Shiver (28 page)

She veered into the other lane, then hit the brakes. The patrol car rocketed past her, taillights streaking like a time exposure, siren lowering its pitch.

Wendy was behind him now. She could execute a U-turn, try to get away. The most logical thing to do. Of course it was.

She arrowed the Camaro at the squad car. Shot forward. Punched a dent in its rear bumper.

“How do you like that, you asshole?” she yelled, her voice high and thin and ragged, keening like the rush of air through the shattered window. “How the hell do you like
that
?”

She rammed him again, again, again. She thrilled with the impact of steel on steel, enjoying the hard shock of contact. She was fighting back, going on the offensive, not running anymore. She’d run for too long, too many years, her whole life. The world had abused her, and she’d responded by hiding her pain, curling up inside herself, learning fear and smallness. Now at last she was taking action, lashing out, and it felt good, so good.

“Fuck you!” she shouted as she hit him once more, crunching one of his taillights like a sea shell. “Fuck you!” Another impact; his left rear tire blew and shredded. “Fuck you!” His trunk lid sprung a latch and popped up, flapping fitfully.

She no longer knew if she was screaming or laughing or both, and she didn’t give a damn. She was free. Free.

Over the siren’s wail, a sound like an engine backfiring. A gunshot.

A hand hung out of the squad car’s window on the driver’s side, a gloved hand with a pistol in it. The gun kicked again. The Camaro’s windshield exploded. Wendy threw a hand over her face. Glass shards bit her palm.

“Fuck you,” she said again. She would not be intimidated. Would not back off.

She put on a burst of speed and plowed into the black-and-white, delivering a blow hard enough to crack both cars’ axles. The gun retreated as the Gryphon tried to steady the cruiser, now weaving wildly, the shredded tire smoking, the one taillight tracing red curlicues like the burning end of a cigarette in a restless hand.

Wendy careened into the patrol car again, her fender a shark’s mouth chewing metal, and then, because she knew it was the last thing her adversary expected, she dropped back, giving him room to maneuver. He straightened out the car and cut his speed, falling back to pull alongside her on her right, no doubt intending to squeeze off another shot from closer range, but before he had the chance, she angled the nose of the Camaro at the squad car’s door and lunged forward, crushing the door like a tin can and shoving the cruiser off the road into the shoulder, where it ought to have smacked into the guardrail, except there was no guardrail this time; there was only dry brush edging the void of a bottomless descent as deep and dark as the black well of death.

The two cars barreled off the shoulder onto a thin strip of dirt scruffy with weeds. The abyss loomed. Wendy wrenched the steering wheel sharply to the left. For a bad moment she thought her bumper had locked with the twisted metal of the black-and-white’s door. Then with a grinding roar it tore loose, and she was skidding back onto the road while the police car, propelled by momentum, kept going, racing toward oblivion, one brake light glowing uselessly, siren whooping in terror.

The cruiser dipped abruptly. The single taillight shot high into the air like a red signal flare as the car’s front end lurched down. An instant later the car was gone.

Wendy stood on the brake pedal with both feet. The Camaro spun completely around and came to a dead stop straddling the double yellow line. Then she was running in her wool socks across the road. At the edge of the cliff she looked down and saw it, the crackling glow on the mountainside two hundred feet below, where the twisted remains of the police car had impacted. A rumble, a shock wave, and the ground shivered as fire bloomed in a blue-red cloud like the domelights’ last furious display. The gas tank had ruptured, caught, blown, and now the car was a fireball, blossoming red, reminding her of a flower with petals unfolding, a red hothouse flower that, like a carnivorous jungle plant, was consuming the car and its contents, consuming the man who’d killed Jennifer and Jeffrey and Sanchez and Porter and who’d tried to kill her, tried and tried again, but had failed each time, and who’d finally paid with his life.

“Fuck you,” Wendy said one last time, her voice groggy and slow.

She staggered back to the Camaro and sank into the driver’s seat, thinking vaguely that she had to go somewhere, call someone, do something. But she couldn’t concentrate; her mind had gone blurry; weakness was spreading through her like the sudden onset of flu. She let her head fall back on the headrest. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, then shut, and a buzzing roar closed over her, all but drowning out the siren rising in the near distance.

Siren.

She jerked half-awake with a last jolt of adrenaline and terror.

The police car hadn’t crashed. The Gryphon was still after her, still chasing her with his siren shrieking, the gun hot in his hand....

No. This was a new siren. An ambulance, probably, or a fire engine. Someone coming to help her, not to slash and kill. Of course. Of course.

Calmness returned, and with it a drowsiness she could no longer resist. She felt no fear, none at all.

Her last thought before losing consciousness was that she would never be afraid again.

19

Drifting. She was drifting. Weightless, bodiless, free. No pain, no fear. Around her, blackness and shades of gray. From somewhere, from everywhere, a rushing-air sound, a conch-shell hiss, monotonous and soothing.

The hum reminded her of the ocean. Slow rolling waves. Sheets of bubbly foam tickling a white shore. Sea birds like chips of broken glass, pieces of the sky. Far down the beach, laughing people. She watched them, saddened by their distance, wishing she could join the crowd. She didn’t dare. She was safer alone. Always alone. Alone and afraid.

No, wait. That was wrong. That was the old Wendy. Something had changed her, shocked her out of hiding, made her come alive. The Gryphon. Yes. Fear was behind her, and all because of the Gryphon.

Her eyes fluttered open. The ocean and the people were gone. She lay in an unfamiliar bed, her left cheek resting on a starched pillowcase.

Without lifting her head, she took in her surroundings. Beige carpet, yellow walls. In a two-dollar frame, a painting of a farmhouse with a red barn. A long wooden bureau. A doorway to what must be the bathroom, and, near it, a closed door.

Behind the door, the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on tile. A hallway. A nurse walking past. A hospital. She was in a hospital room. Of course she was. She knew it even before she rolled her head languidly to the right and saw the bed beside her, unoccupied, its white privacy curtain hanging open.

On the other side of the empty bed, there was a window. Although the shade was drawn, enough pale pinkish daylight filtered through to wash the room clean of darkness. The light was the color of dawn, of promise. Was it springtime yet? No, still March. Spring would come soon, though. Wendy smiled.

For what seemed like a long time she lay motionless, staring at the corkboard ceiling panels. There had to be a call buzzer within reach; she could summon a nurse if she liked. She chose not to. She wanted to think. Wanted to reconstruct what had happened to her and figure out how she’d wound up here.

She remembered watching the police car explode on the mountainside. Then she’d stumbled back to the Camaro and collapsed into the driver’s seat, feeling suddenly weak. After that, a stretch of darkness. Her next memory was of lying with eyes closed in the back of a moving vehicle, her body draped in the soft heaviness of a blanket. The blanket was good because she was terribly cold, shivering. Her skin felt damp, clammy, almost slimy. Like sushi. She wondered if only a Californian would think of that.

Sounds of activity swirled around her as she was wheeled on a gurney into a room smelling of disinfectant and ringing with voices. The voices seemed gratingly loud. She wanted to open her eyes, but found she couldn’t.

Snatches of hurried conversation faded in and out like a weak radio signal.

“Respiration twenty-two.”

“Pulse eighty. Strong and regular.”

Static thrummed in her ears. She went away somewhere. When she came back, hands were crawling like spiders over her fingertips, her lips.

“No cyanosis.”

Pressure on her wrist.

“Distended veins prominent.”

A python squeeze on her left arm.

“Blood pressure one-twenty over sixty.”

“It was one-fourteen over forty-eight in the wagon ...”

The static rose to a roar, drowning out the voices, then receded.

“Vasoconstrictor indicated?”

“No, she should be all right, now that she’s supine. Give me another BP reading.”

The rubber python coiled around her arm again. “One twenty-two over sixty-four.”

“Better all the time. You’re going to make it, honey.”

Of course I’ll make it, Wendy answered voicelessly. I knew that. I can’t die now. Not after what I’ve been through. It wouldn’t be fair.

The voices went on, but the static was rising once more, the signal dissolving in the ether. She thought of Pioneer, of Voyager, those robot spacecraft sent out to explore the solar system, and how they’d glided ever farther from the sun, finally losing radio contact with Earth’s voice and spinning on into the void among the stars, that great and silent darkness. She slept.

And awoke in this bed, in this room, in the first light of day.

Well, she thought with a smile, the doctor was right, and so was I. I made it. I survived. Everything is going to be fine now. Everything.

Except ...

She went cold.

“Jeffrey,” she whispered.

She’d forgotten about him. No, not forgotten. She’d pushed the memory out of her mind, not wanting to face it, not wanting to feel the pain.

She asked herself if she’d been in love with Jeffrey. She wanted to answer yes, but she knew the truth. He’d been someone to go to dinner with, someone who broke up the lonely routine of her days, someone who liked to talk and who’d found a lady willing to listen. That was all.

Then she remembered the concern he’d shown for her last night. The way he’d hugged her when she cried ...

He might have loved me, she thought. He really might have.

And I got him killed.

She flinched from the thought. It wasn’t right to hold herself responsible. After all, she’d nearly died too.

But suppose she hadn’t telephoned Jeffrey from the police station last night. Suppose she’d decided to stay in a motel. Perhaps the Gryphon wouldn’t have been able to track her down at all. And even if the Gryphon had found her, even if he’d killed her, Jeffrey would still be alive.

His death was her fault. Indirectly and unintentionally, yes, sure, of course; but her fault nonetheless.

Her fault ... and her guilt.

The dawn light flaring around the edges of the window shade didn’t look quite so bright anymore. And springtime no longer seemed so close.

A creak of hinges drew her attention to the door. A nurse was looking in.

“You’re awake,” the nurse said with a pleasant smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired. But okay.” She was surprised at the hoarse rasp of her own voice, the dryness of her mouth.

“Well, you’ve been through a lot. Everyone on the staff is talking about you. You’re a regular celebrity.” The nurse stepped lightly to the bed and attached a blood-pressure cuff to Wendy’s arm, then pumped it up and took a reading. “Looking good.”

“What happened to me exactly?”

“You went into shock.” She consulted the clipboard in her hand. “Neurogenic shock brought on by a syncopal episode. In English, a syncopal episode is a fainting spell. Normally if you faint, you fall over. Since you were sitting in a car, you stayed upright. The blood pooled in your legs, and not enough was getting to your heart.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Luckily the paramedics got there fast.” The nurse listened to Wendy’s heart with a stethoscope, then nodded as if pleased. “They pulled you out of the car and put you on a stretcher. Once you were laid horizontal, no more problems.”

“Why did I sleep so long?”

The nurse briefly checked the beds of Wendy’s fingernails and the veins of her wrists. “Well, I’d say you were flat exhausted, for one thing. But you didn’t sleep straight through. You had a bad dream, and it woke you up.”

“I did?”

“You’ve forgotten that, huh? Well, there’s only so much a person can take. Must have been a doozy of a dream, the way you were yelling.”

“Screaming, you mean? I was screaming?”

“Were you ever.” The nurse crossed to the window and raised the shade, inviting in the slanting sun rays, the fragile salmon light. “Anyway, we gave you a shot of Valium, and you slept just fine after that.”

Wendy blinked. The entire incident—the nightmare and the fit of hysteria that followed—had been erased from her memory. She supposed it was just as well. She had enough nightmares stored in her gray cells as it was.