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ONE June
Davis slowed and then spun the steering wheel to the left, swinging north past the hospital from South Street onto Kennedy Drive. The stoplight blinked to red just as he completed the turn, and Davis grinned with pleasure at his timing. This late, fortunately, downtown streets were completely empty.
The centrifugal force of the turn pushed Mary against the door, awakening her. "Joe? Where are we?"
"Back in Piketon, honey. Almost home. Check the kids."
Mary reached toward the backseat and touched the two children gently. She spoke in a low voice. "They're still asleep. This isn't South Street, is it?"
Davis shook his head. "Kennedy. The streets are empty at night. I'm heading up to Central. It's much faster."
"Joe! I don't like driving through North Hill after dark."
He snorted. "This late, even the greasers have turned in. Go back to sleep. We'll be home in no time."
She stared at his profile as it showed strong and determined against the long, lighted windows of a discount furniture store. She knew it would be pointless to argue with his choice of a route. She had argued against combining Joe's business with what was to have been a pure pleasure trip this weekend, and her arguments had had no effect on him. Mary repositioned the small pillow behind her head and tried to get back to sleep, managing only to fall into an uneasy doze.
Davis reached Central Avenue, nine blocks further north, and turned to the right, gently and slowly this time so that he wouldn't wake Mary again. Or the kids, God forbid. At least the specimens in the cages in the back were sedated. Ought to try that stuff on thekids sometime, he thought. Now he was headed east along Central, slipping through downtown. With Mary asleep, he went through two red lights, slowing only slightly to check for cross-traffic, adrenaline pumping as he watched the mirrors for the flashing red lights of a police car. They didn't come: even the police had abandoned the dark, silent downtown streets in the quiet hours before summer dawn. It was like another city, not the Piketon he knew in the daytime.
Roosevelt Drive passed by. Then Washington Boulevard at last, eastern boundary of downtown. Why isn't it a Drive, like the rest of them? Joe wondered for perhaps the hundredth time. Central curved slightly to the left and headed steeply uphill. North Hill lay directly ahead: lily-white social, cultural, and commercial center of Piketon in the nineteenth century; rotting tenements, soaring crime, and unrelieved brown faces in the twentieth. The well-kept businesses west of Washington Boulevard had changed suddenly and startlingly to a war zone. Fifteen minutes to home. Twenty, at most.
Central Avenue ran over the very top of North Hill, where it intersected Lincoln Drive. The stoplight at that intersection caused endless misery in winter for uphill traffic in all four directions. Cold though this year had been -- Joe had all the windows up and the heat on -- ice at least had not been a problem. Right now, however, the stoplight up ahead at Lincoln was red. "Damn it," Joe muttered. He'd coasted through red lights at Eisenhower and Madison without seeing a hint of a cop, though. Sure. He pressed the accelerator down.
When he was in the middle of the intersection, Joe saw from the corner of his eye a police cruiser moving slowly north on Lincoln, headed toward the hilltop. "Oh, Jesus," he groaned just as the red and blue lights sprang to life atop the cruiser and it shot toward him. Panicked beyond thought, he stamped the gas pedal to the floor.
The station wagon leapt across Lincoln. The police car overshot the intersection and had to stop and back up hastily. Joe saw its lights flash by in the rearview mirror, and panic turned to triumph. Halfway down the block, an alley beckoned on his left. He glanced in the mirror quickly. No flashing lights on Central Avenue yet. He slowed quickly, but avoiding any squealing of tires, and swung the car sharply left into the alley. Mary mumbled something, half awakened by the motion.
Joe cut the lights and stepped on the brakes sharply, then released them, using the hand brake so that he could stop the car in the alley without showing even the bright red of brake lights. The police car roared past on Central, siren howling, and Joe let his breath out. There was a low, muffled growl from the cages in the back.
Terror struck Joe suddenly, irrational fear, the unreasoning need to escape from that sound. He shoved his foot down on the accelerator and twisted the wheel. The car surged forward and smashed into a brick wall. His chest slammed into the steering wheel, and he fell back, chest crushed, more surprised at that instant than hurt. Mary? Mary? I can't breathe.
But Mary had gone through the windshield, head first into the wall. She lay limp upon the hood. The children, miraculously, were unhurt, but they were dazed by the sudden jerk against their restraining straps. Still half asleep, confused and frightened, they whimpered in the back seat.
Davis had not understood or allowed for the specimens' extraordinarily high metabolisms and strength. Both the sedatives and the cages were inadequate. The specimens were now fully awake. The cages had been thrown forward and slightly damaged by the impact. Now their weakened sides exploded outward. The children's whimpering changed to screams and then to silence. Davis, still conscious, heard the sounds, felt himself being jerked in two directions simultaneously, felt teeth and claws, then nothing. Mary had suffered the least.
Copyright © 2000 by David Dvorkin
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