“How bad?” Edward asked.
“Keep shoving,” I said.
He took that to mean it wasn’t bad, and we shoved. The tree trunk was onto the road completely now. I felt the vampires wake like a jolt down my spine. It was still light enough that they couldn’t come for us, not yet, but we were minutes away. I dug my feet in, put my shoulder down, and prayed. I prayed that if I had any super-strength, I would use it now. I prayed, “God, if I can move this tree, let me move it now.”
I breathed out in a yell, the way you do sometimes in the gym when you’re lifting something heavy, something that you’re not sure you can move. But it moved. Edward put his shoulder beside mine, and the other men pulled, and the tree moved. I yelled again, and the tree slid across the road as if it were on wheels. It just gave. I fell to my knees, because I hadn’t expected it to move like that.
“Anita . . .” Edward started to help me up.
“Car, start it now.” I said.
He didn’t argue with me. He just did what I said. I liked that. I moved my gun around on its strap so it was in my hands and ready.
Tilford crashed through the trees on the other side of the road, with Newman behind him. I pointed at the car, and my right arm glistened with blood, black in the moonlight. “Car, now!”
“They’re coming,” Tilford said.
“I know,” I said. I got to my feet. The SUV roared to life. The three of us ran for the car. I felt the night fall around us like something warm and thick and velvet. I pushed the thought away that it felt like Her. I was just scared, just freaked. It wasn’t Marmee Noir. It was just nerves.
I felt the vampires, felt them freed of the last bit of daytime paralysis. I felt them like distant thunder trembling along my skin, rushing toward us through the trees. It made me run, and I was suddenly ahead of the men. Like moving the tree, I didn’t run human-slow.
I was the first one to the door. I opened it and turned, looking past the other two men, searching the dark shapes of the trees for something that wasn’t trees.
I yelled, “Hurry, damn it!”
Newman slipped and went down, face first into the gravel. Tilford opened the door on the other side, saying, “I’m in.”
I heard him shut the door. I saw Newman scramble on all fours as he got to his feet. There was blood on his face. He’d fallen hard, but I kept an eye behind him, above him. They were coming. Moving like wind that never stirred a leaf, or brushed a twig, like a silent movable storm that was coming just for us.
I yelled, “Newman!”
I moved at the last minute so I was farther away from the open door but he could go straight into the car without fouling my line of sight. He fell into the car.
Edward yelled, “Get in!” I realized he had his window down and the barrel of his gun searching the darkness. Windows would mess up the first few shots. He knew we weren’t going to get out of here without a fight; so did I.
I put my back against the open door, searching the woods, trying to hear something above the engine’s thrum. I thought, Where are they? And just like that, I could feel them on the other side of the road. They were just inside the tree line, hiding in the shadows and the night.
I breathed, “Shit.” I climbed into the truck, shutting the rear door behind me. I had time to say, “Drive!” Edward put it into gear and started backing up at speed. I made Newman move over so I could try for a seatbelt as the SUV slithered across the gravel. I knew right where they were; I felt them standing there watching us drive away. Why were they just watching? My pulse was in my throat. I was suddenly more afraid than I had been a second before.
“They aren’t chasing us, Edward. They’re just watching from the trees.”
“You saw them?” Newman asked.
I ignored him.
“Why are they just watching?” Tilford yelled from the front passenger seat.
“I don’t know.” I slid the buckle of the seatbelt home just as Edward found the four-way with its stop signs. He turned the big SUV in a circle of flying gravel. He got us facing the right way around and hit the gas. The car jumped forward. He had a moment where I could feel him fighting to keep us on the road, and then we were speeding away from them.
Almost at the edge of even my night vision, two figures stepped out from the trees. They stood and watched us go.
“That’s them, isn’t it?” Newman asked.
I nodded, watching the two figures as if afraid to look away, for fear of what would happen if I took my eyes off them. It was silly, almost superstitious, but I watched them stand there until even I couldn’t see through the thickening dark.
“Why didn’t they chase us?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I don’t care why,” Tilford said, and he turned around in the front seat so he could see us both, “I’m just glad they didn’t.”
“They didn’t need to chase us. They blocked the road again,” Edward said.
We all looked, and this time it looked like they’d pulled up half a dozen trees and formed a wall. “That took time,” Tilford said, “and more manpower than we thought they had.”
Edward slowed the car. “Tilford, you’re driving.”
“What?” Tilford asked.
“Anita, cover me. Newman, help her.” He was already climbing out from behind the wheel. Tilford cursed under his breath as he fought to slip behind the wheel before Edward was completely out from behind it. The SUV swayed, but we stayed on the road.
Edward was climbing past us and into the far back. “What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Shoot them if they get too close. Shoot anything that moves around that barrier.” He was rummaging around in the back in some of the weapons that were too big or too cumbersome to carry easily. It always scared me when Edward started getting into his big stuff. The last time it had been a flamethrower, and he’d damn near burned a house down with us in it. But I did what he asked. I rolled down a window and divided my attention between the barrier on the road and the way we’d just come.
Tilford had stopped the car. “What do you want me to do?”
“Move forward, slowly,” Edward said. His upper body was mostly below the back of the seat.
I did my best to ignore him and do my part of the plan. Edward had a plan, and I didn’t, so he was in charge until either he ran out of plan, or the plan turned out to be too crazy. Though right that second, I couldn’t think of anything crazy enough to make me say no.
Newman said, “Holy Jesus!”
It made me glance back at Edward. For a blink, I thought it was just a bigger gun, and then I forgot to watch the dark or hunt for vampires. I took a few seconds to stare at what he had in his hands.
“Is that . . .” I said.
“Light anti-tank weapon,” he said.
“It’s a LAW,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. He rolled back over the seat so he was kneeling between Newman and me. “Open the sunroof,” he said.
“If you had this, why didn’t you use it on the tree?” I asked.
“It’s the last one I have,” he said.
“Last one,” Newman said. “How many did you have?”
“Three.”
I said, “Don’t argue, just open the door. Watch the road edge and the sky and be ready to jump back in when Tilford guns it.”
“Why not just aim through the windows?”
“Because we can’t watch the sky as well from the window.”
“But . . .”
“Just do it,” Edward said.
Newman glanced at me, then at Edward, and opened his door. I did the same on my side. When I was standing with one foot on the ground and the other on the running board, MP-5 snugged at my shoulder, I said “Edward.”
“Anita?”
“Do it.”
I heard him slithering up through the sunroof. I just trusted that he was halfway through the sunroof.