ONE
“You’re dead.”
The thing nobody had ever told Brian about being chased was that it was fun. It was terrifying, too, but that was part of the fun. Of course, the fact that he was on a bicycle, his trusty old Stringer White 5000, meant that he had an advantage over the two idiots who were after him; they were on foot. He flipped the pedals backward, using the rear brakes to send the bike into a curving skid that spat up gravel chips from the churchyard.
It was almost one o’clock, eighteen days to the end of summer vacation and fifteen days to the end of the Misfits Club. A large gray-white cloud was beginning to hide the early afternoon sun as Brian straightened up the bike. On one side of him was the town of Newpark, on the other a road that bisected the town’s largest housing development. Beyond that lay the countryside and his escape.
“Did you hear me?” the bigger of his two pursuers shouted.
“I wasn’t really listening. Was it something about being dead?”
His mother had said that he had a smart mouth, just like his dad—the only thing they had in common, Brian hoped—and that smart mouths got you into trouble. She was right about that; he was often in trouble.
Of course, he’d be in more trouble if these two hairy gorillas caught up with him. Gorilla number one was flabby and out of shape and not that much of a threat. Gorilla number two was a different prospect, though. He was younger and fitter and he wasn’t issuing threats. In fact, he wasn’t saying anything at all. That freaked Brian out a little bit. His father had always warned him that the quiet ones were the ones you had to watch out for.
The gap between them was about fifty yards. Unless one of them was an Olympic sprinter, there was no way he was going to be caught.
“You’re so dead they’ll have to bury you twice,” the heavier of the two men roared.
Brian faked a yawn, really exaggerated it, too. “Sorry, did you say something? You’re so far away it’s hard to hear you.”
He thought gorilla number one was going to explode with rage. His cheeks puffed out and his face began to turn crimson, from the tip of his forehead to the bottom of his chin—dazzlingly red—like it was the world’s worst superhero power. It made Brian smile until he realized that he’d lost sight of the second guy. There was no sign of him. Had he just given up?
VRRRROOOM.
Uh-oh, Brian thought. That’s not the sound of someone giving up. It was actually the sound of a car, a cobalt-blue 2004 Subaru Impreza, to be completely accurate. A souped-up car, if the roaring, guttural engine sounds that sent great rumbling tremors across the ground were anything to go by. It emerged from the hidden parking space on the side of Colbert Street like a predator emerging from the undergrowth.
“Oh crud,” Brian said as his stomach lurched.
He was quick on the bike, but he didn’t think he was quicker than an Impreza. He was about to find out for certain. The car revved, took off, then stopped briefly to let the bigger guy climb in as Brian spun the bike around by the handlebars, stood up, and began pedaling faster than he ever had before.
There was a left turn thirty yards ahead that led into a cul-de-sac. If he could get to the end of the cul-de-sac, he could make it over the Hennigans’ back wall and disappear into the maze of alleys behind their house. They’d never find him there.
The left turn was only ten yards away now. Another plan was beginning to form in Brian’s brain.
Form faster, form faster, he thought.
The car closed the distance between them quickly and the nose of the Impreza was just behind him as he turned into the cul-de-sac at full speed, leaning low, his shoulder almost grazing the ground as the bike struggled to stay on two wheels.
Brian was almost parallel to the tarmac, but he was in the flow—completely focused, nothing existing outside of him and this moment. Time slowed. He could see everything all at once, hear the noise of children playing, smell the fumes from the car’s giant exhaust, then the whine as the car struggled to follow him into the turn.
The back end of the car swung wide, dragging the rest of the vehicle with it, followed by the look of sheer panic on the bigger man’s face as he briefly thought they were going to smack into a wall. The younger man corrected the spin with two sharp movements of the steering wheel. The car righted itself with a judder.
Brian launched himself onto the small green, and circled around, digging a tire track in the soft grass, before heading back in the goons’ direction. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the Hennigans’ house before they caught him. It was time for Plan B.
As they watched, openmouthed, he briefly considered making a rude gesture, but instead he just waved. It was hard to tell because he was traveling at full speed, but they appeared to be getting even angrier.
He didn’t want to head back toward town—they’d catch him too easily—so there was only a single possibility left. It was one he didn’t want to take because it depended on how lazy a neighbor had been over the last few days, but he decided that he had no other choice. The other possibilities, ones that involved him begging for mercy or shouting for someone to call the cops, never occurred to him.
The turn-off was on the opposite side of the road, past the housing development. He was nearly there when he heard the car’s tires squeal as it joined him on the main road.
He veered the bike right again, down a narrow path with grass growing in the middle. The end of the housing development was on one side, nothing but fields on the other. Brian hoped that the farmer who owned the fields hadn’t gotten around to fixing the broken fence yet. It sagged down next to the iron gate at the end of the path, leaving an opening of about three feet, enough of a gap for Brian and the bike to make it through if he was careful, but not enough space for a car to follow. Brian pedaled furiously. The adrenaline that had kept him going was running out now—his lungs were on fire and his legs felt like concrete, but he kept pedaling. He was only feet away when the car loomed up behind him.
He was going to make it.
As he slipped between the tumbledown barbed-wire fence and the concrete post of the iron gate, he saw that it was padlocked. He heard the screech of brakes as the car tried to avoid slamming into the gate. He’d done it. Even if they tried to break the lock, he’d be miles away from them by the time they managed it. The only way they could chase him now was by running after him, and he knew they wouldn’t do that. They’d never catch him on foot.
He glanced behind and saw both of them standing by the car. The bigger guy was shaking his fist and shouting something at him. Something rude, no doubt, but Brian couldn’t hear it.
They’d given up. He was free. Or at least he would have been if he’d been paying attention.
The grassy field wasn’t the smoothest of surfaces and as he bounced along the rutted path he hit something, a rock maybe, nothing he could clearly see. It jolted the bike and sent him flying over the handlebars. He hit the ground hard, scudded along the surface for a couple of seconds before he came to a stop, twisted on his side.
“Ow,” he said.
Ow was a little bit of an understatement. It hurt a lot more than an ow’s worth. He heard one of the men laugh, a hollow mocking laugh that really annoyed him, nearly as much as the severe pain he was in annoyed him.
Brian clambered to his feet. The men had taken a few steps into the field. He was in no shape to outrun them. He wasn’t even sure he could reach his bike in time.
“We’ve got him now,” one of them said.
Copyright © 2018 by Kieran Crowley
