Red Stripes by Matt Hilton Page A

standing by its rear. The figure stepped forward, raised his hand. Oh, my God! Was that a gun? Something flashed. She let out a cry of disbelief, yanking hard on the steering wheel. It was reflex, or panic, perhaps both.
    The tires bit into the soft shoulder at the edge of the road; then there was nothing beneath them and the car began to roll. The forest opened its arms to greet her. The next instant was filled with showering sparks and raining glass, the shriek of tortured metal and numbing collisions as her head was repeatedly slammed and jostled. Her mind was full of darkness.
    And that’s when Brook had come to, screaming.
    Her body felt immensely heavy, and the pressure behind her eyes was overwhelming. She didn’t understand that she was hanging upside down, or that the pain across her throat was the seat belt cinched garrote tight.
    She wanted nothing more than to be home. She had no time for this !
    There was a stench in her nostrils and her face and hair were slick with fluid. The liquid wasn’t blood; it was more acidic than that. Like chemicals.
    She stopped screaming to spit out the vile stuff, and turned her eyes to seek out the source of a new sound invading her mind. Voices, talking excitedly as they approached.
    “Help me,” she croaked.
    “Is she dead?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Help me,” she said again more loudly. And she suddenly understood what she was soaked with. “I’m covered in gasoline. Please . . . somebody help me.”
    “She’s still alive,” the first voice said.
    “Yeah,” said the other. “We need to do something quick.”
    Thank God, she thought, I’m going to see my children again.
    Then the first one said, “Yeah. Take these matches. You’d better finish her off.”

CHAPTER 1
    T he clouds failed to conceal the moon. It scowled like a drunkard’s bloodshot eye over the rim of an empty glass. The disc was low on the horizon, bloated and red, and I couldn’t help aiming a derisive snort its way. A hunter’s moon: how ironic was that?
    Walking slowly, my hands stuffed in my coat pockets, I felt the same breeze that made ribbons of the clouds tug at my clothing. In a baseball cap, scuffed leather coat and denims, I wandered up the center of the main street of Bedford Well, with no care for traffic. It was after three in the morning and the only things moving were the cats with which I shared the night.
    There was no one around. I hadn’t seen another soul since arriving in town and parking my Audi in the darkened lot of a 7-Eleven. That suited me. I’d rather be here and gone before causing a blip on anyone’s radar. Should any insomniac glance out of a window I’d appear unremarkable, just another guy down on his luck with no real destination in mind, passing through on his way to an undetermined destiny. That suited me as well.
    Three nights ago I’d been on the Florida Gulf Coast and it had been warm enough for shorts and a bare chest as I’d reclined on the deck that overlooked the beach. Now the leather jacket was necessary for more than concealing the gun in my belt. The wind sweeping down off the Pennsylvania hills held a lingering nip of winter and that didn’t suit me at all.
    My limp wasn’t very pronounced, not after three months of hard exercise to get back up to speed, but the cold reminded me that not too long ago I’d been both shot and stabbed in the right leg. The pain was just a dull ache and I pushed it to the back of my mind. Pain is an ally; it confirms that you’re still alive. I’d been fed bucketloads of similar psychobabble when in the military—some of it helpful, most of it horseshit. Mostly, pain hurts and it slows you down. How could that be a soldier’s friend? Made me wonder if maybe I wasn’t fit for this line of work anymore, and that the accumulation of injuries picked up throughout the years was conspiring against me. Or, like my best friend Rink often joked, age was beginning to catch up with me.
    Maybe there was