Nathan's Run

Chapter 25

In the dark, New York looked a whole lot like Pennsylvania. For the last five miles, a car had parked itself on Nathan's back bumper and refused to back off. He'd tried slowing down to get the guy to pass him, and he'd tried speeding up in an effort to lose him, but nothing worked; the guy just stayed there, about three feet behind, his bright lights in the rear- and sideview mirrors burning circles into Nathan's retinas. The other driver was playing some sort of game, racing up close, then falling back a ways. The game frightened him.

After seeing the parade of police cars entering the neighborhood, Nathan had made the decision to avoid the main highways, and to stick instead to the smaller roads. On the map, they looked like they all headed in the same direction. And once he had gotten the hang of the gearshift, he was as comfortable piloting the little Honda around the curves as he was the Beemer.

Like so many other decisions he'd made these past couple of days, this one seemed to have started out well, and then turned sour. He hadn't realized how much of a sense of security there was in passing gas stations and other occupied places periodically. At 1:30 in the morning, there were no lights anywhere, and no other cars around, which to Nathan meant that there were no sources for assistance when this asshole in his mirror finally did whatever he was planning. One thing was certain, though. He had been smart to take the pistol with him.

Sheriff's Deputy Chad Steadman's orders were clear. He wasn't to make the stop until backup units were in place. According to the last report from the Pennsylvania boys, Nathan Bailey was armed and dangerous, and driving the Honda that Chad had been following for the last twelve miles. In the wash of his high beams, the driver certainly looked short enough to be a kid. And the job the driver had done on the license plates wouldn't fool anybody.

To kill the time as he waited for the other two on-duty Pitcairn County patrolmen to form up on him, he decided to play a little catand-mouse, falling back a few car lengths, and then roaring ahead till he nearly hit the Honda's rear bumper. If the kid bolted, he'd have probable cause to pursue on his own. The games seemed to unnerve the kid a little, but other than some erratic swerving, he kept his cool. Steadman wasn't sure how he felt about a kid keeping his cool under pressure. Wouldn't that make him all the more difficult to manage after he was captured?

Steadman saw headlights cresting the hill behind him at the same instant his radio crackled to life. "Charlie Seven's on location with Baker Fifteen," the speaker barked.

"Charlie Seven," acknowledged the dispatcher.

Steadman pulled the microphone out of its dash-mounted clamp and thumbed the transmit button. "Baker Fifteen, Charlie Seven," he said, hailing Jerry Schmidtt, his newly arrived backup.

"Charlie Seven, bye."

"Reliability is high that this is our kid," Steadman explained in the practiced monotone of one who had logged many hours of radio time. "He's been driving erratically. May have made me as a cop.

"You wanna make the stop now?"

"Negative. Command Six is en route; not sure of his ten-twenty," Steadman cautioned, noting for the tape that recorded all radio traffic that he was ready to do his job even when his boss was nowhere to be found.

"Command Six, Baker Fifteen." The speaker rattled with the gravelly tones of Sergeant Watts, the watch commander.

Steadman smiled. Gotcha, he didn't say. "Baker Fifteen?'

"I'm at Halsey Road and Route One Sixty-Eight," his boss explained. "What's your ten-twenty from that location?"

Steadman's smile turned into a disappointed frown. Old fart was a lot closer than he'd given credit. "That'd be about a mile and a half, Command Six."

"All right," Watts decided, "we'll make our stand here. I'll set up a roadblock. Treat this as a felony stop."

"Baker Fifteen's okay," Steadman acknowledged.

"Charlie Seven's affirm?'

Steadman lived for felony stops. It was the closest they ever came in Pitcairn County to being like the police officers on Cops. As they approached the site of the roadblock, Steadman and Schmidtt would hit their lights and sirens and wedge the Honda into a triangle of vehicles from which there would be no escape. From behind the cover of their doors, and armed with shotguns, the three officers would demand that their prisoner get out of his car and sprawl on the ground, from which position he would be taken into custody. If things went well, no one would get hurt. But if the little bastard did anything funny-especially with his hands-he'd be no shit forever dead.

Nathan's heart dropped when he saw the second set of headlights in his mirror. That was no child molester in the car behind him. That was a cop. As the second car approached from behind, its lights highlighted the red and blue lightbar on the roof.

Keep cool, boy, Nathan coached himself silently. They haven't stopped you yet. Maybe they don't know. Maybe they're on their way someplace else. He knew the thought was ridiculous, but his brush with suicide had shaken him into a forced optimism. As long as there was hope…

His mind raced for a way out. As long as they were all just driving along together and he was in the front, then everything was okay. But soon they would make a move, and he wanted to be prepared. They had to catch him before they could put him back in a cage. Just be ready for anything.

He wasn't.

Up ahead, the woods on either side of him started to give way to darkened homes and businesses. A yellow reflective sign warned him of an approaching intersection with a school crossing, and instructed him to slow down to twenty-five. Under the circumstances, Nathan didn't think that would be a very good idea. His foot got heavier. Whatever they were going to do, he sensed it would happen soon.

There it was. A roadblock. About a hundred yards ahead, a cop car was crossways in the street, its blue and red lights sweeping the buildings around it. In his rearview mirror, two more sets of lights jumped to life, and he was startled by the electronic yelp of a siren.

"Oh, shit!" he spat, not even hearing the words as they escaped. For just the slightest instant, he took his foot off the gas, but then he realized that to keep hope alive, he had to keep moving. "Just you and me, God," he said.

Jamming the gas pedal to the floor, the rubber pad became just a tiny wedge between his sneaker and the thin-napped carpet.

Steadman couldn't believe what he was seeing. After having to hit his brakes when the kid slowed down, the distance between them grew dramatically. Over the wail of his siren, he could hear the whiny roar of the Honda's engine as it dopplered away from him.

"Son of a bitch is running!" he shouted into his mike.

But there was no place to go. Watts's cruiser had completely blocked the roadway, leaving only a foot between his back bumper and the four-inch curb. Nothing could get through that space.

Steadman thumbed his mike again. "Christ, Sarge, he's gonna ram you!"

Even as he approached the cop car blocking his path, Nathan didn't know where he was going to go, except that somehow he was going to get past it. The distance closed with frightening speed as the Honda's speedometer passed fifty.

More by instinct than by conscious thought, with less than a dozen yards to go before impact with the police cruiser, Nathan gallumphed the Honda over the curb, the transmission making a horrendous crashing sound as it dragged itself along the concrete. The car went airborne for just an instant, and then crashed back down onto the grass on all four wheels. He struggled to control the vehicle as it spun on the dew-soaked sod.

He didn't even see the shotgun before it discharged.

"Jesus Christ!" Steadman shouted aloud as he saw Watts discharge his riot gun at point-blank range into the Honda. The muzzle flash was three feet long in the darkness. "Fucker's dead now," he declared, surprised by the satisfaction in his voice.

The explosion to his left deafened Nathan instantly, though he shrieked aloud as nine thirty-two-caliber pellets mauled the rear window and post, shredded the passenger seat and headrest, and then went on to blast out the windshield, leaving him a near-opaque spiderweb of shattered glass to see through. It had to be a shotgun, he knew. The dickheads were still trying to kill him!

He had no time to regain his bearings before he was back out on the flat street, with the roadblock getting smaller behind him. As he watched in the rearview mirror, he saw a muzzle flash like a yellow camera strobe, and just an instant later, the mirror, along with the rest of the windshield, was gone in a white puff of erupting glass. He yelled again and pressed the gas pedal even harder.

The car did not respond.

"Oh, God, no! Not now! Please, God, not now!" For the first time since he had seen the cars in the mirror, he was gripped with terror. The Honda was slowing! He tried to downshift, but the gears responded only with a teeth-rattling groan. The gearbox had been destroyed by the impact with the curb.

As Nathan pleaded for help from the Almighty, the speedometer crossed twenty-five on its way down to zero.

"FUCK!" he shouted. It was the worst word he knew.

He jammed the brake and the Honda jolted to a stop in the middle of the road. I'll do it on foot if I have to, he declared silently.

But Steadman was on him before he could reach for the door handle.

"Let me see your hands!" an adult voice shrieked from behind him. "Show me your hands or I'll blow your fucking head offl."

Nathan sat still for a moment, coming to grips with the end of his journey. Somewhere in this mess there was hope, he supposed, but it was awfully well camouflaged. He slowly raised his hands into the air, surrendering not only to the police, but to his own fate.

His ears still rang from the gunshot, but he could hear the sound of running feet as they approached from behind. Out of nowhere, a gun barrel propelled itself through what was left of his side window and bored painfully into his ear.

"Get out of the car!" someone yelled. "Get out of the fucking car!"

"I can't!" Nathan protested. The gun barrel was pushing him in exactly the opposite direction, making it impossible for him to obey. "I said get the fuck out!"

"Gun!" a second voice shouted. "There's a gun on the seat! Watch his hands!"

Two sets of hands descended on him, grabbing fistfuls of his T-shirt and his hair. Using these as handles, they dragged him out of the car through the shattered side window. "Ow!" Nathan yelled. "You're hurting me! I'll do whatever you want!" He felt the rounded shards of glass embedding themselves into the flesh of his arms and his legs and his belly.

When he was free of the window, they slammed him to the pavement, driving the breath from his lungs, and making purple spots explode behind his eyes. They continued to shout conflicting orders to him, but he could no longer hear what they were saying. A booted foot on his jaw pressed his face into the pavement, while a knee drove deeply into the small of his back. Nathan pleaded for mercy while the police officers bent his arms back at impossible angles to handcuff him. Another inch, and he swore that his shoulder would come completely free of the socket.

"Who the fuck do you think you are running from me, motherfucker?" one of the cops hissed in his ear, just before the bracelets went from tight to excruciating.

"Please don't hurt me anymore," Nathan begged. "I promise I'll do what you say."

"You already blew that chance, asshole," the cop replied.

Using the chain between the handcuffs as their handle, the cops lifted Nathan first to his knees, then used his throbbing shoulders to bring him to his feet. His nose was bleeding freely from both nostrils, like a steadily dripping faucet. With no hands to divert the flow, the two streams converged just below his lower lip, and then fell in heavy drops Qnto his shirt and his Reeboks.

Nathan blinked rapidly to clear his vision, and got a good look at his captors. They looked just like every other cop in the world, clean-cut and mean as hell. A third officer approached them as Nathan was steadied on his feet against one of the cruisers. The new officer looked more than mean; he was mad and mean, and he wore a gold badge over his breast pocket, different from the silver badges of the other two. Over the other pocket, the gold cop wore a gold name tag that read WATTS.

Watts walked up to within three feet of the boy. "You Nathan Bailey?" he asked.

Nathan nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, drooling blood.

Watts was older than the others, and despite a considerable paunch, looked enormously strong. His biceps strained his shirt sleeves, and no collar could possibly contain his neck. He had the eyes of a wolf, piercing and threatening. It was the same look Nathan had seen from Ricky Harris.

"Is it true you killed a prison guard?" Watts asked.

Nathan nodded again. "Yes, sir, but… "

Before he could answer, Watts drove an unseen nightstick into the boy's testicles. Nathan cried out in agony and collapsed like a marionette onto the street. Unable to cradle his balls, he brought his knees up protectively, and fought for breath.

"Some judge is probably gonna let you off," Watts said, his face forming a satisfied grin, "but I wanted you to know there's a price for killing a cop." Turning to his subordinates, he added, "Get this dog turd out of here."

Steadman gave a mock salute and yanked Nathan up by his arms, dumping him in the back seat of his cruiser like a bag of dog food.

During the twelve-mile trip to the police station, Nathan never moved. He just lay on his side, knees up, waiting for hope to return.