Gone South by Robert R. McCammon Read Free Book Online Page A

to a hazy slow-motion. Dan was aware of the guard cowering against a wall. Mrs. Duvall fled into the corridor, still shrieking. Then Dan felt himself moving around the desk toward Blanchard, and though he knew he was moving as fast as he could, it was more like a strange, disembodied drifting. Bright red arterial blood was pulsing from Blanchard’s throat in rhythm with his heart. Dan dropped the pistol, got down on his knees, and pressed his hands, against the wound. “No!” Dan said, as if to a disobedient child. “No!” Blanchard stared up at him, his chilly blue eyes glazed and his mouth half open. The blood kept spurting, flowing between Dan’s fingers. Blanchard shuddered, his legs moving feebly, his heels plowing the carpet. He coughed once. A red glob of chewing gum rolled from his mouth, followed by rivulets of blood that streamed over his lower lip.
    “No oh God no please no don’t die,” Dan began to beg. Something broke inside him, and the tears ran out. He was trying to stop the bleeding, trying to hold the blood back, but it was a tide that would not be turned. “Call an ambulance!” he shouted. The guard didn’t move; without his gun the man’s courage had crumpled like cheap tin. “Somebody call an ambulance!” Dan pleaded. “Hang on!” he told Blanchard. “Do you hear? Hang on!”
    Blanchard had begun making a harsh hitching noise deep in his chest. The sound filled Dan with fresh terror. He knew what it was. He heard it before, in ’Nam: the death watch, ticking.
    The police, Mrs. Duvall had said.
    The police are comin’.
    Blanchard’s face was white and waxen, his tie and shirt soaked with gore. The blood was still pulsing, but Blanchard’s eyes stared at nothing.
    Murder, Dan realized. Oh Jesus, I’ve murdered him.
    No ambulance could make it in time. He knew it. The bullet had done too much damage. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Dan said, his voice cracking. His eyes blurred up with tears. “I’m sorry, dear God I’m sorry.”
    The police are comin’.
    The image of handcuffs and iron bars came to him. He saw his future, confined behind stone walls topped with barbed wire.
    There was nothing more he could do.
    Dan stood up, the room slowly spinning around him. He looked at his bloodied hands, and smelled the odor of a slaughterhouse.
    He ran, past the guard and out of the office. Standing in the corridor were people who’d emerged from their own offices, but when they saw Dan’s bloody shirt and his gray-tinged face they scurried out of his way. He ran past the elevator, heading for the stairwell.
    At the bottom of the stairwell were two doors, one leading back into the teller’s area and another with a sign that said EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY! ALARM WILL SOUND! AS Dan shoved the exit door open, a high-pitched alarm went off in his ear. Searing sunlight hit him; he was facing the parking lot beside the bank. His truck was in a space twenty yards away, past the automatic teller machine and the drive-up windows. There was no sign yet of a police car. He ran to his truck, frantically unlocked the door, and slid behind the wheel. Two men, neither of them a police officer, came out of the emergency exit and stood gawking as Dan started the engine, put the truck into reverse, and backed out of the parking space. His brakes shrieked when he stomped on the pedal to keep from smashing the car parked behind him. Then he twisted the wheel and sped out of the lot, and with another scream of brakes and tires he took a left on the street. A glance in his rearview mirror showed a police car, its bubble lights spinning, pulling up to the curb in front of the building. He had no sooner focused his attention on the street ahead than a second police car flashed past him, trailing a siren’s wail, in the direction of the bank.
    Dan didn’t know how much time he had. His apartment was five miles to the west. Beads of sweat clung to his face, blood smeared all over the steering wheel.
    A sob welled up