Now I felt like it was pushing us on. I looked up at its overwhelming profile, silhouetted against the purple-black clouds. I heard the river, and all its residents swimming or flowing.
Faster.
We were all starting to pant, but we weren’t spent yet, and we held ourselves and our clattering equipment together until we reached the Death Nugget. Benny flattened himself across its hood with exhaustion and happiness. He sat the satchel he carried on the dented fender and waved at me to open the door.
“Sure,” I answered his unspoken plea. “Just a second.” I jammed my fingers into my pocket and pulled out my keys, plugging the right one into the lock and flinging the door open.
Everyone piled inside.
I threw the Nugget into gear and almost peeled out swinging it around. Grass and mud sprayed behind us as we slid onto the road. I pulled a U-turn on the spot, and within seconds we were headed back to the interstate.
“Benny, what do you think the fastest way to the battlefield is from here? Freeway? Back roads? Rossville? It’s night, and there won’t be much traffic. Should we stay on the main road?”
“Rossville, probably. We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for cops.”
I took his suggestion and exited at 27 South, zipping down the exit to the right and towards Georgia. I knew Benny was right about the cops, but I forgot and was speeding through the lights anyway when I saw blue lights behind me.
“Eden.” Dana said it casually, with a hint of “you ought to know better.”
“Shit. Shit. I see him.” My stomach and all its contents sank, and I felt myself flush with anger that seethed in every direction. I slowed down and pulled over to the right lane, preparing to take the shoulder or the nearest parking lot.
But the flashing cruiser ignored me, flying around to my left and charging forward. Behind us, a second and third came up and did likewise. I held my pace for a few moments, hardly breathing, waiting for one of my passengers to speak first. Benny was the one to break the silence.
“You don’t think they’re headed for the battlefield, do you?”
Dana said, “Let’s not think that way yet. We’re still miles away from the battlefield. They could be headed for…for a car wreck. Or a fire.”
“I don’t see any fire trucks,” I replied, my teeth clenching around the words.
I upshifted back to fifth gear and hightailed it after them.
We arrived at the battlefield about ten minutes later, and found it sealed off by news crews, police cars, and an ambulance. I kicked at the brakes and stopped in front of the nearest news truck.
Dana was out of the car before I was, and she was quickly recognized. “What’s going on here?” she asked the first reporter who knew her name—a red-haired girl who looked barely old enough to be out of college. “What’s happened?”
“Mrs. Marshall, would you like to make a statement about tonight’s events?”
Dana snatched the microphone out of her hand and threw it on the ground, pulling the taller woman close by one handful of her sweater. “I would like for you to tell me what the fuck is going on, and talk quick because these days my attention span isn’t what it used to be.”
“There’s…there’s…”
“Talk faster, sweetheart.”
“A hostage situation.” She jerked herself away from Dana, who was drawing a small crowd. At least one man with a camera aimed it her way.
“A hostage situation?” I walked around my car and came to stand beside her, between her and the enclosing crowd. “Someone tell us what’s going on.” I stopped. A familiar face was pushing its way close to us.
“Alders,” I growled.
“Call me Nick!” he reminded us, squeezing between two microphone-wielding reporters and forcing his way through until he was on perfect eye level with me. “And don’t worry. They’re making it sound worse than it is.”
“You’d better not be saying so just because my knee’s about a foot away from your crotch.”
He backed up. “No. I’m not. It’s not…Look—it was his girlfriend.”
“She’s not his girlfriend.”
“The girl he was with, then. The dumb bitch ran off into the woods. Said she saw something.”
I took him by the arm then and dragged him off back towards my car, flashing a glare over my shoulder that dared anyone to follow us. “Keep talking. I’m listening.”
“And—and she ran. He went after her, and then there was some shooting, and some screaming. The girl came staggering back—they took her off in one of the ambulances. She got hit in the side; it went right through. But then the shooter, he said he had a hostage and not to follow him. He’s holed up back in the Tower. At the top of the tower.”
“Jamie was telling the truth. I thought he was lying about that part.”
“No, no way. We stayed over at the Tower. I thought it’d be safe. I thought it would be no big—” A police officer approached us then, undeterred by my warning glare.
“Mr. Alders? A word, please?” Nick looked positively delighted to get away from me, despite the uniform and the implication that the cop wasn’t very happy with him.
“Officer.” I chased after them. “Officer, what’s going on? There’s a hostage? Is it Jamie Hammond?”
He paused, one hand still on Nick’s arm. “Ma’am, we don’t have all the details yet. Are you a friend of the hostage?”
“Yes. And I want to know what’s going on.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Did this guy call you?”
“No. No, Jamie called. He called and said for us to come here and get him.” It wasn’t perfectly true, but it was close enough. “I told him we were on our way. That was, um, that was…”
“About half an hour ago,” Benny offered.
“Okay. We’re going to want to talk to you too, then. Do us a favor and don’t leave, okay, miss? Okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed. “When you’re through with him, we can talk.” But even as I said it, I was feeling around in the crowd for Benny and Dana.
I found Benny first, and then Dana behind him. “The Tower,” I said to them both, as if it explained everything.
“We can get there around back, like before,” Benny said, putting a hand on my shoulder and steering me towards my car.
I nodded. “You’re right. They’ve shut off the front way; we’ll never get past the crews.”
“Everybody back in,” Dana said, but I pushed her away.
“No, no, you two stay here. Distract them, or something. I’ll go.”
“Don’t be batty. I’m coming too.”
“We are coming too.”
Neither of them looked prepared to take no for an answer, so I shrugged and grabbed the driver’s side door handle. Everything was still unlocked, so Dana and Benny got in as well.
But our window of opportunity was smaller than I thought.
Another police cruiser pulled up behind and beside my car, effectively blocking us into our improvised parking spot. He exited the cruiser and left the door hanging open behind him.
“Hey!” I cried out after him, but if he noticed, he didn’t care. He stomped off in the direction of the reporters and left us pinned.
“Motherfucker,” Dana said. “You think we can back around him?”
I almost told her, “Sure,” but another ambulance came wailing around the turn to park beside the cruiser. “I guess not.”
“Guys,” Benny said, staring off into the park. “This place isn’t fenced in or anything, is it?”
I shook my head. “No, of course not.”
He pointed at the trees, and at the big stretch of field beyond the clot of emergency vehicles. Red, yellow, orange, and blue lights swiveled, beamed, and bounced off every surface. But beyond the knotted crowd of cars and officials, the way was open and more or less clear—except for the filmy white mist that was settling between the old stone markers.
“Benny, this car wasn’t made for off-roading.”
“Then we can hoof it.”
I thought hard about running with Dana, from Dyer’s cabin to the visitors’ center. It had seemed like forever; it had felt like miles and years. But it couldn’t have been that far, really. Nick had said it was only a couple of miles. Assuming we could get past the police, and the reporters, and the medical personnel…assuming we could make it to the trees, or deep enough into the gathering fog, or far enough into the thigh-deep grass in the middle of the first big field…assuming all this, we could maybe do it.
“Wait.” I crawled into my car. My tiny but mighty purple flashlight had wound up on the floor at Dana’s feet. I picked it up with one hand and popped the trunk with the other.
“Benny? You still got that army flashlight?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, diving into the trunk and excavating the ugly green torch from his bag.
“Put the red lens on it.”
“I’m way ahead of you.”
While he worked on that, I wiggled my way back through the crowd to Nick Alders, who looked a little afraid to see me. The cop who’d been talking to him was now working on one of the EMTs, leaving Nick to sit on the back bumper of the ambulance.
I sat down beside him and talked low, into his ear. “It goes like this,” I began. “You distract these people for about thirty seconds, and I promise not to kill you later on.”
“Dis—distract them?”
“Yes. I don’t care how, but get them not looking into the park. If everything goes well, you’ve got a scoop.”
He caught on quick, and his eyes went big. “You guys can’t go in there. You’ll get killed. I think I’m in enough trouble already here.”
“Wasn’t your last investigative piece for Channel 3 something about fainting goats? Wouldn’t you rather report on something important for once? And hey, if nothing works and we all wind up dead, it’s not on your head—and then you definitely don’t have to worry about me coming around to beat you senseless for dragging Jamie into this. So help us out here and redeem yourself.”
