6940 – This Is Where It Ends
Dave's cell phone buzzed with a new text message. He glanced down quickly as he flipped his phone open to read the two words on the screen.
Water Tank
Dave understood exactly what it meant. His heart was still racing after the truck came around them and he saw Rick so close to them. He was having a hard time faking that everything was normal to Sara, and as if she plucked his thought fresh off the vine, she asked, "Dave, what the hell is going on?"
To this point, she hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary about the interaction of vehicles; she was solely going on the beads of sweat noticed on Dave's brow, and his extremely white knuckles virtually tearing through the steering wheel.
"I'm just getting you out of harm's way, that's all," Dave tried not to exhale his fear too obviously, and composure took everything that he had. He looked at her and smiled, blatantly insincere. He was actually afraid to death of the unknown. Who was this guy, Rick? What was he capable of? This guy's whole world shattered earlier, and now he wants revenge.
They came up and over a small crest in the road, and Dave looked in his rear view and saw Rick a half mile back driving slowly and faithfully behind them.
Dave consciously put his directional on and pulled to the side of the road, where a mile of lilac bushes were dwarfed and shadowed by a giant metal structure that was clearly used to store a water reservoir for the farm.
"We're going to walk from here," Dave said, flatly.
"What? We're not even there yet!" Sara said.
"We're going to go in through the corn field."
"I don't want to leave my ca-"
"Your car will be fine," Dave interrupted, and wanted to end with 'but you won't be', but swallowed that part down.
"Dave, what the fuck is going on?"
"I'm just trying to be romantic…that's all," and it trailed off, its words thin.
"Bullshit."
"If you get out of the car and come with me, I'll tell you."
He left that hanging for a moment, and decided it was time to be firm.
"We need to go now," he said, his tone completely changing.
He got out and went around to her side, no longer seeing headlights coming, but knowing full well that he was still there.
He grabbed her hand and forcefully pulled her, slamming the door to the car in one fluid motion turning toward the seven-foot corn stalks. They were lost in bamboo-like sticks in seconds.
"Don't we need a flashlight?" Sara asked, not even being able to see her boyfriend in front of her.
"No, I know this land perfectly," was all he said.
She pulled back hard, stopping him. She looked straight ahead and pretended that she was looking into his eyes.
"Tell me…NOW."
Two hands went across her cheeks, and they were cold and clammy. Nervous, Sara thought.
"Keep your cool and stay quiet…promise?"
She nodded, her worst fear coming true. He didn't need to tell her anymore. She knew.
Rick crept silently up behind Sara's car, coasting to a stop as best he could so he didn't have to apply the brakes and light up the whole area. He thought that giving them a head start would be okay; he needed to gear up anyway.
He softly closed the door and went around to the trunk, which had popped open with the touch of a button on the keypad. The tiny trunk interior bulb threw off just enough light for Rick to see the silhouette of the landscape around him, as well as the rifle, silencer and high powered flashlight that he had purchased earlier laying before him. He stuffed his pistol into the back of his pants and dumped bullets into both side-pouch pockets on the all black utility pants he was wearing. He heard the high-pitched digital sound of the night vision scope on the rifle warming up.
Once satisfied that he was geared up for his hunting trip, he whispered puffs of a laugh out at the thought of 'going hunting', he softly dropped his automatic trunk down onto to the self closing mechanism and turned toward the lilac bushes guarding the giant corn field to his right.
He stepped into the fray of branches and listened. He heard a rustling of dry leaves to his left, so he immediately turned in that direction and charged through the thick stalks, looking through his scope for any sign of a heat-source, or human.
He followed his acute hearing and the minimal vision of the scope through a clearing, yet he hadn't registered that he was out of the corn until he picked himself up and out of the mud bed.
Mud smelling like feces dripped off of his face as he did his best to smear the wet dirt off of the front of him. He looked back and cursed the stone curbing that surrounded a pen that was once used for pigs, but was now a fertilizer storage area.
He regained his composure, closed his eyes and listened again. Rustling could be heard in the corn still. He dashed into the cornfield again, though, this time, a little slower and more cautious.
Again, using his scope looking for any reds or oranges to show up in the heat-seeking properties of the tool, and his finger softly on the trigger, waiting.
He heard a shuffle to his right. He swept horizontally with his gun and saw the prize, what he had been waiting for…and without even rationally thinking about it, he pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was not silenced nearly as much as Rick had hoped, but when you are dealing with that much power in a rifle, you have to expect it. The pop scared a flock of crows into the air, and an unfamiliar scream came through the husks.
"Owwww, dammit! The fucker shot me!"
Rick blasted through the corn and clicked on his flashlight to see a guy that he didn't recognize lying on the ground between rows, clutching his upper thigh.
Eyes wide with fear, Rick knew that he was committed now. He surmised that the guy would survive, and in psychopath fashion, walked away from the injured farmer on the ground.
"I'll get you, you bastard!" The farmer shouted after him. "I'll get you for this!"
He didn't hear him anymore. He was listening for rustles in the miles of corn. He stepped up on a high stone, massive in size, such that the farmers decided to leave it and work around it as opposed to trying to move it.
Rick approved, as he stood on top and swept the tops of the cornfield looking for movement. He found it. About 20 yards ahead, a little to the left, big sways in the leaf tops could clearly be seen. He jumped down and began his pursuit again.
His adrenaline was pumping hard now, as he was hot on their trail and confident that this would be over soon. He already decided that once he had killed them, he'd take off in Sara's car, ditch it somewhere tomorrow, and get another, and he'd be long gone.
He was almost giddy with excitement.
"Sara!" He shouted as loud as he could. "I'm here for you, darling!" He smiled as his echo kicked back to him.
"He's her-," Dave started to say, but Sara's hand covered his mouth sharply.
"Don't say it," Sara whispered forcefully, "I think that I just heard something."
He grabbed her hand and held it for a moment, realizing that she figured it out and didn't want to hear it, but also, that she was right. He'd heard it too.
"Let's keep moving," Dave whispered back. "No matter what we do, don't let go of me."
"Okay," she whispered in response.
"Straight for the barn, Sara," Dave whispered. "If anything happens to me, you run that way."
Terror rose in her. What did he mean, anything happen to him? He was staying with her. She analyzed it for a moment and understood that this was a plan, already figured out.
"Okay," she replied again, squeezing her hand in protest at the thought of anything happening to him.
They went straight in the direction that his father had told them to, and they heard the "pop" and ensuing scream of pain. Their breath quickened and their hearts almost stopped beating when they heard Rick shout. He was close, and he sounded like he was enjoying this.
His boots crunched hard on the crispy fallen husks as he looked through his scope again. He cursed to himself and swore that he would only fire if there were two figures showing in it.
He had shut his high-powered flashlight off, because it was useless in such close quarters, and he could see the cornrows part as he pushed through, following the sound ahead of him, and the sound stopped.
He pushed forward hard to take the runners by surprise, and again lost his footing as he slid down a slope, twisting as he fell five feet out of the cornfield into a thick row of bushes.
He was getting pissed off at his lack of stability and coordination, and realized that he had a problem. He landed sideways in the bushes, and the bushes resisted when he tried to push himself up out of them.
What the hell was going on? It wasn't until the pain finally set in that he realized that these were not ordinary bushes that he had fallen in. He screamed a guttural sound that everyone on the farm could hear, and as he tore his flesh ripping himself out of the thorns embedded into the rose garden that he had just fallen into, he was beginning to realize that there were strategic routes that they were running in this cat-and-mouse game, and he had fallen into every trap that they had set…the mud, the decoy and now the thorns. No more.
He stood up in the clearing on the other side of the roses, and scanned the rest of the farm as best he could in the dark. He would look for a vantage point to sit and wait for them to come out. He would not follow them into another trap.
His scope lit up as he saw the two figures climbing what appeared to be a hill, and they disappeared on the other side of it. A shot of the flashlight beam revealed a large barn on the other side of the mogul that his enemies had just crested, and he smiled.
He ran in the open field now, confident that he'd spot any other traps out in the open, armed with the flashlight and his rifle, both pointing at the barn that he was now approaching with great speed. He was close enough to hear the barn door slide open and then closed, which they hadn't counted on, he figured. He contemplated another trap, but then he heard a sound from inside the barn that validated that they were in there.
He looked down. He couldn't see the blood, but he knew that he was flowing pretty heavily from at least three areas on his arms and legs, and he pain was getting stronger.
He walked up to the large barn and noticed the dimly lit hanging light swinging just outside the door, like a cowbell tattling on the people hiding inside by alerting on-comers of movement.
He also noticed the two almost full gas canisters sitting just below the light.
"Oh, this is too easy, Sara…" he started speaking softly, but his voice rose. "You are making this too easy!" He hooked the flashlight back to it's loop on his belt and picked up a canister, and began splashing heavily the gasoline inside all over the sides of the wooden barn walls.
Dave almost screamed when he heard Rick splashing gasoline on the barn, when he remembered what his dad had told him…'run to the barn…where your truck is…' and they were IN THE WRONG BARN. He wanted to scream for help as he heard the horses start stirring, but something told him to stay hidden. They were about to burn to death, along with Titan and Intercept, and he couldn't move.
They could clearly hear Rick outside. Overconfident and Overbearing, just as Dave had expected him to be.
"It didn't have to be this way, Sara," they heard Rick say, and Dave hoped and prayed that his father had picked up on the change of venue. They heard the sloshing through the vent hole and they knew that Rick was making quick time with the distribution of the gas around the perimeter. As it was, they were shocked when they heard him at the barn door, they thought that he was much further back and couldn't believe how quickly he made up ground.
"You could've just kept your mouth shut, and you'd still be alive. Why did you feel the need to ruin someone's family? Were you that bored with your own life? THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS, SARA."
Sara wanted to scream back at him 'no, you were the bored one, out chasing other women', but she bit her tongue and hunkered down with Dave. "What do we do?" she asked.
"Not sure," Dave said. "We'll be okay, though. I can feel it."
And it hit him, as Rick continued on his nonsensical rant that reminded him of bad guys in movies that always felt the need to tell a story first, instead of just killing the good guy and winning. And he smiled.
"Why are you smiling?"
Rick lit his victory cigarette as he faced the barn a good twenty feet back. Something wasn't right. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he just had an awkward feeling about the whole thing.
He didn't care, because he was going to walk away, and disappear forever in 3, 2, 1.
He threw his open, burning Zipp-o lighter at the barn and it rebounded off of a well-soaked section of the wooden wall. Nothing.
He took a few steps closer to see his lighter still flickering.
And in the moment that he realized that there was no smell of gas as he poured, the whole barn area flooded with light from spotlights set on top of sport utility vehicles in a 180-degree perimeter of the area.
Rick turned around wide-eyed as the bullhorn chirped, "put down your weapon."
He couldn't see anyone in the blinding lights, but he knew he was outmatched. He dropped the rifle to the ground, and put his hands in the air.
Upon seeing the blinding lights blasting through every crack in the barn, Dave knew that it was over. They went out of the stable through the horse entrance, and walked around to the front, in time to see Dave's dad, the town police chief, two officers and two friends all pointing guns at Rick. Dave picked up the gas can and splashed some in his hands.
"Here's why I was smiling," he said to Sara. "Plant food…salt water based…my dad would never keep a live charge of gasoline next to our horses…we love them too much to put them in that kind of danger."
Sara heard him, but was more intent on watching the demise of Rick.
He saw one of the officers approach him with handcuffs in his hand, and as Rick dropped to his knees, he fluidly pulled the pistol out of the back of his pants, and swung his arm toward Sara.
Slow motion took over as the gun blast was heard; Dave's face one of sheer horror and Sara's of confusion.
A fraction of a second later, Sara checked herself and realized that she wasn't shot, in the instant that the side of Rick's head collapsed inward from a different direction. Before Rick's body had a chance to settle on the ground, the limping farmer from the cornfield came around the other side of the barn with a smoking shotgun pointed at Rick.
"Fucker shot me," was all he said.
Two weeks later, after cleaning up details with Charlotte and Lauren, they found themselves around the giant family dinner table in Deerfield with about twenty friends and loved ones.
Dave had taken the time earlier to meet with Lauren shortly after he got back to school and had a heart-to-heart talk with her about his relationship with Sara.
Sara had met with Charlotte around the same time, and assured her that her and Dave were fine after the traumatic experience.
After helping to set the bountiful table with food and the energy and vibe in the room was positive, Dave made his way to Sara in the kitchen and put his arm around her waist and sniffed her hair while Sara talked to Judy as she was cutting bread.
She flinched a little from the tickle of his new-growing facial hair on her neck.
"I'm staying with you forever, just so you know," Dave said.
She turned and looked at him with a serious expression, which set him back on his heels a bit.
"Do you mean that?" She asked.
"Of course, I do," Dave said, puzzled, as some kitchen helpers, including Judy, turned to acknowledge the exchange.
"Through ANYTHING?" She was trying hard not to smile in excitement because she didn't want to influence him.
"Anything. I promise," Dave replied confidently.
"I'm three weeks late," Sara said, staring into his eyes.
His mouth popped open in surprise, but the corners hinted about curling up.
"But, we used…"
"The barn," Sara confirmed, softly. "No protection."
"Wow," Dave said, and then he turned to his family that only got bits and pieces and put his arm around Sara to help with the big announcement.
There was an emotional connection at that moment, and Sara tangibly felt that Dave was entirely committed, maybe even more love than before, so she smiled along with him as he announced to everyone that he loved so much his big news, with tears in his eyes.
THE END