The headlights in the rearview mirror were closing in.
“So you’re telling me we’re destined to kill each other, D?”
“A hermit crab is a hermit crab. Can’t be nothing else.”
Road and silence.
Silence and road.
Donaldson came to a dark intersection, a stop sign in the middle of nowhere.
He took a left turn, got a ways up the road, and then watched the car behind them do the same.
“There’s someone following us,” Lucy said.
“Maybe. Or…could just be someone driving home late.”
Donaldson checked the gauge again-the red needle sunk far below the E.
“I want to show you something, D.”
“What?”
It happened so fast, the blade catching a shimmer of the tailing headlights, and then it was pressed against Donaldson’s throat.
“You feel that?” Lucy asked.
“I do. Nice and sharp.”
“With the flick of a wrist, I could run this blade across your throat, feel your blood pour over my hand. Maybe you’d wreck the car. Maybe you wouldn’t. I don’t care. We’d both die. But I would win. Do you understand that? I would end you. Do you agree with that?”
“Last time we were in this situation, I slammed on the brakes and bounced you off my dashboard. I could do that again. You aren’t wearing a seatbelt.”
“Neither are you.”
“What if I asked you to buckle me in?”
“How about instead you roll down my window?”
“Your window?”
“Did I stutter?”
“Only one good hand. Gotta stop steering to reach the button.”
Lucy eased her left hand over and grasped the wheel.
“I got it,” she said. “This is what they call a leap of faith.”
“Car behind us is getting closer.”
Lucy lowered her voice. “Donaldson, do you believe there are defining moments in our lives? When a choice can be the beginning of something, or the end?”
“I guess.”
“Roll my fucking window down.”
Donaldson brought his hand across his lap and pressed the button, lowering the passenger side window. The night air rushed in at them, clawing under Donaldson’s facial bandage and making it flap.
“Now what?” he asked.
Lucy leaned up and kissed his bandage, then pulled back and threw the scalpel out the window.
It made the briefest spark where it struck the pavement.
Donaldson hit the button again, and the window ascended back to the top of the door.
Lucy held the wheel steady.
“You know what?” he said. “I remember the names of those crabs.”
“What?” she asked.
“George and Ringo. Ringo ate George, the little bastard.”
“I never liked singing drummers.”
“It all worked out in the end. I poured gas on him, set him on fire.”
The engine stuttered, cylinders misfiring, and then caught again.
“You think that car behind us is a cop, D?”
“No. He’d have punched on his lights already. Called for backup. Like I said, could just be some fella on his way home.”
“You really believe that?”
“No,” Donaldson said.
“So what do you want to do?”
The car chugged once more, and then died.
Without the noise of the engine, they could hear the sound of the tires rolling over tiny rocks, the wind rushing against the windshield.
“Got any weapons on you?” Donaldson asked.
Lucy stared at him, hesitating.
“What?” he asked. “After your whole ‘kill together, die alone’ speech, you still don’t want to tell me?”
“All I’ve got left is a pair of scissors. I had the chance to take a Glock, but I didn’t.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Lucy. This isn’t the time.”
The car continued to coast.
Donaldson glanced at the speedometer.
Fifty miles per hour.
Forty-five.
Forty.
The car behind them closed the gap.
“I’m not fucking with you, D. I didn’t take the gun, because I didn’t want to accidentally kill you and spare you all the pain I had in store. I’m sorry. Frisk me now if you don’t believe me.”
Donaldson grunted something noncommittal.
The headlights were riding their back bumper now.
“There!” Lucy said. “There’s a dirt driveway.”
She pointed out her window, and Donaldson squinted to see through the darkness.
“Is that a barn?” she asked.
“Can’t tell. But it’s better than being out in the open.”
Donaldson nudged the Honda onto the shoulder and made a quick right. The tires sank into dirt, then caught, carrying them fifty yards down the road toward the building, gradually slowing until all momentum ceased.
The car that had been following them crept past and then stopped twenty yards ahead. It was a black sedan. Its taillights burned for a minute more, and then went dark.
“What would someone who isn’t in law enforcement want with us?” Lucy asked.
“Why don’t you hop out and ask?”
“What are they waiting for?”
“I don’t know.”
Whoever was in the black sedan stayed put.
“You have any weapons, D?”
“I figured the gun would be enough.”
“So what do we do? Can you sneak up on him, maybe?”
Donaldson shook his head, flipping on the interior light. “Check out my legs.”
Lucy looked down. The bandages had sloughed off in bloody strips.
Wait. Those weren’t bandages.
That was his skin.
“Grafts. Prick named Lanz told me to limit my movement, or they wouldn’t take hold. Guess he wasn’t kidding.”
“Cool. Is this, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?’ I’ll play.”
Lucy pulled a pair of surgical scissors out of her scrubs and snipped a tiny cut into the bandage of her right leg. She pulled back a piece of black foam while Donaldson took a quick glance at the car in the distance. It hadn’t moved.
“I have to warn you,” Lucy said. “I haven’t had the skin grafts yet.”
Her shinbone shone through a hole below her knee.
Donaldson seemed mesmerized by the wound.
“I had to go off my morphine to escape. They gave me a nerve block shot in my spine, but it’s wearing off. The pain is…spectacular.”
Donaldson couldn’t take his eyes off her leg. Lucy folded the bandage back, grimacing as she pressed the adhesive into another filthy bandage in an attempt to make it stick.
“You’re full of shit.”
“Huh?”
“You can’t feel a damn thing. You’re paralyzed, aren’t you?”
“We aren’t safe in here, D. We need to do something. Now.”
“Do what, little girl? I can barely walk and I only got one good arm. And I bet you can’t walk at all. We’re outta gas in the middle of bumblefuck.”
“So we just wait?”
“This guy wants something. Eventually, he’ll show us what it is.”
They waited.
No one moved.
“You said you killed a hundred and thirty people?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah.”
“I killed twenty-nine. One for every year I’ve lived.”
“I admire a woman with pluck.”
“We’ve both been on the news. People knew we were at that hospital.”
Donaldson’s face scrunched up. “What are you saying?”
“Maybe one of our victims has family. Family who are pissed off.”
Through the windshield, they watched the driver side door of that car swing open.
A dark figure stepped out.
“Guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Donaldson said.
The driver was tall and thin. He stood for a moment next to his car, a waxing gibbous moon behind him, the Honda’s headlights washing out his features.
Then he began to walk toward them, his black boots kicking up little spirals of dust in his wake.
“Want to hand me those scissors?” Donaldson asked.
The man’s face shone pale in the moonlight. And razor thin. The night air blew wisps of his long black hair, causing it to wrap around his face and stick to his thin, colorless lips.