The Getaway

“Clyde, you hold on, man, you hold on.”

“It hurts, Gill, it hurts so bad.”

Clyde lay in the back of the 1974 Chevy Impala, dying. A gut shot had him bleeding all over the seat. It had been a lucky shot by the cop. Gill returned the favour with a shot to the chest.

The heist did not go as planned. It was a cluster fuck. Billy was lying on the floor of the bank. A hole in his head. The car was shot up. It was pretty obvious who and what they were. There was no time to stop and steal another one. The cops were hot on their tail.

Gill ripped the ski mask off of his head. It took him that long to realize he still had it on. He took corners so fast he thought the car would flip, but it gave them a few more feet on the cops. The sheriff was pretty eager though to get them.

“Gill, you gotta... You gotta... My mom can’t know I did this.”

“They won’t get us, Clyde, they won’t. You hang on, man. You’ll see her again. You just hang on.”

Those goddamed lights and sirens. Everywhere Gill turned, there they were. He had to get out of town.

Gill looked up. There was a woman in front of him. He didn’t swerve or hit the brake. He drove right through her. The woman hit the hood, cracked the windshield, and rolled over the car. Gill looked in the rearview mirror. She wasn’t moving, but her body was holding up the cops.

Gill spotted a sign for the on-ramp to the interstate. He came around a corner and slammed into another cruiser. As he pulled away, he saw the cop turn to follow, less his front bumper.

Shit! Two more deputies had planted their cruisers on the street, blocking his way to the on-ramp. Gill turned the wheel and took the car onto the front lawns. The coppers saw what he was doing and started shooting. He flew past them, bounced over the curb and he was free!

Onto the freeway. He gave it more gas. It’d take valuable minutes for the cops to turn their cruisers around and follow. He had to get off the interstate before they could catch up with him.

Gill took the first exit. The night was falling. He shut off the lights and took the third turn off the main road. He was in the country now. Looking back, he could see the flashing lights on the freeway.

“Clyde! Clyde! Are you with me, man?”

“It’s okay, man,” Clyde replied, with a weakening voice. “It’s okay, man. We had a good run, right?” He trailed off.

Gill turned the lights on. He looked back. Clyde was unconscious. Maybe dead. There was a lot of blood.

“Just hold on, man.”

Gill turned back. There was a woman in the headlights of the car.

“Jesus Christ!” He said as he drove through her. Up and over the car.

This time, he stopped. He’d need to move the body, to keep the cops from getting a clue where he was going.

Gill left the engine running as he exited the car. He looked but there wasn't a body. Anywhere. He checked under the car and in the ditch. Nothing.

“What the f...”

He shook off the feeling he was getting and checked on Clyde.

He was dead.

Gill dragged Clyde out of the car and dumped his body off the road, and tried to cover it with grass and dirt.

“Sorry, man,” was all he said over his friend's body.

Gill got in the car and started off down the road again. He suddenly felt someone next to him in the passenger seat. He turned his head.

There was that woman, staring at him with black, empty eyes.

“So, what will you do next?” She asked.

Gill screamed and slammed on the brakes. He jumped out of the car with his gun drawn.

There was nobody there but him.

He looked around.

No one.

Gill swore and got back behind the wheel. It was dark down this road except for his headlights. He needed to find a way back to the main road.

He slowed down while he looked for a house. Then he saw two hitchhikers. Maybe they knew.

He was slowing down to pick them up. It was a man and a woman. He honked the horn to get their attention.

It was Clyde. His guts open. Blood was everywhere on him.

It was the woman, covered the same.

Gill hit the gas and sped off.

He was panicking, breathing heavily, getting light-headed.

Gill felt a presence beside him and looked over. Clyde was sitting in the passenger seat. Black, empty eyes stared back at him.

“You know, we’ll never escape.”

“Fuck me!”

Gill pulled on the steering wheel and put the car on the shoulder. He felt a loss of control and slammed on the brakes. Out of the car, he stared at the empty passenger seat. He looked at the back of the car.

He’d blown a tire.

There were no lights anywhere but his. He’d have to fix it.

After grunting and swearing, he had the tire change. He rolled the old one into the ditch. Gill took his gun out. He checked out the front and back. Nobody and no one except him. He got back in and was on his way.

A few more minutes down the road and he saw house lights. Turning up the driveway, he saw the mailbox said ‘Graves’. Funny. An old decrepit graveyard greeted him off to one side. It was a long way to the house. He parked the car and got out with his gun hidden at his side. A man appeared on the porch with a shotgun in his hands.

“What’re you doing here? What do you want?” The man said.

“I’m just looking for the interstate...” Gill started saying.

The man in the door caught the outline of Gill’s pistol. He brought the shotgun up and fired. Gill felt pain ripping through his left side but returned fire.

The man on the porch dropped.

“Fuck!”

Gill looked at his side. He was bleeding. A lot.

He walked up to the house and kicked the old man laying on the porch. He was dead, right through the chest. Gill went inside to find some first aid.

Gill found some bandages, gauze pads, and some antiseptic. He peeled the shirt off his body. His shoulder, upper arm, and chest were a mess. The pellets didn’t go deep, but the effect was all the same. A lot of blood. A lot of pain. He wiped as much away as he could, pouring the antiseptic on the wounds as he went.

Goddamned, it hurt.

Gill did his best to patch the wounds. He’d need a doctor. Fast. He looked around the kitchen for something that might tell him where he was but found nothing. Did he risk turning back and meet the cops or keep going ahead? He kept moving on.

It was hard maneuvering the car with one hand. Gill started down the driveway when he saw the old man in front of him. He hit the gas and just drove through him. Gill looked to his right and laughed.

There was the old man. Black, empty eyes.

“Was it all worth it?” It asked.

Gill took his good hand off the wheel, brought his gun up, and fired. The window shattered. The ghost was gone.

He laughed again.

Then he was off the driveway and into the graveyard.

The car plowed through a couple of headstones before Gill could stop. He backed the car up to turn around, but the ground was soft from the graves. He gave the gas and rocked the car back and forth. Soon, the graves were shredded, but the Impala was free.

Gill felt his head get lighter. He took the bottle of pills he grabbed from the medicine cabinet and chugged them down. Who knows what he was taking but it could do him any more harm.

Back on the road, there they were.

Three hitchhikers.

Gill stepped on the gas and sped by.

Clyde leaned forward from the back seat.

“You know, we can’t escape what we’ve done.”

Gill slammed on the gas and the brake pedals. The car went out of control and hit a pole. Gill flew through the window, rolled as he hit the ground, and came to a rest in the field.

He just laid there, not sure if he could feel anything.

As he did, three figures approached him.

The sun was setting on the crime scene. Sheriff Bowes lifted his sunglasses to get a better look at the body. It was ripped up pretty badly.

“He got himself shot and then torn up coming through the windshield,” the crime scene tech said. “Animals have done some damage, too. You’ve got to expect that after a couple of days laying here.”

“Likely, the farmer back there got him first,” a deputy commented.

The sheriff spit a bit of chew off to the side.

“Whether you think you live by God’s laws or not, you do,” the sheriff said. “The punk got what he deserved. Wrap it up.”

Bowes walked to his car and turned back to the interstate. Heading east, the darkness had already set in. He adjusted his rearview mirror to keep the setting sun out of his eyes. When he turned back to the road, he saw four people walking on the dirt shoulder.

Hitchhikers or locals?

He cared little except to get back to the station and drove on.