From the car, the Death Merchant had difficulty locating the overpass. He was using his phone for guidance but the reception was spotty. Sometimes it lost the signal and couldn’t update his location. The first overpass he stopped at was just a bridge over a small creek. He stared into the darkness, trying to will his eyes to adjust, but he could not spot any trail there.
“Shit!” he roared, rushing to get back in his car and speeding away into the night.
He moved his eyes from the road to his phone, scared he might miss a curve from not paying attention. When he caught a pocket of signal, his GPS app updated and showed he had not yet reached the overpass he was looking for.
The next overpass was not the correct one either. It was a bridge spanning a narrow valley between hills and he could see no trail there. He was nearly in panic mode now, concerned he’d missed her entirely and he would not find her on this night. He couldn’t wait another full day. This ended tonight. The Death Merchant did not put things off. He did not stop before the mission was complete.
Back in the car, he drove a little too quickly on the narrow and unfamiliar road, his tire dropping off the shoulder several times.
“Slow down,” he warned himself.
At the next overpass, he was in luck. There was a brown sign indicating bike trail access. The Death Merchant smiled and pulled over into a cramped gravel lot. He killed his engine and ambled out in the darkness.
With no flashlight, he was reduced to stumbling around in what little ambient light there was. He couldn’t see any details, only enough shapes and generalities to find his way. He got his hand on a stone railing and followed it out to the center of the overpass and listened.
Dead silence.
Had she passed already or was he ahead of her? He had no idea how long it would take a bicyclist to reach this point. Then it occurred to him he had no plan for what he was going to do when she came along. How would he take her down? Was he going to leap onto her back like in the movies? Not likely.
He couldn’t see the exact distance but it looked like a significant drop from the overpass to the trail. No, he needed something he could drop on her. Something that would wreck and incapacitate her without killing her.
The Death Merchant returned to the car and flipped on the headlights. He studied the area illuminated by the lights for anything he might use as a missile. There was a green barrel being used as a trash can but when it tried to pick it up it was too heavy. He was certain he could roll it into position but it was heavy enough it would probably kill anyone it landed on. While it was certainly part of the plan that Amanda die tonight, he wanted it to be a more personal, intimate event.
He wanted to speak with her first. He wanted her to admit to what she’d done.
He spotted a tree limb just beyond the edge of the parking lot. It must have snapped off a tree and dropped into the parking lot before being shoved to the side. The Death Merchant was not a good estimate of size, but he thought the limb to be twice as tall as him. The largest end was as thick as his bicep. He picked it up and found it was something he could easily carry and toss off the overpass.
He heaved it up onto his shoulder, laying it on the hood of the car while he killed the headlights. This would be a shitty place to run down your battery, especially with a kidnapped girl in the back of the car. He was traipsing into position with his awkward load when he spotted the flicker of white light in the woods. He couldn’t see the trail but assumed it could be a headlight coming along the trail toward the overpass.
He smiled in the darkness. “I have a present for you CamaroChick19. Consider it a token of my friendship, of my utter fucking loathing for you. Let it serve as a reminder not to play with people’s feelings. We could have been good friends. I could have been anything you wanted.”
The headlight broke from the distant woods and he heard the steady sound of the tires rolling over fine gravel and cinders. The Death Merchant crouched and hid below the stone railing, not wanting to silhouette himself. He bobbed up occasionally, gauging the distance between himself and the rider.
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. He was tapped into an adventure such as he usually only experienced in his games.
When he felt the timing was right, he shot up and grabbed the limb in both hands. He dropped it, hoping his hurried calculations were correct.
They were.
Limb and rider met directly below him. There was a grunt, a curse, and the beam of the headlight skewed as the bike toppled over the shoulder of the trail.
“Yes!” the Death Merchant yelled, raising a fist in victory.
He ran for the end of the overpass, looped around the railing, and stumbled down the steep embankment to the trail. Several times his feet slid from beneath him and he sat down hard in the dirt. He didn’t care. He was nearly ecstatic at his success. It was perfectly executed.
From the trail he could see bike and rider tangled at the bottom of another embankment. After the limb had hit the rider and made her wreck, she’d rolled down a rock-strewn hill to where she lay now.
“That had to hurt,” he said. “Consider it the appetizer.”
He scrambled after her to the extent a four-hundred pound man could scramble. She was face down, moaning in pain but conscious. He flipped the bike over until the light shone in her direction. He flipped her over and staggered backward in shock.
It was not CamaroChick19.
The boy from the bike shop was bleeding, his mouth a rictus of pain. His eyes bore into the Death Merchant’s. “Why did you do that?”
The Death Merchant had no answer. He fell backward, then got to his feet and crawled up the embankment to the trail. He stopped there, breathing hard, and looked back at the kid. He didn’t know what to do with him but the more time he wasted there, the more likely it was the girl was going to escape.
He climbed the steep path back to his car. At the top, he was breathing hard and stumbling, his legs weak from the exertion. He sagged into the car seat and brought up the GPS app on his phone. He was pleased to find he had a signal, pleased for the one fucking thing that was going his way right now. He studied the map.
There was another overpass. Surely the girl had to be between that one and here. He had another shot if he could get there soon enough. He started the car and backed up. The car struck the green garbage barrel and there was a crunch of steel. It did not slow him. He stomped the gas and slewed out into the road.
“Let her be there,” he begged. “Let her be tired and slow and let her be there.”