Both arms smashed and useless, he scooted on his back, pushing against the ground with his outstretched legs. He fought to keep consciousness. He propped his numbing body up against the front tire of the Pontiac.
"YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!" he shouted.
The shadowed figure, looming over him like a spectral demon, smiled.
Gravel rolled under foot.
Jake's cries tore at the tendons in his throat.
And the iron bar came down.
His body went numb in an explosion of pain and bright light. A weak ache filled his lower abdomen. He felt as if he were floating. And then his eyes drifted down to the two feet of exposed iron bar that had pierced him through like a medieval javelin. His life slowly poured away. Intestines jutted from the exit wound in his back.
He tilted his head back. His eyes drifted up. . .
And it was one monster looking into the eyes of another monster.
He tried to speak, but words wouldn't come. His heartbeat was slowing, growing weaker and weaker with the dark blood flowing from his body. It soaked through his torn shirt, pooled in his lap, and flowed in streams over his thighs, painting the gravel below in a flood of red.
The spectral figure brought forth a small bag from a jacket pocket. Its contents were emptied into a gloved hand.
The short, coarse, black hairs of an African American were sprinkled purposely over Jake Blaine, settling to his clothing, settling to the blood-washed gravel.
A warmth spread through Jake's body as his remaining breaths blew away the thinning threads of his inner life force. And as those final breaths came, so came the full-throated, sardonic voice of the man he had known as Tucker.
"Don't you know, partner?. . .It ain't safe to hitchhike."
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