by Mitch Goth
Bobby’s car rolled slowly through the industrial ward of town and Taylor and Mike both held themselves out their respective windows. Taylor leaned out of the front passenger side while Mike manned the back driver’s side window. All the while, Nate sat back with his thoughts.
“Cady!” Taylor called out into the night.
“Cera!” Mike yelled in the other direction.
“Cady!”
“Cera!”
“Anything?” Bobby wondered at Taylor.
“No,” she sighed, leaning back into the car, “I know it’s hopeless.”
“What was your first clue?” Nate remarked from the back.
“At least we’re trying, Nate.”
“What you’re trying is unbelievably dumb.”
“You come up with something better, smart ass.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time?”
“Ignore him,” Bobby brought Taylor back up to the front seat conversation, “he’s under a lot of stress.”
“No shit,” Nate proclaimed.
“Ease up, back there,” Bobby replied, “focus on your thinking.”
Nate leaned into his seat and turned his sight out into the maze of shadows created by the tall, decaying buildings around them. His thoughts overtook him once more and his brain began storming at full force.
“This is never going to work,” Taylor said despairingly.
“Yeah, probably not,” Bobby shrugged. “But the night’s still young and Cady and Cera are probably still alive.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“I don’t know. If you don’t believe things will come out well, then how can you bring yourself to do them?”
“How can you be so optimistic in a situation like this?”
“That’s just another thing I don’t know. I guess I always was. And in a situation like this, doesn’t at least one person need to be? Otherwise you’d just be a group of downers diminishing each others hope until there’s none left and you just sort of give up.”
“Well, thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being that person for us.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Bobby smiled at her.
She returned his smile.
“Okay,” Nate leaned up and disrupted their conversation, “I came up with an idea.”
“You did?” Taylor sounded legitimately surprised.
“Yes I did. Now, just hang in here, because this is kind of a crazy idea I just came up with. Let’s call the police.”
“Again with the cops?” Mike leaned back into the car on the mention of the law enforcement.
“Yes, Mike, again with the cops.”
“Alright, if it’ll shut you up,” Mike pulled out his phone, but paused. “The industrial district is a huge dead zone for me apparently.”
“Fine, I’ll do it,” Nate pulled his phone out. “I’ve got a signal, but it’s really weak. Do either of you have a better one?” he inquired at Bobby and Taylor.
“I left my phone at home before I went to the party, I didn’t think I needed it,” Taylor replied apologetically.
“You left your phone at home, in this day in age?”
“Sorry if I didn’t foresee a massive shootout to happen in the front yard of Cady Steward’s house.”
Nate groaned, “What about you, Bobby?”
“I don’t have a cell phone, man,” Bobby explained.
“You have got to be kidding me. What kind of person doesn’t have a cell phone?”
“I don’t feel the need to be hooked up to the Internet all the time, I’d rather just be hooked up to life, you know?”
“No, Bobby, I couldn’t even pretend to know.”
“Hey,” Mike exclaimed, “I’ve got bars!”
“Well call the cops then,” Nate insisted.
“Alright, cool your jets. Let me just say that this is a bad idea,” Mike found his emergency dial and pressed the call button.
“Put it on speaker,” Nate instructed. Mike did so.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
Nate’s mouth opened but before a single syllable could come out, a bright light surrounded the car and filled the interior. In an instant the light became blinding. Nate realized it was coming from the side of the car. Headlights.
A large truck slammed into the rear fender of Bobby’s Impala. The car spun around in a swift jerk. Mike’s phone went sailing out of the open rear window. Meanwhile, Nate’s slipped out of his hand and sailed upward towards the ceiling, it came down from its impact in pieces. The car came to an abrupt and screeching halt aiming the same direction they were prior.
All four of them were dazed and confused by the crash. Nate came to his senses the fastest. He looked out his window to see the truck wrapping around to make another go at ramming them. He slapped at Bobby’s shoulder wildly.
“Go, go, go!” he commanded.
“Stop hitting me, bro,” Bobby replied, still hazy.
“Just fucking drive!”
Coming out of his haze, Bobby could make out the truck as well; it had now aimed itself right at them. The two vehicles slammed their accelerators simultaneously. Bobby’s significantly lighter car picked up speed swiftly, even with the damaged fender. Ramming had ceased, but a car chase had begun.
“What the fuck is happening?” Mike asked loudly as his unbuckled self was thrown throughout the back seat.
“Who are those people?” Taylor buried herself in her seat, but still tried to look back at their pursuers.
“Maybe they just want our insurance information,” Bobby suggested.
“Shut up and drive, Bobby,” Nate commanded.
Bobby turned sharply through many uncontrolled intersections and in no time they were in a heavily unknown part of town. Street signs became blurs and they all just hoped the next turn they took wouldn’t be a dead end. But no matter how fast he drove or how many turns he made, the truck was never less than a few car lengths behind them.
“Drive faster!” Taylor insisted.
“This is as fast as it goes!” Bobby assured.
“Make it go faster!”
“Did you not just hear me?”
Just then, the back windshield shattered and a portion of the center consol exploded as a bullet passed through it. All four of them ducked for cover, Bobby included. The car drifted into the curb and he overcorrected the drift, causing the car to slam into and go over the opposite curb. Another over correction sent the Impala hurdling through a line of mailboxes and sliding loudly through the street.
By the time Bobby regained control of the car they were heading the opposite way they started. Right along side the truck. They passed it in a flash, but that moment was more than enough for another bullet come plowing through the driver’s window and clip Bobby’s ear. He cringed in pain, but was careful not to let himself lose control again.
“Are you okay?” Nate wondered as he shifted his head wildly back and fourth between looking at Bobby and watching the truck spin around and continue its chase.
“I’m fine. Where’s the blunderbuss?” Bobby searched around the car frantically.
“Here! It’s here!” Taylor reached down by her feet and retrieved the gun.
“Don’t hold it inside the trigger guard!” Bobby instructed, observing her tight hold on the trigger.
“What?” she replied, confused, not having heard that rule before.
Before Bobby could elaborate, Taylor’s grip tightened as he maneuvered a corner and the weapon fired a pile of ball bearings through the roof of the car and filled the interior with a thick cloud of smoke.
“Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t see shit!” Mike exclaimed through coughs.
Unable to get a good view of the road, Bobby slammed on the brakes just in time to stop inches from the curb of a “T” intersection. In one swift movement, he shut off the car, pulled the key and unlocked all the doors.
“Run!” he said as he bolted from the vehicl
e.
The others followed his example after a moment of hesitation. They had made it a mere ten feet before the truck stopped next to the abandoned car and the two passengers exited, guns drawn.
The group had no choice but take a trip through a dark and twisting alleyway. Just behind them, the reports of pistols echoed. Much to their collective dismay, they came across what looked like a solid brick wall.
“What the hell do we do now?” Nate wondered, looking around the lightless area.
“There!” Mike pointed swiftly to a slit between two buildings that couldn’t have been more than three feet wide. Where it went, they didn’t know, but it was a necessary risk.
Before any of them could make a run for the small opening, a voice came from behind them.
“I think I got my share of cardio following you bastards,” a heavily winded Adnan approached them, gun aimed. An equally breathless Josh joined his brother.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Taylor inquired frightfully.
“Do we want to explain this whole thing to them?” Josh asked Adnan.
“Well, if we bring them in, we’d have to do it anyway,” Adnan answered.
“But Hosni didn’t say we had to do that.”
“Right, he said we could use our own discretion on this one.”
“Well what does our discretion say?”
“I think it says that there’s not enough seats in the truck for them.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“We’re a kick ass team.”
“I was just thinking that too!”
At that, Adnan and Josh shared a brotherly embrace.
Mike leaned over to Nate, “What the hell is happening right now?”
“I don’t know,” Nate said, dumbfounded, “I can’t possibly know.”
“Alright,” Adnan spoke up as the duo aimed their guns back at the four of them, “we’ve decided to kill you, congratulations.”
“How is that possibly congratulatory?” Taylor replied with even more terror than before.
“Well, if we kill you here, you won’t have to deal with that loud, short haired girl.”
“Hey,” Mike replied, “that’s my sister.”
“Whatever, the point is she’s annoying as shit.”
“Can we stop conversing with the enemy please?” Josh wondered.
At that moment both Bobby and Mike spotted several medium sized stones on the ground. Mike acted first, snatching up one of the rocks with the speed and agility of a pro footballer. But then, he threw it. In an instant the rock flew far left and out into the dark oblivion of the alleyway.
“Okay,” Josh broke his recent rule, “I’m going to ignore for a moment that you just threw a rock at us. We are literally ten feet from you, that was a God awful throw.”
“Fuck you. It’s dark out here,” Mike defended himself.
“What does the amount of light have anything to do with anything?”
Just then, Bobby reached for one of the rocks. He grabbed one up as fast as he could and hurled it at Adnan. The shot was fast and sure. A rather jagged edge struck him directly on his right eyebrow. Both brothers took a few steps back, stunned by the single hit.
Bobby was quick on his feet and bolted for the small alley, quickly gesturing for his friends to follow him. In only a few moments, the whole group had disappeared down the dark abyss.
“Where did they go?” Adnan questioned furiously as he looked back up.
“I don’t know,” Josh shrugged.
“Why did you wince? The rock hit me.”
“I know, but when I saw it hit you it looked like it hurt and that kind of hurt me in a way.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I can’t really explain it.”
“The same thing happened to me that time you fell down those stairs when we were kids,” Adnan recollected. “I limped for a week after that.”
With that, another brotherly embrace was given.
The alleyway the group had faded into spit them out just a half block from their car, which was now sufficiently empty of smoke. Sprinting over, they hopped into the car and just as smoothly as he’d shut it off, Bobby started his car up and sped as far away as he could as fast as he could.
“Oh my God,” Taylor exclaimed, still breathless from the running, “did we just almost die?”
“I think that’s a fair assumption,” Nate replied.
“Who the hell were those guys?” Mike wondered.
“I don’t know, but they really want us dead for some reason,” Bobby rubbed the hole in the consol.
“We would be dead if it wasn’t for one hell of a rock throw,” Nate couldn’t help but give Bobby a single pat on the back.
“Yeah, where’d you learn to throw like that?” Mike inquired.
“I don’t know, I guess I just always knew,” Bobby shrugged.
“Maybe after this is all over you could give me a pointer or two?”
“I think that can be arranged.”
“Have you ever considered playing football?”
“Guys,” Nate interjected, “I think there’s more pressing matters at hand right now.”
“Right,” Bobby nodded, “we have places to be.”
“Where exactly do we have to be?” Taylor asked.
“I don’t know,” Nate answered, “just keep driving.”
6