Blood sprayed the air between them.
She must have done a hell of a better job than she thought, because Harrison took his foot off the brake and somehow stepped on the gas and the Dodge started moving forward again. His face was bloody, his eyes lolling in their sockets, and his body went slack against the seat.
Gaby stopped hitting him long enough to lean over his body, grab the door lever, and jerk on it. The door swung open and she leaned back, put both feet against Harrison’s shoulder, and pushed with everything she had. He didn’t fight her — he didn’t look as if he were capable of fighting her. Thank God he wasn’t wearing his seat belt, because his body toppled toward the open door and disappeared into the air, landing with a solid thump! against the highway moments later.
“Gaby!” Claire shouted behind her.
Gaby looked back at the girl, saw her pointing, and turned toward the front windshield.
The horsemen were coming right at them at a fast gallop. There had to be at least a half dozen of them, and there was no confusing the camo uniform they were wearing.
Josh’s soldiers. I hate it when I’m right.
She climbed into the driver’s seat, jammed a foot down on the brake, and pulled the gear into reverse. She grabbed the steering wheel and switched her foot over to the gas pedal, pushing down as far as it would go until she felt it touch the floor.
“Hold on!” she shouted.
Here we go again, she thought as the Dodge began to reverse up the highway.
She struggled to keep it straight, using both the rearview and side mirrors, jerking the steering wheel left and right the entire time, trying to compensate for the drift. It was amazingly harder to drive backward than she had expected, but then, she knew that all too well. The last time she had tried this, she ended up in one of the ditches…
And the horsemen were coming. She had no idea horses could move that quickly.
She kept backing up, praying she was going straight enough. The last thing she needed was to go into the ditch again.
“Left, left!” Claire shouted behind her.
Gaby jerked the steering wheel left, knowing full well she was overcompensating but unable to relay that information to her hands.
“No, no, your right, your right!” Claire shouted.
Gaby righted the steering wheel and saw the ditch flashing by in her rearview mirror.
“Straight, straight!” Claire shouted.
Gaby grinned. Her own personal highway traffic controller. Now if only she could find Claire a pair of bright orange sticks—
Pek-pek-pek!
The front windshield cracked and Gaby heard a whistling sound as a bullet sliced past her right ear — an inch from taking it off completely? Two? — and tore off a piece of her seat’s upholstery. More rounds slammed into the hood, the ping-ping! of metallic ricochets echoing in the air.
“Get down, get down!” Gaby shouted.
She didn’t look back to make sure both Claire and Milly had obeyed orders because Gaby was too busy looking forward at the horsemen galloping up on them. Jesus, were horses supposed to be able to move that fast?
They were close enough now that she could make out six of them, like camo-wearing cowboys, a couple sporting baseball caps to keep out the sun. The country sky was thick with gunfire, bullets screaming around the car, digging chunks out of the road outside her window. The only reason she was still alive, she imagined, was because the soldiers were riding and shooting at the same time. It looked easier in the movies, but was apparently not so in real life.
But they weren’t completely terrible shots, either. Enough bullets were hitting the Dodge that smoke began venting out of the hood, and Gaby kept hearing glass breaking. The headlights, the windshield… Where else did the car have glass? And how long before every single one of them was shattered?
We’re going to die. We’re going to die on this miserable piece of sun-drenched highway. I’ll never get to drink ice cold water or sleep in my own bed again, or take a hot shower. I should have never gotten on that damn helicopter…
Then she heard an explosion and braced herself for the car to be engulfed in flames. But that didn’t happen. The hood was still in one piece and though smoke continued to rush out from underneath it, the sound hadn’t come from in front of her. It had come from under the car, which meant—
The Neon began fighting her and she knew one of the front tires had been punctured. Oh great. She had barely managed to get this far on four good tires, now she was swerving dangerously left, then right, then left again on just three.
What else can go wrong?
“Gaby!” Claire shouted.
“I know, I know!” Gaby shouted back.
She struggled with the steering wheel and searched out the shotgun and found it on the floor of the front passenger seat. There was no choice now. If she kept backing up, she would end up in the ditch again and that would be it. If the Silverado hadn’t been able to survive that kind of drop, there was no way the sedan, in its current sad state, would even come close.
“Stay down!” Gaby shouted just before she slammed down on the brake.
The car swerved, coming to a stop with the front bumper pointing at the left side shoulder and the front passenger side facing up the highway. Gaby put the car in park and lunged for the shotgun. In order to reach the weapon, she had to lay across both front seats, and when she scrambled up on her knees, the first thing she saw was one of the horsemen right outside the window.
Gaby pulled the trigger, prayed that Harrison had a shell already racked, and was rewarded with a loud blast that, in the closed confines of the car, was ear-splitting. The buckshot tore off pieces of the open window, but enough of them made it through and hit their intended target. Red splotches spread across the rider’s shirt as he fell out of the saddle.
The other soldiers, seeing one of their own go down, reined up twenty, maybe thirty yards away. Gaby threw herself back down to the seats as gunfire filled the air once again.
The ping-ping-ping! of bullets punching through the Dodge’s side, the warbling shrill of Milly screaming at the top of her lungs and her own labored breathing filling her ears all in one loud rush. Then there was another boom! as one more tire exploded and the car dipped slightly behind her.
Gaby gripped the shotgun and kept her head down. Glass pelted her from every direction, the noise of bullets whistling above her head like missiles. It was impossible to rack the shotgun and load a new shell while still handcuffed, so she had to grab the forend with both hands and pulled it back before returning her finger to the trigger.
She bided her time, keeping her eyes on the open front passenger door window above her, waiting for a head to appear on the other side like last time. But they had apparently learned their lesson and no one came close enough for her to shoot. They didn’t have to, either, because they could destroy the car from a distance just fine, which seemed to be what they were trying to do. The seats around her were perforated, the dashboard to her left literally coming apart by the second, and glass continued to rain down on her, cutting her arms. She might have been bleeding from her face (again), but she couldn’t be sure.
She didn’t know how long she lay there across the two front seats holding the shotgun, small and large shards of glass falling off her body with every slight movement she made or breath she took. It could have been a minute. Or a few seconds. Hell, it could have been an hour for all she knew.