Body Rides (2 page)

She’ll never find out, he’d told himself.

She might. Anything’s possible.

It’s a moot point, he’d thought. I’m taking them back tonight, even if it kills me.

Now, driving along the empty streets on his way to the video store, Neal smiled and shook his head. He was pleased with himself. He felt fairly brave and reckless.

In the great scheme of things, the real danger of making a midnight run to the Video City was slim. Nevertheless, a prudent person wouldn’t be doing it. He was needlessly putting himself at risk.

If his mother found out he’d done such a thing, she would pitch a fit.

He smiled and shook his head.

What a way to go, he thought. Killed in the act of returning
Straw Dogs
and
I Spit on Your Grave
to the local video store. Oh, the irony.

He laughed softly.

He didn’t feel particularly nervous until after he’d crossed National Boulevard. The freeway underpass, just ahead, never failed to worry him. It was too long, too empty. Driving through it, he always felt cut off from the world, vulnerable.

He had walked through it many times in daylight.

Seen disturbing graffiti under there.

L.A.P.D. 187

KILL OFAY

He sure would hate to run into the taggers who’d scribbled those charming tidbits. He wasn’t a cop. He was white, though. Anyone who enjoyed writing such shit might very well try to kill him.

And such shit got written at night.

He thought about turning around. He could easily go back and take National over to Venice Boulevard. Avoiding the underpass.
Avoiding the even creepier area on the other side of it.

As he neared the underpass, though, his headlights showed it to be empty. A broad, barren tunnel.

Nothing to be afraid of.

As he entered, he picked up speed. The engine noise swelled, reverberating off the concrete. On both sides, taggers had left their spray-painted names, symbols and threats – a jumble of secret codes, symbols and bizarre spelling. He’d seen them before, so he didn’t try to study them now; he tried to ignore them.

I really should’ve stuck to the main roads, he decided. This was stupid.

He left the underpass behind.

On both sides, embankments slanted down from the freeway. The lower areas of the slopes were thick with bushes and trees. Then came the old railroad right-of-way. Unused for years. Overgrown. Scattered with every kind of garbage. Bordered by a ragged chainlink fence that obviously did little good.

Neal didn’t even want to
think
about what sort of people might be lurking in there.

Not very long ago, a police officer had been murdered somewhere in that odd little strip of wilderness. Late at night.

L.A.P.D. 187

He looked both ways. He saw nobody wandering around. But nearby streetlights showed enough dense foliage to hide a legion of mad predators.

His car bumped over the tracks.

Time for another decision.

Make a left onto the backroad, or go straight ahead to Venice Boulevard? If he didn’t make the left here, he would find himself at Venice on the wrong side of the video store. Also, he would have to turn into the drive-through lane of the Burger Boy where that teenager had gotten murdered last month.

He shook his head and sighed.

One way was probably as bad as the other.

The backroad would be more direct.

Narrow, much of it dark under trees that blocked the streetlights, it ran for about half a mile alongside the abandoned railroad right-of-way. Where God-knows-who might be lurking. Where the cop had been gunned down.

Neal made the turn and stepped on the gas.

To his left, the wilderness. To his right, a row of shabby dwellings.

Fun and games if the car breaks down
.

His car seemed to be working fine.

Next time, he told himself, just take Robertson and forget about all this backroad crap.

Right. Next time, just forget about returning the damn videos in the middle of the night. You’re asking for trouble with this.

Blowing it all out of proportion, that’s what you’re doing. Better just hope to God nobody ever finds out what a wimp you really are
.

Through his open window, mixed in with the mild night air and the sounds from the freeway, came the far-off but distinct outcry of a woman shrieking, ‘HELLLLP!’

Neal’s stomach clenched.

He looked to the left.

For a moment, his view was blocked by a van parked across the road.

After passing the van, he saw the strip of wilderness leading to the embankment. He slowed down and gazed out his window. High in the distance, cars and trucks sped along on the Santa Monica Freeway. He saw nobody by the side of the freeway, nobody in the grass and weeds of the embankment, nobody in the darkness among the trees and heavy bushes that cloaked the base of the embankment, that spread out toward him over the field of the long-abandoned right-of-way. He saw nobody on the railroad tracks.

He saw no lights over there.

The yell could’ve come from anywhere, he told himself. He was fairly used to hearing distant outcries and screams. He would sometimes step outside his apartment, glance around and listen for a while. But he had never done more than that. Most such cries, he suspected, came from kids goofing around.

‘NO!’

Goosebumps prickled Neal’s face.

He swerved to the left, swung off the road, hit the brakes, killed the engine and headlights, yanked his key out of the ignition. Clamping the key case in his mouth, he used his right hand to fling up the lid of his console beside his seat. He fumbled through the
compartment, reached under the note pad and change purse and a stack of napkins and snatched up his Sig Sauer .380 pistol.

He thought about the spare magazine. Down there somewhere. Couldn’t afford the time to search for it.

Keys still in his mouth, the pistol in his right hand, he threw open his door with his left and leaped out of his car. He rushed to a gap in the chainlink fence, ducked through it, and ran straight for the deepest, thickest part of the darkness at the bottom of the freeway embankment.

As he ran, he plucked the leather key case out of his mouth. He shoved it into a front pocket of his shorts. Loose down there, it whopped against his thigh with every stride.

His baggy gray shorts looked pale in the night. His legs looked brighter than the shorts. His white socks glared. Only his shoes and shirt were dark.

Should’ve worn black
.

Yeah, he thought. Right. Gotta dress proper for my midnight rescue missions.

He couldn’t believe he was doing this.

Must be nuts
.

He had never in his life rushed to the rescue of anyone. The opportunity had never come up. He’d never really
expected
it to come up.

The pistol in his console was meant for self-defense, a last resort in case of attack. He’d bought it after watching news coverage, telecast live from a helicopter, of people being dragged from their cars and beaten nearly to death at the corner of Florence and Normandie back in ’92.

You just never know when you might suddenly find yourself in the middle of a riot, or jumped by a thug who wants to jack your car and possibly kill you in the process.

So you carry a gun, just in case.

Illegal as hell, but worth the risk.

Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.

He wondered if he would be doing this if he didn’t have the gun.

Not a chance.

This is nuts, he thought.

But he kept on running, kicking out his legs, pumping his arms, leaping over the dim obstacles of railroad tracks, brambles, ruts,
an old tire, a sofa cushion, a collection of crushed cans that smelled of motor oil. He dodged the larger bushes, and a car bumper, several trees, a toilet that smelled as if someone had used it not very long ago, and an old door that lay on the ground like an entrance into the dirt.

Then something snagged his foot.

A root, a strand of barbed wire, maybe an electrical cord from a buried appliance.

He didn’t know what, but it grabbed his left foot and held it back. He fell headlong.

On the way down, he almost yelled, ‘Shit!’

He kept his head, and yelled it only in his mind.

The landing hurt. He whammed down on an unseen mixture of foliage, dirt and junk. Things beneath him crackled, mashed, crunched, scratched him and gouged him. His breath got knocked out. His balls took a hit. He had hot, painful places on his knees and arms and chest. He thought that he must be bleeding here and there.

He wanted to get up fast.

No telling what horrible things might be under him. He easily and quickly imagined plenty: rusty nails, broken glass, a used condom or diaper or sanitary napkin, canine or human turds, spiders, snails or snakes. A half-mashed rat might roll over under his belly and give him a nip.

For a while, though, he was unable to move.

Then he pushed himself to his hands and knees, and stood up. He couldn’t stand up straight – too much pain for that. He had to bend over, and it hurt to breathe.

This is what I get for trying to be a hero, he thought.

He felt as if he’d been clubbed in the groin and chest.

Warm trickles were running down from his right elbow and both knees.

‘Don’t,’ he heard. ‘Please.’

Not an outcry, more of a sobbing plea.

From somewhere in the darkness of the trees up ahead and off to the left.

Eyes fixed on the area, Neal clenched his teeth and started hobbling. He tried to be quiet about it.

‘What’ll you give me?’ he heard a man say.

‘Anything. Please.’

A soft chuckle. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘I don’t want to die.’

‘Glad to hear it. Know what?
I
don’t want you to die, either. Not for a few more hours, anyhow.’ More chuckling.

Then came a quick hiss.

‘That didn’t hurt, did it?’

‘Yes.’ The sad and hopeless tone of her voice made Neal’s throat tighten.

‘Aw, tough tittie,’ the man said.

Then came a gasp.

‘Or not so tough.’

‘Please.’ She wept.

‘Awwwww.’

‘Ow!’

‘Hurt?’

‘Please.’

‘Tell me something.’

‘What?’ she sobbed.

‘Tell me you’re a filthy, stinking slut.’

‘I’m a filthy, stinking slut.’

‘You need to be cleansed with pain.’

‘I need to be . . . cleansed with pain.’

‘I’m your salvation.’

‘You’re my salvation.’

‘Please, make me scream.’

‘Please . . . make me scream.’

‘You don’t sound like you mean it.’

‘I mean it!’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes!’

‘Liar.’

She squealed.

Limping past a tree, Neal saw them ahead and still a distance over to his left – maybe twenty feet away.

Dim, vague shapes that seemed to be facing each other. One blacker than the darkness, one pale. Both mottled by random flecks and dabs of light that reached them through the foliage.

The pale one, definitely the woman, was facing the dark one.
She didn’t seem to be wearing any clothes. She had her back to a tree trunk. Perhaps she was tied to it. Neal could see her squirming. He heard her sobbing.

The man’s dark arm reached toward her. He held something shiny. A small tool of some sort.

Pliers?

‘No!’ the woman gasped. ‘Please!’

‘Oh yes, oh yes,’ the man said.

The tool moved toward her left breast.

Neal yelled, ‘Drop it!’

Both heads turned fast.

The man had a white face masked by wild black hair.

‘Drop the fuckin’ pliers, Rasputin!’ Neal yelled. ‘I’ll blow your head off!’

He flung his arms high. ‘Don’t shoot!’ he yelled. ‘I give up! Don’t shoot!’

Above his head, specked with moonlight, Neal saw the pliers in his right hand and a knife in his left. The slim, tapering blade of the knife looked almost as long as the man’s forearm.

‘Drop that stuff,’ Neal said, aiming his Sig at the dark figure.

Shaking.

Heart racing, pounding.

Mouth as dry as a handful of sand.

The man turned toward him, arms still raised, knife and pliers still in his hands. He looked cadaverous. His black hair and beard hid most of his face except for pale knobs of cheekbones. His long-sleeved, black shirt seemed to cling to the bones of his arms and ribcage, hug his sunken belly. The way his black trousers gleamed, they were probably leather. His black gloves appeared to be leather, too.