With both feet, Rob slammed on the brakes.
Jessica seized the emergency brake lever that sat between the seats. She yanked it as hard as she could.
The Subaru jolted. The tires screeched. Jessica was thrown forward, her seatbelt catching her and digging hard into her chest.
Mere seconds later, there was another jolt, and a tremendous noise. The motorcycle behind them had crashed into the Subaru.
Just as Jessica had suspected, the biker hadn’t had enough time to swerve or brake to avoid the Subaru. He’d been too busy trying to get his shotgun into position, and by trying to hold it, he’d lost the crucial ability to maneuver as he’d needed to.
There wasn’t any time to waste.
Jessica’s hand went to her seatbelt button, jamming against the button.
It was stuck.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Rob seemed dazed, and he was mumbling something.
Jessica glanced in the mirror, but she couldn’t see the biker. She knew that it wasn’t likely that he was dead. He was still there. And he still had the shotgun. He was still a threat.
Jessica dug into her pocket, looking for her knife. But it wasn’t there.
Of course it wasn’t there. They’d taken it from her when she’d been kidnapped and tied up.
“Rob, give me your knife. Quick.”
“What’s that?”
Rob sounded dazed. Maybe he’d hit his head.
There wasn’t any time to waste. The seconds were ticking by. Each new second meant that the chance of danger was increasing. All it’d take was for the biker not to be so critically wounded that he couldn’t wield his shotgun.
Jessica reached over and dug her hand into the pocket of Rob’s jeans. She hoped his knife was on her side.
It was. She removed her hand, clutching the knife. With one hand, she flicked it open.
In a single stroke, she sliced through her seatbelt, pulling the blade away from herself.
She was free. She opened the door, stepped out, keeping herself low and behind the Subaru for cover.
The biker was moaning in pain. From somewhere unseen.
Jessica moved quickly, slightly ducking, to the back of the car.
The motorcycle was tangled up with the Subaru’s rear bumper. It lay partially under the Subaru.
There were streaks of bright blood on the pavement that formed a trail that led away from the Subaru.
Jessica followed the trail. The knife was in her hand. It was still opened, and her fingers tightened around the handle. With each step, she stood up straighter, growing less fearful of the man who had kidnapped her and tormented her.
She saw him now. He’d crawled his away off the road. He’d almost reached a tree. The shotgun lay a few feet behind him on the road. Apparently, he’d abandoned it.
There was blood all around him. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from, or what exactly his injuries were.
But it didn’t matter what they were. She knew what she had to do.
With long, purposeful strides, Jessica reached him.
In a single motion, she grabbed his head by the hair, pulled it back, and, with her other hand, ran the knife across his neck.
There was a gurgling noise. Blood came from his mouth.
And that was it. Thirty seconds later, he was dead, his body lying unmoving in blood that was pooling up around him on the dirt.
Jessica gazed down at him, expecting to feel something. But she felt nothing. Nothing except satisfaction that she had lived through another dangerous encounter, that at the end of it, she’d been the one who’d lived.
She leaned down and ran her hands across his pockets and his belt, looking for anything that might be useful. On a carabiner attached to his belt loop, there was a ring of keys. She took it and pocketed it. In another pocket, she found her own knife, plus another, one that she recognized as a Buck 110.
Jessica left him there, and, picking the shotgun up from the ground, she went back to the Subaru to check on Rob.
He was awake, but he still seemed dazed. His hands were vaguely fumbling with his seatbelt.
“It’s a good thing the airbags didn’t go off,” said Jessica, surveying the situation. “You OK, Rob?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Rob, seeming a little more ‘with it’ now that Jessica addressed him directly again.
“Come on,” she said, using her bloody knife to slice through Rob’s seatbelt. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“The car?” said Rob.
“We’re leaving it here.”
“Leaving it here?”
“It doesn’t work. Remember? The power cut off as we were driving.”
“Oh, yeah…”
“Come on. We’ve got to go.”
Jessica had to actually grab Rob under his armpits and pull on him until he started to use his own muscles to actually get out of the seat.
She helped him pull himself upright, and he leaned against the side of the Subaru, swaying slightly. He gazed off towards the dead biker with the blood around him.
“Shit,” said Rob.
“Don’t worry about him. I took care of him. Come on.”
“What are we going to do with the car?”
“Leave it,” said Jessica. “We’re not going to be able to fix it.”
Jessica’s mind was rushing through the possibilities. Rob wasn’t really cognizant enough to discuss it with him. She had to figure it out herself, and simply tell him what they needed to do.
There was the possibility that they could fix the Subaru, even though Jessica didn’t know how to do it herself. And she guessed that repairing it was beyond the capabilities of even Jim, who was the handiest of all them.
It’d be a huge blow to lose the Subaru.
But at least it wasn’t loaded down with their gear, which was safely at the lake house.
They might be able to get another vehicle. After all, people would be dying off like flies in the coming days and weeks, leaving their vehicles behind them to be scavenged by people like Jessica.
Trying to hang onto the Subaru meant hiding it somewhere on the side of the road. Or just leaving it in the road.
Hiding it meant expending a lot of energy and time. Energy that they didn’t have. Rob was in a daze. And she wasn’t doing much better. Her head ached and her muscles were burning from struggling against the cords that had bound her.
It was better to just leave the Subaru there.
“Come on,” said Jessica. “Help me get this bike upright. Maybe there’s a chance we can start it.”
She was surveying the motorcycle, and it didn’t look promising. She doubted it would run.
But it didn’t hurt to try.
“What’s that?” said Rob.
“Did you hit your head or something?”
“I think so. The crash or something.”
“Great, now we’ve both been hit in the head. Let’s hope you snap out of it soon.”
22
“Jordan! Come on. Wake up!”
She was screaming into his ear. She was shaking him as best she could.
But his eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow. He wasn’t dead, but he was dead to the world. And dead to the flames that had already overtaken the living room.
She couldn’t believe how fast the flames had spread. The room had lit up like a pile of tinder.
She knew she was going to have to make a decision. And she knew that time was running out.
Jordan wasn’t waking up. Not anytime soon.
Aly could feel the intense heat of the flames. If Jordan could sleep through the heat and the growing roar of the flames, he’d sleep through any attempt of hers to wake him from his drunken slumber.
Aly wasn’t about to let herself get burned alive. In just a few seconds, she’d have to decide whether to leave Jordan there to be burned alive, or to try to drag him out through the flames. If she tried to save him, she’d be risking her own life. After all, her own ability to save herself was already severely diminished by her injuries.