yesterday. Three more than the day before. It didn't make sense to him. How could the truce agreement ever go ahead when they keep bombing the oil wells and storage facilities?
At least they were talking about peace. At least the bombings were slowing.
They finally entered a clutch of maples at the end of the straight. A bonfire of autumn leaf, lit softly and set like gems against the oily haze. So intense the color can hardly be contained. Like his son's eyes that first time. The first time those virgin eyes saw him and connected with him and the infant smiled and planted something in his brain. Something that could hardly be contained. Something that could never be removed.
Harry was winding down and Linc thanked what ever part of his brain had helped him tune it out. Nobody enjoyed conversing with Harry.
“So I'll hook it up and then you'll run the test and sign it off?” Linc asked.
“That will be fine,” said Harry. “As long as I certify each step.”
When Linc positioned it well, Harry felt important.
Harry supervises.
Linc does menial installation tasks.
The job takes a third of the time.
No broken promise today.
A sweeping right hand bend revealed a gray SUV, stopped at right angles to the direction of the road. Blocking the lane.
Harry was clearly less adept with steering wheels and brake pedals when connected to a real car, but the tires went quiet a few feet short of the blockage and Linc managed to keep the power supply safe from launching off his lap and into the dash.
“Call 911,” said Linc. “I’ll check for injuries.”
“I don’t use a mobile phone,” replied Harry with disdain. As if he'd called his mother a whore. Maybe she was a whore. He didn’t care. But he did remember Harry once saying something about never wanting to own a device that pumped his body full of electromagnetic radiation.
“Use mine,” growled Linc as he dug his phone from his pocket. He shoved the door open and climbed out. He shifted the power supply toward his empty seat but something stopped him. Stopped his fingers from surrendering their grip around that smooth steel handle. Something liked the feel of it by his side.
Linc circled the vehicle. A gray Ford, at least ten years old but in excellent condition. A small ding broke the otherwise pristine expanse of the rear passenger door panel. A windblown door or a careless shopping cart. A conscientiously maintained vehicle. Drivers door agape. Abandoned.
A pair of hollows were sunk in the black leather of the drivers seat. Familiar and well formed. Too cool to have been recently occupied. Sunlight licked at a splash of blood on the drivers headrest. Still viscous.
“Help me!” screamed a shrew voice. It was behind him. In the woods. She must have gotten confused and wandered off.
“Help me!” It was urgent. Hysterical.
Linc turned and checked the woods behind him.
“Please stop!”
A girl, twenty something, ran from the woods. She was barefoot and wearing nothing but skimpy bra and panties. Not the attire Linc had expected of a car crash victim.
Her underwear was white and spattered with blood and an array of cuts adorned her face and upper body. The allure of her face defeated by terror.
The vehicle glass had been whole and Linc had seen nothing in the Ford to cause such injuries.
He started toward her, expecting to calm her down somehow. Not knowing how.
She cried and sobbed between calls for help and mercy and ran toward Linc.
Six men in black leather jackets ran from the woods, laughing and waving knives and bottles and baseball bats.
Linc was ten yards from the car. The girl was twenty. The bikers were thirty five.
Linc backed toward Harry. “Get in the car!” he yelled. She could make it if she didn’t panic and trip and fall.
Tires squealed behind Linc. Harry sped away.
Damn Harry. He was a coward as well as a transcendent prick. He wished Harry was the one to be drafted. Instead of his cousin, killed in some nothing invasion of some nowhere shithole like that. Send Harry off to skulk in a ditch in Oman or somewhere and get shot at. Nobody would have missed Harry.
But now he had Linc’s phone and Linc was on his own. Bringing a piece of computer hardware to a knife fight.
The girl was in bad shape. The bikers had taken her clothes. Probably slowly. Ripping a piece off at a time. Like a litter of kittens playing with a single mouse. One at a time, taunting and terrorizing, without empathy and building slowly to some exhausted finale.
Linc had seen what came next. Gangs were becoming bolder and brasher. News reports no longer bothered to include violence between rivals. Headlines were now filled with gang crimes against regular citizens. Random acts of malice. Brutal and repugnant cruelties. Worse and worse every day. Like it was the coming of the end of justice and consequence.
Linc’s neighbors, Jim and Mandy, had first-hand experience. Their daughter was raped on her way to work a few weeks ago. They hacked off all her fingers just for the fun of it. Linc had found Jim sitting in the car with a hose from the exhaust pipe into the window and the car running. It was a tough thing to see; the wreckage of a hard but upstanding man like him, an ex-army sharp shooter. All his skills and experience and he could not protect his own daughter. The police said there was no chance of catching the culprits. They seemed disinterested. Like they were overwhelmed by more important cases.
And these parasites were about to dispense the same experience to another innocent. Another family.
The girl reached the empty space where the car had been. More hysterical now. She'd seen a car. A running engine. A taste of hope. Then snatched away again.
Had Linc had five friends with him the bikers would run for the hills. A few smarmy comments and their tails between their legs. But it was six against one. One and a half if he counted the girl. And those kind of odds made bikers brave.
They were closing. Ten yards. Staying in a tight group. Puffing each others chests. Feeling courageous.
“Run!” Linc yelled at the girl pointing back the way he came.
Linc's options were limited. If he took them all on he would take a beating. Or worse.
If he ran he would easily escape. Outrunning a bunch of lazy fat bikers was a simple task. This was not even his problem. The car had been empty. Could have been an abandoned vehicle. A break down. Nobody to help. At least as far as he knew. They could have easily driven past and never been the wiser. Can't feel guilty if you don't know.
But they would catch her. Harry had made sure of that.
And he did know. She was somebody's child. Somebody like Jim and Mandy.
Harry had made it his problem.
“Run!” Linc yelled again and finally she ran.
“I'll slow them down!” he called after her.
He couldn't take them all on. Split them up. Even the odds.
“You sure are gonna slow us down,” said the oldest of the group. He was about Linc's height and built a little heavier. Especially around the belly.
“We're gonna take all the time in the world with you,” he sniggered. “And then we'll come back for your new girl friend. Ain't that right boys.”
“You bet, Shane.”
“All the time in the world.”
“And your new girl friend.”
The group had fanned out and formed a wide circle around Linc.
The one with the short gray hair, Shane, was facing Linc and had his back to the woods. Where they emerged. The direction Linc needed to lead them. Away from the girl.
Shane was clearly the leader. One thing Linc knew about a pack was if you take out the leader the rest of the pack is more likely to scatter. Or at least dither and regroup before they resume pursuit. It was strange how the things he learned in documentaries about wolves might save a girl from being raped.
Or not.
“What's that, a computer?” laughed Shane. He probably thought his blue bandanna and stubbly goat
ee made him look gangster. “You got some office work to do boy?”
One on his left and one on his right stepped forward, "Yeah, office work!". They laughed and tapped their weapons in their palms. A broken bottle and a knife with a four inch blade.
Linc stepped back, a retreat. He figured his best form of defense was surprise. And striking first. Better when used together.
The two moved forward half a step.
He used his momentum to swing the power supply behind him in his right hand. Then he spun on his left heel and shifted his weight forward again and whipped the unit forward and into the jaw of the short stumpy guy on the left. He had a handlebar mustache. The kind of mustache a biker thinks will make him more desirable to woman. The kind of mustache most woman consider about as appealing as cold sick. Mo's jaw cracked like a Harley Davidson backfiring and spun to his left and toppled the clean shaven one next to him.
Linc kept his spinning momentum going and crashed the unit into the leaders right shoulder. He stumbled to his left and Linc sprinted through the opening toward the woods.
“Get him!” barked Shane.
He'd failed to dislodge the leader. Failed to scatter the pack. Now they would hunt.
Linc reached the trees with the first two fifteen yards behind. He ran through firs and pines, old and young, dense and shadowy. Occasional shafts of morning sun pierced the canopy and danced along the ferny carpet. Like a keeper in the tree tops was ushering the way along a path of chlorophyl footlights. Hurrying him past a place that should be filled with games and laughter and burnt sausages and s'mores by a campfire. All of the things that