Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

ONE Wednesday

      “She’ll call the police if I don’t come home.”

      Professor Thaddeus Bartholomew kept his hands on the wheel the way he’d been directed, his eyes straight ahead. Actually it was a desperate gamble, his last. His wife had been dead over two years.

      “Shut up and drive.” The man in the seat next to him pressed the snout of the revolver against Bartholomew’s thigh and he tensed involuntarily and felt the gun nose him hard.

      In the headlights, giant windmills whirred against the night sky. They’d been driving toward Palm Springs for almost half an hour and they were getting close.

      Bartholomew had spent the entire time searching his mind for a way out and finding none. He was a scholar, at home in the tranquil world of old wars and settled battles; the voices that called to him were the ones that lived on the page and in polite debates on the History Channel. He realized in that instant he could speak so confidently about history because it was done.

      It wasn’t sitting next to him reeking with sweat, crazed with some plan to maim and kill a substantial part of the world’s population.

      A plan Bartholomew feared had every chance of working.

      Bartholomew rubbed his hands on the wheel and tried again. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you could talk to me about it again. Make me see.” His voice held a tremor he didn’t like.

      “Turn left here.” The gun jabbed him again.

      “Careful with the gun.” Bartholomew instinctively jerked the wheel toward the dark dirt road leading between the high fields of soy. He slowed to avoid a sudden dip in the road.

      He thought despairingly of how he’d almost made it to the car when the man had emerged from the shadows of the parking garage. He could admit it now; why lie, what was the point? He’d been flattered, more than happy to stand there a few moments listening. Relieved to postpone going home to an empty house and his solitary meal.

      They’d talked before; or more precisely, he’d listened to him rant. Bartholomew wasn’t a man given to snap criticisms, but this man scared him.

      At least he did now.

      There’d been enough signs.

      Documented. Why hadn’t he ever documented what the man was saying?

      Ironic, when he thought about it. His lifework had been spent painstakingly resurrecting those marginalized, forgotten ones history had relegated to footnotes: the dispossessed, disenfranchised, the lost. Yet here was one of that very number whose words Bartholomew hadn’t thought to record. And the ingenious plan the man proposed had made him recoil in horror. The very next instant, it seemed, he’d found a gun pressing into his side.

      Fast. It had happened so fast.

      He wasn’t going to make it out of this.

      Not alive.

      “Stop right here.”

      They were in a small dirt parking lot next to a four-acre plot of soy contained by a barbwire fence. On the fence was a sign:

       USDA EXPERIMENTAL SOY PROJECT 3627

       DO NOT ENTER

       VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

      “Turn off the engine.”

      Bartholomew shivered, his head bowed. The man reached over and switched the engine off, yanking out the keys.

      “Move.”

      “Where?” His lips were numb.

      He’d left the headlights on and in the wash of light, barbwire hung in strands where it had been cut, revealing a hole large enough for a man to crawl into the dark rows of soy.

      “I’m giving you to the count of ten.” His voice was flat.

      Bartholomew lurched off the seat and scrambled toward the gaping hole, his heart hammering.

      “One.”

      He clawed through the fence break, his jacket catching on the barbwire, and plunged into the soy. A cloying, sweet smell bit his nostrils. The ground was uneven and the darkness almost impenetrable. He stumbled and went down hard on his knee, feeling the dark cold earth and the familiar odor of mulch. Pain shot through his knee.

      “Two.”

      The voice was coming from the outside perimeter of the fence.

      Bartholomew whimpered and immediately cut it off, swallowing the metallic taste of fear that was flooding his mouth. He grasped a sturdy plank of soy and heaved himself up. The stalks upended under his weight, the roots leaking clots of dirt. He took a staggering step and regained his balance. The pain was volcanic, roaring up his thigh into his groin.

      “Three.”

      He thrashed farther into the thicket and felt the stalks give way, sending him sprawling into a cultivated field. He panted shallowly, getting his bearings. In the dim moonlight, he could see the soy laid out in neat, bristling rows. He scanned the field and spotted another place along the fence where the soy seemed to be growing wild. He limped toward it, gripping his thigh above his injured knee to brace himself.

      Dimly, he’d been hearing numbers.

      “Eight,” his attacker said, his voice still distant.

      Bartholomew wormed his way as far as possible back into the dense undergrowth and slid down, gripping his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible.

      His cell phone.

      “Nine. I lied. Any last words?”

      The voice was dead-sounding, clearly coming now from somewhere inside the fence, and most alarming, seemed to be turned straight toward him.

      His attacker couldn’t possibly see him. Bartholomew yanked the cell phone free and dialed the familiar number, his hands shaking so badly he balanced the phone on his good knee to find the numbers. His phone was an old model, the kind nobody made anymore. The keys sounded unnaturally loud. He waited for the voicemail to kick in.

      He had to focus now, figure out what to say and how to say it. He peered at the small electronic keyboard in his hand, lit with the comforting green light. His fingers moved carefully across the keys.

      “Okay, then.” The man’s voice was closer.

      The air seemed to shiver and in the next instant, a piercing pain slammed into Bartholomew’s chest. The velocity of it crashed him backward and sent the cell phone flying from his grasp.

      At first all he felt was stunned disbelief coupled with a roaring pain, and then he realized something was lodged in his chest. A stick.

      An arrow.

      He couldn’t breathe. No, he could breathe, but not deeply; he couldn’t move, he was pinned to the ground. It was getting warm under him now, and that was a comfort. He touched the arrow and wondered if he could risk yanking it up. The soy above him parted and he stared up at his attacker’s face. It was blank as an insect’s. The man was holding aloft the cell phone.

      Goggles, Bartholomew thought wonderingly. Why was he wearing goggles?

      Wordlessly, the attacker shifted the crossbow in his grasp. He reached down and grasped the arrow and—God no!—yanked it with all his might and then tipped it back and forth as if trying to work it free and a fresh wave of pain engulfed Bartholomew.

      He cried out in terror and pain, his voice an incoherent tumble of words pleading and thank God it stopped, stopped and his attacker pulled a water bottle from his jacket.

      Bartholomew’s field of vision was narrowing, the edges fuzzy and gray. He fought to stay conscious. His attacker unscrewed the bottle and tipped it over him and for a brief instant, Bartholomew thought, Water,