Cruel World(70)

The driveway was there on the right, his eyes finding it, latching onto it as he kept the wheel cranked. His foot left the brake and found the gas, the rear tires sliding and then catching on the shoulder of the road before peeling free. They shot off the street and onto the driveway, barely missing a conglomeration of mailboxes mounted on a steel pole. He slammed his foot down, and the brakes screeched again as they came to a stop.

“What are you doing?” Alice yelled.

Quinn threw the transmission into reverse, listening to the sound of the approaching truck over his rushing blood as he craned his neck around and stared through the empty back hatch. The remaining truck’s blue paint flashed between the trees on the corner and Quinn punched the gas.

They rocketed backwards, coming even with the road as the truck passed by. The rear end of the Tahoe met the truck’s passenger side in a furious impact of glass and steel. Quinn’s head snapped backward, meeting the seat’s headrest hard enough for flashes of light to flicker in his vision. Alice rose in her seat, and he snagged her arm, holding her tight while she tried to cover Ty with her body. There was a shriek of shredding metal and then they were still as the truck continued down the road sideways, its tires catching and turning to the sky. Sparks flew as the truck flipped over and coasted to a stop on its hood, the cab rumpled into a flattened mass.

The Tahoe’s engine chugged and hissed, vibrations shaking the wheel beneath his numb fingers. He watched the truck for movement, his vision shuddering with each thunderous heartbeat. When no one climbed from the wreckage, he turned and found Alice still crouched over Ty in the rear foot space.

“Are you guys okay?”

Alice sat up, a dazed sheen covering her white face. A thin line of blood ran down from her right temple, and her eyes were clouded, blinking slow and methodical. Ty rose from beneath her, peeling himself from his mother’s embrace.

“I’m okay, mom; I’m okay.”

“Does anything hurt?” Quinn asked, his gaze beginning to run frantic over their forms, searching for a gaping cut or the hump of a broken bone. They were uninjured.

“I think we’re okay,” Alice said, swallowing. She coughed once and winced, holding her ribs. “Side hurts, though.”

“Can you walk?” Quinn said.

“Yeah.”

They climbed from the Tahoe, Ty from the opposite side since his door was jammed shut from the crash. The ringing hadn’t left Quinn’s head, and he shook it as he paced down the center of the sunlit road, cradling his rifle in both hands.

The truck ticked and pinged as the overheated metal cooled. Antifreeze and oil pooled beneath the hood, mixing into an evil, dark-orange puddle. He found the first body in the ditch. The man had struck the road and slid for a dozen yards before coming to a stop. Any features with which Quinn could’ve determined his age had been scraped away by the pavement. As he made to move past the corpse to the next body in the ditch, a rattling came from the cab of the pickup. Quinn moved closer and crouched beside the ruined vehicle.

Glass shards glittered everywhere on the roof of the truck. The driver’s face was a mask of blood, his body hanging in a hunched lump from the seatbelt. At least he thought to put his on, Quinn thought absently. The noise came again, definitely not from the driver but from behind him in the less-crushed rear seat.

A woman, her eyes wide with shock lay bound and gagged on the roof of the truck. A huge, purple bruise spanned the right side of her face.

When Quinn leaned in through the broken side window, her gaze found him, and she began to moan through the simple white cloth yanking her mouth into an obscene grin.

“Nahnahnah.” The woman shook her head as she tried to speak through the gag.

“It’s okay; you’re safe; you’re safe now,” Quinn said. He reached into the crushed cab, but she tried to inch away, her eyes flitting around the space searching for escape. “Here,” Quinn said, kneeling further down. He held out a hand, beckoning her closer. “I won’t hurt you. They were trying to kill us.”

The driver unfolded from his bloody cocoon, one hand holding a pistol, blistered eye sockets two red orbs.

Quinn grabbed the man’s arm and pushed it up, folding it over the rumpled door panel. The man’s finger squeezed the trigger, and the gun barked once, twice. The woman screamed against the cloth. Somewhere, Quinn heard Alice yelling his name. His free hand scrabbled at the holster near his side. The XDM was there, sliding free, pushing through the open window against the man’s temple.