Disappearance (22 page)

"Damn it!"

As we merge onto I-65, I look out the rear view mirror at Nashville behind me. Who knows if I'll live to see it again.

With Nashville fading further into the background, I wonder where we are going next. There are little towns here and there, but I can't imagine a reason to stop at any of them. As much as I am an optimist, I can't picture the black car stopping at a rest stop. Louisville maybe, but even that seems doubtful. We didn't stop in Nashville so why would we stop in Louisville?

I realize then I have to take matters into my own hands. I have to either find a way to take control of this car or smash through one of the windows and jump out. At ninety miles per hour, the latter option is likely suicide, but if I can at least have the glass broken through so I'm ready, there may be an opportunity to jump if the black car slows down for some reason.

I start with option A, taking control of the car. There aren't many buttons on this machine but I push them all, not caring what they say they claim to do. I even try pushing multiple buttons together in different combinations. I'm just hoping for some blind luck that there's some combination or bug in the system that allows me driving access.

When nothing works, I resort to smashing and kicking the dashboard. I wish I could say things started to break, but the inside of the car seems to be as durable as the outside.

As technologically advanced as this car is, I don't think kicking buttons is going to do anything. Since I'm filled with rage, I move to option B, smashing through windows. I throw Tabby in the backseat to protect her from my crazy episode. I lean back, and with the heel of my foot I start kicking as hard as I can at the driver's side window. Kick after kick does no harm to the window or my foot. In my last fit of rage I get the wise idea to punch the glass with my hand and instantly realize what a stupid idea this was. I rarely drop the F-bomb, but I leash out a few of them. Then I remember I have my ax. How could I forget about the ax sitting on the passenger seat floorboard?

The car is small, so I can't give it my full on baseball swing but I give it all I have. The side window has no chance of breaking, though. I shot my gun at it, so why would an ax do anything?

I look back at Tabby, who's studying me with interest. When I look up I realize the only window I haven't tried to break is the back window. It seems pointless but if I don't give it a try I'll drive myself crazy until I do.

"Come here Tabby, you need to go back to the front seat," I say as I toss her to the front.

When I get in the back seat, I realize I can put a pretty good swing together with this extra room. I take a deep breath, then build up all the rage inside of me I can muster and make the hardest swing I can.

When the ax breaks through the back window, I'm so surprised I almost lose my grip. It cuts through the glass like a knife going through butter. Glass flies back everywhere as I close my eyes and turn my head away.

When I look out the window, I see glass skipping and bouncing its way across the highway behind me. The sound of the wind coming from the back window is quite loud. I stick my hand out to feel it, and I'm amazed by how much force there is at this speed.

I take my ax and keep chipping away at the rest of the glass. The wind makes it easy, and before I know it I have the entire back window all cleared out.

With this gaping hole, I turn into the scared parent and realize if Tabby gets too close to that back window the force of the wind will take her away. I'll need to keep constant watch of her to make sure she doesn't try to get out.

I look out the window again and wonder if there's a way to jump without killing Tabby or myself. Is there some way I can soften the blow? Looking around, I see there's not much to work with. I could take apart one of the seats and use it as a cushion but something tells me this wouldn't go as planned. I'm not at a desperate enough stage yet to actually consider doing this. For now, I wait and hope there's a time when I can grab Tabby and jump out the window. Images flash in my head of what the black car would do if we escaped. Would it turn itself around and try to run us over, or would it keep on driving? There are many mysteries about this car I feel I've yet to find out.

For now, I think I've exhausted all my good ideas. I look through the front window and see we're still moving forward too fast. I lie down in the backseat to think and rest. I don't plan on napping; if we make some kind of turn I don't want to miss it.

I lie there and the moment I close my eyes, Tabby jumps on my belly and lies down. I start petting her and she purrs her approval. It only takes a couple minutes before she closes her eyes and falls asleep. Sleeping and purring, Tabby is in little kitty heaven. If she only knew what kind of danger she's in.

Seeing her this relaxed does ease some of my tension, though. It's kind of like when you see someone yawn in a meeting and it sets off a chain reaction of yawns. Seeing Tabby falling asleep makes me close my eyes and, before I know it, I drift off as well.

When I wake up, realization takes over and I jump forward. How long was I asleep? When I look out the window, I still see a long stretch of highway in front of me.

Tabby wakes up when I push her off me but quickly falls back asleep. I really need to go to the bathroom now. I can't hold it any longer. Fortunately, for now it's just number one. I look out the back window to see if I can make this work. I take my pants completely off. Tabby opens her eyes, wondering what on Earth I'm doing. Her attention fades and falls back asleep.

There's a short area above the seats that I can lie on. When I try to get into position, though, I realize my body is too big. With one leg down on the seat, I adjust my body so it's sort of in position. When I let it go, the wind takes it out like a vacuum sucking up dirt. This is working much better than I expected and provides some entertainment value as well. As I finish, the stream comes back and some of it gets on my leg. The warm, wet feeling is gross but in the end it was well worth it. I feel much better now.

I go back up to the front seat and put my pants back on. When I look back, I expect to see Tabby still asleep but she isn't there. When I see her above the seat my mouth drops. She jumped up to the window and is now inches away from falling out!

"Tabby, no! Get away from there." But she doesn't even look back at me. She walks through the back window, not knowing the strong force of the wind would take her away. By the time I reach to grab her, it's too late.

I turn my head away, not bearing to see her fall to her potential doom.

Chapter 20

When I do look up, Tabby is far off in the distance. I see a black spot on the highway, which is no doubt her, but I can't tell if she's alive or how badly damaged her body is.

Being this close to the window, I get a good feel for how fast we're going. It makes my stomach queasy because, as nimble as cats are, that is a nasty fall at an incredible speed.

I have seconds to decide if I should jump out after her, but it's an easy decision. I could die -- and probably would -- if I jumped. Best-case scenario, I would break every bone in my body, which would be no good for either of us.

I start crying when I think about her helping me in the woods. It's very possible I would have made it out alive, but then again I might not have. Now and forever I feel Tabby saved my life. That little black cat was there for me at a time when nobody else was and now I'm abandoning her.

My sadness turns to anger as I see the black car continue to speed along. Someone is behind all of this. Whether it's a human being or some higher power, there's someone accountable for this happening to Tabby. If there were a way to control the car, I never would have broken through the window - and Tabby would never have fallen out. I'm going to kill whoever's responsible.

Deep down, I know I'm at fault as well. I knew I had to keep a very close eye on her because she wouldn't know any better. What a terrible parent I would be. I've had a cat less than a day and for all I know she lies dead on the road.

I move to the front seat to see if I can whip up any more great ideas. I'm starting to get hungry, but it doesn't look like we're stopping through McDonald's any time soon.

Am I going to starve to death? Of all the ways to die, I think this is up there as one of the worst. How long am I going to be in this car with no food or water? A few days? Maybe a week? How long would it -- or should I say
will
it -- take before I jump out that back window?

I only wish I knew the time. I don't know why it bothers me so much not knowing, but in my entire adult life I've never gone more than a few waking hours without checking a watch or a clock. It's pretty sad when I think about it. I doubt cavemen were constantly looking up at the sun for the time.

As I sit in the passenger seat, I look in front of me and kick myself for not thinking of this earlier. I'm not sure what most people call it; my mom always called it a glove compartment. It's the little storage area that sits right in front of passenger seat. I've never seen a car without one. When I look at it, this car's glove compartment is sealed and hidden unlike any other car I've seen. I suppose all expensive cars have some fancy way of disguising this standard feature. For this particular car, the latch blends in with the rest of the panel. You wouldn't see it unless you looked really close. Nevertheless, here it is so I take the latch and pull it down - giddy with excitement for what I'm about to find.

When the compartment opens all the way, I'm instantly creeped out by what I find. While most glove compartments I've seen are jam-packed with stuff - owner's manual, other various car papers, GPS devices, CDs, etc. -- this car has one tiny item that sits oddly centered facing up. It's my wrinkled picture of Abby that was in my wallet - the one with the written message on the back.

I reach into my back pocket and see the picture is indeed missing from my wallet. When or how someone took it from my pocket, I'll never know. I think back to any time my wallet hasn't been right with me for safekeeping. When I slept each night, I always took my pants off but always had them next to me. When I took that bath, I was obviously naked but, again, my pants were nearby. As long and hard as I think about this, the more convinced I am that I've never had a moment where someone could have easily taken the picture out. And why would they want that picture in the first place?

I look around in my wallet for anything else they may have taken, but it all looks accounted for. There's sixty dollars in cash they didn't bother taking, but I guess that's not surprising since money is pretty worthless now. The most disturbing part is knowing that the wallet I have in my hands was recently in the hands of somebody else. I put the wallet up to my nose but can't detect any kind of a scent.

It's terrifying to think someone has been this close to me. Did they come in the middle of the night when I was sleeping? Yes, that's the only time they could have done it. I've always been a very deep sleeper. Countless times Abby has woken me up in the middle of the night because she heard something.

She always thought there was a burglar trying to break in, but each time I would get up and never find anything. I knew Abby would never fall back asleep unless I did a thorough check so I would always run outside, check the basement, and go everywhere else I thought a burglar or boogieman would be, but I never found or saw anyone.

I'd never admitted it to her, but there were a few times when I went outside and had an odd feeling someone was out there. Of course, when I came back inside, I would over-enthusiastically tell her everything was fine. I'm not sure I always convinced her but I usually did enough to get us both back to sleep.

If Abby were here and she knew someone came in the middle of the night and took a picture out of my wallet, she would never sleep again the rest of her life. I take the picture out of the glove compartment and put it back in my wallet. I hope I never see anything in that glove compartment ever again.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, I say to myself. I take my gun and decide it's time to start blasting again. With Tabby gone, I only have my own life to account for, which I care less and less about by the minute. I go to the backseat and decide to start blasting at the dashboard. Kicking it did nothing, but let's see how it handles being shot at.

Abby's picture, I'll admit, has me feeling a bit crazy. I get into position, propping the gun on the backseat. I figure the seat can protect me from any of the debris that will hopefully come flying off.

When I pull the trigger, the sound from the blast is unlike anything I've heard from a gun before. Even though the back window is gone, being in this enclosed space magnifies the sound. Without being able to have my feet firmly in place, the gun knocks me to the back of the seat. I can't see the dashboard because of the seat, but when I look at the backseat I see pieces of shattered glass and plastic and I know I've done a good job. When I do look, I see the dashboard has, in fact, been blown to pieces. Unfortunately, when I look through the front window, the car is no longer the precision driving machine it used to be. Before, I'd seen it drive everywhere exactly centered on the road. Now, it's starting to drift dangerously left.

As fast as my body can move, I leap to the front seat and am surprised by my own quickness. I turn the steering wheel and get excited when I feel the car move where I want it to go. Turns out, the dashboard was the brains of the vehicle.

The black car is still going the same speed so I ease on the brake, but this doesn't do anything. Before, the brake pedal seemed stuck and unable to move; now it moves but doesn't do anything. The gas pedal does the same, which means I still have no control over the speed of the car.

I steer the wheel from left to right, making sure it still works. My situation doesn't seem much better than before if I can't control the speed.