Lame. I rub a hand across my forehead. Lame, lame, lame. If those assholes wanted to race, they could have picked a side road, where there was no chance of hitting anyone. Granted, the three of us are the only cars I’ve seen since I left Cottonwood, but still. Dying as collateral damage in a high-speed car accident is definitely not part of the plan.
“Move your ass,” I muttered. “Jesus, you pansy…”
I turn on my blinker to merge back over before realizing how stupid that precaution is. I could drive down the center of the highway if I wanted to—so I do. Just to see what it feels like. And you know what? It actually feels pretty damn awesome, like I own the whole open stretch of valley in front of me, like I could—
I slam on my brakes, and my truck stops about five feet later.
The red SUV is flipped over, literally upside down, in the grassy median that separates the northbound and southbound lanes. It’s smoking and two of the wheels are still treading against the air. Parked diagonally across the lanes is the beige sedan. Two men jump out, both of them wearing those tacky-looking hunter camo jackets, rifles out in front of them. One is the taller version of the other. Both have long, stringy dark hair that’s gathered in clouds of frizz under their hats. They’re fully bearded, and full bellied, and for a second I want to laugh. But that’s when the girl appears.
She has a head of dark curls and is wearing a tank top and jeans. To her right is a short blonde, bundled up in an oversized black hoodie. Cowering behind them is an even younger girl, Asian, with long, flowing black hair. That one keeps trying to turn back to the SUV, but the blonde keeps grabbing her and pulling her in close to her side.
The guns are suddenly up and level with the men’s, and one of them fires at the SUV’s back window, shattering the glass. I can hear the girls scream and suddenly I’m out of the car, and all five of them are staring at me.
“Get the hell out of here!” one of the men shouts, his gun turned back toward me. I throw up my hands, because what the hell else am I supposed to do? None of this feels real. I’m seeing a kid and a teenager for the first time in six years, and it’s like my brain can’t understand it.
The girls bolt. Out of the corner of my eye, I see them go, cutting across the highway. The older one touches the hood of one of the cars that has been abandoned there, and its headlights flare to life—its engine roars. She makes this motion like she’s sweeping the dust off it, and without any other warning, the car is shooting across the median toward the men—the skip tracers.
Holy shit.
You hear about the things these freaks can do, but you sort of figure that some of it has to be exaggerated. There’s no way someone can blink and set a house on fire, right? And that girl, she just…she just…
The skip tracers have to dive out of the way to avoid getting hit, but whatever crazy power resuscitated the car suddenly blinks out, and it rolls to a slow stop on the opposite shoulder. I don’t think it was ever meant to hit them, only pack enough of a punch to serve as a distraction. I’m half horrified, half amazed that it works.
“They’re running,” I yell at the men, throwing my arm out in their direction. The girls are trying for the shelter of the Tonto National Forest.
The men chase after them on foot, shooting me these looks like it’s my fault. I don’t know, maybe it is. Maybe I should be running after the freaks, too, see if I can swipe one of them for myself. There’s nothing in the handbook that says you can’t, or that you get docked points. It seems like it could be dangerous business to find yourself suddenly being hunted by the same people you just stole from.
But they could have other stuff I need.
I’m not proud of it, okay? But I go and look anyway, peering through the sun’s glare on the driver-side window to see if they left anything valuable lying out. There’s a small wad of money in one of the drink holders, but I don’t see any of their tech. Figures.
The door is unlocked, which pretty much makes the decision for me. I slide the money into my back pocket, giving a salute in their direction. They won’t miss it, I tell myself. They’re going to have thirty grand coming their way if they nab those girls. Those things.
The handbook tells you not to think of them like they’re actual humans. That’s easier after watching the psychic ninja jump-start that car and send it flying, but I still don’t know that I can follow the advice. One of the skip tracers they quoted said that he likes to think of them as dogs—puppies, really. Living creatures that aren’t like us but still have needs. I’ll start there. Puppies—no, puppies are too cute. I’ll stick with freaks.
And it’s the strangest thing, because as I walk by the flipped SUV, I swear I can hear a dog whimpering nearby. I tell myself to keep walking, to get the hell out of here before the beards make it back and notice what’s missing, but my eyes slide toward the dark figure in the SUV’s driver’s seat. With the glass blown out of the windshield, I can see the unnatural angle of the kid’s neck. His long dreads fall around the place where his head is jammed against the car’s roof, but they don’t cover the jagged shards of glass embedded in his throat. Blood is still spilling down over his chin, gliding over his dark skin, into his open, unblinking eyes.
Not even cold yet.
The body. The kid…the thing.
I remember being ten, bumming around behind Dad’s restaurant after school with two of my friends. One afternoon we pushed all the garbage cans onto their sides because one of us had the genius idea of jumping over them with our bikes like the guys we’d seen on MTV—one of those stupid shows. Only, when we turned the first one over, there was a dead cat behind it. I will never in my life forget that damn cat. The way its gray fur was matted, coated with blood, the back half of its body broken by what I’d guess was a car. The three of us, we just sat there staring at it, taking turns trying to get close to it without puking. For hours.
And that cat was the first thing I thought of later that night when I found Dad’s body.
What is it about horrible, violent things that capture us? I’d never seen a dead thing before that moment, but years later, it would be one funeral after another and everyone would want to know every detail about each one. The twenty-four-hour news stream would stop pretending like there were other stories to report. And all of us, we were hooked to the coverage of the hundreds, thousands, millions of deaths like junkies, waiting to see how bad it would get, drowning in it. And when the D.C. bombings happened, forget it. I stayed home from work for two weeks, overdosing on CNN.
There’s a second of silence before the pounding starts and a small, pale hand begins slamming against the back passenger window. I feel my legs moving, running, bringing me around to the other side of the SUV, where the doors are hanging open.
There’s a girl, maybe eleven years old at most, in the seat directly behind the driver, peering at me through the wreckage, her face streaked with blood. She’s hanging upside down, struggling with her seat belt. The driver’s seat looks almost broken in half, bowing back so that the small kid is pinned in place. For a second, I doubt my first impression and I think I’m looking at a boy. Her black hair is spiked out around her head like a pixie’s, and it takes me a moment longer than it probably should to realize she—it—is wearing a bright pink dress.
The seat belt’s jammed, I think. I’m dimly aware of my hand’s reaching toward her—it, dammit—and all of a sudden I’m gripping the strap myself, trying to rip out the buckle by force. I climb inside to go at it from a better angle, and her look of relief turns to one of irritation—like, Hey, asshole, if that was ever going to work, would I still be sitting here?