24 Hours

He fired, and Will felt his right leg buckle. He almost collapsed, but he managed to keep his feet long enough to set Abby down and move in front of her. She was screaming in terror. He considered telling her to run for it, but he doubted she would, and any such move might cause Hickey to shoot again. He felt her clutching his pants from behind.

“Shot by your own gun,” Hickey said. “How does it feel?”

Will looked down. The bullet had caught him in the meat of the thigh, but on the lateral side, away from the femoral artery.

Hickey yelled back over his shoulder: “Come on, Buckethead! Train’s leaving! Show me you’re not a wheelie-boy!”

“Get out of here while you can, Joe,” Will said.

Hickey laughed darkly. “Oh, I’ll be gettin’ on soon. But you and me got an account to settle. And that little girl behind you is the legal tender.”

He took a step closer, then another. Will was about to snatch Abby up and try to run for it when a female voice stopped Hickey in his tracks.

“I got the money, Joey!”

Cheryl was standing on the far side of the road, by the median. The smile on her face was as forced as an Avon lady’s on a poor street, but she was making an effort. “Let’s get out of here, Joey. Come on!”

“Well, well,” Hickey said. “The prodigal slut.” He shook his head. “Gotta finish what you start, babe.”

Her smile cracked, then vanished. “There’s no reason to hurt that little girl, Joey. Not anymore.”

“You know there is.”

“Killing her won’t bring your mama back.”

His eyes blazed. “He’ll feel some of what I’ve felt!” Hickey lowered his aim to Will’s legs, which hardly shielded Abby at all.

“Joey, don’t!” Cheryl opened the ransom briefcase, took out her Walther, and aimed it at Hickey’s chest. “It wasn’t even his fault! Let’s go to Costa Rica. Your ranch is waiting!”

Hickey looked at Will and laughed bitterly. “Turned her against me, didn’t you? Well… she always was a stupid cow.”

He turned casually toward Cheryl and fired, blowing her back onto the median and spilling hundred-dollar bills across the grass. Then his gun was on Will again, his aim dancing from head to chest to legs. As he played his little game, a strange beating sound echoed over the slab of the interstate. Will recognized it first: the whup-whup-whup of rotor blades. Hickey soon understood its meaning, but instead of bolting, he took two steps closer to Will.

“What do I want with a ranch in Costa Rica? I can’t stand spics anyhow. This is what I came for. What goes around comes around, Doc.”

Will felt a hard tug on his pants. “Daddy, look.”

As Hickey steadied his aim, Will threw himself on top of Abby. Then, just as Cheryl had done before the crash, he turned and looked death full in the face.

He expected a muzzle flash, but what he saw was a bloody forearm the size of a ham slip around Hickey’s neck and lift him bodily into the air.

“You can’t hurt Abby, Joey,” Huey said. “You can hurt Huey, but you can’t hurt Abby. She’s my Belle.”

Hickey’s eyes bulged with surprise. He tried to bring his pistol far enough back to shoot his cousin, but the first shot didn’t come close. The bloody forearm just lifted him higher, closing off his windpipe like a clamp. Hickey’s legs kicked like a badly hanged man’s, and his gun barked harmlessly into the sky. He somehow managed to choke out four words, but they were poorly chosen.

“You-god-damn-retard-”

Will watched in fascination as Huey choked the life out of his cousin, his face as placid as that of a mountain gorilla at rest. Hickey’s last bullet tore off part of Huey’s ear, but then the gun clicked empty. By the time the sharp snap of cervical vertebra reverberated across the road, Hickey’s face was blue-black.

His limbs went limp as rags, and his gun clattered onto the concrete. After a few seconds, Huey set him gently on the side of the road, sat beside him, and began to pet his head. Then he shook him gently, as if he might suddenly wake up.

“Joey? Joey?”

The beating of the helicopter was much louder. Will rolled off Abby and unbuckled his belt, wrapped it around his wounded thigh, and tied it off.

“Look,” Abby said in a small voice. “Huey’s crying.”

Huey had knelt over Hickey and put a hand over his mouth to feel for breath. When he felt none, he started mewling like a baby.

“Why’d you want to hurt Belle?” he sobbed. “It’s not right to hurt little girls. Mamaw told us that.”

“We’ve got to help him, Daddy.” Abby started across the road, but Will limped after her and brought her back.

“I need you here, baby. We’ve got to find Mom.”

“I’m right here,” someone said from behind them.

Will turned. Karen was standing on the median side of the road, an automatic pistol in her hand. It was Cheryl’s Walther. She was pointing it at its owner, while Cheryl crawled over the grass stuffing loose packets of hundred-dollar bills back into the briefcase. Both women looked like air-raid survivors, dazed beyond reason but still trying to function, their brains pushing them down logical paths without any larger perspective.