The Homeless Millionaire

My immediate, instinctual reaction was to tear myself free and that was a mistake. He tightened his grip, and f.u.c.k, was he ever strong. I heard myself wheezing and my brain went into overdrive. Throw a feint, it told me. Pretend to faint.

So I did. I emitted a pitiful choking sound and went limp. Thoughts flashed through my head at breakneck speed. I could try and reach back and go for his eyes with my thumbs, but chances were he'd just tighten his grip on my neck and I would really black out. Then I thought of the knife.

I'd completely forgotten about the Finnish knife taped inside my cowboy boot: it had been there for so long. I g.r.o.a.n.e.d and let my head loll to the side and he relaxed his grip slightly. I bent my leg and reached into the boot and pulled out the knife. He'd felt something was up and tightened his grip, choking me. I stabbed the forearm across my neck.

I did it much too lightly, the tip barely went in but he screamed, right into my ear. I stabbed him again with more force but it was no good, I was holding the knife the wrong way around, blade up. So I turned it over in my hand for a downward stab and stabbed him right below the wrist, really hard. I felt the blade hit bone and twisted the knife, pushing hard.

He screamed like a banshee and let go of my neck and I got out of my seat and opened the door and jumped out of the cabin. I slammed the door shut and ran to the front of the truck and backed off a few paces. He was screaming and cursing and throwing himself around in there. I could have made a run for it, there was no way he would catch me going up the slope. But my bag was still in the truck's cabin, and so was the Rembrandt.

He was climbing over the seats and to the front. I glanced around and saw a handy stone, palm-sized and nearly round. I picked it up, transferring the knife to my left hand. I heard the door to the cab open.

"You little cunt!" he shouted hoarsely. "I'm going to fix you good."

Metal clanged as he climbed out and I saw he was holding a tire iron in his good, left hand. It made sense to stay on his right side, he wouldn't be using his right arm. I ran forward and around the front of the truck to stay on his right side.

He tried to chase me but he didn't have a chance, not with his weight. We ran around the truck a couple of times until he understood he was getting nowhere. He stopped and so did I and we stared at each other. We were standing by the side of the truck, hidden from the road, five-six steps apart. I threw the stone as hard as I could at his face.

It hit him in the left eye. He screamed and went down on one knee, dropping the iron and raising his hand to his face. I transferred the knife to my right hand and ran forward and stabbed him in the neck and instantly jumped back.

I jumped back because I was afraid he'd grab me. He didn't even try, but it was still a good move because I wasn't splattered by the jet of blood that spurted from his neck. I was shocked, I was sure that the blade hadn't gone in further than an inch and he had more than an inch of fat all over. I stepped back a few paces, eyes locked in a horrified stare.

He was on his knees, the tire iron on the ground beside him. His left hand was over his injured eye and his right arm was hanging limply by his side. The blood pumping out of his neck was already forming a pool around his legs. He was making unhappy puppy noises and swaying slightly from side to side and suddenly he just toppled over, his head hitting the side of the trailer with a thump as he went down. Then he was still.

I stared at him until I was completely sure he wasn't moving. Then I crept up to him, listening hard for his breathing. There was none. I gave his leg a kick and he didn't react.

I stuck my knife into the ground a few times to get the blood off the blade and found out I needed to wipe it anyway, along with my hand. I got into the cab on the driver's side and grabbed the box of tissues on the dashboard and cleaned the knife and put it away. I heard a car approaching and I froze.

It took an eternity before it drew close and then passed without slowing down. I took a look once it was past and it was an ordinary saloon - I had been afraid it might be the highway patrol. That was when I fully realized what had just happened and my legs went weak.

I had to leave that scene, and fast: that was the priority. I crawled over the seats and reached and pulled my bag out. I had the thought I'd better check the interior for anything I might have left. I listened carefully for a while and heard no car engines, so I switched on the cabin light.

The first thing I saw was that the cabin was splattered with blood. There was blood on the seats, on the dash, on the f.u.c.k.i.n.g ceiling. There was blood on my clothes: I looked in the driver's mirror and yes, there was blood on my face. It was so horrible I felt like throwing up. I switched the cabin light off and jumped down to the ground and forced myself to smoke a cigarette.

Halfway through, I felt my sanity beginning to return. So: I had killed someone. I did it in self-defense, but there had been no witnesses. Why hadn't I left him alone after hitting him with the stone? I could have taken my bag, and ran away.

The answer to that question came when I lit my second cigarette: I wanted to kill him. I was totally freaked out. I'd turned into an animal fighting for survival. He'd turned into an animal first, but no one would believe me. I had no injuries except for some bruising on my neck.

I tried to imagine turning myself in. What would the cops think? What would they say? Why didn't you just run away, sir, after you'd incapacitated him? You didn't want to leave your bag? What made that bag so precious? Maybe we'd better have a look inside.

That did it. There was no way I was going to turn myself in. No one was going to take away my Rembrandt.

I finished my second cigarette just as another car came by. I stood motionless until the sound of its engine faded away, then got going on my survival plan. I opened my bag and pulled out my spare jeans, a T-shirt, and a thick flannel shirt. Then I took off my blood-spattered jeans and jumper and put them into the shopping bag I used for dirty clothing. It was lucky I hadn't been wearing my jean jacket in the cab: we had been driving with the heating on. I made sure I was clean of blood before I put on the fresh clothes. I used up all the tissues on the ox on the dashboard and stuffed them back inside the box, making sure I didn't leave any around.

Another vehicle came by just as I was cramming the box with the bloodied tissues into the bag with dirty clothes. It was a truck this time, going east, and the driver took his foot off the gas as he was passing by. For a moment I was terrified that he would stop to investigate. He didn't, but in that brief moment I understood I couldn't stay on the road. Sooner or later someone would stop, and find the body.

I thought about dragging it into the vegetation, but quickly decided it was a stupid idea. It would have been a hell of a struggle, and there was no way I could wipe the cabin clean of blood, there was just too much of it inside. Whoever stopped to investigate would see it, and start looking around, and find the body in less time than it would have taken me to hide it.

I was about to zip up my bag and start walking when I remembered that there was a half-bottle of scotch inside. I took it out and opened it and had a swig. I instantly felt more relaxed, and had the thought the least I could do was wipe my fingerprints from the cab. I used a pair of dirty underpants for that and it took me almost twenty minutes, I had to take extra care not to get any blood on my fresh clothes. I also had to pause a couple of times, switching off the cabin light: for a truck going west and a van going east.

There was no way I could walk along the road, I would be seen and remembered even if no one stopped - who the f.u.c.k walks down the side of a deserted highway at three in the morning? Walking through the mountainside forest was out, too: the terrain was far too rough. I decided I would walk along the railroad tracks. No one would spot me up there from the road if I squatted down when necessary, and I would hear and feel a train approaching long before it got anywhere near me.

I climbed up the slope and the embankment and got onto the tracks and started walking. After a couple of hundred steps, my eyes got used to the darkness and I saw a creek curving out from between the trees. It ran next to the tracks, and after a short hesitation I stepped off the embankment and got out all the clothes from the plastic shopping bag and washed them thoroughly in the running water. It took a hell of a long time, I soaked and rinsed and squeezed the water out of each piece half a dozen times. Then I dug a hole in the bank of the creek with my knife and hands and squeezed the box with the bloody tissues inside before covering it with a stone.

I was getting really hungry by then; the enormous steak and fries I'd been treated to by Stan was a distant memory. I'd eaten my last candy bar and drunk my last Coke around midnight, over an hour before all the shit came crashing down. All I had was that half-bottle of whisky, two-thirds full. I swear that whisky saved my life that night. I'd have gone to pieces without it.

I had a good swig from that bottle and got back up on the tracks and started walking west. The tracks ran roughly parallel to the road, from fifty to a hundred yards away. When a car or a truck appeared, I squatted on the tracks until they were gone. That only happened a couple of times over the next twenty minutes, and then I came to a small bridge over the creek I'd washed my clothes in earlier on. It curved away towards the mountain and then back, crossing under the tracks again and then under the road before disappearing in the trees on the other side.

I was just about to step onto that second bridge when I felt the tracks begin to tremble under my feet: a train was coming. There were a couple of good-sized bushes nearby, and I got off the tracks and slid between them, scratching my face. One bush hid me from the road, the other - from the tracks. I hunkered down and waited for the train to pass.

It took what seemed a hell of a long time. At least a couple of minutes passed before I saw the beam from the locomotive appear in the distance, to the east. The train was going west, and it slowed down even more when it came to the first bridge. It was a freight train, and when the locomotive passed my hiding place I realized there was my chance to hitch a ride. The train was moving at little more than a brisk walking pace while it went down the curved track linking the two bridges.

I left my hiding place and scrambled up the embankment. A row of cisterns was just passing by; each had, at its rear, a short staircase with a handrail. I slung my bag over my back, with the strap across my c.h.e.s.t, and broke into a trot. When I was going as fast as I could - but still slower than the train - I jumped the moment a cistern's steps drew alongside, grabbing the handrail with both hands.

My arms were pretty nearly wrenched out of their sockets, but I managed to get one foot on the steps and held on. After a while, I pulled myself onto the cistern bed and sat down, facing the rear. The huge tank gave me some protection from the wind and I moved the bag around on my back so that it was supported by the frame of the cistern bed. I saw the second bridge pass slowly under my dangling legs; a little while later, the train began to accelerate.

I pulled the whisky out of my back pocket and had a drink. I had to be careful: my hands hurt after holding onto that handrail for dear life, and my fingers were getting numb. I put the bottle back into my pocket and lit a cigarette. When I was putting the pack away, I looked at my watch.

I could just about make out the hands on the dial; they pointed to twenty past four in the morning. I had been a killer for just over three hours.