Bradley was headed to the 7-11 for his usual bean and cheese burrito and coffee when a crappy yellow pickup truck going at least 90 swerved into his lane and screamed straight at him. Blinded by the oncoming high beams, he veered off the road and ate gravel for twenty seconds before managing to spin the patrol car around and give chase. He told dispatch that he had a pretty good idea of who they might be, and he didn't think a backup was necessary.
Once he got down off the hill, Bradley noticed the pickup's crimson taillights were bobbing north of the highway and headed towards the railroad tracks. He smiled, switched off his headlights and turned onto a rarely used and less bumpy road that went by the old Foster house, expecting to make up for lost time. No one knew the back roads better than he did. Hell, he too once spent a brief period in his youth racing around the countryside in a Chevy Impala with a group of friends, always one step ahead of sheriff Crawley and his deputy Norm numb nuts - that is until dad found out and he'd had hell to pay. Whoever was driving that truck was in a serious heap of trouble, no matter who they were. You couldn't run a cop off the road without expecting nothing in return.
Bradley parked his car in the middle of the road, just before the tracks. He grabbed the pump shotgun and stepped out and waited. The truck was grinding over the last hill. It was a rough road, and a bad choice on their part. He could hear the bottom of the truck scraping against the high dirt median and the squeal of a bumper being jarred loose. About the time he could make out silhouettes in the cab, he reached into the patrol car and turned on the searchlight to give them a little taste of their own. Stunned, the driver screeched to a halt and the figures just sat there frozen in the cab.
Bradley smiled, and lowered the shotgun a little. "Get out, hands above your heads."
The two youths lined up in front of the truck, scared shitless. Duncan, the skinny tattooed boy who owned the truck was trying to speak but his tongue had failed him. Roach, his grungy partner, turned to look at a young woman who seemed to have appeared from nowhere along the tracks. Had she been here the whole time watching me? Bradley wondered.
"What are you assholes doing here? Thought you'd find something?" she asked the boys.
"Hands in the air, Leslie, and move over next to them."
"And what the fuck is he doing here?" she said, pointing at Bradley.
The boys just stood there, too shit-scared to answer. Bradley wondered why they were so terrified of him. Maybe his temper got the best of him sometimes, but he wasn't like a maniac with a badge.
He'd known all three of them since they were children, watched them grow up over the years, making mistakes and never learning from them. The boys were school dropouts who currently worked for old man Gowan's landscaping company. Leslie, who had seemed so promising as child, had gone the Goth route, and despite the heavy mascara and anemic glow, none of it really hid the acne that blushed angrily on her cheeks. Bradley still saw her parents at church, but it had been years since she'd attended and he'd long since stopped asking how she was doing. Although he lacked any tangible proof, he believed the three of them were involved with a group that performed satanic rituals in the surrounding woods, and he intended to find out if tonight's business was somehow tied to their nocturnal activities.
"You almost got us killed back there," he said, "Can you tell me what's going on?"
The three kids stared at each other, uncertain of what to do. Bradley saw Leslie's eyes flicker to the truck and back. He stepped around them, keeping a safe parameter, and glanced at the pickup bed. A large tarp covered the back, tied down with cord.
"What's in the truck Duncan?"
"Weed killer."
"Well why don't you show me then?"
Bradley waved the rifle and Duncan trotted over to the back and began to untie the cords. He fumbled nervously with the knots, taking longer than Bradley had time for.
"Help him," he ordered the others. He moved back far enough so that he could keep an eye on them all at once, just in case they'd stashed a gun in there and decided to try something stupid. He seriously doubted it, but it had been awhile since he'd dealt with any of them. They weren't bad kids, he was pretty sure about that - just lost like most of them these days; dabbling in Satanism, drugs, excessive body piercing and anything else that smelled like rebellion. There were others that could get them into serious trouble though, put them way in over their heads. Take the meth trade for instance, always on the look out for new recruits to help spread their product. Over the past few years the diseases that were once believed to be only the problems of big cities had finally infected the heart of small town America.
"There better not be any stolen goods back there or things are going to get a lot more serious."
The kids began to peel back the tarp. Bradley noticed the large tanks of herbicide, the ones with straps on them like the men down at the golf course used to keep up the battle against weeds and such. Not that he knew anything about golf. The only time he'd ever been up to Yellow Squash Ridge was to serve summons on some foul-mouthed banker from out of town who'd ended up taking a swing at him.
"O.K., keep your hands where I can see them."
Bradley walked closer to the truck bed to look inside, but something glimmered in the corner of his eye and he turned to look. Several yards away, he made out the rear end of a Land Rover jutting up from a ditch, its tail lights dimming.
"What's that doing over there?" he asked. He couldn't figure out why he hadn't noticed the SUV earlier, or the girl for that matter. It had him worried.
None of the kids could look him in the eye. Bradley felt the sudden surge of nerves being overloaded, a flash of sweat sprouting from the heat. It was a natural high, like when he worked out hard at the gym or went to a spiritual revival, but not something he cared to face on an empty stomach. He'd really been looking forward to his burrito dinner, and now he'd have to wait a long time. He swung the shotgun around and pointed the barrel at the youths.
"On the ground - NOW!"
The kids dropped and tucked their hands neatly behind their heads, thanks to endless hours of watching real life cop arrests on television while getting stoned, most likely. Bradley quickly frisked them with one hand while keeping an eye on the Land Rover. All he found was a hunting knife on Roach. He tossed it into the grass nearby.
"Now don't move until I say so."
Bradley raised his rifle and stepped away. He heard a rustle in the bushes and saw an owl fly off. The air smelled pregnant with rain and caused his sinuses to ache. He moved towards the SUV.
As he got closer, he saw that the driver's door to the Land Rover was wedged open by blackberry vine. There was soft white light coming from the dash inside. He heard the thump thump of a stereo bass, reminding him of trout beating the sides of an ice chest. Stickers from the thick brush bit at his ankles and into his pant legs, but he shook them off as he moved forward, eyes concentrating on the driver's door.
"Anyone hurt in there?" He couldn't tell if the steady thump thump was coming from the truck or from his own chest. Something sour swam up his throat and made him spit. He shot a look back at the kids to see if they were still on the ground where he'd left them. They hadn't moved. He stepped cautiously forward, and a vine under his foot sprang up and caught him in the mouth.
"Shit!"
It really stung. They were like miniature meat hooks first sinking into his flesh before being yanked away. He'd felt it catch first on his lip and then jag down his neck. He wiped his hand across his lips and tasted the sticky copper of blood. A hot tide of anger welled up inside him, polluting the rational calm that he normally kept on the surface with prayer and blood pressure medication. And although the new mayor was making his life miserable lately, he'd managed to keep a lid on it. He was certain that the bitch was still poking around, getting into stuff that was none of her business.
When he realized that he was being jabbed in the chest by the tip of the same garden-hose thick vine, he tossed his rifle onto the ground and grabbed the offender with both hands before thinking. Pull it out! Pull it out like a goddamn weed! his brain screamed as he squeezed tighter around the vine. The stickers that had hashed his face sunk deep into his palms. In a blur of sheer outrage and pain, Bradley saw the vine as the backbone of all that made his life unbearable. I'm cleaning the big fish, he thought, I'm gutting it for good.
Much to his surprise, the vine gradually went limp. Laughing, he began to feed it though his bloody hands so he could get to the root, the damned root that he was planning to stomp to fucking bits until it was just a colorless mush. When it finally broke loose he smiled at the sound it made, like living flesh being torn apart. The root was heavier than he'd expected, and when he raised it up to look at it he saw the severed arm of a man dangling before him with an elaborate spider web tattoo criss-crossing the elbow. More vines like the one he'd just killed began to work their way up his pant legs, using their stickers like climbing axes, pulling at him with their combined weight. Bradley stumbled, letting go of the vine and it's bloody catch. The arm flopped to the ground with a sickening thud. Bradley turned to shout for help, but more vines converged on him and drew him to the ground, gagging him with leaves and tendrils while giant saw-tooth vines worked their way towards him like anacondas through the underbrush.
He couldn't breathe. There was a sharp burning sensation in his chest, reminding him of when his father used to baptize him in the sour-tasting pond behind the house whenever he was bad, holding him under with cold bony hands until Bradley imagined a thing that must be his soul. It was like a book of lit matches centered in his chest, and the longer his father kept him under, the pain would start to float upwards through the murk toward the water striders that skimmed the surface like angels far above.
In a blurry mindscape Bradley saw a dirty-faced man with rotten teeth and tattered long johns pulled down below his scabbed buttocks, strangling a woman on the ground below him with red, raw hands. He could tell she must have been beautiful, despite the clots of blood and dark bruises. Suddenly the man rose from the ground, screaming and clutching at his face.
Look what she did to me. Look what the witchy witch did!
She had bitten him on the cheek before bunching up her long black dress and running away. The man stood there staring at Bradley with blood oozing from between his fingers.
Look what the witchy witch did to me, you SON OF A BITCH! I'm gonna tear you apart. Just like I would have done to her!
The thick saw-tooth vines had reached him. He could feel them press against his eyes, wriggling their sharp tips like corkscrews against the tender flesh of his eyelids. Make it fast, oh please Lord, make it fast he prayed to himself as they pricked the tender surface…
A cool mist began to shower over his body, a foul mixture that smelled like bones, hairspray and death. Bradley could feel it seek out the cuts in his face and burn like acid. He jerked his body around and struggled to free himself from the vines that bound him. They slowly loosened their grip, retreating from the horrible mist that collected on their leaves. The saw-tooth snapped away from his eyes, and when he opened them they immediately filled with tears while human hands - not sticker vines, reached down and pulled him upwards, dragging him across the ground and away from danger.
"Bradley. Oh fuck. Bradley. Can you hear me?"
Bradley smeared the acid tears from his eyes and stared. The bone and hairspray were making him nauseous.
Leslie and Roach collected ditch water in old coke bottles and used it to wash him down. The brownish water smelled like old hay and creosote, but it was still a thousand times better than having that poison eating his skin.
Roach eventually helped him to his feet. Bradley felt woozy, like he was drunk. Leslie helped lift him from the other side and the two youths led him to the pickup, where he noticed Duncan unstrapping a canister of herbicide from his back. The boy's eyes were wild.
"He's really strong now. He's not going to let us go without a fight."
Bradley didn't know what the boy was talking about. Duncan pointed at the tires of the pickup and the patrol car. They were completely flattened, not just air-loss flattened, but torn to shreds. Bradley turned his head away and vomited before losing consciousness.