Upgrade(48)

If Kara was close, if she hadn’t made a break for the Google, she’d have an easy shot at me.

Now I just needed the damn truck to start.

By my estimation, it had been sitting here since October. Eight to twelve weeks. When parked in low-consumption mode, on a full charge, it was supposed to take six months to drain the battery. If she’d stopped at the same charge station we had in Ojo Caliente, 28.4 miles back, there should’ve been an ample charge, even on an old model like this. If she hadn’t, well, I was probably going to die in the next thirty minutes.

I pressed the motor start.

Nothing.

Tried again.

The motors slowly whirred.

Then seized.

“Come on.”

I glanced through the windshield, the rearview mirror, the side mirrors.

No Kara.

I tried once more.

It whirred again, faster this time.

“Come on!”

On the fourth attempt, the motor whirred to life and stayed whirring. I eased onto the accelerator, the bald tires spinning for several interminable seconds, then finding traction.

The truck lurched forward, and I cranked the steering wheel, guiding the Chevy back in the direction of the road, flooring the accelerator now because every second delayed gave Kara a chance at— Bullets raked the passenger’s side of the truck, the window exploding, what I hoped were only glass shards embedding in the side of my face, and it wasn’t the single, piercing strike of a sniper bullet but the staccato chinking of full-auto rounds.

I caught the briefest glimpse of her—standing in that black coat in a patch of sunlight that made her pale hair glow, shouldering a machine gun.

I saw a muzzle flash—

Ducked as the windshield took fire, then popped up again, swerving just in time to avoid colliding with a tree.

As the back of the Chevy took heavy fire, I glimpsed the road in the distance and the blue Google with its trunk still open.

I broke out of the woods, stomped the brake pedal, and brought the Chevy to a screeching halt a few feet past Kara’s car.

The gunfire had stopped.

I grabbed the shotgun, opened the driver’s-side door.

Holding the shotgun at waist-level, I put a round of buckshot through the right rear tire. The Google sank a little. I shot out the left rear tire. While I could certainly outrun Kara on the last, rocky stretch of road, her car would’ve easily caught the truck on the smoother sections.

Kara emerged from the forest.

I didn’t hesitate—just put her in the ghost sights and fired three rounds. She dove behind a downed tree and I threw the shotgun into the truck, jumped in, and jammed the accelerator into the floorboard.

I flew down the road on ruined shocks, the truck feeling like it might rattle itself apart at any second.

I pushed the speed to 40 mph, barely able to see through the fractured windshield. My seat was covered in blood, and it felt like someone was shoving a red-hot poker through my back.

I kept checking the side mirror, half-expecting to see the Google bearing down, but there was only a trail of orange dust.

My adrenaline waned. Pain was coming on strong.

After several miles, I had to slow down because I didn’t trust myself to keep the truck on the road. I was having trouble seeing, I felt so lightheaded…

Didn’t know how much time had passed since Kara shot me, but I had been bleeding too long. Of that, I was certain. I needed to stop it or I was going to die.

I reached back and held my hand against the wound. Blood seeped through my fingers. I couldn’t drive and put pressure on the wound, but I had to keep driving. I had to get as far away from her as possible.

I was entering hypovolemic shock, which occurs after the human body loses twenty percent of its blood. My respiration rate was too fast and shallow, and I could feel my diastolic pressure plummeting toward dangerous levels.

I was suddenly cold, confusion setting in, and I tried to stay above it all, tried to use the power of my intellect to keep alert, alive, but a gray nothingness was creeping in around the edges of my vision.



* * *



—

A tone.

Blaring.

Sustained.

It called to me, faintly, in the depths of this grave darkness.

Lifting my head was the hardest physical act of my lifetime, and when I did, the noise ended.

I opened my eyes.

Light splintered in.

Crystal shimmering rays of it.

I tasted blood in my mouth. It was sheeting down my face. I was still sitting behind the steering wheel of the old Chevy. Just beyond the hood, I saw the enormous, rippled trunk of a cottonwood tree. I had crashed into it.

There were buildings nearby.

I saw the ruins of Mis Amigos.

There was someone standing beside my window, and I slowly turned my head, blinking against the bright winter sun.

He was eleven or twelve, and he was looking at me through the window, into what I imagined was one of the more disturbing scenes of his young life.

Me bleeding to death in the corpse-reeking cab of a bullet-ridden truck.

“?Necesitas ayuda?”

His voice came high and muffled through the glass.

“Sí,” I said. My voice sounded so weak. “Por favor.”

There were other people now in the street behind him, drifting toward this single-car accident in the middle of their quiet village.