Cruel World(69)

“Quinn,” Alice said beside him. She was hunkered down, half-turned in the seat with one arm covering Ty who lay on the floorboards. “Don’t let them catch us.” He tried to answer but more gunfire erupted behind them and a round punched through the windshield beside the first hole.

The main street they were on exited Belford and became a county road, cracked and weathered with heavy forest to either side. Quinn accelerated off of the sidewalk and brought the Tahoe up to eighty-five. The trucks fell back but then began to close the gap, the faces of the men in the closest vehicle taking on cruel details; black sunglasses and wild hair whipping in the wind. A bald man in the rear of the first truck took aim, and Quinn slid to the side as the shot ripped the rearview mirror from its mounting. Whoops and yells came from behind them. There was an animalistic wheezing inside the SUV, and it took a moment for Quinn to realize he was making it. He swallowed, trying to calm his frantic breathing while he searched the sides of the highway. The road curved then straightened, and he pressed the pedal all the way down. The needle climbed past one hundred miles per hour. He threw a glance at the driver’s side mirror and saw the trucks keeping pace behind them.

“Alice, I need you to get the map open on your phone and find a curvy road near here,” he said as more shots zipped past the Tahoe like angry hornets.

“What?”

“Find a road that has curves. Do it, now!”

Alice fumbled with her phone. “There’s a drive coming up on the left in half a mile, take it.”

“Give us some room. Shoot back at the bastards.”

Alice patted Ty once, telling him to stay down, then slowly sat up in her seat and brought the AR-15 to bear. The rifle boomed three times, filling the car with acrid smoke. Wheels screeched behind them, and the lead truck slewed across the road before coming back to center, its grille shrinking in the side mirror. A gap in the trees opened on the left side, and Quinn hammered the brakes, spinning the wheel at the same time.

The Tahoe rocked sickeningly on its springs as gravity came and went. The two wheels that had lifted from the pavement resettled, and Quinn guided them onto a small, paved drive cutting through the forest. Homes appeared and vanished behind trees as he accelerated again, glancing once into the side mirror. The mouth of the drive was empty for a beat and then filled with the bulk of the first truck, skidding sideways as they had done, before straightening out and speeding after them. Quinn focused again on the street, the adrenaline turning his nerves to livewires.

“Where’s the next sharp corner?” he yelled. The air howled through the bullet holes in the windshield, coursing through the glassless back hatch. His eyes watered. Alice pulled her gaze away from the pursuing truck and punched at her phone.

“One mile, there’s a sharp right-hand corner.”

He nodded as another handful of bullets thunked into the rear of the Tahoe. Quinn pushed the throttle harder, the engine screaming beneath the hood.

“When I tell you, empty your magazine at them,” he said, throwing a look at the side mirror.

“We won’t last much longer. They’re going to shoot our tires out.”

“No, they’re having too much fun for that. Trust me, okay?” He yanked his eyes away from the road and locked his gaze with Alice’s. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

The bend was coming up, its sharp corner a wall of old-growth pines larger than a man could put his arms around. He pushed the gas harder.

“Quinn?” Alice said.

“It’s okay.”

“Quinn!”

“Shoot. Now!”

Alice spun in her seat and began blasting at the truck behind them. Quinn’s damaged ear rang with each concussion, the gunshots so loud they filled up the world. The lead truck jerked to the side as Alice fired, avoiding the rounds, and revealed the second vehicle directly behind it.

The trailing truck’s windshield spiderwebbed, and the left headlight burst. The front wheels jerked to the right and bit into the gravel at the edge of the ditch. The truck left the road, roared up the opposing bank, and collided with a towering oak. Quinn caught a flash of something man-shaped blasting through the broken windshield, but then the curve was there and his foot was on the brake, the steering wheel shuddering like something dying in his hands. Alice screamed, ducking low to hold onto Ty as the boy shrieked for her. The back end of the Tahoe skidded, the street like ice beneath the tires. None of them were wearing seatbelts. They would all be thrown free when the big SUV rolled and smashed into the pines. There would be pain and then nothing. This life and then the wide ocean. He could almost see his father’s eyes looking at him through the cracked windshield, feel Teresa’s hug.