Engagement Rings and Hot-Tub Flings
(July 11, 2016)
10: Shots Fired, Man Down
Wendy's visit to the Sprawl-Mart took longer than she would have wanted, and she wasn't really satisfied with the axe she bought—the best they could find was a lightweight tomahawk-style camping axe on a seventeen-inch handle. She also bought a braided belt and cinched it around her middle chest, so she could carry the axe behind her back.
They got back on the road, Dipper navigating with his cell-phone GPS, and headed east and into darkness. The GPS set them a complicated route, and soon they found themselves on US 36, the Mount Hood Highway. At first they passed bedroom communities and islands of shops and gas stations, and then individual houses and the occasional roadside business—Fat Fella's Tires, an RV lot, an auto graveyard—but surprisingly soon, they were driving through a relative wilderness, at least as far as houses and buildings went.
"Should be a country road turning off on the right in a mile or two," Dipper said. "That's Hablent Road. Then about seven or eight miles and we have to look for the farm off to the left."
Wendy slowed. Hablent was not a highly-improved road, to say the least. Narrow and crooked, its pavement battered to pieces, it wound through forest, with ferns crowding up to the very edge—you'd have a hard time finding a shoulder to pull off on, and the center line only occasionally ghosted into view, most of it having faded completely since it was painted, maybe during the Eisenhower administration. An alarmingly dilapidated wooden bridge crossed over what showed up on the GPS map as Bald Beaver Creek.
Wendy grumbled at the wretched driving conditions, but she didn't dare go more than forty-five, and on Hablent Road, that was pushing it. "It should be on the left somewhere pretty near," Dipper said after awhile. "At least, according to the coordinates. Nothing shows up on the map."
Wendy slowed to a crawl—there were no other drivers to bother—and they both stared out the driver's-side window, looking for any indication of a farm. "Think that's it?" Wendy asked.
Dipper raised up as far as he could in the passenger seat of the Carino and in the headlight glare saw what might have been a driveway. It looked as though at one time a wooden fence and gate might have stood there, but if they still existed, they had been completely reclaimed by a gangling tangle of western wild grapevine. Anyway, a weedy scrape, maybe an old driveway, led through a break in the foliage. Wendy turned and they crept along for thirty feet or so, barely able to tell where the drive was. The only clue was a flattened track where wheels had crushed the weeds.
"Lights," Dipper said.
Ahead, over a ridgy hill, flashes of blue and red pulsated. "Cop car," Wendy said. She killed the headlights. "Let's go from here on foot and see what's up."
They got out of the car and waded through brush to the top of the hill. For a few seconds they stood looking ahead and down. A derelict farmhouse, looking partly burned and half collapsed, leaned away from them. Behind it they could make out the police vehicle, its lights flashing, and beyond that a barn, in better condition than the house, apparently, and near the closed barn door the black Impala they had seen on the video.
"The cops beat us here," Wendy said. "Let's go see—"
From below a flash of light and a boom cut her off. Dipper pulled her down. "That was a gun!"
The gun fired again. Then the barn door opened a crack. "You get him?"
"Yeah, I hit him—if he's not dead, he's crippled!"
"Get back in here and let's pack up before more come!"
"Nah, I'm gonna find him and finish him off. Throw me one of them flashlights!"
Dipper swallowed. He whispered, "That's not a policeman. That's one of the thieves."
The two of them all but burrowed into the ground as the figure beside the barn flashed a beam of light across the ground. They saw him go to the cop car, lean inside, and do something. The flashing rack of lights went out, though he left the headlights on. From where they lay, Dipper and Wendy could see the figure of the thief outlined against the barn—the headlights lit it up—as he held a handgun up and ready in his right hand. In his left he held the flashlight, and as he stepped into the dark, he used it to scan the ground between the cruiser and the farmhouse.
"Come on," Wendy said.
"Where?"
"We gotta help the cop," Wendy said. "Be as quiet as you can, man."
They moved in a semi-crouch, trying to keep trees and the car between them and the prowling car thief. They were within a few yards of the barn when Dipper tripped on something. He went sprawling, and then groped for whatever had caught his feet. It felt hard and cold and rusty, and he grasped it, finally recognizing it for what it was: a crowbar that had spent maybe thirty years exposed to the weather. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing. He ripped it free of weed roots.
Then he heard a faint groan off to the left. Wendy must have heard it, too, because she changed direction. "Dip!" she said in a whisper.
The guy with the flashlight had gone inside the ruined farmhouse. They could see the dim illumination leaking from the empty window frames as he apparently searched the place for the policeman.
Who lay on his side in a kind of gully. "You hit, man?" Wendy asked him. "I'm the owner of the stolen car."
"Lost my sidearm," he whispered back. "Took two slugs in the chest, but my vest helped. I think I've got broken ribs. Got to get to the radio, call for backup. Who are you again?"
"Corduroy," she said. "I own the stolen Dart."
"Get out of here, get to safety and call 911."
"No way we're leaving you," she said. "This is Dipper Pines, my boyf—my fiancé. He'll help you back to our car."
"No," the officer said. "My partner's in the barn. I didn't hear any shots—but he may be hurt. Or dead."
They didn't have much time to improvise a plan, but they did their best. It looked as if the searching thief's only option—unless he wanted to bail out a window—was to exit by the same door he'd gone in. They flanked it, Wendy standing just behind the slight projection of a narrow porch on the door's right side, Dipper farther away and angled off to the left. "Don't miss, dude," Wendy warned.
"Do my best."
"And drop quick!"
The thief probably was in the house for less than five minutes, but it seemed like an hour. Then Dipper saw the flashlight beam and heard cautious, crunching footsteps and the groaning protest of rotting wood flooring. The guy came out, muttering curses.
Dipper reared, hurled the rusty crowbar hard as he could, and flung himself down again. The thief must have turned toward the sudden sound, because the flashlight stabbed in Dipper's direction a moment before the crowbar caught the guy square in the face. He didn't have time even to yelp, because Wendy stepped out and used her axe, which had a flat hammer-head opposite the cutting edge, to club him.
The guy collapsed. Dipper hustled to him, and Wendy grabbed his flashlight and then his gun, both of which he'd dropped. "Get him in the house," Wendy grunted.
He was out cold, and they dragged him inside into what had been the kitchen. The inside paneling had been ripped out, and they used the policeman's handcuffs to shackle him to a water pipe that felt sturdy enough to hold him. Wendy crammed Dipper's handkerchief into his mouth and tore off a strip of her shirt hem to tie the gag into place.
They went back to the cop car, its engine still running, and Wendy grabbed the radio mike. The injured cop had told her what to say. She turned the speaker volume low and gave the call sign. The dispatcher came back with the go-ahead. She said quietly, her mouth close to the speaker, "Listen, this is a civilian. You have a man down. Shots fired. The hurt policeman told me to say twelve-eighteen, repeat twelve-eighteen. You've got at least two bad guys in a barn. Send backup quick. Approach with caution. When you see the parked green Carino, that's a civilian car, that's ours. The barn's down the drive another hundred feet. Use caution!"
She signed off. Dipper hauled her back out of the cop car as the barn door opened, showing an oblong of light. "Roy! Where the hell are you, man?" somebody bawled. "You find the cop?"
Dipper hoarsened his voice and all but grunted, "No!"
"We're getting the hell out of here. Come and help us haul the tools! We'll take both cars."
He went back inside, leaving the barn door open. Dipper and Wendy hurried up. Either the guy who'd yelled for Roy or the other one came out with a heavy wooden crate in both hands. He met the hammer-head of Wendy's axe about forehead height and fell backwards, metal tools clattering.
"Clete, what the hell, man?" called another voice.
Dipper, his arms trembling, held up the heavy automatic the first guy, presumably Roy, had dropped. When the third dude came to the door, similarly laden down with a crate, Wendy hit him with the light, and Dipper yelled, "Freeze!"
"Don't shoot!" He threw down the crate and made as though to raise his hands, but then he grabbed a pistol from his belt and swung it toward Dipper. Who in another heartbeat might or might not have fired, who knows?
Except the thief didn't fire, because he couldn't. Wendy's axe had been quick, and it is virtually impossible to use a handgun when your shooting hand has been broken in four different places.
Wendy grabbed that guy's handgun and conked his noggin for good measure, and then she threw open the barn door. "There it is!" she said.
In the light of battery-powered lanterns her Dodge Dart looked whole and unharmed. Dipper grinned. For the moment, everything looked good. He and Wendy had managed to take down all three thieves.
Too bad they didn't know about the other one..
To be continued