Chapter 9
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Dawson looked up and saw Rebel jump from the window. He quickly swung his rifle around and fired three shots from the hip striking Rebel in the leg causing him to fall hard on his chest and stomach. He stumbled to his feet, feeling a stabbing pain in his left thigh, just above the knee.
He fired off a couple of shots of his own in their general direction causing the Dawson boys to scramble for cover.
Finally reaching the car he dove into the seat, slamming the door shut.
They sat perfectly still for a few agonizing seconds, then everyone held their breath, and said a little prayer and like a miracle the engine began chugging.
"Oh, thank God," Kristie said under her breath, and threw the car into reverse.
The tires spun on the gravel and she tore down the driveway backwards. With a sickening crunch and scrape of metal the car lurched to a stop.
"A tree, I hit a frigging tree!" She screamed and smacked the steering wheel.
She pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor and for a moment, thought the tires wouldn't get enough traction, but the positraction rear axel that came standard in the 1958 Corvette finally caught and she leaped forward. The small tree had broken at its base and fell across the driveway blocking their only exit, but Rebel remembered seeing an old access road that led down the mountain in the other direction. The bad thing was, they would have to pass Dawson and his boys to get there...
Van and Marlon Dawson unloaded a barrage of gunfire as Rebel's car sped past them, hitting the windshield and the passenger side headlights. Rebel and Kristie were hunched over in the seat as the sound of artillery bombarded the sleek little sports car.
"Come on, we've got to hurry!" Van Dawson ordered. "Let's get your brother in the car."
The two of them lifted Danny and carried him to the black full-size SUV; Marlon opened the car door and they loaded him into the back seat. Van got behind the steering wheel and tore out of there like a bat out of hell.
Night had completely fallen and the black clouds had rolled in to hide the night's only light. It was the kind of dark if you stuck your hand ten inches in front of your face you couldn't see it.
"Damn!" Kristie pounded the steering wheel, "I can’t see a damn thing out there!" She tried to yell, but the apprehension made it just sound crackly and warbled.
And with only one headlight to show the way, it was hard to distinguish the overgrown track from a goat trail.
"That’s alright, I'm pretty sure I know where we are right now. I know where this turn off is… if we ever get to it." Rebel said sarcastically, insinuating Kristie's slow driving.
"I can’t even see the road for God sake." Kristie said, with an almost panicky tone.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Rebel snapped "It's right up here on this road, just please, Kristie, please just drive," he ordered.
Meanwhile Dawson and gang was gaining fast, and with two good headlights he wasn't wasting any time. Danny tried to lift his head and let out a short scream.
"I sure wish you wouldn't yell like that son, it's already plenty hard keeping this thing on the road as it is," Van warned.
"Well, it doesn't help that you're bouncing us all over the freaking place back here." Marlon scowled. "And would you please try not to hit every-single-freakin' pothole?"
Marlon was busy in the back seat with Danny, who lay crossways, half in the seat, half in Marlon's lap, nursing an abdominal gunshot wound.
"Damn, Marlon this is bad, ain’t it? This is so damn bad." Danny growled as he held Marlon's scarf, shaking, trying in vain to seal the leaking, bleeding mess in his gut.
"Naw, you'll be up and moving around in no time buddy, it's just a little messy that's all, it just looks scary, folks live from gut shots all the time, this ain't no different, this ain't bad." Marlon tried sounding convincing but he was a terrible liar and Danny knew it.
It was bad, and Marlon knew all too well, he had seen this very same injury take far too many lives, far too many times in his young life. His hands began to tremble as he assisted his younger brother, trying to plug the holes in his body. There was just so much blood, and there was just so much he could do. Marlon knew this, and it absolutely broke his heart to watch Danny so pale and weak.
Rebel focused on the tops of fence posts just barely visible out in the darkness, but for the one headlight. He watched them crawl by until a large dead tree split in half, apparently by lightning, just on the far side of the fence came into his view, his eyes about bolted straight out of his head with excitement,
"Take a right, next right, Kristie!" Rebel cried out.
"Next right? Hell, I can’t even see...."
"There it is, we just passed it!" Rebel interrupted.
"Shit, we’re gonna have to back up," Kristie instructed.
She slammed on the brakes, and the car swerved off to the side, nailing one of the old pine trees that had fallen across onto the road head on, tossing the car towards a deep wide chasm. Kristie continued to stand with both feet on the brake pedal, finally bringing the car to rest two inches from the edge of the cliff and a 500 foot drop to the bottom. The car stopped cold, and the engine killed.
Rebel looked back and saw two headlights coming towards them at a high rate of speed.
You could have heard a pin drop as Kristie tried in vain three, then four times to turn the engine over,
"I think you'd better hurry, cause we got company coming." Rebel shouted. The inflexion of his voice crescendoed with each word.
Again she tried to start the engine, but to no avail.
Rebel looked back at the headlights and they were not slowing down.
"GET OUT!!!, GET OUT!!!" Rebel screamed, but it was too late. The sleek little sports car was no match for the full size Cadillac Escalade when the two cars collided with an ear-splitting crash.
Danny spoke for them all as he screamed out, "OH, SHIT!"
Rebel saw the earth give way beneath the car as it plummeted; they both leaped out, more like thrown out as the car flipped end over end, hitting the side of the mountain and bouncing like a toy. Rebel and Kristie landed on the other side of the gorge. He nearly collapsed as he watched the fiery explosion of his 1958 (formerly mint condition) Chevrolet Corvette as it crashed into the valley below.
Rebel felt a lump rise in his throat. It was like losing a childhood friend. Even though he has newer, more expensive cars, his all time most sentimentally favorite has always been his '58 Corvette. Roger Savage had purchased the car brand new off the show room floor in 1958 and later gave the Corvette to Rebel as his son entered his freshman year of college at Harvard.
But now, all Rebel could do is look down at the fiery heap of mangled molten metal. His memories flooded back to his childhood days and the long Sunday drives through the country with his father in that very same Corvette. He would be fascinated as they passed through Amish country, or creaked over wooden bridges. He remembered trips to New York for major league baseball games, to Vermont and Canada for fishing. One year they vacationed at a dude ranch, and for several years they shared a cottage on Cape Cod with friends in the summer.
Rebel remembered fondly his father's avocations of fishing and hunting. On his seventh birthday, Rebel received from his father a Weimaraner puppy, to which he raised into a finely skilled all-purpose gundog. They had great times going on hunting trips in the Corvette.
Rebel loved the car as much as his father did, and now as he stood looking at the burning pile of metalliferous earth, he knew a part of his life was gone. He grew up with that car and drove it all through college. He kept that car in mint condition, as well as his father before him and just like that it was gone.
Rebel turned and looked at Kristie who was still sitting there groggily rubbing her head. Reaching down he took her hand.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
Stumbling to her feet, still trying to collect her wits she reached down and placed her hand over her now dyspeptic stomach. Looking at Rebel through blurry eyes, she inquired, "Are we dead?"
"Not yet." he blissfully replied.
Semi conscious yes, but alive. Beaten, bruised, bloodied and shot, but alive!
Sometimes in life there is an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause. We call it a miracle.
We don't know why Rebel and Kristie were thrown some fifty two feet in the air, landing relatively unscathed on a more or less flat shelf of rock protruding from a cliff on the other side of a deep, wide chasm, but this was the third time Rebel had beaten death at the hands of Van Dawson and he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Van pulled a gun from his vest and pulled the trigger repeatedly, except he is not shooting... There are no bullets left in the gun... Van and Marlon can only watch as Rebel and Kristie climb up the mountain, and run into the forest.
"You checked the car, right?" Van asked looking down at the pile of mangled metal and burning flames.
"Yes, I checked the car." Marlon answered.
"And?" He queried with an uneasiness of mind caused by fear of misfortune
"I found nothing. No suitcase, no money" he said assuredly.
"Good." Van exhaled a big sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, in the back seat Danny lay staring blankly at the car's ceiling, freezing cold, and it hurt to shiver, but he couldn’t make himself stop. He heard the others outside, he wished he could be out there with them, after all this was all his fault they were in this awful mess to begin with, or so he thought. It was his plan to rob the Sim-Life insurance company. It was his idea to hire Rebel to crack the safe... An overpowering feeling of guilt began to wash over him as he finally got to thinking of it. His mind began racing.
"Oh, what in the hell have I done? What have I gotten us all into? Dad and Marlon only got into this whole nasty scheme for me, what’s going to happen to them when I die right here in this car?
His lower lip quivered, and a big fat single tear rolled out from the side of his eye down his cheek bone. He tried to keep himself focused on staying warm, and alive, but his mind wandered, back years ago, and miles away. He went back to when he and Marlon were children playing around in Grandpa Dawson’s cornfield, or in the creek that ran right through the middle of town, or walking to and from school with Marlon. Those were such good days he thought.
"Yes, sir this is some fine mess I made." Danny thought to him self out loud.
His voice made a gurgling sound as he spoke, which rapidly turned into violent coughing, he turned his head over to the side facing the back of the passenger seat to continue coughing, as he did he spat blood, and mucus all over the back of the seat. He brought his hand up to his mouth to wipe it off, only to find it already dripping, soaked in his blood. He stared at it for a few seconds, then dropped it.
"This is so damn bad." Then closed his eyes.
Outside, Van patted Marlon on the back and said...
"C'mon, the moneys got to be somewhere in that cabin."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Marlon shouted with overpowering amazement. then turning his attention to his younger brother... "We have to get Danny to a hospital, and I'm talking quick, fast and in a hurry."
Van stared into the back seat at his youngest son.
"I think it's to late for that." he choked back the tears.
[Van and Marlon stand together weeping as the scene fades to black.]
________________________________________
Dawson looked up and saw Rebel jump from the window. He quickly swung his rifle around and fired three shots from the hip striking Rebel in the leg causing him to fall hard on his chest and stomach. He stumbled to his feet, feeling a stabbing pain in his left thigh, just above the knee.
He fired off a couple of shots of his own in their general direction causing the Dawson boys to scramble for cover.
Finally reaching the car he dove into the seat, slamming the door shut.
They sat perfectly still for a few agonizing seconds, then everyone held their breath, and said a little prayer and like a miracle the engine began chugging.
"Oh, thank God," Kristie said under her breath, and threw the car into reverse.
The tires spun on the gravel and she tore down the driveway backwards. With a sickening crunch and scrape of metal the car lurched to a stop.
"A tree, I hit a frigging tree!" She screamed and smacked the steering wheel.
She pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor and for a moment, thought the tires wouldn't get enough traction, but the positraction rear axel that came standard in the 1958 Corvette finally caught and she leaped forward. The small tree had broken at its base and fell across the driveway blocking their only exit, but Rebel remembered seeing an old access road that led down the mountain in the other direction. The bad thing was, they would have to pass Dawson and his boys to get there...
Van and Marlon Dawson unloaded a barrage of gunfire as Rebel's car sped past them, hitting the windshield and the passenger side headlights. Rebel and Kristie were hunched over in the seat as the sound of artillery bombarded the sleek little sports car.
"Come on, we've got to hurry!" Van Dawson ordered. "Let's get your brother in the car."
The two of them lifted Danny and carried him to the black full-size SUV; Marlon opened the car door and they loaded him into the back seat. Van got behind the steering wheel and tore out of there like a bat out of hell.
Night had completely fallen and the black clouds had rolled in to hide the night's only light. It was the kind of dark if you stuck your hand ten inches in front of your face you couldn't see it.
"Damn!" Kristie pounded the steering wheel, "I can’t see a damn thing out there!" She tried to yell, but the apprehension made it just sound crackly and warbled.
And with only one headlight to show the way, it was hard to distinguish the overgrown track from a goat trail.
"That’s alright, I'm pretty sure I know where we are right now. I know where this turn off is… if we ever get to it." Rebel said sarcastically, insinuating Kristie's slow driving.
"I can’t even see the road for God sake." Kristie said, with an almost panicky tone.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Rebel snapped "It's right up here on this road, just please, Kristie, please just drive," he ordered.
Meanwhile Dawson and gang was gaining fast, and with two good headlights he wasn't wasting any time. Danny tried to lift his head and let out a short scream.
"I sure wish you wouldn't yell like that son, it's already plenty hard keeping this thing on the road as it is," Van warned.
"Well, it doesn't help that you're bouncing us all over the freaking place back here." Marlon scowled. "And would you please try not to hit every-single-freakin' pothole?"
Marlon was busy in the back seat with Danny, who lay crossways, half in the seat, half in Marlon's lap, nursing an abdominal gunshot wound.
"Damn, Marlon this is bad, ain’t it? This is so damn bad." Danny growled as he held Marlon's scarf, shaking, trying in vain to seal the leaking, bleeding mess in his gut.
"Naw, you'll be up and moving around in no time buddy, it's just a little messy that's all, it just looks scary, folks live from gut shots all the time, this ain't no different, this ain't bad." Marlon tried sounding convincing but he was a terrible liar and Danny knew it.
It was bad, and Marlon knew all too well, he had seen this very same injury take far too many lives, far too many times in his young life. His hands began to tremble as he assisted his younger brother, trying to plug the holes in his body. There was just so much blood, and there was just so much he could do. Marlon knew this, and it absolutely broke his heart to watch Danny so pale and weak.
Rebel focused on the tops of fence posts just barely visible out in the darkness, but for the one headlight. He watched them crawl by until a large dead tree split in half, apparently by lightning, just on the far side of the fence came into his view, his eyes about bolted straight out of his head with excitement,
"Take a right, next right, Kristie!" Rebel cried out.
"Next right? Hell, I can’t even see...."
"There it is, we just passed it!" Rebel interrupted.
"Shit, we’re gonna have to back up," Kristie instructed.
She slammed on the brakes, and the car swerved off to the side, nailing one of the old pine trees that had fallen across onto the road head on, tossing the car towards a deep wide chasm. Kristie continued to stand with both feet on the brake pedal, finally bringing the car to rest two inches from the edge of the cliff and a 500 foot drop to the bottom. The car stopped cold, and the engine killed.
Rebel looked back and saw two headlights coming towards them at a high rate of speed.
You could have heard a pin drop as Kristie tried in vain three, then four times to turn the engine over,
"I think you'd better hurry, cause we got company coming." Rebel shouted. The inflexion of his voice crescendoed with each word.
Again she tried to start the engine, but to no avail.
Rebel looked back at the headlights and they were not slowing down.
"GET OUT!!!, GET OUT!!!" Rebel screamed, but it was too late. The sleek little sports car was no match for the full size Cadillac Escalade when the two cars collided with an ear-splitting crash.
Danny spoke for them all as he screamed out, "OH, SHIT!"
Rebel saw the earth give way beneath the car as it plummeted; they both leaped out, more like thrown out as the car flipped end over end, hitting the side of the mountain and bouncing like a toy. Rebel and Kristie landed on the other side of the gorge. He nearly collapsed as he watched the fiery explosion of his 1958 (formerly mint condition) Chevrolet Corvette as it crashed into the valley below.
Rebel felt a lump rise in his throat. It was like losing a childhood friend. Even though he has newer, more expensive cars, his all time most sentimentally favorite has always been his '58 Corvette. Roger Savage had purchased the car brand new off the show room floor in 1958 and later gave the Corvette to Rebel as his son entered his freshman year of college at Harvard.
But now, all Rebel could do is look down at the fiery heap of mangled molten metal. His memories flooded back to his childhood days and the long Sunday drives through the country with his father in that very same Corvette. He would be fascinated as they passed through Amish country, or creaked over wooden bridges. He remembered trips to New York for major league baseball games, to Vermont and Canada for fishing. One year they vacationed at a dude ranch, and for several years they shared a cottage on Cape Cod with friends in the summer.
Rebel remembered fondly his father's avocations of fishing and hunting. On his seventh birthday, Rebel received from his father a Weimaraner puppy, to which he raised into a finely skilled all-purpose gundog. They had great times going on hunting trips in the Corvette.
Rebel loved the car as much as his father did, and now as he stood looking at the burning pile of metalliferous earth, he knew a part of his life was gone. He grew up with that car and drove it all through college. He kept that car in mint condition, as well as his father before him and just like that it was gone.
Rebel turned and looked at Kristie who was still sitting there groggily rubbing her head. Reaching down he took her hand.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
Stumbling to her feet, still trying to collect her wits she reached down and placed her hand over her now dyspeptic stomach. Looking at Rebel through blurry eyes, she inquired, "Are we dead?"
"Not yet." he blissfully replied.
Semi conscious yes, but alive. Beaten, bruised, bloodied and shot, but alive!
Sometimes in life there is an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause. We call it a miracle.
We don't know why Rebel and Kristie were thrown some fifty two feet in the air, landing relatively unscathed on a more or less flat shelf of rock protruding from a cliff on the other side of a deep, wide chasm, but this was the third time Rebel had beaten death at the hands of Van Dawson and he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Van pulled a gun from his vest and pulled the trigger repeatedly, except he is not shooting... There are no bullets left in the gun... Van and Marlon can only watch as Rebel and Kristie climb up the mountain, and run into the forest.
"You checked the car, right?" Van asked looking down at the pile of mangled metal and burning flames.
"Yes, I checked the car." Marlon answered.
"And?" He queried with an uneasiness of mind caused by fear of misfortune
"I found nothing. No suitcase, no money" he said assuredly.
"Good." Van exhaled a big sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, in the back seat Danny lay staring blankly at the car's ceiling, freezing cold, and it hurt to shiver, but he couldn’t make himself stop. He heard the others outside, he wished he could be out there with them, after all this was all his fault they were in this awful mess to begin with, or so he thought. It was his plan to rob the Sim-Life insurance company. It was his idea to hire Rebel to crack the safe... An overpowering feeling of guilt began to wash over him as he finally got to thinking of it. His mind began racing.
"Oh, what in the hell have I done? What have I gotten us all into? Dad and Marlon only got into this whole nasty scheme for me, what’s going to happen to them when I die right here in this car?
His lower lip quivered, and a big fat single tear rolled out from the side of his eye down his cheek bone. He tried to keep himself focused on staying warm, and alive, but his mind wandered, back years ago, and miles away. He went back to when he and Marlon were children playing around in Grandpa Dawson’s cornfield, or in the creek that ran right through the middle of town, or walking to and from school with Marlon. Those were such good days he thought.
"Yes, sir this is some fine mess I made." Danny thought to him self out loud.
His voice made a gurgling sound as he spoke, which rapidly turned into violent coughing, he turned his head over to the side facing the back of the passenger seat to continue coughing, as he did he spat blood, and mucus all over the back of the seat. He brought his hand up to his mouth to wipe it off, only to find it already dripping, soaked in his blood. He stared at it for a few seconds, then dropped it.
"This is so damn bad." Then closed his eyes.
Outside, Van patted Marlon on the back and said...
"C'mon, the moneys got to be somewhere in that cabin."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Marlon shouted with overpowering amazement. then turning his attention to his younger brother... "We have to get Danny to a hospital, and I'm talking quick, fast and in a hurry."
Van stared into the back seat at his youngest son.
"I think it's to late for that." he choked back the tears.
[Van and Marlon stand together weeping as the scene fades to black.]
Amazing chapter, Rebel! You have outdone yourself with the incredible pictures and the heart-stopping action!
ReplyDeleteNot to say that Danny had it coming, but... Very good with the action sir! I hope Rebel and Kristie can find their way back to the cabin before the Dawsons do.
ReplyDeleteThank you Wendy Pan for your kind comments, that is one of my favorite chapters in this story. :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Wendy U... Well, now that their on the other side of the mountain, it's going to be a looooooong walk back to that cabin. Lol.
Wow words can't describe how incredible this is, very wonderfully done, BRAVO!!!
ReplyDelete