Dark Matter(99)

“Where’s the Suburban?” I ask.

When he answers, I have to lean in close to hear his voice: “A quarter mile past the turnoff. On the shoulder.”

I rush over to the clothes I stripped out of just moments ago, dressing quickly.

When I finish buttoning my shirt, I bend down to tie my boots, glancing over at Jason2, bleeding out on the floorboards of this old cabin.

I lift the gun from the floor and wipe the grip off on my jeans.

We need to leave.

Who knows how many more are coming.

My doppelg?nger says my name.

I look over—he’s holding my wedding band in his blood-soaked fingers.

I walk to him, and as I take the ring and slide it onto my finger over the ring of thread, Jason2 grabs my arm and pulls me down toward his face.

He’s trying to say something.

I say, “I can’t hear you.”

“Look…in…the glove box.”

Charlie comes over, wrapping his arms fiercely around me, trying to hold back tears, but his shoulders jerk and the sobs break loose. As he cries in my arms like a little boy, I think of the horror he’s just witnessed, and it brings tears to my eyes.

I hold his face between my hands.

I say, “You saved my life. If you hadn’t tried to stop him, I never would’ve had a chance.”

“Really?”

“Really. Also I’m going to stomp your f*cking phone into pieces. Now we have to leave. Back door.”

We rush through the living room, sidestepping pools of blood.

I unlock the French doors, and as Charlie and Daniela move out onto the screened-in porch, I glance back at the man who caused all this.

His eyes are still open, blinking slowly, watching us go.

Stepping outside, I pull the doors closed after me.

I have to track through the blood of one more Jason to reach the screen door.

I’m not sure which way to go.

We head down to the shoreline, follow it north through the trees.

The lake as smooth and black as obsidian.

I keep scanning the woods for other Jasons—one could step out from behind a tree and take my life at any second.

After a hundred yards, we turn from the shoreline and move in the general direction of the road.

Four gunshots ring out at the cabin.

We’re running now, struggling through the snow, all of us gasping for breath.

The adrenaline tide is keeping the pain of my bruised face at bay, but I wonder for how much longer.

We break out of the forest onto the road.

I stand on the double-yellow line, and for a moment, the woods are silent.

“Which way?” Daniela asks.

“North.”

We jog down the middle of the road.

Charlie says, “I see it.”

Straight ahead, off the right-side shoulder, I clock the back of our Suburban pulled halfway into the trees.

We pile inside, and as I push the key into the ignition, I catch movement in the side mirror—a shadow sprinting toward us on the road.

I crank the engine, release the emergency brake, and shift into gear.

Whipping the Suburban around, I pin the gas pedal to the floor.

I say, “Get down.”

“Why?” Daniela asks.

“Just do it!”

We accelerate into darkness.

I punch on the lights.

They fire straight onto Jason, standing in the middle of the road, aiming a gun at the car.

There’s a burst of fire.

A bullet punctures the windshield and rips through the headrest an inch away from my right ear.

Another muzzle flash, another gunshot.

Daniela screams.

How broken must this version of me be to risk hitting Daniela and Charlie?

Jason tries to step out of the way a half second too late.

The right edge of the bumper clips his waist, the contact devastating.

It slings him around hard and fast, his head slamming into the front passenger window with enough force to break the glass.

In the rearview mirror, I watch him tumble across the road as we keep accelerating.

“Anyone hurt?” I ask.

“I’m fine,” Charlie says.

Daniela sits back up.

“Daniela?”

“I’m okay,” she says, beginning to brush the pebbles of safety glass out of her hair.

—

We speed down the dark highway.

No one says a word.

It’s three in the morning, and we’re the only car on the road.

The night air streams through the bullet holes in the windshield, the road noise deafening through the broken window beside Daniela’s head.

I ask, “Do you still have your phone with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Give it to me. Yours too, Charlie.”

They hand them over, and I lower my window several inches and chuck the phones out of the car.

“They’re going to keep coming, aren’t they?” she asks. “They’re never going to stop.”

She’s right. The other Jasons can’t be trusted. I was wrong about the lottery.

I say, “I thought there was a way to fix this.”

“So what do we do?”

Exhaustion crushes down on me.

My face hurting more every second.

I look over at Daniela. “Open the glove box.”