Part 3: Take the Highway

I followed Chuck indoors, and felt a sense of helplessness overwhelm me. But I knew that letting it bring me down was not the best thing for us right now. A few pulls of the cord and my motor was running again. Car, gone. Leave, how? Motorbike. It's in the shed in the back yard. While Chuck muttered his frustration under his breath I swiped the keys off the counter top and walked out onto the back patio. I pulled open the door to the shed, and light cascaded into the small, rusted and dusty backyard shed that hadn't seen the light of day for years. No. The grim hadn't been through here, and nor had anybody else. The shape of the motorbike sat in the middle of the shed underneath an ample tarpaulin sheet. I pulled at its corner, in a wide sweeping motion, and the sheet fluttered to the ground, uncovering a magnificent machine. Chrome blinding in the sunlight, the maroon red colour looked as magnificent and sharp as it did the day I bought it. I swung my leg over the bike and gripped the handlebars with a certain tentativeness, and I sat on the soft leather seat. I kicked the motor. It jerked and spluttered before it cut away into silence. No petrol.

As I rummaged through the shed for the old rusted gas can, worrying little of the noise that I made, Chuck wandered out into the back yard to see why I was making such a commotion. He came to a halt at the shed door, and watched as I stood, bent over, pouring petrol into the motorbike. A grin spread across his face momentarily, but it only took a moment before the sirens came within earshot and that grin vanished into panic. He stepped into the shed and pulled the door shut.
"Turn on the fucking light!" I yelled in a reduced volume panic. There were no windows in this shed.
Chuck groped clumsily around the wall until light filled the room for a second time. "Shit!" I whispered. In my panic and frustration, petrol was overflowing onto the floor. I put the gas down and wiped my soaked hands on my shirt.
"Shh!" Chuck had his ear pressed to the door. "They're in the back yard."

And I stopped. I could hear them too. No doubt Lincoln and a few others were lighting up, making casual conversation while the rest of the team were tearing my place to shreds. Oh, you'd be loving this, wouldn't you, Sergeant Lincoln? Indeed, they were just chatting, while I waited with gritted teeth, waiting for them to make a move. It was about 10, maybe 15 minutes, I'd say, before I heard the back door open, and the conversation break up. I heard four sets of steps walking from the concrete patio floor to the hard carpet flooring indoors. The back door swung shut and Chuck peered through the crack in the door to see if anyone had remained behind. We were lucky, it was all clear. Chuck went to open the door, to make our escape there and then, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back. I wheeled the motorbike towards the back wall, for it wasn't a wall at all. With as much focus as I could muster, I pulled the shed wall up, and it slid smoothly up into the ceiling. It opened out into the small path that ran between my house and the house behind us, parallel to the street. I sat on the bike once again, and Chuck slid onto the seat behind me, and we were ready to make our escape.

While we still had the element of surprise, I wheeled the bike out into the narrow pathway and, ducked low beneath the fence line, we crawled along as far as we dared, for a roaring motorbike engine would surely bring the guys out to the yard and our game would be up. Buying time... that's all it was, buying time. I was passing across the fence of my neighbour, slow and steady, creeping further and further away. Two houses down... three... and the door opened again. I could hear Lincoln walk out onto the grass, he was yelling at a man behind him. He wasn't happy, not happy at all. I lifted my leg to start the engine, but Chuck stopped me, and continued to push the bike down the path. Six houses, seven, eight... we were going to get out of here, I knew it! Chuck tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the thumbs up to start the motorbike. It roared into life, and we rolled out onto the street and left the mess behind.

I planned on driving back to Chuck's home, but he was continually navigating me in a different direction. The first red light we came across I turned around to ask him where we were headed, to which he responded with comments such as "It's not safe back home" or "it's best if we stay on the road for a while". After a while, he had become the automatic hand that guided me, so it came as a bit of a shock when I noticed that we were suddenly on the highway, with a sea of cars stretching as far as the eye could see. It was only a slight motion in my mirrors, but there it was, sitting back from us a bit, the car. And in it was the grim. And no doubt, the body in the boot was already gone. Chuck had seen it too, and he instructed me to stand up and swap seats with him. I turned to see if this really was as it seemed. Yes, it was definitely the Grim, and there was no doubt that he was following us. The light turned green and Chuck hammered the throttle, racing past commuters, as they rolled home for dinner, we were speeding forward, trying to escape the clutches of death.

The Grim was up for the chase, weaving in and out of the traffic, keeping us within reach. Faster and faster, we were speeding down the highway, but the Grim never let us slip too far ahead of him. Faster and faster, we raced along on the motorbike, but he, too, was going faster and faster. Gripping the handlebars, Chuck was all I could rely on at the moment.
"Dave?" Chuck yelled back at me to get my attention, but it was difficult to hear. "Dave?!"
"Yeah?" I called back.
"On my belt... near my left pocket... grab my gun." He twisted and weaved through the cars as I reached around his waist to pull the pistol from its holster.
"What now?!" I asked him.
"Shoot, man. Fucking dammit! Shoot!" He accelerated through a set of red lights as I glanced behind me to see that his car was still right behind us.
I rotated in my seat and fired once, twice, wildly into the air. Not even close. And what's more, I could see the Grim holding a gun outside his window, aiming to retaliate.

Several bullets ricocheted off the bike, and Chuck retaliated by hitting the throttle harder still. I tried to fire off a few more bullets. Still, I missed, but a little closer this time. Duck and swerve, faster and faster, down the highway, shoot, miss, be shot at. Thank god Chuck knew how to manoeuvre the bike, or we'd probably be dead already. This guy, the Grim, he was so aggressive, yet remarkably efficient and accurate, a real assassin.
Then I heard Chuck mutter under his breath two words I'd rather not hear under these circumstances; "Oh shit". I looked ahead and I could see what he was worried about.
Cops. A convoy was coming down the other side of the highway, and a barricade had been set up on this side further up the road. Traffic had come to a halt, but Chuck and I, and the Grim too, we were all speeding along on the bicycle lane, looking frantically for a way out, but as the turns approached, we could see the flashing red and blue lights further down the exit ramp, a trap.

Closer, the road block was almost upon us, any moment now, the police coming along the other way were almost upon us, as they sped down the deserted other side of the highway. They would have blocked off the entrances once they caught wind of what was going on, and they were much more effective than I had expected. And then Chuck made the sharp turn. Cutting across the intersection before the road block, we were going to be dead, we were going to die, I knew it. The other police cars were right there, we would hit them, we would be dead.

Whiskers. We were mere whiskers away from the collision. I was clutching so tightly to the leather seat, eyes closed, praying for my life to be spared. And it was, for now. The police cars were right behind us as we roared down the deserted side of the highway. The Grim, where was the Grim? The police were behind us, but he was behind them. I watched as the police closed in on us, I watched as the Grim followed them hungrily, like a bear follows a pack of wild cats as they close in on their prey. They'd take it down, and the bear would come in and claim its ground. But here in the materialistic world, there's no such thing as a free lunch. There was an outlying cat, a lone cop car, sitting behind the pack, the Grim was not forgotten about.

Sergeant Lincoln. After all we've been through, as I was racing towards the end, he was not on our heels, ready to bring me down, and take Chuck with me, he was tagging the Grim. That two-faced bastard. The Grim was trying to slip past the pack through the outer lane of the highway, and Lincoln was brutally bashing him back, grinding his car into the wall. Sparks were flying, metal was crashing into metal, warping, twisting, interlocking, breaking. The cars were fused as one, and the Grim was helpless to do a thing. Lincoln was not a policeman, an upholder of the law, he had become a man who writes his own laws, a law unto himself, a cold-blooded killer. The Grim was severely shaken from the constant battering between the cop car and the barrier, he was well out of the game, and with all the grace of the angel of death himself, Lincoln held his gun in his hands, and swiftly and smoothly aimed his gun at the Grim and pulled the trigger.

I felt numb, the killer I was fleeing from had been replaced with an even more aggressive, even more fearful one. And we were running out of highway. Red and blue lights flashed behind us, red and blue lights flashed in front of us. The highway ahead of us was blocked, and Chuck took the last turn off knowing that there were more police officers at the end of the exit ramp. We rolled to a halt, and for the first time since we met in the park, I felt helpless, utterly helpless. The cop cars behind us came to a standstill, and not far behind them, Lincoln followed, in tandem with the car in which a dead Grim lay slump at the wheel. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of capturing me and completing his goal to crush everything that I lived for. He got out of his car and walked up to the pair of us.
He pushed me to the ground "You worthless piece of shit, you" He spat next to my face. "Cuff him, boys."
They pushed my back into the ground and tightened the handcuffs around my wrists. They pulled me to my feet, and for the first time, I got to see everyone who helped Lincoln stab me in the back.
Ray. "Fuck you, Ray." I spoke with bitter disdain. "You reduced me to this."
"No" It was Lincoln speaking. "You reduced yourself to this. With your elitism, with your egotistical ways. You only care about your job because it elevates you above everyone else, you don't care about anyone else. You're a rat, you're not worthy of my respect. You're a vile piece of scum and you'll rot for all eternity in hell! But don't thank me. Oh no, thank your friend Chuck here. He delivered you to me, just as we'd agreed. But I think we should start using his chosen name... Lucifer."
"You sick motherfucker..." I said.
"It's a criminal's world, David."