Free Work Done for Hire by Joe Haldeman Page A

working on an upside-down bicycle. He slowed down and waved at her, blinking his lights. She waved back and he pulled off the road in front of her, and backed up.
    He rolled down the window as she came up, wiping the water from her long hair. She was big, not quite half his size, and he salivated at the thought of all that delicious fat.
    â€œGolly, thanks, mister—” He flung the door open with such force that she sprawled almost to the middle of the road. But she was standing, staggering, by the time he heaved himself out of the van. He took two ponderous steps and dropped her with a punch to the solar plexus.
    Faster, now. He grabbed her wrist and roughly dragged her to the back of the van. Locked. Stupid of him.
    The driver’s-side door was still open. He lumbered back to it and stretched to reach the keys in the ignition.
    Sudden sharp pain in his back. He turned and she was standing there with a narrow-blade knife, a switchblade stiletto, staring at the color of his blood.
    The wound was not serious. He backhanded her so hard her neck snapped.
    She was limp but still alive as he tied her up and manacled her in the back. She managed some incoherent growls and moans, too soft to annoy him or attract attention, so he didn’t bother with the duct tape.
    â€œBe happy,” he called back. “You’re out of the rain.”
    Decisions. Maybe leave Georgia for this one, so as not to have the same group of state police studying his spoor. Drive on into Alabama, or maybe all the way through to Mississippi.
    No. The need was growing in him. Alabama would do.
    He was across the border in thirty minutes, and stopped at a McDonald’s for a bag of small burgers and ten orders of fries. He gulped it all down, driving one-handed but with intense care, before he left the interstate. He had memorized the map and the Googlemaps screen that showed the nameless dead-end dirt road that was his tentative destination.
    At the first small road he pulled over to the shoulder to check on his quarry. He was too big to crawl through the van, so he chanced opening the rear doors. Her eyes were closed, but when he forced her mouth open and poured in some water, she coughed and gagged.
    â€œThat’s good. It won’t be long now.”
    â€œPlease,” she croaked. “Do . . . do whatever you want. . . .”
    â€œDon’t worry. I will.” He eased the doors shut and went back toward the front of the van, but she started to scream. Annoying.
    He went back to the rear doors, swung them open, and hit her head twice on the metal floor, just hard enough to stun her.
    â€œPlease. You only cause trouble for yourself.” He tore off a piece of duct tape and smoothed it over her mouth. Then he tore off a small piece and closed one nostril. “Wouldn’t that be an awful way to die?”
    Before getting back into the van, he stepped into the forest, studying the loam. The van would leave tracks when he went off the road. If it rained harder, they would be obliterated, but the forecast called for the rain to taper off and stop in a couple of hours.
    He studied his memory of the Googlemaps images. The topographical map showed a ridge to the east, and a gravel road in a few miles that ran up it. He would drive up there and check the soil and underbrush.
    In the small cooler between the seats he’d stashed alternating quarts of beer and Coke. Took a Coke to be on the safe side. Wouldn’t do to be stopped in the middle of nowhere and forced to kill a state trooper. Two, probably.
    He almost missed the unmarked gravel road and reversed back up to it. He drove up the rise and pulled over, out of sight from the paved road, and stopped to listen for a couple of minutes. No traffic; no sound but the ticking of his engine and the patter of raindrops.
    He drove on slowly for about a mile and a half. The road ended at the grey ruin of a clapboard shack with a collapsed roof. Saplings