Paradise Falls (62 page)

“You, either.”

10.

Jacob slumped as he pulled back the throttle. Jennifer braced herself at the last second, before the boat hit the dock. Not very fast, but enough for a loud
crunch
and to throw up some splinters. Jacob started to rise, but Jennifer could move faster. She dropped down and tied the mooring line around the
 
big cleat in a crude knot, like she was tying an enormous pair of shoes. Her bundled up hand made it difficult, until Katie helped.

Jacob grunted as he came down behind her. He looked like like ten miles of bad road. Just looking at him made her heart ache.

Jennifer didn’t feel much better. She had a throbbing bruise on her jaw and her eye was starting to swell where Al Naab hit her. She was sweaty and greasy (
and bloody oh god
) enough to just sweep her now shortened hair back and stick it to her head to keep it from her eyes.

Jennifer got up on the dock and Katie jumped up next to her, and they each took one of Jacob’s arms and pulled him up. Jennifer touched the crude bandage on his left shoulder.

“Duct tape?” she said.

“I was in a hurry.”

“What now?” said Katie.

“We have to get back home,” said Jennifer.

“Can’t we call the police? The FBI or the Army or something?” Katie pleaded.

“We’re going to,” said Jacob, “in case we don’t make it. You’re going to call them.”

“Me?”

“There’s only two seats in the car,” said Jacob.

“You can’t just leave me here,” Katie chirped.

“We’re not,” said Jacob. “Shit,” he breathed. “You can sit on Jennifer’s lap. We’re dropping you at a safe place. Then, we have to go.”

“Then let’s go,” said Jennifer.

Jacob nodded and showed the way. When Jennifer spotted the Martyr hunched in an alleyway behind a dumpster, she had to blink a few times to make sure it was real. Jacob touched the thing hanging around his neck and the hatch slid open. Normally he would have boosted her up inside, but Jennifer climbed in first, awkwardly standing in the back seat to help Katie up. It was a tight fit, and Katie had to press hard on Jennifer to get in. Jacob pulled himself up, and almost flopped into the seat. When the engine roared to life, Katie yelped. Jacob wasted no time. They were moving almost before the hatch closed.

Disoriented, Jennifer barely knew where she was. Somewhere by the Delaware river. That was about it. Jacob turned up a side street and an old Honda came screeching to a halt, the driver staring open-mouthed as the Matyr went tearing up the street in front of her.

“Jenn!” Katie chirped. “Hey, it’s the Dog House! I remember that, Dad took us there-“

Jacob turned, drove up and over a row of concrete parking barriers and came to a screeching halt in front of the low, diner-car style restaurant and opened the hatch.

“Katie. Go inside, call the cops. Go now.”

Katie got up, sat on the edge of the cockpit, then leaned down and threw her arms around Jennifer.

“I’m not going to convince you to stay behind with me, am I?”

“No,” said Jennifer. “I love you. She squeezed her sister’s hand. “Go… wait.”

Their father’s gun. Jennifer handed Katie her purse, and Katie slipped it on her shoulder, squeezing the strap.

“Take care of her,” Katie said, to Jacob.

“You should be telling me to take care of him,” Jennifer sighed.

Katie nodded and dropped down, and jogged into the restaurant. The hatch slid closed, and Jacob opened up the throttle. Jennifer had a feeling Katie didn’t need to call the police. Everyone inside had their cell phone out, and half of them were on their feet, pointing and staring.

The Martyr snarled and rocketed out onto the road. Jennifer pulled on her safety harness just as Jacob threw the control yoke around and the whole works whipped around one hundred and eighty degrees, spinning her brain around inside her head. Her stomach pushed against the seat as the force of acceleration rammed her back, and she grabbed onto the sides of the seat to steady herself. The world was still spinning.

She shook her head, tried to clear it out. Her skull was throbbing.

“Paradise Falls is hours from here,” said Jennifer. “We’ll never make it.”

“Yes, we will,” said Jacob.

“We’ve got company.”

As they blasted past a gas station, a state police cruiser lit up its lights and came screeching out, fishtailing as the driver floored the gas.

“Radio scrambler,” said Jacob. “If they stop us we’ll never make it home in time.”

Jennifer blinked. Then, she remembered. She found the switch and hit it. Nothing happened except a quiet mechanical whir as an antenna about the size of a coffee can emerged from the Matyr’s humped back and began pulsing wide-band radio frequencies. A flick of the switch on her control stick reversed the view, so her little screen showed what was going on behind. The police car was catching up.

Jacob went for the highway onramp.

“We can’t take the highway,” Jennifer shouted, unnecessarily. “They’ll road block us.”

“Not likely,” said Jacob.

“Jacob, we can’t…”

“The hell we can’t.”

She felt a funny, weightless lifting sensation as the Martyr surged up onto the highway at full speed. It was just before sunset, not much traffic, but there was enough. Panicked drivers swerved over to the shoulder as Jacob cut over to the left.

“How much range does the jammer thing have?”

“Not much,” said Jacob.

“When we get too far away…”

“I know. He’ll radio it in. Probably already has.”

Tensing, Jennifer watched the rear view camera, biting her lip. She even glanced back a few times, though she could see very little, lacking a rear window. She peered over Jacob’s shoulder, watching the highway. It made her stomach turn loops as he weaved through the traffic.

“Where are we?”

“Two minutes from the state line.”

She watched the speedometer creep higher, past ninety. Jacob had a straining two-hand grip on the controls, his knuckles white. Jennifer clamped down on the back of his seat, and her jaw dropped when she saw the roadblock. There had to be ten cop cars stretched across the road, lights flashing.

Jacob wasn’t slowing down.

“Jacob,” said Jennifer.

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Jacob!”

He nosed the Martyr to the left. They were on a bridge, but it didn’t matter. The front end hit the concrete k-rail dividing the highway with a crunch and kicked up, and threw Jennifer back in the seat. The Martyr came down hard in a cloud of dust and debris, and the thudding rear tread snarled as it ground into the concrete for purchase and launched them forward.

Jacob looped wide across the oncoming lane, and Jennifer screamed out loud at the sight of headlights stretching off into the horizon before Jacob nosed back over and there was another great
thump
as the Martyr jumped the gap again, her stomach lifting before they came back down with a jolt that threw her down and back in the seat.

“Don’t do that again!” Jennifer screamed.

Grim-faced, Jacob rammed the throttle all the way forward. In the camera Jennifer saw the cops scrambling to get in their cars and give chase. Ahead on an on-ramp she saw half a dozen Pennsylvania state troopers pouring down onto the highway, lights flashing.

“Jennifer,” said Jacob. His voice was either inhumanely tense or eerily calm.

“Yeah?”

“Are you strapped in?”

Her stomach fluttered. “Yeah…” she said.

Before she could answer, he flipped up the safety cover and hit the red switch.

The engine snarled, and then
screamed
in a high pitched whine that cut through her head like an animal shriek, and the force of acceleration shot her back in the seat. Jennifer was screaming, too. The buildings lining the sides of the highway swept by so fast they bent in her vision as they slid out of sight. She glanced at the speed on Jacob’s instrument panel.

It hit 150 before it stopped counting up. Jacob, shoved back into the seat by acceleration himself, held the control yoke with his arms straight out and locked, grimacing as he weaved back and forth. Jennifer felt nauseous staring at the rear view camera, watching everything behind rocket away so fast she could barely keep track of it, and closed her eyes to force her stomach back down before she opened them again.

“You watching our back?”

“Yeah,” she said, choking a little. “We’re going really fast.”

“I know.”

“This is dangerous.”

“I know. I have a route plotted. Not much further and we can go off-road.”

She nodded. A brilliant light flashed, bathing the cockpit with light.

“Helicopter,” said Jennifer.

She could see it in the rear view camera, and it looked like it was struggling to keep up.

“They’re gonna call the Army or something,” said Jennifer.

“Can’t. Posse Comitatus,” said Jacob. “It’d be the National Guard.”

She eyed him over the seat. In the window, his reflection smiled weakly. She had to throw her hands up and cover her eyes as Jacob slowed just a bit to cut around a truck. After passing a pack of cars that all pulled away from the far lane, the highway was virtually empty.

“They’ve shut down the road,” said Jacob. “Closed all the ramps. Nobody on or off.”

Jennifer leaned over the seat and looked at him.

“We don’t need ramps,” said Jacob.

They were getting close to the airport. Jacob nosed over and the Martyr jumped the concrete divider rail again. Jennifer pressed her eyes shut until they landed, the whole thing bouncing under her, only to open them again and see Jacob run right into the guard rail on the far side. This time she had her eyes open and yelped as the Martyr rolled up and over the rail and fell a good thirty feet and came down hard, swerving from side to side as it clawed for purchase.

“Did you drive this way on the way down?”

“No. I obeyed all traffic control devices and speed limits.”

Jennifer shot him a look.

For just a moment, he grinned, and throttled forward.

Jennifer’s face went slack.
I’m on the run from the police
. She was almost giddy, in a panicky, flighty way.
Get it together.

The magnitude of everything that just happened hit her like a sack of flour on her lap. It all replayed in her mind, from the car wreck to the truck stop and the boat and now this. She looked at her hands. There was dried blood crusted in the creases of her knuckles. She stared at them.

Jacob noticed.

“Later,” he said. “Hold it back. Process it later. The kids. It’s going to be a school day.”

She nodded, and dropped her hands in her lap. She could feel the pressure pushing behind her eyes and rubbed at them. Jacob knew the way. The city faded surprisingly quickly, as it was all along the coastline and the highway, and Jacob turned down an even smaller road, and then just drove into a cornfield. Jennifer wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.

“I’m tired,” she said. “How can I be tired?”

“Me too. When this is done I’m going to sleep for a week.”

“Are we going to make it?”

“Yes,” he said, but didn’t sound so sure. “Jennifer?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I love you, too. Punch it.”

11.

It happened again.
 

The steady drone of the Martyr’s engine put her to sleep.

“Jennifer. Jennifer! Wake up.”

She jolted awake, from dozing as her head bobbed on her chest to a full, cold alertness that made a shiver run down her spine, lice an ice cube dropped down her shirt. She leaned on Jacob’s seat. They were in a damned corn field again, at least for the moment. The Martyr eased up onto the road.

“We’re running low on fuel,” said Jacob. “We can make it over the bridge, but the rest will be on foot. You with me?”

“Always.”

Jennifer looked ahead. Another roadblock. Jacob rolled up slowly this time. Jennifer trembled at the sight of the bridge towers rising overhead.

“I’ve been listening to the radio chatter,” Jacob said, grimly “We’re too late. They’ve taken the school.”

Jennifer’s blood froze, and she gripped the seat.

“What are we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna go in,” said Jacob. “Here we come to save the day.”

The Martyr rolled up to the roadblock. A man in a suit held up a bullhorn. His voice was muffled by the Martyr’s armor and all the noise.

“Shut down the vehicle and step out slowly with your hands visible!”

“Should we?” said Jacob.

“Here we come, to save the day,” said Jennifer, in a sing-song voice.

“You know,” Jacob said, grimly. “I wanted to do this ever since I got this thing.”

He threw the throttle forward and the Martyr surged. He gave them enough time to get out of the way. When the front wheels hit the hood of the first car the front end tilted up and came back down as the whole thing crunched under the Martyr’s weight with a metallic screech and a scrape as the back tread bit into the metal. They rolled right over the road block and Jacob hit the throttle hard, and surged across the bridge, the yellow metal cable-stays whipping past. Jennifer felt a cold dread as she looked up at the towers as they passed overhead. She could still remember the steel superstructure of the original bridge, place it before her eyes as plain as day. Not far now to the school. Not far.

The familiar was at the same time eerily alien. Driving down Commerce Street in the Martyr felt like exploring an alien planet. The town was deserted, probably evacuated.

The Martyr made it a few blocks more, and then the growling engine sputtered, coughed, and died. The vehicle slid to a stop, and Jacob let out a ragged sigh. He rose and offered Jennifer a hand, and she stepped out.

It looked worse from the outside than she expected. The armor plating was bent and scraped, and it sagged to one side from damage to the suspension. Jennifer gave it a pat on the fender, not quite knowing why.

“Come on,” said Jacob, pulling the gear out of the cockpit.

Jennifer took her rifle out of the case, checked that it was loaded and the safety set and slung it on her her shoulder. Jacob discarded a few things, some gadgets from his harness of pouches and pockets.