Chapter 9. Alice
ALICE
Alice didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to see what was out there. Simon raised his arm and aimed the gun at her. “Get up!”
Jenny’s sobs increased and she buried her face in her hands, but she didn’t stop him, didn’t say, Put the gun away, this has gone too far!
Alice used the counter to pull herself up. Simon backed out and then waited for her at the bottom of the steps. He gestured that she was to go in front.
They walked down the shoulder of the road.
Behind her, Simon’s sneakers made a scuffing sound on the dirt.
Alice looked at her sandaled feet, the fine layer of dust that coated her toes.
She didn’t want to lift her head. Heat radiated off the side of the RV.
The engine ticked. The air reeked of tire rubber.
Alice halted. The bike lay on the shoulder of the road where it had been pushed, the RV’s shadow draped over it.
The biker’s legs were visible just past the RV’s rear tire.
The rest of his body was underneath. She didn’t crouch down.
She didn’t peer under. He’d been driven over twice.
His legs were twisted, broken. His boots were dusty and worn, with silver buckles.
One of them was undone. She didn’t know why this mattered, why she wanted to fix it.
“Grab one of his legs,” Simon said in a rush, his voice high and tight like he was barely holding himself together. “We have to drag him.”
Alice couldn’t stop looking at those broken legs. How could she touch him?
“I can’t.”
Simon was sweating profusely, his face red, and his hair flopping into his eyes as he stepped toward Alice, who tried to back up, but she wasn’t fast enough. His hand wrapped around her throat. Not squeezing, but tight enough that it was a clear warning.
“If you don’t hurry, a car is going to come by, then I’ll have to kill them too, and that’s going to be your fucking fault, get it?”
She nodded and he released her. She didn’t know if a car could see the back end of the RV if it drove past, and the road felt unused. More like a lane between farms. But it wasn’t a risk she wanted to take. She rubbed at her neck, still feeling the imprint of Simon’s hot hand.
He was watching her with a strange expression, like he was surprised by his actions but not ashamed. His hands were now clenched into fists, waiting for her next move.
Alice bent and grabbed one of the biker’s legs, her hands around his ankle.
Simon picked up the other. The man was heavy, and they were both breathing hard as they dragged him out from under the RV.
When the man’s torso and head came into view, Alice stopped moving, suddenly lightheaded, like she might pass out then and there.
His chest was crushed, nearly concave, and his T-shirt was ripped, exposing a hairy belly marked with black tire treads.
Blood had leaked from his nose, mouth, and ears.
His eyes were closed, his nose flattened.
His face had been scraped across the dirt, showing raw, open skin.
His arms, spread wide, were also mangled.
A white bone stuck out of his bloody forearm.
Alice gagged and tried to catch her breath, but she could smell the blood. Metallic, like a dirty copper coin. Something else too. Urine. She retched again, her eyes watering.
“Hurry up!” Simon kicked at her leg, snapping her out of her shock.
Alice turned her face away from the body and continued dragging the man to the ditch, where a ravine dropped into a thicket of trees and shrubs. They lowered him at the edge, and then Simon pushed him over. The man’s body caught partway on a branch.
Simon pressed his hands to the side of his head. “Shit.” He looked up and down the road, before turning to Alice. “Climb down.” When she hesitated, he lifted the gun again, this time shoving it into her belly below her rib cage. She gasped at the sudden pain.
“Get moving.”
Alice used roots and branches to clamber down the embankment.
When she reached the man’s body, she closed her eyes and gave him a push.
The body didn’t move at first, so she had to open her eyes, unfold his arm from where it had caught on a branch—she’d never forget the feel of his still-warm skin, the smell of him.
Leather, cigarettes, stale beer, and campfire smoke.
He’d been with friends the night before. He might have a family, wife, kids.
His body rolled a few more feet, coming to rest against a tree trunk.
She peered up the embankment at Simon. She could barely see him through the brush.
She looked around the ravine. Nothing but forest. How far could she get if she ran?
Could she lead him into the bush? She’d still have to circle back to the RV, and he was likely faster than her.
“Toss branches on him,” Simon shouted down.
She gathered fallen pieces of brush, dried wood, and leaves, heaping them over the man like a blanket. She whispered a quick prayer. “I’m so sorry. I hope someone finds you.”
She climbed back out of the ravine, scraping her hands on rocks and roots, her lungs strangling in the dry air. She hadn’t had any water. She feared she might get sick. She collapsed onto her knees in the gravel and dirt, her head bowed as she tried to stop the spinning.
Simon was lifting the bike up from the ground.
The handlebars were bent, one of the tires wobbled as he wheeled it to the edge.
The saddlebags were still attached. He rummaged around in them, pulling out a wallet, which he shoved into his pocket.
Then he gave the bike a push and it crashed down through bushes.
Simon broke a branch off a tree and used it as a broom to smooth out the dirt, the blood trail, the drag marks.
Then he walked around and picked up glass, pieces of metal, the rod that the biker had used, and threw them into the bushes too.
Alice got to her feet, slowly, and stood by the RV door, thinking about the morning that they’d left the first campground. When the bikers had been parked in the shade by the restroom.
Simon had finished and was walking back toward her now.
“You stole something from him,” Alice said. “That’s why he was chasing us.”
He just looked at her silently and rubbed his arm across his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt and blood. Alice stared at the crimson line. She hoped he saw it the next time he had to face himself in a mirror.
Simon pulled the door open, and she followed him up the steps.
Jenny was standing by the table and chewing on a fingernail. Her eyes went to Simon when he came inside and widened when she saw the blood.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“He was a bad guy who was going to hurt us.” Simon gently drew her hand away from her face. “I took care of it, babe. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
Alice, stuck behind Simon, didn’t know where she was supposed to go, but she didn’t want to be part of this moment. She edged past Simon to check on Tom.
The rear of the RV was stifling. Tom’s shirt was damp, his face feverish looking. The bag of corn had completely thawed. In the time that they’d been parked, there’d been no air-conditioning, no way for him to cool down.
“Oh, Jesus.” She rushed to the kitchen. Did they have any ice left?
“What the hell are you doing?” Simon said.
“He’s overheating.”
She shoved the corn back into the freezer. The bag of peas wasn’t ready yet, so Alice found a juice can, wrapped a cloth around it, and placed it against Tom’s forehead, then his neck, and along his shoulder. She got a glass of water and leaned him forward so he could drink.
“I want to stay with him. He needs someone.”
“Jenny can sit back there. You drive.”
Alice swallowed hard, looked at Tom, and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.
“I’m better. The water helped. Are you okay?” he whispered, searching her face.
She shook her head, trying not to cry as she watched Simon pull one of Tom’s beers from the fridge and guzzle it down in one shot.
A moment later Jenny was standing in front of her. “I hope you didn’t get hurt when you fell onto the floor.”
Alice stared at her. What was wrong with this girl? A man had just been murdered. His body dumped into a ravine. Was this some kind of joke? Jenny wasn’t smiling, though. She seemed spaced out, her eyes blank. Maybe she was in shock. Alice looked past her to Simon.
“Come on,” he said.
“I can’t drive. Not after that.”
He pulled the gun out of the pocket of his shorts. “Get behind the wheel, Alice.”
“Why don’t you drive?” As soon as she said the words, she wondered if that would be worse. He might not know how to drive a large vehicle. They could crash.
“I’m not in the mood for bullshit. You really going to try me on this?”
No. Not after what she had just witnessed.
Alice moved to the driver’s seat. She wondered if the motorcycle might have damaged the underframe of the RV, but it started with no problem.
She couldn’t say the same for herself. Everything felt strange.
Like her arms and legs didn’t belong to her.
They were working but she didn’t know how.
She’d seen a dead man. She’d touched his skin.
She glanced down at her clothes. Did she have his blood on her?
She hadn’t checked. Beside her, Simon was tapping his fingers on one knee, the gun resting on his other, finger crooked inside the trigger.
“Stay the speed limit.” He slumped against the side window. She smelled the beer on him, the musk of his sweat. The blood streak was gone from his forehead.
Several miles down the road, he took the cash out of the biker’s wallet, stared at the man’s license for a moment, then threw the wallet out the window into the forest.