Need a Lift, Buddy?

Larry Lee Jenkins was blinded by the approaching lights.  Throwing himself into the ditch by the side of the road, he buried his face in the earth and instinctively put his hands over his head, hoping to conceal himself.  It was a big tractor-trailer rig, and as it swept past at seventy five miles an hour, it sucked up leaves, twigs, and other debris at the margins of the pavement.  Even in the shallow depression where Larry Lee lay, he could feel the blast of air and grit and hear the almost deafening roar of  the truck’s powerful diesel engine and massive tires as it hurtled on down the road. He watched as the red tail lights finally disappeared over a slight rise, and with them, the noise that had broken the nighttime desert silence.

Larry Lee Jenkins,  30 years to life, kidnaping and interstate flight to avoid prosecution.  Larry Lee Jenkins, high school dropout,  sociopath.  Larry Lee Jenkins, I.Q. 85, loser.

But Larry Lee Jenkins had just broken out of a maximum security facility by holding a homemade knife to a guard’s throat and forcing him to drive out the gate.  And now, he was Larry Lee Jenkins, killer. Murder One.

He’d stabbed the guard thirty-nine times in the chest, groin and neck, and left the body by the roadside.  He’d driven the prison van only another six and a half miles when – true to his usual luck – he had a blowout, right front tire.  So he was hoofing it.  The guard and the van might not be reported as missing for another hour or so, but he couldn’t take any chances.  He’d starved himself for two weeks, rubbed his body in butter, and crawled through a heating vent.  He’d crossed a lighted yard without being seen, and had slipped into the prison garage unnoticed.  There, he’d gotten the jump on Leonard Watkins, the guard.  Crouching low behind the driver’s seat, Larry Lee had pressed the barrel of Leonard’s service revolver into the man’s liver and held his breath as the van passed two security checkpoints.  No problems.

Leonard had whined and pleaded for his life when Larry Lee stabbed him.  He’d tied the guard up with a nice piece of electrical wire stolen from the prison machine shop.  Pocketing the gun, he’d begun stabbing, hard, and Leonard had screamed for a half minute or so – “No, please, oh God, please don’t” and shit like that.  Tough luck, screw.  Jerk bled all over the place.  Larry regretted for a moment not cutting the man’s head off.  Hey, what a blast that would have been.  Send the ugly thing to the warden in the mail.  He never for a moment thought about how impractical the scheme would have been.  It was the sheer beauty of the idea that appealed to him.  He was always getting into trouble with beautiful, impractical ideas.  It was the story of his life.  Larry Lee chuckled to himself.  He was free. Free as a lark.

Probably not a good idea to stick to the road, he thought.  First place they’ll come looking.  He surveyed the darkness and thought he saw the glow of lights coming from some buildings a mile or two to the southwest, away from the highway.  Probably a farm or ranch of some kind.  He could make out the silhouettes of big cottonwood trees near the house, or whatever it was.  The desert was flat and barren all around, so he started out in a beeline, crossing a barbed wire fence just off the shoulder of the highway.  Paralleling it from a safe distance, he soon came to the graveled lane.

It was in the middle of the vast expanse of nothingness that stood between him and his goal that he was once again dazzled by lights. Maybe his luck was turning.  He could knock off the driver out here and nobody would see or hear a thing.  This time, he remained standing.  He could feel the gun against the small of his back, where it was tucked into his waistband.  He put on a big wide grin and strode to the center of the road, waving his hands.

But suddenly he was paralyzed with fear.  What he had taken for a farm vehicle – a pickup truck, maybe – had just risen into the air and was going to pass right over him.  And not a sound.  Not a whisper.  The lights went out, and a black oval patch moved against the curtain of stars until it was directly overhead.  And then it stopped.  He felt his ears ringing.  And then a terrible, mounting pressure in his head.  Cautiously reaching for the gun, he watched in horror as the thing began to descend, gliding down like black tarpaulin, without a sound.  He put his fists up beside his temples to make the throbbing in his brain stop, keeping a wary eye on what was happening above him.

Abruptly, a shaft of light shot down from the object and enveloped him in a blinding blue glare.  He could see the dust motes swirling in the air around his head, just like you see them at the drive-in theater when you come up close to the projectionist’s window.  And before he knew what was happening, he began to float upward along the beam of light, just as neatly as you please.

From the air, it looked pretty bad.  They hadn’t seen one of these since Roswell, 1948.  Only this one wasn’t stuck away in some boondock canyon.  It was right by the damned highway.  Thank heavens it’s nighttime.  Hardly any traffic out here in the middle of the desert.

Twisted metal and debris all over the pavement, though.  Looked like the thing had skidded along for a few hundred feet, skipping like a flat rock on water before plowing into the embankment.

They’d had it on radar from the very beginning.  The helicopter had it visually when it was hovering over that ranch.  And then it had taken off again.  And then it had landed out in a field.  And then it had shot up again, crazily, had tilted and wobbled, and then plowed right into the highway.

And here it was, out in plain view for all the world to see.  Two a.m.  They’d have their work cut out.  Only three or four hours of darkness left.

Break out those flares, dammit, and get a flatbed truck in here, fast.  And get that hangar ready back at the base.  We’ve got another one.

Officer J. D. Rankin of the State Patrol scratched his head with his left hand and steered his car with the other. They’d recovered only one occupant from the vehicle.  An escapee from the Federal Correctional facility.  The call had come in at three thirty from somebody with some branch of the government – not FBI, but he was too groggy to remember exactly who.  He was the only patrol officer assigned to this stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere.  He’d been asleep at home, in bed. Rankin  poured another cup of coffee from the thermos, one-handed.  There’d been a wreck.  According to the Feds, it was being “taken care of.”  Whatever that was supposed to mean.  Driver had picked up a hitchhiker, one Larry Lee Jenkins, escaped con.  Just one body located so far, the escaped con’s.  Where were the driver and passengers, Rankin wondered.  In cases like this, the hitchhiker usually stops the vehicle a mile or two down the road and executes the driver in the ditch.

He hoped he’d find the bodies before some innocent bypasser did.  He always hoped he’d find the bodies first.  They’d be in the ditch by the highway, probably, or nearby.  They’d have bullet holes or stab wounds.  Not a pretty thing to deal with if you’re not used to it, and after all, this was what he was paid to do.

Wherever they came from, they obviously hadn’t heard.  Something every mother in these parts knows and drums into her kids from the time they’re old enough to sass back.  He saw the sign up ahead.  NO  STOPPING NEXT TEN MILES. FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL FACILITY.

Another damned hitchhiker, an escapee, and somewhere, a long way off probably, friends and relatives that would grieve when they found out.  Gives this place a bad reputation. Hell on tourism.

Off to the east, with the coming dawn, the sky looked washed out in dusty tints of pink and turquoise.  The stars had been beautiful tonight.