baby…

Now he is getting the hang of it, the bone-jarring separate bumps are blending together, exactly the rugged terrain this vehicle is designed to handle. Soon he is moving upstairs as fast as a man can run, and as he reaches the first landing he can see that the two men are not behind him at all, but on the parallel set of stairs across the way. They are trying to beat him to the gates of the complex—to cut off his exit.

Easing onto the next flight up, Henry piles on more speed, wrists aching from the vibration, encouraged by how the ride seems to flatten out the faster he goes, sprinting up the flights one after the other, his vision and consciousness rattling to a blur: Budabudabudabudabudabudabuda….

When he reaches the top and there is nothing left but the silky level blacktop of the driveway, Henry almost can’t believe the sudden, blissful relief, like catapulting out of violent rapids into calm water.

Now it is easy. The men are still only halfway up the stairs, running their hearts out. They’ll never make it, not in time to stop him from getting to the top platform, ditching the ATV (but keeping its starter key), then slipping out that hole in the fence. Before they can figure out where he went, he’ll be back in town and on the phone to the mainland. Henry accelerates, now really feeling the vehicle’s power, thrusting forward so fast his eyes water from the wind.

His escape is blocked.

There is a pickup truck parked across the upper ramp. A burly, white-haired man with a Kenny Rogers beard is standing at the inner fence, lazily holding the gate closed with one hand. Behind him are the muted guard dogs—the war dogs—bouncing against the wire like crazed pinballs.

The old man is looking right at him, in no particular hurry to move, and Henry can hear the other two calling from below, “That’s him! That’s him!” They sound calmer now, irate but businesslike, knowing he is trapped. Everyone is converging at the gate—how convenient for them. “You might as well give up, a*shole,” one of them shouts up.

Nearing the mouth of the blocked driveway, Henry skids to a halt. He looks downstairs at the two men, who are bounding up the last flight toward him. They are staring back as they climb, exhausted but smirking at his plight, making sure he knows that they intend to make him pay in spades for every step.

“Where you gonna go, dude?” the lead one says breathlessly. “Give it up. No one’s gonna hurt you.”

“The police know I’m here,” Henry says. “People know where I am.”

“Sure they do. Just be cool.”

At this moment, the man at the truck opens the gate and the dogs come exploding out. They are so close that Henry can hear their nails skittering on the asphalt.

Okay, don’t panic…

The dogs are already halfway to him, barreling down the driveway. It’s clear from their ravening faces that they are dead serious—this is no game, no fetch-the-stick. Henry is prey, and in two seconds they will be all over him like hounds on a rabbit. What he does in the next split second may very well determine if he lives or dies. Dies horribly.

Trancelike, Henry kicks the ATV into gear, darting forward as if to meet the dogs…but then at the last second sharply cuts left, shooting down the steep service road, the dogs flying after like a furry avalanche.

Whoa! Now they are coming up on either side of him, their slavering jaws lunging for his legs. Hating to do it, Henry wildly swings the vehicle from side to side, smashing the lead dogs against the guardrails and catching them under the rear wheels—he feels the grisly thumps. The dogs can’t even yelp in pain, writhing quietly in his wake.

The men on the adjacent stairs curse him as he passes, but Henry barely hears their threats above the blood rushing in his ears. He can’t even think, flying on pure motorized instinct. As he nears the bottom, he applies even more speed, accelerating beyond safety toward the parking barrier at the end, its heavy steel railing overlooking nothing but thin air.

Oh God, oh God…

Now Henry is hurtling downhill at top speed, out of control. As the railing rushes up, he does something he could never have made himself do by thinking about it:

He jumps off.

Jumping like he has never jumped before, Henry springs as high as he can off the seat, and is in midair as the all-terrain vehicle hits stout iron posts sunk in concrete. It stops short with a resounding CLANG! while Henry himself sails past over the cliff.

Holy shiiiiiii—

Hard metal bits pepper his legs, and suddenly Henry is falling, plummeting downward. In a second he will know if he cleared the beach or not. Heart in his mouth, he has a strangely serene moment of seeing a tire flying along with him, spinning and wobbling in space like a flying saucer, and wanting to put his foot on its rubber treads to steady it.

Then he hits. Like a ton of bricks.

The water is shallow, just four or five feet deep, and Henry makes a glassy crater to the bottom, smashing flat in the gravel. For a moment he lies there, stunned, encased in salty cold wetness though and through. He opens his eyes to a gritty orange blur—the water’s surface burning above him.

Ugh, he thinks. That wasn’t good.

Needing to breathe, he crawls out from under the flames and comes up draped in seaweed, feeling like his nuts have been slammed in a drawer. There is a strong smell of gasoline and a rainbow sheen on the water. Streamers of fire dribble down from above.

Ouch. F*ck.

His whole body a nest of aches, ears clogged with water and sand, Henry limps ashore as fast as he can. He has to get out of here, get back to town and call the police, the FBI, somebody—everybody.

Most of all he must find his wife and daughter.