The heavy tramping over the terrain behind her coincided with her certainty that Victor was going to burst out of the darkness and kill her right here. His breathing was faint at first and then louder and louder, and here was the maniac huffing like a racehorse breaking free from the tangle of branches and barreling right at her and there was a precious second where silver light played off the blade in his hand and then he was toppling over her, tumbling further down the mountain as if he had planned the gymnastic maneuver.
She froze as if he were a bear that might mistake her for an abnormal rock formation. She had to run. Had to go now. But she couldn’t. Victor had landed on his back and now slowly sat up and turned to her. Dark streaks pattered his face like tread marks. His head tilted slightly as if he didn’t recognize what he was seeing. This was Death and not just a madman with a knife but Death with the capital “D.” When he stood, that knife would morph into a giant, cartoonish scythe and a heavy black robe would drape around him. He would glide toward her and reach out with one huge skeletal hand.
“NO!” Her scream tore her throat but gave her the needed shock to run right at him.
He crouched from her attack, raised his arms and there, finally, was some luck. He had dropped his knife.
She crashed into him and her hands snapped his head to the side. He fell over easily. Her bare feet trampled over his legs and she hoped she had scored another crotch hit.
His hands slid down her jeans, latched onto her right heel, and with the next step, her left knee buckled and she fell forward again. Her hands saved her once more but one of her fingers snapped and when she slid several feet before stopping, something sliced into her midsection like a scalpel.
She looked up and thought of mirages again.
She was almost at the bottom of the trail. There was the back of the dented metal sign that read HIKERS ONLY on the opposite side. There was Caleb’s elderly Toyota and beyond it, her father’s car. The hope that flooded her was as all-consuming as jumping into a freezing pool on a torturously hot day. Then she remembered the lost keys and brutal despair made her go completely limp. She was going to die mere feet from what should have been her salvation.
“Hello, bitch,” Victor Dolor said as if through a mouth of rocks.
FIFTY-NINE
The mountain had been so giving that he hadn’t even believed he’d tripped right over Mercy. It had to be an illusion. But then she was clawing at the ground and crying and begging for help.
Victor’s legs were steady, solid. He had dropped the knife but that was okay. There were two more tucked against his belt. One had the gut hook. But they were gone, too. No problem. The brass knuckles were all he needed right now.
“Did you really think you were going to get away?” he asked. His voice sounded strange, deeper and raspy. As if he were morphing into something else, some other Victor.
“Please,” she said, sounding like a little girl.
“Try screaming,” Victor said. “Scream as loud as you want. Who’s going to hear you?”
She was on her stomach, hands beneath her, head twisted back over her shoulder at him. Her eyes flickered like silver dollars. Beyond her was the start of the hiker’s trail and the small gravel lot where two cars waited: Caleb’s and hers.
He stopped short of her bare feet. They were smeared with blood, black in the light, the flesh torn deeply in several places as if someone had tried to skin her. Now, there was an idea.
“I never would have guessed you had so much fight in you,” he said.
He stepped farther, his boots on either side of her legs. He adjusted his grip on the brass knuckles. The first hit should land between the shoulder blades, right on the spine. That would cripple her long enough for him to have her one more time. He could pull her jeans off and have her just like this. She would feel even better the second time. Hell, he’d take her in the ass. If she managed to resist at all, he’d crack her in the skull. It would be a shame for her to get knocked out, though--she’d miss all the fun.
He bent over her, face approaching her ear, brass knuckles hovering over her spine. Drops of saliva, or maybe blood, dribbled onto her shirt. “You must hate your shitty luck,” he said. “Probably think you’re a real tough bitch, don’t you?”
“You have no idea,” she said.
She flipped over, stared at him for a beat with coins for eyes, and stabbed him in the gut with his own knife.
Victor was hardly aware of what was happening as he stumbled back, growling against the burgeoning pain in his midsection, and watched Mercy Higgins get to her feet and run away from him again.
SIXTY
Again, she ran. Her father’s car pulled her toward it with its promise of safety and escape but she couldn’t waste time with it--she had no keys and, unlike in the movies, there was no spare set tucked under the visor. Even if it was unlocked, the car would actually keep her confined so Victor could get at her.
But you stabbed him. He could be bleeding to death.
That was true, but she couldn’t count on it. She had released the knife almost immediately when she felt the firmness of his skin give way. The sensation of perforation traveled up the blade, through her hand, and into her arm like an electric shock that hurt and numbed simultaneously. It was an unnatural feeling, something innately wrong, and she wanted to get away quickly from that sense that she had crossed a boundary of acceptability.
Victor crossed that boundary first. A long time ago.
She did what she had to and maybe he would die and that would be the end of it, but that didn’t mean she could feel alright with it. Perhaps she never would.
She trailed her hand over the trunk of her father’s car as she passed. The metal was cold. It grounded her to a reality in which she was a quiet young woman who didn’t go out much, spent her hours reading, a girl who hadn’t been raped or even had sex, and who certainly had never stabbed anyone.
She wanted to cry. To stop running, drop to her knees, and cry it all out. Victor would catch up and kill her, but that didn’t matter as much as the need to purge her pain. To collapse and cry right now would feel as good as anything she had ever experienced before. The pure despair would feel so liberating in its relief.
There would be no stopping, however. No crying. Not yet. Later, if she survived, she would cry it all out, use an entire week to get it all out, but not now. Not when she had to keep running. When she had to find help or safety.
She ran over the gravel in the parking lot without feeling any of the sharp pebbles digging into her feet and crossed over onto Route 51, the main drag in and out of town. The asphalt was cold and flat and she imagined dipping her ruined feet into a soothing mineral bath.
The glowing spaceship of the Alexis Diner waited in the distance. It could have been hundreds of light years away, but Mercy knew it was only a mile or two, three at the outside. If she kept up her speed, she could get there in under a half hour.
When you run, you run.
Her renewed determination faded almost immediately, however, when she neared a long, dilapidated building on her right. It was the site of a former garbage company. The sign out front was crooked as if it might fall into the road from the slightest breeze and faded so badly she couldn’t read it until she was almost upon it.
She had passed this building hundreds of times, maybe more like thousands of times, but it had always been in a car and although she had seen the sign all those times, she had never let it register in her mind.
In large block letters, it read: Murray Waste Co. Next to it was another sign, CONDEMNED KEEP OUT. Her father had explained once that the place closed down because of financial fraud and illegal dumping. She hadn’t cared, but now it felt like urgent information and she tried to squeeze anything else from the confines of her mind where information is stored that is deemed unimportant. She came up with nothing.