Alice & Dorothy (32 page)

Alice glanced over at Dorothy.
What about her?
Alice could see the girl hiding in the car during a gunfight, then being
rescued
by the cops after it was all over. She’d probably blame the entire thing on Alice, maybe walk off scot-free. Run off and get married, have a fantastic life, even have a great story to tell her rich friends one day after a few cognacs and they’d smoked a joint.
Hey guys, check this out. Remember Alice Pleasance? The Motel Killer? I knew her...

Don’t you worry a thing, pet
, the Hater said.
I’ll take care of that little strumpet when the time comes. And her little dog, too.

They turned off the road and onto a larger, double lane artery that ran through town. Traffic was light, allowing Alice to weave in and out. They’d be able to follow this road out of the city and head south. Gradually they moved away from the inner city condos and strip malls for the more relaxed cookie-cutter neighbourhoods of the suburbs. The road picked up speed, and before long the girls were out of the city altogether, driving along at a steady clip through flat prairie. They were also driving away from muggy sunshine and toward large, bulbous thunderheads that split the sky between light and dark. Lightning flashed on top of the clouds, and a long way off you could see the misty gray swells of rain dropping out of the sky.

Dorothy had stopped crying, but she was still pointedly ignoring Alice. She kept her back to the girl and stared out the window instead, her face buried in her little black puppy and her fingers tracing circles on the glass.

Behind them, a silver monster was gaining ground. It pulled out behind an SUV and blew past it, then changed lanes once more as it sped toward the little yellow Volkswagen.

Alice watched it in the rear-view mirror, her stomach dropping. When it got a little closer, Alice saw the black man from the motel in the passenger seat and wiry, angry Rabbit in the driver’s seat. He was leaning over the steering wheel, eyes red and twitching, and he was moving like lightning on the highway.

He’s late
, the Hater said, laughing.
Oh, He’s late, he’s late.

The silver behemoth slid in behind them, and the moment Alice hit the gas she realized there was no way they’d ever get away from that thing. The Volkswagen just didn’t have the punch that the silver wolf on their tail had with its big heavy engine. If this turned into a marathon, they might win on gas mileage, but the look on Rabbit’s face told her he wasn’t planning on taking all day to finish this.

“Oh my god,” Dorothy said, looking back. “Is that
them?
”

Alice didn’t replay. She didn’t need to. They could both see Rabbit’s face in that car, clear as day.

He rolled down the window and pointed his gun at them.

Dorothy shrieked and dove for the floor of the car. She was just a bit too big to sit down there, though, and she ended up on her knees, her face buried in her arms on the seat and using her dog as a pillow. Alice swallowed the urge to slap her.

There was a muted roar behind them, like fireworks going off, and the back window of the car imploded. A round hole appeared in the front windshield as the bullet continued on its merry way out of the car. A half second later the back window of the little blue car in front of them imploded as well, and the driver swerved onto the shoulder, slamming their brakes and kicking up clouds of dust in their wake. Alice blew past them, glancing over long enough to see blood on the inside of the windshield and a man screaming. His face was a frozen mask of pain.

You just don’t see that in movies
, Alice thought, and then she was past the car and sliding across lanes, trying to wreck the angle Rabbit was shooting at and get out of his way. She reached down and flicked on Rabbit’s stereo, and then cranked it up near max so she wouldn’t have to listen to Dorothy screaming.
Tool
thundered through the car, and Maynard James Keenan cheered on the end of the world.

The highway was a terrible place to be caught by Rabbit, as there were only two lanes to drive on and they both headed in the same direction. She did her best to weave around the cars in front of them and did what she could to keep Rabbit behind them. If he managed to get his car in a position to get a clean shot both Dorothy and herself would probably both be dead in short order.
He’s probably beyond reasoning now
, Alice thought.
He’s only thinking one thought—revenge
.

She cut off a brown station wagon and the man behind the wheel jerked his brakes and laid on the horn at the same time. It was just enough of a slowdown to knock Rabbit back a bit, and Alice kept her foot on the gas to create some space. She needed just a moment to think. She needed to get off the highway soon, because it was just a matter of time before Rabbit got off a shot that would end their little road trip forever.

She looked in the mirror again.
That moment is probably coming sooner rather than later.

“
Jesus Christ!
” Rabbit shouted, cranking the wheel to the left and passing a brown station wagon on the shoulder. He swerved around the driver and cut back into the lane behind Alice, but she had already sped up and was now moving past a big blue pickup. The driver flashed his brakes and Rabbit could see the man flip Alice the finger. The girl was making friends all over the road.

Rabbit switched lanes. The traffic was clearing out a bit as they drove along, but there were still too many vehicles on the road for him to get a clean shot. All he needed was one, but if he used up all his ammunition before he got that shot, he’d have to run her off the road or hope for some luck.

“
Lookout!
” Devon said. He was holding onto the hand strap coming out of the ceiling of Eazy’s car, and his other hand was firmly on the dashboard. His hands actually looked white.

“I got it,” Rabbit said, annoyed. He avoided another car that had slowed down as Alice changed lanes again. He passed the car on his left and then came right back into the lane.

The side of the road dropped in a gradual slope for drainage, and there was knee high grass growing at the bottom of the ditch. The grass snaked up to a farmer’s barbed wire fence on the far side of the ditch, and beyond that were braided rows of farmland. Rabbit wasn’t crazy about the idea of going into the ditch, because there could be anything down there under the grass. Mud and water were the least of his worries. He was thinking about large chunks of wood and debris that might not just fuck up Eazy’s car, but possibly kill them both.

He’d known a guy in high school who had gone into just this kind of ditch and hit a telephone pole that was lying on its side, buried in tall grass. The impact had driven him out the side window and into a barbed wire cattle fence. His back had snapped in three places. He lay in the dirt getting ant bites and having spiders crawl on him until someone finally noticed him and stopped to help. The cattle fence had collapsed under him, and his legs were flopped over backwards like a G.I. Joe doll with an elastic band hip joint twisted around backward. He never walked again. Years later Rabbit had sold Brown to the guy, and they’d gotten high together.
He never survived that accident, even though he was still alive. It didn’t just break his back, it broke his soul.
Rabbit had always been wary of those fences after that, and the ditches that ran along the highway. You never knew what was lurking down there, under all that grass.

Only this time he
had
an idea, because down off the highway sitting in the grass was a white cop car, parked behind a road sign announcing an odometer test section had begun with mile one. Alice and Dorothy didn’t see it; they passed that cop at full speed and their brake lights didn’t flicker. Rabbit knew they were too busy looking back in their mirrors at him to notice, and he hit the brakes on his car just as the lights came on and the cop car came alive. He settled in behind it as the squad car gunned its engine and roared after the Volkswagen.

This was bad. If Alice got pinched for what happened at the motel, they’d search the car, and if they did that Rabbit had no doubt they’d find his drugs. He silently prayed for Alice to keep driving, and decided if she did he would come up behind the cop car and wipe him out. Eazy’s car was big enough to push a Caprice off the road easily, and powerful enough to keep up since the cop wouldn’t be passing Alice anytime soon. He’d just drive up and knock the car into the grass, and maybe there’d be nothing down there but mud and frog water.
Then again, maybe there’s a hidden telephone pole lying on its side waiting to grant Johnny Law a life of pissing in beer cans
.

But then Alice’s lights flashed, and Rabbit cursed. The yellow car slowed on the shoulder, and the cop car slowed behind her. Rabbit also slowed down, but then he signaled and moved over a lane. As he passed the cop Rabbit saw him speaking into a radio, an older man with a salt and pepper moustache.
Aren’t they all like that?
He thought.
An old man with a salt and pepper moustache or a woman with a pony tail and a big ass.

When he drove past Alice she was scowling at him, and he pointed to his eyes and then back at her, saying
I’ve got my eyes on you
. She flipped him the finger in return, and Devon made a throat slashing motion. Rabbit hit the gas and sped off, watching Dorothy appear in her seat again. Alice was focused on the cop.

“
So what we goan do now?
” Devon said. He had relaxed his grip on the safety strap, sometimes known as the
holy shit
strap, as in
HOLY SHIT HOLD ON FOR YOUR LIFE
.

“Now?” Rabbit said. “Now we wheel around at the next turn off and come back around. If we’re lucky, Alice just gets a ticket. If we’re not lucky, well, we might have to do some serious
gangstah shit
.”

“She’s gotta die, man.” Devon cracked his knuckles. It was cold in the vehicle but he was sweating profusely; his head looked like a cold beer can on a hot day. Sweat ran from his crown down behind his ears and soaked the collar of his shirt. “She killed my boy. Whatever it takes.”

“If this
worksh
out, we won’t even have to get out of the car.”
This better fuckin work
, he thought. He didn’t want to go to jail, but he definitely didn’t want to be in deep with the Mexicans who had fronted him the drugs. That would be so much worse than jail. At least in jail they’d let him keep his balls. These guys were liable to cut them off and stuff them up his ass. His teeth were killing him. He’d have to blast again soon. It hurt so bad he could almost hear it, like it was screaming in both ears at the same time.

Up ahead there was a connector with a NO U-TURNS sign. Rabbit flicked on his blinker and pulled into it. He’d make his way back around, then find another connector when he passed Alice and the cop again.

The cop pulled to a stop behind them, and Alice was already gritting her teeth because Dorothy wouldn’t shut up. She could see the blue and red lights reflecting in the rear-view mirror. Behind the wheel back there was a gray haired cop with a moustache, furthering her theory that
all
cops had moustaches. Or maybe they were just all the
same
cop; like clones with their genetic spooge all siphoned off some 1970s T.V. cop drama.
Simon & Simon
maybe, or that yellow haired guy from
C.H.I.P.S
..
What was his name?
What a stupid thought. Of course she didn’t know the guy’s name.

It didn’t matter now. What mattered now was when that cop got to the window to ask
Where’s the fire?
Or
Speedometer broken?
Or
Lemme guess...you were practicving for the Indy 500?
Any of those questions would almost immediately be followed up with
Why are you girls so beat up?
Or
Why is she cryin’ like that?
Sooner or later, those questions would turn to the BIG one, and they’d be up shit creek without a paddle:
What do you girls know about a dead guy in room 202 at the Emerald City Motel?

They might even have Rabbit’s car in their system now; being driven by a ‘person of interest’. She was sure Rabbit hadn’t called the car in stolen because he wanted his drugs back. But if there were people standing around in the Em City parking lot when the shootout happened, they would have seen everything. Rabbit’s boy was too stupid to even close the door. They would have seen Alice shoot that guy. It was self defense, yeah, but the Hater said
whores don’t get to play that card
.

He’s right,
Alice thought. Nobody would believe her.

She’d know in about two seconds if the cop was coming to arrest a murderer or ticket a speeder. His body language as he approached their vehicle would tell her everything she wanted to know about his intentions. If he came to the door with his ticket pad in hand, she might let him live. If he came with his gun drawn, there was a good chance he’d have to use it in quick fashion.

“We’re fucked.” Dorothy’s voice salty and crackling. She choked on her sobs and snot ran from her nose.