Heroes by David Hagberg (reading cloud ebooks TXT) 📗

Her hair was done up in a bun with a scarf around it. She looked typically middle-American.

“Hey, wait up,” she puffed, catching up with him. But he did not slow down, and she finally fell in with his pace.

It was several blocks around to the highway, across a broad, grassy field. There were houses and streetlights across the tracks from the station behind them, but ahead there was nothing but the highway, although well to the southwest, at least a couple of miles away, they could see the green and white flashes of an airfield.

She asked him about it.

“It’s the Cutter-Carr Airfield,” Schey said. He had studied maps of the entire area. “It’s called Number Two.”

“So where’s Number One?”

Schey shrugged. “You got me.”

It took them nearly ten minutes to get back out to the highway, and Schey was hot. It was very much warmer down here than it had been up in the mountains. Of course, it was high summer, and he should have expected this.

A big truck lumbered up the highway from town, and Schey stepped up onto the edge of the pavement and stuck out his thumb.

The truck rumbled by, its wake hauling a great gust full of dirt over them. Eva jumped back, coughing and rubbing her eyes.

“Christ, don’t you know nothing?” she snapped crossly. She bodily shoved him aside. “Go sit on the suitcases.”

Schey moved back off the side of the road. For just a minute or so the night was exceedingly quiet. Even more silent than the high country where night birds screeched and where the insects whined. Here it was absolutely still.

Eva stepped back as two cars, a truck, and a bus came by from the north, their tires whining on the pavement, audible even before they were visible.

A pair of headlights came their way from the south, and Eva stepped out onto the edge of the highway and lifted her skirt well above her knees, exposing the tops of her nylons and a lot of her thighs.

The car flashed by, but screeched to a halt just beyond where Eva stood. It was a big four-door Pontiac. A ‘39.

“Wait here,” she shouted back to Schey, and she hurried up to the car, her shoes crunching on the gravel.

She leaned into the driver’s window and hung there for a long time. Schey stepped up onto the roadway. He couldn’t see her head and shoulders, only the white blouse at the small of her back and the curve of her bottom.

He was about to go to her, when she pulled away and looked back. She was smiling. She waved him on.

Schey hurried down into the ditch, grabbed their bags, and rushed up to where she had gone around to the passenger side of the car.

Schey threw their bags in the back seat after Eva crawled in, and then he climbed into the front seat. A very fat man sat behind the wheel which rubbed his bare belly where his pullover shirt had hiked up. The man had stuffed a large red and black handkerchief between the bottom rim of the steering wheel and his belly to avoid chafe. He was smiling uncertainly.

“This isn’t what it looks like, believe me,” Schey said, sticking out his hand and smiling.

The fat man just looked at him for a moment, but then he reached out and shook Schey’s hand. “I saw the girl … the …”

“My wife,” Schey said. “I’m Karl Veltman. My wife’s Elizabeth. Our car broke down.” Schey looked out the windshield.

“Hell, the mechanic said it’d take weeks, maybe forever, before we’d get the parts. And a hell of a lot more money than we’ve got.”

“We’re headed up to Denver,” Eva said from the back seat.

She leaned up over the back of the front seat, between Schey and the fat man. “We both got jobs up there.” She grinned. “Course, the jobs don’t do us a bit of good unless we can get to ‘em. You headed up that way?”

“I’m going over to Tucumcari. Route 66. ‘Fraid I’m going in the wrong direction for you,” the fat man said. His voice was gentle and pleasant.

Shit, Schey thought. He reached leisurely into his pocket for “&2s

Vfs-Z the gun, but then decided against it. He was not a common murderer. If he did kill this man, his body would be found and the chase would be on.

“Hell,” Schey said.

Eva said something in the back, but he ignored her. “Tucumcari.

We might be able to get over to Amarillo and get a ride up from there easier than from down here.”

“The Raton Pass is open, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the fat man said. They still had not moved. Several cars and a truck had passed them on the highway. Schey felt very exposed here. But he also had the feeling that the man was lying to them.

“No, it’s the traffic. Can’t get a ride if there’s no cars on the highway.”

The fat man shook his head.

“Look,” Schey said, taking a chance. He reached for the car door and opened it. “Thanks, anyway. But if you don’t want to help us out, we understand.” Schey half turned toward the back.

“Don’t we, honey?” he said.

“Sure,” Eva said on cue. “It’ll be morning before too long.”

“Close the door,” the fat man said after a moment’s hesitation.

“Damnation, ain’t nobody going to accuse me of leavin’ someone to camp out all night on some stupid highway.”

Schey looked at the man. “You sure now?”

“Yeah, sure,” the fat man said. “Close the door.”

Schey closed the door. The fat man pulled away from the side of the road, accelerated through the gears, and then looked in the mirror at Eva.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am, you sure got a nice set of gams.”

Schey had to laugh. Eva did too. “Why, thank you, Mr … ?”

Eva’s voice trailed into a question mark.

“Shamus. Burt Shamus. I work for Westinghouse. We just shipped a big load into Albuquerque. It’s headed up to Santa Fe someplace. I had to ride