Mind + Body by Aaron Dunlap (free books to read TXT) 📖

Black mist seemed to swirl around my mind. Fragments of events shot through my vision like flashbulbs, coming in then fading just as fast. An explosion of gunpowder, a slide lurching backwards, a hot brass cartridge spinning from an ejection port, a hand on my wrist, my hand on someone else’s wrist, a sharp spray of fluid right into my eyes, blurs of light and shapeless hues, a fountain of cold white liquid.

I felt the world falling back into place, could feel my back was cold and wet. Sounds were coming back. I thought I heard my name.

I opened my eyes, they felt dry and cold. Light filtered in, I could see the ceiling and walls, then a big tan blob filled my vision. I rubbed at my eyes with my right hand, and then opened them again. The edges of the blur started to fill in, colors separated into shades and shadows. I could see her face now. I was still on the floor, surrounded by milk and Amy.

“You’re pretty,” I said. My voice was weak and froggy.

Her mouth tightened to a line. “You’re alive.”

I lay there for a second, trying to remember why I was on the floor of a grocery store. It came to me in a second, and I stood up in one motion. The teenage store clerk was still standing there, his lower lip hanging down and out. He watched me in silence.

“We have to get out of here,” I said to Amy as she stood up on her own. I looked around and started toward the entrance, Amy falling in behind me.

“Should we call the police?” she asked in step.

“No,” I said without thinking. She looked at me and stopped walking in the middle of an aisle. Canned fruits were on my right, Pyrex dishes and cooking utensils on my left.

“Why not?” she asked, her arms folding.

I looked at a few cans of peaches, some in light syrup and some in their own juice.

“Because,” I said, looking at a can of diced peaches in light syrup. “We don’t know if that guy wasn’t the police for sure. And even if he isn’t, he’s a lot closer to us than the real police.”

“Then we could stay in here, he’s not going to come after us inside the store, with people around.”

“He’s dressed like a cop,” I said, “he could come in here and do whatever he wanted and people would enjoy the show.”

She scrunched her eyebrows and leaned her head back, looking up at the drop-tile ceiling. A black plastic bubble sunk from the ceiling like a pimple a few feet away, concealing a surveillance camera.

“So what’s the plan, then?” she asked finally.

“Oh, you know me,” I said. “I work better without them.”

The night air outside was colder than I remembered, the chill amplified by the milk soaking the front and back of my shirt which made the fabric cling to my skin. Although I’d just recently run through here, it was the first time I’d seen the parking lot. I got my bearings and saw my car, the depressingly mangled white Civic parked in the wrong direction in the street past the parking lot. The trunk was ripped and bent into an odd triangle where it had struck the police car. Cars driving down the road were honking and pulling sharply into the left lane to avoid it.

We waited until traffic was clear, then Amy ran around to the passenger side and opened the door. I saw a white streak in the corner of my eye, and looked up to see a police cruiser with a familiarly mangled hood around the front passenger side wheel. The car was driving on a cross-street and ripping through the intersection about two hundred yards from where I was standing. It drove on through the intersection and nearly out of sight, and then I heard tires squeal and saw the car make a hard U-turn back toward my direction.

“Time to go!” I said, hopping into the driver’s seat and pulling the door shut. Amy followed suit. The keys were still in the ignition, and the engine turned and started cheerfully. I pulled forward and turned the car around and drove forward as fast as I could convince my car to go. I drove past the freeway on-ramp, knowing highway chases never end well.

I saw the police car turn hard onto this road behind me, heard the car’s engine roar and sputter in attempt to catch up. The road kept winding past businesses and intersections until the trees were getting thicker and thicker and the side streets and businesses were farther between. My car was managing around 60 miles per hour. I could feel the damaged trunk affecting my wind shear and the steering was put off-kilter from the wheels impacting the curb earlier. The police car was close enough that I could see that the front passenger side tire was shredded and was practically running on the rims, which explained why he was running slowly.

Not too slowly, though. He was practically on top of me, his front bumper occasionally scraping against my malformed rear bumper. I didn’t know where exactly I was trying to go, and I knew I couldn’t outrun him. All I could hope was to escape him, which wasn’t going to happen on this road. I turned into the first side street I saw, nearly skidding into a tree in the process.

The pavement soon ran out as I passed a small house set back behind a few trees, and the dirt road began winding through the woods and over hills. The police car wasn’t handling the dirt road as well; it kept cutting to the right, the shredded tire couldn’t gain any traction in the dirt. My headlights were cutting yellow cones of light through the pitch black, casting thick shadows through the trees running tight on each side of the road. The police car was about ten feet behind now, illuminated only by my taillights. Either he didn’t have his headlights on, or they were damaged during the collision.

I could see in the distance that the road turned abruptly to the left, blazing a trail through the woods. I tried to calculate the distance to the turn, and then switched off my headlights. Once again, I was driving blind. The moonlight barely filtered through the bare trees. Amy asked what I was doing. I didn’t answer.

When I was sure that I’d gone far enough, I slammed on my brakes and skidded forward about thirty feet then cut hard to the left, barely following the turn of the road. My brake lights probably blinded the man in the police cruiser, and with his steering banking to the right, he had no chance of making the turn. I drove on in the dark, completely unaware of how the road moved. I heard the incredibly loud crunch of the police car crashing into a tree. Then there were no noises besides those of my car.

I stopped and pulled to the side of the road, and looked out my back window toward where the car must have hit. It was only about a thousand feet away, but I could only see a few odd angles and reflections.

I quickly pulled the gun from the cardboard and foam box in the back seat and started feeding rounds into the magazine with nimble fingers. I slid the clip back into the pistol, chambered a round, and handed the gun to Amy. She looked back with deep and inquisitive eyes, illuminated by my car’s dome light.

“Take this and get out of the car and hide back in the trees. You know how to use it if you need to,” I said.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, trembling with the gun still balanced between her two open palms.

“I have to make sure he’s…” I was lost under the weight of the situation for a moment, then said, “Make sure he’s not still a threat.”

She looked at me like she knew what I meant, and then nodded, her hair falling over her face. She opened her door and stepped out. I saw her step into the thick of the woods, her head still low.

I turned off my dome light and pulled back into drive with my headlights still off, then drove forward far enough to turn