Life or Death Read Free Page B

gone for the money. He hopes he spends the rest of his life sipping pina coladas in Cancun or cocktails in Monte Carlo. Screw the bastards! The best revenge is to live well.

3
    Just before dawn the stars seem brighter and Audie can pick out the constellations. Some he can name: Orion and Cassiopeia and Ursa Major. Others are so distant they’re bringing light from millions of years ago, as though history were reaching across time and space to shine upon the present.
    There are people who believe their fates are written in the stars, and if that’s true then Audie must have been born under a bad sign. He’s not a believer in fate or destiny or karma. Nor does he think that everything happens for a reason and that luck evens itself out over a lifetime, falling a little here and there like it comes from a passing raincloud. In his own heart he knows that death could find him at any moment and that life is about getting the next footstep right.
    Untying the laundry bag, he takes out a change of clothes: jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that he stole from one of the guards who left a gym bag in his unlocked car. He pulls on socks and laces his feet into his wet boots.
    After burying his prison clothes, he waits until the eastern horizon is edged in orange before he begins walking. A creek crosses a narrow gravel wash, feeding the reservoir. Mist clings to the lower ground and two herons stand in the shallow water, looking like lawn ornaments. The mud banks are pockmarked with holes made by nesting swallows that flit back and forth, barely brushing the surface of the water. Audie follows the creek until he comes to a dusty farm track and a single-lane bridge. He sticks to the road, listening for vehicles and watching for clouds of dust.
    The sun comes up, red and shimmering above a line of stunted trees. Four hours later, water is a memory and the blazing orb is like a welder’s flame against the back of his neck. Dust cakes every wrinkle and hollow of his skin and he’s alone on the road.
    Past midday, he climbs a rise, trying to get his bearings. It looks like he’s crossing a dead world that some ancient civilization has left behind. The trees are huddled along the old watercourses like herded beasts, and heat shimmers off a flatland that is threaded with motorbike tracks and turkey trails. His khaki pants are hanging low and there are hoops of sweat beneath his arms. Twice he has to hide from passing trucks, slipping and sliding down loose rocks and shale, crouching behind brush or boulders. Stopping to rest, he sits on a flat rock and remembers the time his daddy chased him around the yard because he caught him stealing milk money from people’s doorsteps.
    ‘Who put you up to it?’ he demanded to know, twisting Audie’s ear.
    ‘Nobody.’
    ‘Tell me the truth or I’ll do worse.’
    Audie said nothing. He took his punishment like a man, rubbing the welts on his thighs and seeing the disappointment in his daddy’s eyes. His older brother Carl watched from the house.
    ‘You did good,’ Carl said afterwards, ‘but you shoulda hid the money.’
    Audie climbs back onto the road and continues walking. During the afternoon he crosses a sealed road with four lanes and follows it from a distance, taking cover when traffic blows past. In another mile he comes to a dirt track curving north. In the distance, along the rutted road, there are mud tanks and pumps. A derrick is silhouetted against the sky with a flame burning from the apex, creating a shimmer in the air. At night it must be visible for miles, standing atop a mini-city of lights like a fledgling colony on a distant planet.
    Studying the derrick, Audie fails to see an old man watching him. Stocky and brown, he’s wearing coveralls and a wide-brimmed hat. He’s standing next to a boom gate with a painted pole and a weighted end. Nearby is a shelter with three walls and a roof. A Dodge pickup is parked beneath a lone tree.
    The old man has a pockmarked face, flat