D-Day.
The doors flew open and five black shapes darted out of the vehicle. They froze crouched on the asphalt, eyes flicking back and forth in the darkness, listening for moments that stretched into eternities.
One rose.
“Follow me,” it breathed in a low voice.
The five shapes moved silently to the front of the vehicle. The frontmost figure lifted its head and checked both directions. It motioned to the left, then bolted off in a crouched half-sprint. The still midnight air pounded with silent war-drums.
The next two shapes hesitated for a split-second, then dashed off in pursuit. They closed the gap to a nearby stretch of fencing and fell into place pressed against the wooden planks.
The first shape was positioned near the edge of the fence, gripping the corner and peering out intently in the direction of the last two figures.
“What are they doing?!” it hissed in a low whisper.
The second and third shapes crept up next to the first and peered around the corner. The final two figures could be seen in the distance, crouched and racing away in the opposite direction of the fence.
“Those dumb-asses must’ve gone back to get the beer,” the second shape croaked in a hoarse voice.
“What the FUCK is wrong with them?!” the first voice spat. Its owner stared after the last two figures as they darted across a walkway and into a doorway some way in the distance.
“Well… nothing we can do. They’re screwed.”
The three figures ducked back behind the cover of the fence. In the distance, at the far edge of a dark field, the headlights of a fresh line of police cruisers flickered between the trees.
“It’s go-time,” the third voice said in a somber whisper.
“What?”
The other two shapes squinted at the third.
“It’s go-time boys. We’ve gotta make our escape before the Gestapo find us and throw us in the special shower.” The solemn message caused a moment of deep silence to settle over the group.
“Man, what the fuck is a guest-apo?—”
“—are you serious man? How fucked-up are you?”
The two shadows stared at the third in disbelief.
The third slowly nodded and smiled a toothy, knowing smile, “Yes.”
There was another moment of confused silence. “Wha?… well… just… don’t do anything stupid,” a worried whisper came from the first shape. “I’m having a hard enough time holding it together as it is…”
“Man, I don’t know what the hell you two are talking about, I just don’t wanna go to jail…” The hoarse whisper sounded like a strange blend of confusion, irritation and apathy.
A final moment of silence passed. The three shapes turned and looked back out over the endless black expanse between them and freedom.
★ ★ ★ ★
It should have been an easy, low-key night. A couple cases of beer, an eighth of weed, an empty apartment, and five friends. The apartment didn’t belong to them, and no one was old enough to buy the beer they were drinking, but the chances of anything going wrong seemed slim. No one cared enough about where these burn-outs were or what they were doing to have any reason to come looking.
They met in the early evening, most catching rides in the only car they had between them. The group enlisted the help of one “Uncle Ricky” to pick up the beer and other supplies. Ricky wasn’t actually related to anyone, but was rather a sketchy forty-something year-old that one of the boys had met through a friend of a friend. He would occasionally help the group buy alcohol, cigarettes and other paraphernalia in exchange for a couple cans of beer or sampling of whatever else was being bought. There was a general suspicion that Uncle Ricky might be homeless, but nobody cared enough to investigate.
It had been dark for several hours by the time the first four arrived at the empty apartment. The venue was situated at the edge of a low-end golf course, part of a line of cheap vacation housing that remained empty for most of the year, waiting for seasonal visitors who only occasionally materialized. The last member of their group had a part-time job with the facility management office and was able to access the complex’s booking system. He had helped the five identify an empty unit near the end of the development with relatively few tenants nearby.
It was here that the four waited for the better part of an hour, sipping cheap beer and chatting until the final member of their group rapped on the door. He gave the all clear. Most of the staff were gone, leaving only one lone security guard to monitor the entire complex. Even the most diligent staff would be unlikely to inspect this far-flung corner, and the man on duty this night was known to be particularly lazy. He was more likely to be found sleeping in front of the control room’s monitor panel than patrolling the grounds.
With their group complete, the five decided to kick off the night by hot-boxing their car. It was stationed at the far end off the narrow parking lot running along the front of the apartment block. Smoking there would not only help their precious pot go further when trapped and recycled in the tiny space, but would also minimize the chance of wandering fumes finding their way to some irritable neighbor.
Five shapes exited the unit, leaving behind only two thirty-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon. They slunk across the dark asphalt and filed into a cheap white sedan halfway between the final building unit and the start of the trimmed grass that marked the golf course proper.
The front two seats held the car owner’s towering, tangled Afro alongside the group’s hoarse-voiced inside man. The back contained a spindly, twitchy skeleton, a toothy jackal, and a foreigner with a perpetually half-baked understanding of his surroundings. The latter of these had declined to join the group in “smoking drugs,” but was nonetheless happy to sit wedged in the center-back seat as the air in the tiny vehicle was replaced with a thick haze of burnt cannabis.
Within ten minutes it was nearly impossible to see beyond a few feet in any direction. The group laughed and joked as they choked down the cheap pot. The Afro jabbed at the foreigner, who was bouncing up and down in his seat, obviously no more sober than the rest of the creatures surrounding him.
Flashing blue lights.
The vehicle was suddenly bathed in rhythmic flashes of blue light. Every shape in the car instantly threw themselves to the floor, with the exception of foreigner who was jerked down by the skeleton a half-second later.
They lay motionless on the floorboards. Not one moved or breathed for the better part of a minute as the pulsating flashes of blue doused the space above them.
Finally the Afro lifted up slightly to peer out.
“They’re just standing by their car talking… they keep looking over at the apartment.”
Several long minutes passed. The jackal, who had been holding the glass pipe when the lights appeared, gazed sidelong at the object clenched in his fist. A deranged grin spread over his face as a plan began to take shape. If he smoked away the rest of the evidence, then how could these blue monsters prove anything at all?
The flick of a lighter caused every head in the vehicle to twitch.
“What the fuck are you doing?!?!” the skeleton’s panicked voice was somewhere between a whisper and a low hiss.
“Disposing of the evidence,” the jackal grinned through a mouthful of smoke.
“Dude, are you retarded? You’re gonna get us all pinched…” the Afro’s bassy voice was was unusually thin as he glanced towards the source of the blue lights.
Another flick.
“All gone.” The jackal announced proudly.
No one responded as several more tense minutes ticked by.
Suddenly the blue lights shifted and disappeared from view. Nobody disturbed the dark silence that followed. Finally the Afro peaked up.
“They’re gone.”
The two leftmost figures, the Afro and the jackal, leaned against their respective doors, facing away from the complex and towards the dark grass. The three remaining shapes turned and positioned themselves behind.
The doors flew open.
★ ★ ★ ★
Five shapes darted from the vehicle. The skeleton, the inside-man and the jackal went left, the Afro and the foreigner went right. More police began to appear through the trees and across the roads leading to the complex.
The three darted, slunk and slid through bushes, behind trees and along the edge of black grassy fields. As soon as they had put some small distance between themselves and the parking lot, the skeleton made an urgent call. After many pleas and few threats, it was agreed that his cousin would wait for their small group one block from the golf course. If they could just make it there they might survive; their one last chance for salvation.
And so they inched their way across the dark expanse, zigzagging from cover to cover. The enemy was everywhere, an ever-growing stream of ominous lights. Headlights from vehicles, flashlights from searching officers, and cycling lights from the vehicle-mounted mountain bikes called in for occasions such as these. Their time was running out.
Finally, after what seemed to be several eternities, the last stretch was in sight. A dense row of tall, bushy trees marked the far edge of the course. The yellow street light peaking between them marked the path to salvation. The gates of heaven itself would not have been a more welcome sight.
One final desperate dash. The three were exposed on open ground for a painfully long stretch of time. They plunged through the tree line and burst out into blinding light.
Clear. The street was empty.
After quickly orienting themselves, the skeleton directed the group down the road towards the rendezvous point. One block away they found a small white sedan idling by a street sign. Without waiting to be invited, they threw open the doors and dived in.
Extraction.
★ ★ ★ ★
The gas station lights covered everything in a dingy yellow glow.
The jackal sat perched on the hood of the sedan, watching a cockroach scurry back and forth in front of the shop’s sliding doors. Behind him, the inside man leaned mutely against the side of the vehicle, gazing blankly at their co-conspirator. The bony silhouette was glued to its phone in a heated conversation.
“There’s no way man. There are so many cops there right now.”
As if to emphasize his point, the hum of another police cruiser passed the station. From their elevated position they had spent the last fifteen minutes watching a steady stream of cruisers trickle down the hill towards the apartment complex. It seemed like half the town’s police force had been called out to arrest a small group of teenagers smoking pot.
“Just leave the fucking beer and sneak out the same way we did… ” A stream of frantic, garbled gibberish emanated from phone. “I’m sorry man, but there’s no way. We’d be so boned if we went back now… ” More gibberish. “Yeah… Yeah, give us a call when you get out… OK, peace.”
The skeleton hung up. He put the phone back in his pocket and turned towards the two mute shapes.
“Man… They’re fucked.”
★ ★ ★ ★
“End Call.” The Afro pressed the button and slid the phone into his pocket. He slowly turned and faced the room.
It was dark. The foreigner’s outline was barley visible against the curtains.
“They aren’t coming.”
The foreigner’s worried face sank further. He stood mutely staring as if he might throw up. The cases of Pabst sat between the two, suddenly seeming the most stupid, inconsequential things in the world.
“Dude, why the fuck are there so many cops? I thought they’d be gone by now, but more just keep showing up … ” No response. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”
The Afro walked to the window and peaked behind the curtain. There was a clear view of most of the golf course. The majority of the bobbing white lights were to the right, closer to the center of the apartments than the black expanses of trimmed grass. The lights to the left were scattered, spread out unevenly with large stretches between.
“There.” The foreigner slid to window as the Afro stretched out a long, thick finger. “On the side there. There’s no cops that whole way between that fence and the street. We gotta try to run from there, through that big bunch of trees. I know a couple places around that neighborhood that we can hide out where the cops definitely won’t find us.”
He let the curtain fall and glanced briefly at the foreigner before turning back into the room. The two crossed the small space to the entrance. The Afro’s large fingers wrapped around the handle.
“Ready?…” The worried face gave a hesitant nod.
The door swung open. Two shapes slid out of the entrance and down the walkway. They darted from shadow to shadow, crossing to the edge of the units, then the parking lot, then to the long stretch of wooden fencing.
The Afro had been right. The way between the edge of the fence and the dark mass of trees appeared clear. The two figures paused for a moment, then dashed out across the open field.
They were nearly to the safety of the trees when a sudden harsh bark rang out.
“HEY!!!”
A blinding white light exploded over the two shapes.
“STOP!!!”
They didn’t turn around. The shapes’ dash became a frantic sprint.
Time slowed and the distance to the line of trees seemed to stretch on endlessly. Reality gave way to a nightmare. Each step was futile struggle through quicksand. They would not make it.
All at once the darkness of the trees surrounded them like a flood of cold water. They flew between the immense shapes, dodging and ducking limbs, twigs and branches.
A leafy mass slapped the Afro directly in the face. Something sharp and pointy jammed up his nostril. He kept running.
The deadly white light flashed out between the trees to their back. The thudding steps were close behind.
There was some kind of break in the trees ahead. As the Afro passed between the last two trunks the ground was swallowed up by a dark pit.
A creek. He had less than second to find his footing and push into a running leap.
A few moments in the air. A muffled thud. He landed and scrambled back into a sprint without missing a beat. Several seconds later a second thud sounded. The foreigner had made it.
Just as the mass of trees began to re-engulf the two figures a strange sound rang out.
A loud crashing and cracking, followed by an agonized scream. The pair risked a glance back. The pit was glowing with the ominous white light. Their pursuer had fallen headfirst into the dry creek-bed.
They didn’t stop to celebrate their luck. Both figures turned back into the trees. Within seconds they were gone in the darkness.
★ ★ ★ ★
Over the next several days the inside man went to work. After discretely dropping questions and hints to various contacts, he was finally able to piece together a picture of events that bizarre night. Why had half the tiny city’s police force appeared to arrest a group of burn-outs getting high in an empty apartment?
They hadn’t. As it turns out, the group’s extraordinary luck in escaping unscathed had immediately followed a streak of horrible luck and unfortunate coincidences.
On the night of their escape, a nearby unit had had an unwelcome visitor. The tenant’s ex-boyfriend, a known gang affiliate with a history of domestic abuse, had arrived unsolicited at her apartment. A confrontation had ensued, ending in the man’s departure, but not before he managed to spew a stream of threats to the unfortunate young woman. In her panic, she had dialed emergency services.
When other tenants in the area were questioned by police, they reported sighting a group of shady, unfamiliar young men lurking nearby. Fearing the worst, the officers on scene had called for back up.
And so it was that the hapless five had gone from public nuisances to public menaces. No more or less than a group of unfortunate idiots, their only lesson best summed up by the Afro’s later reflection:
“I’m just glad the pigs never found the beer.”
End
James B. Cutchin 