“Glove compartment. Grab the blue ones, those are slugs,” Young told him. Her eyes were all over the road.
Chapel yanked open the glove compartment and found the box of shells. Half of them were shot packed in red paper. The other half were solid slugs mounted in blue plastic casings. She was right — they would be far more effective against vehicle tires than the shells full of buckshot. He loaded two in the shotgun and nodded at her.
“Aim for the right rear tire,” she told him. “That’ll make ’em slew over to the left, into the median. It’s the safest — Jesus!”
He looked up to see what had her attention. The rear window of car three erupted in shards of glass. Chapel could see Quinn using his fist to clear the remaining glass. The barrel of a pistol emerged from inside the vehicle and started to track them.
“Head down!” Young shouted, as she veered to the right. Chapel was thrown up against the passenger-side door, jarring his good shoulder. The box of shotgun shells burst open and spilled all over his lap, the shells rolling down into the leg well.
The windshield of the patrol cruiser cracked from top to bottom as a pistol round tore through its cabin, narrowly missing Young’s ear.
“I’m fine,” she shouted, and he nodded, snapping the shotgun closed and rolling down his window. “Take your shot, quick!”
Chapel caught a flash of motion ahead of them and saw car two drifting back toward them. Either they’d come to see what was happening — or to help. Whether they wanted to help Chapel or Quinn was an open question.
“I’ve got this,” Young told him. “Take that shot!”
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+59:03
Chapel rolled down his window and unbuckled his seat belt. Cradling the shotgun in his arm, he got his knees up on the seat and leaned out the window. The wind of their velocity tried to tear him out of the car but he braced himself and held on. Young shouted something at him but he couldn’t hear. He could barely keep his eyes open as the air slapped him in the face over and over, but he managed to get the shotgun clear of the window and brought it up to his shoulder.
Then a second pistol shot struck the hood of the cruiser, and Young had to veer to the side. Chapel flopped like a rag doll as the car shifted under him. He had to grab for the car door with his artificial hand, and nearly lost the shotgun. A third shot took off the wing mirror on the driver’s side.
At least Quinn — or whoever it was shooting from car three — wasn’t aiming at Chapel. They clearly intended to incapacitate Young so she couldn’t continue the pursuit. Chapel had to end this before that happened. He raised the shotgun and tried to find an angle to get the rear tire of car three. Normally with a shotgun you didn’t need to aim — you just pointed and fired. This shotgun was loaded with slugs, though, solid projectiles that acted similar to rifle bullets. He needed to make his shot precise and clean.
That wasn’t going to happen with him hanging out of his window. He was firing across the car and the hood was in the way.
There was only one thing for it. He reached forward with his left hand and grabbed the windshield wipers so he could pull himself forward. He was going to have to climb out onto the hood.
Up ahead car two had fallen back in the right lane, boxing car three in. Were they trying to help? Their windows were up, and he couldn’t see anyone inside the car. They weren’t shooting at him, which was nice, but they were preventing car three from complying with Young’s instructions. Not that Quinn was likely to let the driver of car three just pull over and surrender.
No, it was on Chapel. He dragged himself forward, compensating every time Young veered or drifted into one lane or the other, trying to make it as hard as possible for the shooter in car three to get a bead on her. He could hardly blame her for not wanting to stand still, even if it did make it next to impossible for him to move out onto the hood. He glanced through the windshield and saw her sitting up in her seat, trying to see over him. Her eyes were firmly on the road. Either she knew what he was trying to do or she figured it was his own neck at risk.
Stop stalling, he thought. He tried to channel Top, tried to hear his old physical therapist’s voice in his head. This wasn’t exactly a situation Top had prepared him for, though, and no words came.
It didn’t matter. He knew what Top would want him to do.
Chapel kicked his legs out of the window and flopped down hard on the hood of the cruiser. Inertia tried to yank him up over the windshield and onto the roof of the car but he kept his center of gravity down and hugged the hood, the mechanical fingers of his left hand grabbing at the grill on the front of the car because it was the only thing to hold on to. Heat from the engine seared his chest and groin. The buttons of his shirt soaked up that heat and scorched his flesh, but he could only ignore it. With his right arm he reached around and brought the shotgun to bear. He braced it against the hood, angling the barrel down toward the tire of car three.
That was when Quinn erupted out of the shattered rear window, howling in rage, hauling himself through the broken glass. The chimera pulled himself onto the trunk of car three. His mouth was wide open, virus-carrying saliva forming long strands between his massive white teeth. He stared at Chapel with eyes as black as the bottom of a well.
Quinn had a pistol in his hand.
Chapel had the shotgun.
Quinn lifted his weapon and pointed it straight at Chapel’s face. There was no way Chapel could dodge the bullet, no safe place he could move to.
His weapon was already aimed.
He took his shot.
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+59:07
The sound of the rear tire of car three exploding was the loudest bang Chapel had ever heard. Shreds of hot rubber and steel belting blasted outward in a cloud of stinging, slapping chaff. Chapel looked up and saw Quinn’s pistol discharge. He could have sworn he saw the bullet come out of the barrel, that he watched it travel in slow motion straight for him. He dropped the shotgun and let it clatter away between the two cars. Car three was already turning, swerving over into the grassy median strip, dust and pieces of torn-up vegetation rising in a plume from its front tires.
Chapel couldn’t tell if he’d been hit or not. Quinn had fired from point-blank range. He’d been aiming right at Chapel. Had the car started to swerve before or after Quinn pulled the trigger? Chapel knew from past experience that you could be shot and not know it for long seconds, that the brain under stress could delay pain reactions for a surprisingly long time.
Was he already dead, but his body hadn’t realized it yet?
He wanted to look down at himself, check himself for wounds, but he didn’t dare. Car three had rumbled to a stop, nose down in the median, and was rocking back and forth on its suspension. Young hit the cruiser’s brakes, though she was careful not to decelerate so hard that Chapel went flying. When he decided she’d slowed down enough, when he could look down at the asphalt and see the grain in it, the texture of the road surface, he scrambled forward off the burning hot hood of the cruiser and rolled down to the ground, taking the fall on his artificial left arm. In a moment he was back up on his feet. He felt like he was floating, like adrenaline lifted him up into the air and then he was running, dashing full tilt back down the highway toward where car three sat, lifeless and unmoving.
On the far side of the median civilian cars went by so fast they were just blurs of color in the air, red, bottle green, gunmetal gray. He heard the sirens of Young’s cruiser but only as if they were far away, as if they were in the next county. He heard the breath surging in and out of his lungs. He heard his own heartbeat.