What if he’s crazy?
—and while he felt more than a little nervous, he walked up to the open garage door and called out, “Anybody here?”
There was movement in the darkness, and a beefy, bearded man emerged, scowling. “Yeah? What d’you want?”
Under ordinary circumstances, Gary would have left then and there, just turned away and continued down the road. But he was hungry, thirsty and in pain, and he asked, “Can I use your phone?”
“Ain’t got one,” the man said, staring flatly at him.
How is that possible? Gary wanted to say. You have a towing business. How do people contact you when they break down if you don’t have a phone?
Something was wrong here, and all of a sudden Gary wanted nothing more than to get away from this spot as quickly as possible. “Okay!” he said, waving. “Thanks!” He turned back toward the road.
“Wait a minute,” the man said, and it was as much order as request. “Is your car out there? Did you break down?”
They were perfectly ordinary questions, totally appropriate under the circumstances, but the big man’s tone and demeanor made them seem threatening, as though he was trying to ferret out information. Why did he want to know? Gary wondered. Was the man trying to determine if anyone else was with him or knew he was out here?
What if he’s crazy?
He pretended as though he hadn’t heard. “Thanks!” he yelled again, turning away, and started walking. He waited for another shouted question or for the sound of running footsteps behind him, but there was nothing. For a brief moment, he thought that he’d misread the situation, that the drugs still in his body had skewed his perceptions and made him read into a perfectly innocent exchange a threat that wasn’t there. But when he turned and looked back, he saw the bearded man still standing in place, scowling, and he forced himself to give another fake, hearty wave and continue on. His heart was pounding.
Moments later, the rough sound of a powerful engine cut through the still air, and Gary knew that the mechanic had started his tow truck. He kept walking, a little faster now, but he was already thinking about how he could run off the road and strike out across the chaparral if necessary. For there was no way he could outrun a truck. He probably couldn’t even outrun the mechanic, not in the shape he was in, and he had just decided to leave the road early when he heard the engine grow loud and felt more than saw the tow truck pull next to him.
“Need a lift?” the man asked, and the belligerence was still in his voice, more obvious now, if anything.
Gary shook his head, kept walking.
“Where’s your car?”
Instead of answering, he stepped off the shoulder of the road and into the brush.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!”
Gary increased his speed, striding purposefully between rocks and bushes, heading away from the tow truck at an angle. His heart lurched as he heard the truck’s door open and shut. A bird flew up from somewhere on his right, startling him.
“Hey!” the driver shouted.
Even as he walked, Gary examined the ground ahead of him for something that could be used as a weapon: a stick, a rock, a broken bottle, anything. It wouldn’t have surprised him if the man had a gun, and he kept expecting to hear the whipcrack sound of a shot seconds before he felt a bullet slam through his back, but nothing came. He hazarded a quick glance behind him.
The man was coming.
He didn’t have a gun, but he was holding a lug wrench, and he looked angry. He moved with the inflexible decisiveness of the casually violent, and the lug wrench in his hand was held up and outward, like a weapon. “I see you, faggot!” he shouted. “I see you!”
Gary started running. The ground here was sandier than it had been closer to the pavement, and it was hard to move quickly. The countryside was more desertic than he’d realized, and he thought that he was probably out of California. In Nevada, maybe. Or Arizona or New Mexico.
He looked to his left. He hadn’t come that far from the garage, and he abruptly changed direction and started heading toward the side of that run-down building. There was no way he’d be able to discover something in the sand that could effectively defend against a lug wrench. He was far more likely to find a tool or weapon he could use in the garage.
He glanced back, praying that the mechanic was still following him, because if the man figured out where he was going, it would be much faster to get back in the truck and then drive back and wait for him to arrive. Gary’s only hope was that the mechanic continued to come after him on foot.
He was coming after him.
And he was gaining.
Gary pushed himself, trying to ignore the pain in his right leg that had graduated from throbbing to stabbing in the last few seconds. His left leg hurt, too, but it was tolerable. With his right leg, though, he was crying out each time it hit the ground, an involuntary sound that seemed to make him move a little faster. It would have given away his position had he been trying to hide, but the mechanic had been focused on him from the second he left the road and could see exactly where he was at all times.
“Stop right there!” the man ordered. “Don’t even think you can get away!”
The garage was close now. He was almost there. But the man behind him was close, too. Gary could hear the grunts of exertion as the mechanic plodded through the sand. The small lead he’d had was gone, and while desperation had kept him competitive, in a moment or two he would be caught, and he expected to feel the blow of the lug wrench against his head before he even made it into the garage to find a weapon of his own. Looking ahead of him on the ground, he saw between himself and the wall of the garage an area awash with black rocks of various sizes. Most of them were embedded in the ground, but a few were loose, and he reached down and grabbed one, turning to heave it at the mechanic.
Under the best of circumstances, Gary had no arm. He expected the rock to go wild, but amazingly it struck the hand holding the lug wrench, and the mechanic cried out, dropping the tool.
Gary wasted no time. He sped ahead, hobbled around the corner of the building, and looked frantically around the open garage for something he could use. His eyes alighted on what appeared to be a sledgehammer hanging from a spot on the wall to his right. He hurried over and grabbed it, turning around just as the bearded man stepped into the garage.
Gary’s heart was thumping crazily. He had never been so scared in his life, and the calmness engendered by the drug he’d been given was long gone. He held up the sledgehammer with both hands, but it was so heavy that it was already wobbling in his grip. There was no way he’d be able to keep this up for any length of time. If he couldn’t bluff his way out of the situation, his only chance was to land a single clear hit. If he could connect, he could do damage. Otherwise, he was dead meat.
He wondered if the mechanic had done this before, if there were bodies buried in the sand nearby.
Judging by the way the man had come after him with absolutely no provocation, Gary could only assume that he was not the mechanic’s first victim.
Gary rested the handle of the sledgehammer on his shoulder, trying not to wince from the pain caused by the sudden pressure, hoping his adversary couldn’t tell that he was doing so because he had to, because he did not have the strength to continue holding the tool aloft. “Let me go,” he said. “Give me the keys to your truck and let me get out of here.”