A Bad Day for Voodoo

CHAPTER 23

There are many difficult decisions in life.

For example, let’s say that you’re working in a coal mine, and it collapses. You and five other miners are trapped in a small pocket, and you have about one hour of air before you all suffocate. Rescuers will never reach you in an hour.

One other miner, Jimbo, was separated from everybody else in the collapse. He has plenty of air, enough air to last for weeks, even if he pants a lot.

There’s a small gap in your pile of rocks.

You have a hand grenade.

Do you throw the hand grenade through the gap, blowing up Jimbo but ensuring your own rescue? Six lives versus one. But can you kill an innocent man to save your own lives, especially knowing that Jimbo would almost certainly be rescued?

Actually, I guess that any gap big enough for a grenade would be big enough to let in air. And a grenade wouldn’t actually clear out fallen rocks; that’s really a job better suited for dynamite. I don’t think this is the way the hypothetical dilemma is supposed to go. I remember that when a friend posed it to me once, I was like, “Wow, that’s a really difficult decision!” but the way I’ve got it doesn’t make much sense.

Okay... so ...eating one of your fellow miners. A difficult decision, right? You don’t want to do it too early, because if you get saved, you all look like a bunch of jerks, but if you wait too long, you could all die with perfectly good arm meat available.

I see that I have completely botched the point I was trying to make, but basically, what I’m trying to say is that life is filled with difficult decisions.

The decision to go after the minivan was not one of them.

Kelley and Adam needed my help. Yeah, I needed help too, but I was going to rescue them, no matter what.

I got in the taxi. He’d never shut off the meter, and we owed him over three hundred dollars at this point. Maybe when all of this was over, I’d write him a check.. .in blood! (Sorry, but that’s as badass as I get.)

I’d never driven a taxi before, but I assumed it was just like a regular car. I fastened my seat belt, floored the accelerator, and sped down the street in the direction the minivan had gone.

They weren’t gonna get away.

Not a chance.

When I looked back on this evening, I knew I was going to have a lot of regrets (see everything else that happened in this book), but one of them was not going to be that I’d let Whack-Job Mildred and Totally Bonkers Glenn get away with Kelley and Adam.

The camera flashed as I sped through a red light.

Ha! Ticket for Zeke!

The minivan was a few blocks ahead. Now that I’d found it, I had to solve the more difficult problem of how to stop it.

Did I need to stop it? What if I just followed it until it stopped on its own? They were probably headed back home to pick up Donna and Franklin.

But if they knew I was following, Mildred might crawl into the backseat of the minivan and kill Kelley and Adam.

If I tried to follow without being seen, I might lose them.

If Mildred killed them, it might not be a simple stab-stab- and-it’s-over death. Human sacrifices could linger.

I had to stop that minivan, no matter what.

The minivan had a lead, but it was built for fuel efficiency and passenger space, while the cab was built for speed. I rocketed down the street, not even thinking about my hideous injuries and the fact that I would probably spend the rest of my life with a nickname like One-Eared, Eight-Toed Tyler. The pain didn’t matter. Getting blood on Zeke’s seat was amusing but didn’t matter. Oxygen and sunlight didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except stopping that minivan! I wish we had the budget to put that sentence in 3-D, because I really can’t emphasize enough how nothing else mattered.

I narrowed the distance between us from four blocks to three blocks to two blocks to one block to half a block to a quarter of a block to an eighth of a block back to a quarter of a block because I didn’t want to ram them, and then I pulled into the opposite lane and sped up alongside the vehicle, doing fifty-five.

Glenn looked over at me and then rolled down his window. I couldn’t lean over and roll down the passenger side window while

I was speeding down the street in the wrong lane, so hopefully he’d shout whatever he had to say loud enough for me to hear.

Mildred handed him something.

I applied the brakes as I saw the gun.

He put his hand out the window and shot at me. A hole appeared in the center of the windshield, and the bullet punched into the seat right next to me.

Despite this noteworthy increase in the amount of my personal danger, I did not veer from the nothing-else-matters attitude. I did, however, veer out of that particular lane and swerve into the correct lane, right behind the minivan.

I could see Adam peering out the rear window, looking most frightened indeed. I was dangerously close. If they decided to slam on the brakes, I’d be screwed. I eased off the gas a bit.

A huge semi whizzed past us in the opposite lane. It was a good thing that I’d already switched lanes, or that would have posed a pretty big problem.

I knew that if I rammed it from behind, the damage to the taxi would be a lot worse than the damage to the minivan. (Actually, I knew no such thing from any kind of experience, but it sounded reasonable.) They’d drive off, and I’d be left with a wrecked cab.

So my only choice was to pull up alongside again and ram them right off the road. Yes, Glenn had a gun, but I knew that if I were driving a minivan at high speed with two hostages in the back, my aim would suck. If I did this quickly, he wouldn’t have a chance to get off a good shot.

I could do this.

I wasn’t scared at all, I told myself.

Myself didn’t believe me.

A tiny voice of self-preservation said, Gosh, I think Kelley and Adam will be just fine if you take no action to rescue them, but I told the voice to shut the hell up. Not out loud.

I floored the accelerator.

Up ahead, maybe two blocks, I could see that the road ended. You either turned left, turned right, or smashed into a very large brick building.

I had to get this done.

I sped up alongside the vehicle ahead, and this time, Glenn’s bullet went through the passenger window. I couldn’t tell where it hit, but it hadn’t struck me or the doll, so I didn’t care.

I yanked the steering wheel to the right. For a split second, I started to think that maybe the little voice that had advised a different course of action had a point, but only for a split second.

The two vehicles collided.

The minivan went off the road and onto the sidewalk. In case you had any moral issues with this, I should remind you that the streets were eerily devoid of people. I wouldn’t have done it if there were any pedestrians. I hope you already knew that.

The taxi went out of control and swerved back into the wrong lane. I slammed on the brakes and heard a loud crash and a honk. As the taxi screeched to a stop, I looked over and saw that the minivan had smashed into the side of a brick building right after taking out a fire hydrant. A huge spray of water jettisoned into the air. I could now cross Smash a minivan into a fire hydrant like in an over-the-top action movie off my bucket list.

Now what? The minivan was stopped.

It would be kind of silly to go through all the trouble of crashing it only to run over there and get shot. I mean, there’s a line between heroic and suicidally reckless. I didn’t want my tombstone to say Here Lies Tyler Churchill. He Should Have Stopped after the Minivan Crashed and Not Run toward It When the Driver Still Had a Gun.

The rear door slowly slid open.

Mildred fell out.

Kelley climbed out and gave me a thumbs-up sign. I assumed this meant that Adam was also not dead and that Glenn was not actively shooting at anybody.

I’d done it! I’d saved them!

And then, suddenly, a new voice: What in the freaking frack were you thinking by running them off the road! You could have killed them! What kind of recklessly irresponsible person are you? Don’t ever do that again!

I vowed that I would not do this ever again. The next time my friend and girlfriend were kidnapped, I would allow the proper authorities to handle the situation, using their training and years of experience.

Apparently what happened is Glenn was not wearing his seat belt. I know what you’re thinking: What? Seriously? With kidnap victims loose in the back of the vehicle and the high probability of a high-speed chase, the fool wasn’t wearing his seat belt? How does that even happen? Well, to be fair, he was wearing the seat belt during the drive from their home to the junkyard, but while they were parked waiting for me to resolve my issues with the taxi driver, he took off his seat belt for comfort.

Then when Zeke ran off, Glenn said, “Ha ha! We’re not going to pick up your friend! Instead we’re driving away so my wife and I can torture you to death!” (I don’t know if that exact phrasing was used, and the “Ha ha!” part seems unlikely, but that was the gist.) Glenn was so excited about this wicked twist of events that he forgot to buckle up for safety.

So, when the minivan struck the building, Glenn struck the steering wheel, giving it a good solid honk right before his sternum broke. When somebody is trying to kill you, believe me, it’s always better for you if his or her sternum breaks.

Mildred was wearing her seat belt. This made it more difficult for Kelley to drag her out of her seat and knock her unconscious as she had her daughter, but Kelley got the seat belt unfastened and managed just fine.

Adam got out of the vehicle as well.

Kelley and Adam were safe. I had the doll back. And the cab wasn’t broken, so we had a means of transportation to get to Esmeralda’s House ofJewelry.

I gave Kelley a hug and then said, “Wait a second. We should grab Mildred’s phone before—”

A gunshot rang out.

“Fudge!” I shouted. (Not really, but you can use context clues to figure it out.) Without saying anything else, the three of us knew that it was best to ditch the retrieve-the-phone plan and resort to the get-into-the-cab-before-the-psycho-with-the- broken-sternum-shoots-us plan.

Another gunshot, and then Kelley cried out and fell to the ground.