The Long Road

Jason L. Henderson

Description

A fast-paced thriller for readers interested in road trips and things that go bump in the night.
The year is 1984. Carl is a teenager in a Chicago suburb. He’s lived in the same neighborhood his entire life. He has turned to a life of petty crime to help his parents pay the bills. He goes to parties with friends. He has a girlfriend with a wild streak. And he only has one adult he really trusts, the owner of a local mechanic’s shop, Slim. After being talked into breaking into a hotel and stealing a briefcase, his friend is shot, and Carl finds himself traveling down an unfamiliar path. He turns to Slim, who has a side business stripping stolen cars and shipping parts out all over the country. To help save Carl’s life, Slim sends Carl and his acquaintance Rick on a delivery out of town.
As the two travel, they come across bikers who have deep secrets hidden in their hideout, a group of mysterious men acting as guards, mercenaries, rich folks having an elegant party, a group of terrorists, and a girl who doesn’t quite fit in. And who is the pale, blond man from the hotel where the failed theft took place. And what does he have in common with Rick?
Having rarely left the safe confines of his Chicago neighborhood, Carl is tasked with abandoning the delivery and going into hiding for the rest of his life… or seeing the delivery through to the end. Will he complete it successfully? Will the leader of an organized crime outfit catch up to him? Or will things that go bump in the night end his terrifying journey before he can get back home to his family?

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Teenagers
• Suspenso
• Adult
• Horror
• Supernatural
• Hurlements 2
• Road Trip
• Suspense
• Thriller
• Fiction
• Vampire

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 13 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663254436
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE LONG ROAD
 
 
 
 
JASON L HENDERSON
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE LONG ROAD
 
 
Copyright © 2023 Jason L Henderson.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
iUniverse
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
844-349-9409
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-5442-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-5443-6 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912541
 
iUniverse rev. date: 07/10/2023
CONTENTS
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Now
 
 
 
 
 
 
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8
ONE
1984
The tires on the 1969 Hurst Oldsmobile squealed as the car slid into the intersection at an uncontrollable speed. It skimmed across the wet pavement as it turned left onto the side street, smashing into a trio of metal garbage cans sitting by the curb. The streetlight hanging overhead blew out as trash flew from the cans and merged with the raging downpour before landing on the sidewalk. For several seconds, the car remained motionless as the sound of the engine turning over could be heard half a block away. With each turn of the ignition, the headlights flickered a little dimmer as the engine cranked over. Steam emanated from the broken front grill, interlacing with the lights as it rose up through the large drops of rain. After a short pause between attempts, the engine roared to life, and the car’s tires once again squealed as it sped away from the curb with the freed garbage cans falling over behind it.
Carl was having trouble seeing out the windshield. The wipers were old and providing a subpar performance. It seemed like each swipe of the blade left a trail of rainwater larger than the previous. Bits of what looked like rotten lettuce and tomatoes from the garbage cans joined with the rainwater to make it even more difficult. At two in the morning, the working streetlights lined down the road only added to the problem. He stared out the food-contaminated glass, seeing nothing but blurred images.
As if it would do any good, Carl leaned forward in the bucket seat bringing his face closer to the windshield. He brushed his long, black hair from his faced and tried to focus on finding the next intersection. A fog from his breath formed on the glass. He frantically used the sleeve of his denim jacket to clear it away. The lines on the road were hidden under the refractive water. He couldn’t tell which side of the road they were on. Using shadows from streetlights and distorted images from both sides of the road, he deduced that the car was driving somewhere near the center line.
The car sprang over an upward sloping hill in the road, and its tires briefly left the ground. It landed with a thud, causing Carl’s cheek to bounce off the hard steering wheel. He quickly regained control and jerked the wheel to the left as they began to slide around another corner.
Kevin appeared in the rearview mirror as the momentum of the turn threw his body to the right side of the car. He cried out in pain as his body thudded against the passenger side. Rick, sitting behind Carl in the backseat, reached out and held onto Kevin as the car completed its turn.
A hand clutched Carl’s arm. “Dammit, Carl! Slow down. You’re going to kill us or get us caught by the cops,” Rick shouted.
Carl glanced to the mirror again. Rick held his hand over the gunshot wound on Kevin’s stomach. Blood was running down Kevin’s abdomen, covering the front part of his pants and staining the white leather seat. Several handprints tarnished the roof of the car and the side windows as a result of being thrown around as Carl bobbed and weaved through the city.
He made another sharp turn before stepping down harder on the gas pedal. “I can’t slow down! Kevin’s been shot. If we don’t get it taken care of, he’s going to die, man.”
“It’s not going to help our situation out any if we end up getting busted,” Rick shouted, looking up from Kevin’s wound to meet Carl’s gaze in the mirror. His jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. “How would we explain this to the cops? Look at us, man. They’d have us fuckin’ jerked out of the car, bent over the hood, and handcuffed before we even opened our mouths. You know they wouldn’t give a shit what we say. They’d see the blood back here and react accordingly to two young punks in a stolen car with their friend bleeding to death in the back seat.” Still glancing in the mirror whenever time allowed, Carl watched Rick reach up and thump his shoulder with an open hand. “Slow down, man.”
With the rain coming down hard and heavy, the wind made it seem like the water droplets ran horizontal. Lightning and thunder got more intense as each minute passed. The shadows cast from parked cars, light posts, and other various items that lay to each side of the road again began to fade out and disappear, stirring a different kind of fear in Carl. He’d been running on adrenaline since the gunfire back at the hotel. Up to this point, he hadn’t thought about much of anything other than getting his friend to safety as quickly as possible. With Rick’s plea echoing in his mind, Carl took what seemed like his first breath since rushing out of the hotel. He slightly eased up on the foot pedal.
In the mirror, Carl could see Rick reassuring Kevin that they would get him patched up soon. Streaks of blood covered most of his face, but Carl could see Kevin’s complexion was becoming pasty. He wasn’t flailing about and grinding through the pain like he’d been just a few minutes earlier. Weakness from the loss of blood was setting in. If Carl didn’t get Kevin safely to Slim’s place, the kid would surely die.
“It wasn’t supposed to go down like that,” Carl whispered to no one. Rick told them that he had scoped the place out for over a month, making the score sound easy. He’d said that every time there had been a delivery, the men would exit the hotel to enjoy dinner several blocks down the road at a strip joint named Doc’s, leaving the goods behind in the room, unsupervised. Their job was to break in through the window in the back bedroom, grab the briefcase full of money, and be gone within twenty, thirty seconds tops.
A flash of lightning revealed a street sign that read Jefferson Avenue. Another jolt of adrenaline ran through his body as they neared their destination. He drove past the street and turned down the alley just another sixty feet away.
Still driving faster than he should, the car bounced and clanked as it ran through deep puddles of water, splashing mud, trash, and rock onto the car. For as many times as he’d been down the sandy, pebbled soil, he couldn’t remember the holes being so bad. As the car bounced out of one of the puddles, it sprang to the far side of the alley, causing the vehicle to scrape down the side of an old block building.
As he steered the car back to the center of the alley, the building they needed approached just twenty feet away to the left. He slammed on the brakes, and the car halted abruptly behind the building with a large garage door on the left side, closest to them. Above the door, a three-foot by four-foot sign read Phelps Garage in large black letters. Running along the bottom in smaller red letters, it read 24-Hour Towing Ser vice .
Carl jammed the shifter between the bucket seats into park and turned the lights off so no other cars passing the alley could see them. He flung the car door open and ran out into the rain, splashing through small streams of water. To the right of the garage door, a smaller service door sat atop a three-by-three-foot section of concrete up on two steps near the edge of the building. It had a small porcelain overhanging light above it. It was nearly the only light in the entire alley. To the side of the building lay a fenced-in lot Slim used for his business. It always reminded Carl more of a junkyard than a lot. With all the overgrown weeds and piles of junk cars, it was hard to tell if the front half of it was ever even used or if it was just a vehicle graveyard. The back half was certainly used all the time. Even now as he stood under the light with the rain droplets beating down on him, Carl noticed all the recent non-customer cars waiting to be stripped down and sold off in the far corner.
He didn’t try opening the door. It was always locked. He flipped a patch of his long, black, and now-soaked hair out of the way before pounding on it and shouting loudly, “Slim, open up. It’s Carl. I’ve got an emergency, man!” He stuck his ear to the door to listen for any signs of someone coming.
Carl slapped his hand on the door again. “Slim, I’m serious. I really need you to—”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” came a voice from the alley near the far end of the car, which still sat idlin