Thunderland (4 page)

Warily, he slunk through the throng of people. He would have reached the door without being noticed, except for a hyperactive kid.

When he was halfway to the exit, a child darted around the table nearest the main walkway, screaming about a Happy Meal. Jason sidestepped, but he moved too slowly. The boy crashed into him head-on.

The milkshake tumbled out of Jason’s hands and splattered onto the floor.

People turned to look. The noise level fell.

Jason’s heart knocked. Now, Blake must see him.

The kid who had smashed into him had dropped onto his butt. Without looking at Jason, he bounded to his feet and took off, still yelling. A blushing young woman dashed around the corner, murmured an apology to Jason, then chased after the boy.

“Brooks!”

Jason froze. That unmistakable voice made spicules of ice spin through his blood.

“Brooks!”

Slowly, Jason turned.

From far across the lobby, Blake stared at him. A humorless grin sliced across his face.

A month ago, during the final exam for their science class, Jason and Blake had been assigned to sit at the same table. Not surprisingly, shortly after the test began, Blake attempted to bully him into letting him copy. Most kids shriveled under Blake, but Jason refused to give in. His grandfather had indoctrinated him in the importance of standing up for himself. Blake was infuriated. Before he handed the teacher the blank test that would result in his being retained in eighth grade for the second time, he promised that when he next met Jason he was going to beat him so brutally that afterward “Not even God’ll recognize you.” In Blake’s warped mind, it was Jason’s fault that he had flunked.

“I’m gonna get you, Brooks!”

Jason rushed out of the door.

Blake and his gang hustled out of the door they’d been near, too.

Outside, the temperature felt as if it had escalated ten degrees since Jason had entered the restaurant. The furnace-like heat snatched the air out of his lungs and made him lightheaded. As he ran alongside the building, he dragged one hand across the brick wall to keep from falling in a faint.

He had not locked up his bike. Doubting anyone would ever steal such an ugly ride, he never chained it up. He pulled it out of the stall, hopped on it.

Evidently, Blake and his friends had parked their bicycles beside the entrance. They were on them already, motoring around the front of the building, toward Jason.

“Gonna kill you, boy!”

There were several places to which he could flee. He made a decision in an instant.

A used-car lot lay adjacent to the McDonald’s. It was one of the biggest in the county, the size of three football fields, every inch consumed by vehicles. A virtual labyrinth that provided countless avenues of evasion.

He weaved around bumpers, aiming to put as much distance as possible between himself and his pursuers. Searing sunshine ricocheted off hundreds of windshields, and the blacktop seemed on the verge of melting under the heat. Rippling mirages glistened on the pavement like pools of molten silver.

Riding hard and fast, Jason felt as though he had stumbled into an action movie. He had only wanted a milkshake, and now he seemed to be fleeing for his life. Adrenaline pumped like hot oil through his veins, his heart pummeled his rib cage, and sweat drenched his shirt. His bike clanked, whined, and clattered, and he prayed under his breath for the bike to stay in one piece.

Finally, seeing no one on his tail, he stopped between two rows of cars. He looked around.

Blake and the others were nowhere in sight.

But they had to be there. Somewhere.

He licked his dry lips, looked around again. No sign of them.

But it was nuts to think they had given up. Blake had a reputation for being as unrelenting as a pit bull. From what Jason had heard about him, the kid even relished a good chase before he kicked someone’s ass.

Against Jason’s will, his imagination powered up; a river of vivid images flooded into his head. He imagined Blake, Bryan, and Travis having abandoned their bikes; he saw them slithering like serpents alongside, under, and behind cars, quick and stealthy, switchblades bared and gleaming in the sunlight, muscles tense with pent-up violence, minds boiling over with bloodlust, creeping ever closer, closer, closer ...

Two arms wrapped around his chest.

Unable to stop thinking of his terrible fight with Linda, Thomas left the restaurant and drove to Green Meadows Nursing Home.

He rode the elevator to the fourth level of the building, drumming a pocket notebook against his leg as the first three floors beeped past. He was nervous. Under the circumstances, visiting his father might only worsen what was already one of the worst days of his life. But he had been compelled to visit. He nursed a naive yet sincere hope that an earnest, man-to-man talk with his dad would help him solve his problems.

He arrived on the fourth floor, walked slowly to the last room on the south wing. He paused at the threshold, exhaled deeply, then stepped inside and shut the door.

At the
thunk
of the closing door, his father’s eyes opened. He spoke in a slightly slurred baritone voice: “What the hell do you want, boy?”

“I came to visit, Dad.” He settled into the chair beside his father’s bed.

Propped up by pillows, his dad leaned against the headboard, his legs swaddled under sheets. After a major stroke ten years ago, he had been admitted to the nursing home, and the years had been tough on him. He was seventy, yet he looked ninety.

His six-feet-four frame was emaciated to scarecrow proportions, his ashen brown skin stretched so tautly over his bones that it seemed one sudden movement might split his flesh open. His long, bony fingers resembled gigantic spider legs. His lips were gray and chapped, and he had lost his teeth years ago. He had lost most of his hair, too. Only a few brittle white strands remained.

His dad’s nickname was Big George, but these days, the only thing big about him was his mouth. Easily the most despised resident at Green Meadows in the eyes of both the tenants and the staff, Big George had a reputation for speaking his mind, regardless of the consequences. About two years ago, his penchant for cussing out doctors, making sexual overtures to nurses, and ridiculing fellow residents had got him banished to his room for a week. After the week had passed, he had apparently decided that he enjoyed his own company more than he enjoyed the company of others, because he rarely left his room anymore. But his mouth was as big as ever.

Big George’s black eyes penetrated Thomas. “Why ain’t you at work? You slacking off, Tommy?”

“No, sir, my assistant’s there. He can handle the place as well as I can. I came to see you because ... I have a problem.”

“You have a problem, all right.” Big George straightened up in his bed. “After all this time, you still ain’t learned that you can’t trust another nigger with your job.”

“Huh? That’s not what I was—”

“That’s what
I’m
talking about, boy,” Big George said. “Did I work my ass to death so you could let some fool walk in and shit on everything I earned?”

“No, sir, of course not.”

“Did I work eighty hours a week, every week of the year, so you could skip out and let some so-called assistant ruin my place’s reputation?”

“No, sir, you didn’t.”

“Damn right, I didn’t.” He pointed a gnarled finger at Thomas. “I’ll tell you what: if I hear about you slacking off again, I’ll climb out of this bed and kick your black ass all over this nursing home. That’s
my
business putting food on your family’s table, and don’t you ever forget it. You hear me, Tommy?”

Thomas clenched his fingers into fists. Why had he come here when the same sorry scenario always played out? Did he expect Big George to listen to his problems, to sympathize with the anguish and guilt he felt since he’d grabbed—even shook—his wife? Did he expect Big George to tell him how to apologize to Linda? Did he expect Big George to advise him on how to save his marriage, which suddenly might be on the brink of collapse?

He turned back to the bed.

Big George glared at him.

No fatherly concern sparkled in those eyes. It had never been there. Why did he continue to hope that one day his father would care about him?

“I said, did you hear me, Tommy?” Big George said.

“I heard you, sir. You’re right. I should know better than to trust someone to run the restaurant as well as you or I could. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

The tension seeped out of Big George’s face. Thomas had broken his vow numerous times, but his father never seemed to remember.

“Long as you know who’s the boss,” Big George said, nodding, “we’ll be okay. Now open that notebook and tell me what’s going on at my place.”

Lowering his head, Thomas opened his pocket notebook, found his page for that day, and began to read.

Two fat arms squeezed around Jason’s chest.

“Blake, come on. I got him, I got him!”

It was Travis Young. Jason struggled to escape the kid’s bear hug. His bike dropped from under him and smacked the ground. They lurched over the bike and tottered between the cars, Jason thrusting his elbow backward, trying to strike Travis’s gut but missing. Travis panted and snorted in Jason’s ear, his fetid breath washing over him, making Jason want to faint.

Three rows away, Blake and Bryan emerged from behind a truck.

Fresh adrenaline galvanized Jason. He stabbed Travis’s gut with his elbow. Travis grunted, but he held tight. They stumbled over each other’s feet and collapsed to the hot blacktop.

Travis flopped onto Jason, as if to pin him under his bulk. Holding Travis off with his forearm, Jason freed a leg-and slammed his knee into the boy’s groin.

“Uhh!” Agony twisting his face, Travis rolled off Jason. He curled into a ball and hugged his stomach.

“Brooks!” Blake said, only a few feet away.

No time to get on his bike or run. So he scrambled under the nearest thing, a red sports car.

In spite of the shade there, the heat was unbearable. The pavement scalded his palms and his bare legs, scorched his chest through his shirt. He rose up, minimizing his contact with the baking blacktop.

Blake’s dirty combat boots pounded to the car beneath which Jason had crawled. Bryan Green’s battered high-tops followed. Travis lay on the ground, his curled back facing Jason.

“Get that asshole!” Blake said.

He couldn’t stay there, he had to keep moving, that was his only chance. Silently, Jason rolled into the blinding sunlight, hesitated, then wormed beneath a low-rider pickup in the next row, sucking his teeth as his skin scraped against the hot ground.

Blake peered below the sports car.

Jason’s heart galloped. Could Blake see him?

“Shit, I don’t see him,” Blake said, probing the shadows with his single eye. He pounded his fist on the pavement. “Where the hell did he go?”

Blake’s face disappeared as he rose.

Jason chewed his lip. He squirmed underneath a van.

Sweat streamed into his eyes, stinging them and blurring his vision. He wiped away the perspiration with the back of his hand.

He saw the boys’ feet pacing around the area.

“Asshole’s gotta be here somewhere,” Blake said.