Jeanette sits and watches the TV only pausing to find her way into a bag of chips nestled in her ample lap. Programmes have been interrupted in favour of a live police chase. Jeanette would normally have switched over to some other afternoon cookery show like the one she’d been watching, (how she wishes she could cook), but this chase is happening right here in her own backyard, Vesper County. She lets out an excited shriek and mindlessly drops the chips on the carpet as she gets up and runs to the window, just in time to catch the black and whites storm past, like a wall of stampeding zebra. What the hell were they were chasing?
***
Lloyd makes the hard turn onto the interstate. County lines mean shit nowadays. There is only one thing between him and his goal; twenty flashing cherries screaming twenty different shades of blue murder in his mirrors. The dumb procession seems to have gone on for hours when it can only surely be minutes. Either way, Lloyd figures that he can get more clear thinking done up here than ten in Leavenworth. He remembers the rants Wade, his brother, used to shout at the TV as if he were rehearsing for his own fifteen minutes on the freeway. Wade hasn’t made the stage this afternoon but Lloyd clearly hasn’t got time to deal with that right now. The one thing that Wade told him was that if they get real close or you feel a nudge like they’re trying to Pitt you, cut the engine and stand on the brake.
***
Officer Mike Vasquez is trying to get his brain to concentrate on six things at once. There is no chance of him prioritizing them all but if he could make a list his top three would be as follows:
1. Stay alive. His baby is due any day now and he wants to see her; besides Carol would murder him if he comes back less than whole.
2. Don’t kill anyone. He can’t afford to be suspended what with the repayments.
3. What the fuck am I following and how am I gonna stop it?
***
Chad is an amateur storm chaser on his days off. He’s still collecting most of the technical kit but what he has rattles around in the back of his estate like a Chinese kitchen in an earthquake. Chad is checking the skies as he is prone to, even on busy highways. He sits back in his seat, we’re not even in storm country yet. Darkness suddenly descends over the dash like an instantaneous locust plague. Chad desperately scans the sky once more with his head out the open window. He knows very little of what happens next except that he is sent careering across the highway and down an embankment. His last thought is “Sneaky goddamn tornados.”
***
Doug Burnquist hates flying. He’s not phobic about flying but another day in this whirlybird and he swears he’s gonna jump. Doug is the traffic reporter for KBCOP. It all began as a filler for a couple of weeks whilst the regular guy recovered from injuries sustained during a rotor failure (the chopper smashed into a roof killing the pilot). It was either the eye in the sky or the big wave goodbye as his boss had said. This morning after a skinful down at the Lazy Eye, Doug vomits on cue as Pete, the pilot aims the chopper over bus stops and smoking huddles. Pete laughs uncontrollably. Doug hates his life right now.
***
Oscar de la Cruz sits on a bar stool with his back to the bar at the Lazy Eye. It’s busy today but everyone gives Oscar space. A double beep and he reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out his cell. A text; it reads HOT PURSUIT IN PROGRESS.
“Hey Jimmy, change it to channel 9.” Oscar gets his wish and suddenly the entire bar turns to watch the chase. Oscar squints at the screen silently assessing the situation. After a few minutes he stands on the bottom rung of the stool and shouts. “Four to one says he won’t make the state line.” There is no shortage of takers.
***
Lloyd is rattled. He can only think about Wade, his brother. He dares himself to look back but can’t. There had been a shot somewhere back there and he’s sure a large part of Wade hit the inside of windshield as they drove away. From what he can see in the kiosk like cab, it was a part of Wade that definitely should be still part of Wade and it was unlikely that Wade could function without it. The more Lloyd thinks about it the more he smiles to himself. Wade was better off with a large section of his brain missing. Who on earth besides Wade would steal a London double-decker bus and use it as a getaway vehicle? Lloyd is in fact unsure how a London bus gets to the mid-west to begin with but Lloyd does know one or two things. He knows that all that stuff that Wade said about the Pitt manoeuvre don’t mean shit; they’d need a tank to stop this thing. Lloyd also knows that it is unlikely that they’d try and use stop sticks in case the whole thing topples over like a cereal box.
***
Mrs McKinley is far from minding her own business. In the last fortnight she has become obsessed with the movements of the woman in the house across the street. She is sure that there is no good going on. No woman should know that many men, let alone have them round as often as she does. No sooner than one man leaves, another car pulls up, a man steps out, knocks on the door and the woman lets the man in. Today she has counted twelve and it’s barely midday. Mrs McKinley turns off the TV in the kitchen and reaches for her binoculars. Another car pulls up.
***
Officer Mike Vasquez is no closer to imagining how this is all gonna end. Control seems clueless and less than willing to sacrifice a few cars in the name of a roadblock. A few of the guys alongside have been shouting on the private channel. Mike can see them talking as he listens to them.
“Someone shoot his goddamn tyres out, they’re big enough even you could hit Hennessy”
“Why don’t you jump on the roof from the next bridge?”
“Maybe I’ll land a chopper on the freeway.”
“Maybe I’ll just shoot the fucker in the face.”
Mike turns back to the official channel on his radio. There is a call for him to pull alongside and get a good look at the driver. They need to know if he seems aggressive, if he’s wounded and whether he’s drunk.
***
Doug swallows an antacid and pulls it together for long enough to give some drama to proceedings. He recalls his boss giving him tips before he went out for the first time.
“Remember, over emphasize everything. If a stolen vehicle is doing forty in a thirty he’s rushing. If he’s doing fifty he’s a maniac, sixty or seventy a death wish, over seventy and it’s like he’s raped your sister and killed your momma. If a civilian comes within ten feet of the car, that’s attempted murder. If he hit’s another vehicle, assault with a deadly weapon…”
“I get the point.”
“And for fuck sake watch out for Pete, sometimes he just has a little too much fun.”
“Good to know.”
The more Doug commentates the better he feels. It’s only when he has to look down at the map or his notes that he feels sick.
“You join us live over the Interstate here on K.B.C.O.P where we are following a suspect in what appears to be a stolen London bus of the double-decker variety. As you can see there are approximately twenty to thirty patrol vehicles following. Here’s what happened earlier when the bus was in collision with a member of the public driving on the freeway.”
***
The doorbell rings and Jeanette makes her way to answer it with her head fixed on the TV and the chase that is unfolding. Jeanette opens the door and lets out her characteristic shriek as she watches the bus shunt the corner of an estate car sending it plunging off the road and into a ditch where it turns on its roof and explodes. She turns to the man on her doorstep barely looking at his face before turning back to the TV. “Have you been watching this?”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m here. Can we watch at the same time?”
“No problem honey.”
***
Oscar has collected $500 in five minutes knowing full well that all of it is pure profit. The occupants of the bar are whistling and shouting at the screen like freshmen. He takes out his phone and calls his brother in law.
“Hey, Mikey, how ya doin’?”
“Oscar, I’m kinda busy right now as your fat ass can probably see.”
“Yeah I can see you Mikey, but can you see him? What kind of scumbag are we talking about here?”
“Oscar, I can’t do this right now, I have a job to do.”
“Mikey, Mikey. I can be your eyes and ears, I can see what you can’t. You want the glory ahead of them other fuckheads don’t you and let’s not forget you owe me one.”
“But Oscar…”
“Look there’s also a few bucks in it for you as if you didn’t know.”
“Okay, okay. Let me call you back.”
***
Lloyd has been crying. His sleeve is as wet as the sweat stained denim on his back. In the bottom corner of Lloyd’s blurred eye, a dark shape edges in like octopus ink. He turns to see a flashing black and white. The driver is trying to get a good look at him so Lloyd slams himself back in the seat and hides his face behind a bulkhead. He can hear the officer shouting something to the effect of “Pull over, pull over, do you want to get yourself killed?” Lloyd looks at the blood on the windshield and thinks to himself. “I don’t care. I just don’t fucking care if I live or die. People have been in situations like this, on the run for much less. Runnin’ stop signs or forgetting to pay for their gas, I’m just trying to get my brother home. Lloyd jerks the wheel down and the huge red block lurches towards the patrol car which swerves in reaction and then moves out of sight.
***
“Did you see that. Attempted murder right there.” The audience can almost see his pointing finger in their minds. Doug has forgotten his helicopter belly and is finally beginning to see what all the fuss is about. Guilty people doing bad things live. When did all the sympathy disappear?
“I’m goin’ down for a closer look.” Pete has an aviator’s grin.
***
The sudden swerve wakes Wade from his unconsciousness and gets to his knees. He feels light headed and he can’t see straight but this is not unusual for a man who drinks a quarter of the output of his local microbrewery each week. Thinking he has just rolled off the couch, he sleepwalks his way up the stairs to bed taking his gun with him. The stairs are all twisty, he don’t remember them being like that, maybe Lloyd changed things round. Wade reaches the top. This is weird and I got blood on me. Why is he out on the porch and why has Wade got all the Xmas lights on? That repetitive bass thud was familiar and getting louder. Wade smashes the back window of the bus with the butt of the shotgun and sees the object of his fury closing in on him fast. Wade has no option but to fire.
***
Lloyd heads for the off-ramp. He looks up. Something is wrong, desperately wrong. He pats himself down for signs of injury but finds nothing.
***
Jeanette is curled up on the couch facing the TV. She looks up from the stumpy penis she is sucking to see a puff of smoke emerge from the back of the bus. She lifts her head. “Wow did you see…” A hand forces her head back down into the man’s crotch. “Oh yeah baby, I saw it.”
***
Wade has shotgun satisfaction. Both barrels fat and square on target. The chopper gives a little roll of acknowledgement and then a full bow down and to the right.
***
Officer Vasquez who has been patiently tailing, patiently waiting for further instruction, looks up at the back window of the bus. The radio bursts into life “Shot’s fired.” He hates the way that officers have a knack of stating the obvious. He’d reported in a while ago that the driver just looked like a normal scared white guy. He picks up the mic, “He’s heading down the off-ramp.”
***
Lloyd decides to drive through the swirling miasma of wrongness. Stopping is out of the question, going faster is not and he stamps on the gas.
***
Doug is hanging half out of the helicopter and is live on air. “We’ve been shot at. We’ve been shot at.” He remains cool. This could be his moment. Being shot at wasn’t that bad, he even saw the flash even if he didn’t hear the bang through his headphones and over the noise of the chopper. Not even a scratch. He gives his voice the chance to calm down. “As the bus got on the off-ramp, we, the K.B.C.O.P eye in the sky has come under fire, apparently from a passenger on the top deck bus
***
Wade turns and faces the front of the bus in time to see a crumpling metal monster tearing towards him like a wave. It screams at him like the demonic child he once was. He has no time to react except to wave the shotgun at the monster as he sees it.
***
Officer Vasquez is pinned by the swathe of steel, seats and body parts that once formed Wade and the roof of the bus. As his car explodes into a hot and blackened tangerine ball of flame his last thoughts are of his unborn baby and his angry wife. He couldn’t even do this right.
***
Doug senses that the chopper has been banking right for some time now. They are moving away from the action and it’s really beginning to kick off down there. Doug rights himself and turns to see that Pete has lost more than his nerve. Doug screams like a girl as the chopper goes into a steep dive.
***
Oscar is back on his stool. The bus appears to have stopped shortly after losing its roof to a low bridge. “Looks like I win folks.” There are shouts of disapproval from the floor and a few people throw matches and other lightweight items at him. He sinks his beer, belches loudly and makes for the front door.
Oscar has one hand on the door of the Lazy Eye. “So long losers.”
He opens the door and is temporarily blinded by the light. When he regains his vision, he is surprised to see the K.B.C.O.P chopper travelling at speed, only a few feet from his face.
***
“Time’s up big boy.” Jeanette zips the man up and searches for another channel covering the pursuit but fails to find one. Her face is a portrait of disappointment.
“We should do this again sometime.”
“Sure whatever,” she says and holds out her hand.
***
Lloyd looks up and enjoys the fresh air and clear sky. The bus is handling a lot better now she’s just a regular coach. From what he can tell, the roof blocked the freeway. He’s lost the cops and for the first time he dares to think the unthinkable.
***
Mrs McKinley watches another man leave and she adds a ‘one’ to the spreadsheet she’s keeping. The IRS will no doubt have something to say even if the police don’t. She returns to her binoculars. To her amazement, a large red shape fills her wide eyes.
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