“What?” Pam shouted. Dave could hear her a little but the words we heavily muffled.
“Nothing,” he replied, deciding to give it a few seconds for the ringing in his own ears to subside.
They were all doing over ninety now and while the Rogue would be reaching its limits soon, the cars and bike had more room on their speedometers before approaching their top speeds. The car on the left roared forward and Dave swung the car that way, bumping the muscle car and fucking up its expensive paint job. Their mini-SUV fishtailed a little from the impact and Dave fought to keep the car on the road, seeing mile marker 165 blur past. Up ahead, he could see the road straighten out and then a wide bend to the right. After that, Mike had confirmed it straightened out again for about a mile and then began the gradual rise. The cavalry was lying in wait just on the other side.
The guy on the bike motioned violently with his pistol hand and the two cars sped forward again. They were going to try and overtake Dave on the curve. It was a pretty good plan and one that Dave could get behind, if he’d been on their side. He knew it was going to be hard enough making the sweeping turn at this speed, seeing the yellow fifty-five-speed limit caution sign flash by, not to mention defending his little piece of the road. The guy on the bike kept moving, goosing the throttle and moving back and forth across the open lanes, making himself a harder target. Joe fired at him again, missing for the third time and then tried to put a bullet into the tailing car’s passenger door out of frustration. But at that angle and with a moving target, it didn’t penetrate the exterior metal of the door and instead put a sharp dent and short crease in the glossy, black paint.
Dave considered telling Pam to take the shot at the guy on the bike behind them, knowing it’d be a lot easier to hit the weaving son of a bitch with the shotgun, rather than a pistol. Maybe he should just tell them to switch guns. Or have her pass the gun over the seat and just let Joe and Dakota do all the shooting. His thoughts were interrupted when the twelve-gauge roared to his left. The explosion made him jump in his seat and his head snapped toward the sound. While he’d been considering their firing alternatives, the car on the right was trying to sneak past them. Pam had let him know that might not be a good idea by blowing a load of buckshot into the front corner of his car. The ringing that had partially subsided was back and Dave thought he may have screamed, in a manly way, from the unexpected blast. Pam hadn’t appeared to have hit anything vital because the car dropped back but kept up its pace. The turn signal was shattered and what was left of it dangled from a single wire. Dave disliked the idea of doing that kind of damage to a classic muscle car, but he also figured the guy probably stole it, so fuck him.
The small, green 161 sign zipped past as they hit the curve. The car on the left went wide this time and the car on the right took the inside taunting Dave to try and block them both at the same time.
“If it looks like he’s going to make it past me, blow one of his fucking tires out,” Dave shouts to Pam, happy his hearing had partially returned.
“If I can,” she yells back. Jerking the pump-action back, the empty shell flips out the window and disappears at the same moment she pistons a loaded one into the chamber.
It dawns on Dave this should have been the plan all along but there’s no time to berate himself at the moment. He needed to concentrate on getting his family out of this fucking mess that seemed like such a good idea a few minutes ago. If they survived, they’d all need to get together and talk about a playbook or something, for what to do when this kind of shit happened again. For now, he just needed to keep his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road, the cars nipping at their asses like jackals and the greasy fucker on the bike.
“Here they come again!” Joe says as the cars flank out and begin accelerating.
The car on the inside hangs back, making it impossible for Pam to take a shot at the tires without leaning halfway through the window, which was out of the question. The one on the other side begins to slide forward, keeping several feet between them.
“This one’s bringing his window down!” Joe shouts, putting two of the three rapidly fired shots into the front fender as the cars reach the start of the curve.
“Maybe he just wants to talk?” Dakota suggests.
“You think?” Dave shouts, jerking the wheel right, trying to keep that one from passing.
“Could be,” Dakota replies.
“Shoot him anyway!” Dave yells to Joe.
“I was gonna!” Joe shouts back. “But you keep jerking the car around!”
“Stop making excuses!” Dave replies.
Joe scowls for a moment and then rests the butt of his pistol in the open window frame, steadying his aim and waiting for the shot to line up. With the car’s window all the way down, Joe could see the driver was either alone or a second occupant was hiding on the floor of the car. Both options seemed plausible.
Time slowed for Joe as he worked to control his breathing, which until now, he hadn’t noticed was panicked and coming in large gasps. He forced his eyes open, not wanting to miss the shot, but they instantly began to well up. The air pouring through the window made it impossible not to squint, and he quickly rubbed the tears from his eyes. With seconds drawn into minutes, Joe studied the car as it crept forward, its engine a muffled roar in his ears. He made micro-adjustments to his aim with every fraction the guy moved closer, picking the optimum angle. As soon as he had a clear shot, Joe was taking this fucker out.
“Shit!” was all Joe had time to shout, the instant he saw the end of what looked to him like twin tunnels being pointed at him by the guy in the driver’s seat. While Joe had been focused on getting the perfect shot, this guy had been doing the same thing and was faster at it. Realizing his fatal mistake, Joe fired blindly out the window at the same instant he flung himself back in his seat. With Joe suddenly out of the way, Dakota saw the unavoidable peril he was in an instant before the driver pulled the double triggers on the shotgun.
The first of the double-ought pellets ripped into him, instantly stripping the flesh from his face and coating the inside of the car behind him in crimson gore. Chunks of pulverized meat and skin soaked the car’s interior in sticky globs. Several of the projectiles punched savage holes into Dakota’s fragile facial bones, causing his eyes to rupture in their sockets. Milky eye fluid that had once filled the gelatinous orbs, mingled with blood and mucus from his destroyed sinus cavities, looking like undercooked egg whites swirled into the chunky salsa of human debris. The horrifying mixture pooled briefly in what was left of his ruined mouth before spilling down his neck in slowly tumbling hunks of gore.
Some of the pellets sprayed past Dakota, missing him entirely as the window behind him blasted outward. The flesh and ragged skin that had managed to remain attached to the back of Dakota’s skull fluttered in the high wind from the missing window like grotesque streamers. Thick drops of nastiness flicked from the ends in all directions, speckling the interior and its occupants with crimson dots. What remained of Dakota’s jaw moved up and down, like he was trying to speak. His ruined tongue twisted and squirmed in his destroyed mouth. It pushed out a molar, no longer bound in place by gum tissue or bone, and the tooth fell from his mouth. It tumbled past his missing lips and landed into the tide of sticky viscera sloughing down Dakota’s neck, covering his chest and pooling in his lap. His brain must have been sending bursts of confused signals to the rest of his body because his limbs began jerking and flailing spasmodically.
The guy who fired the kill shot let out a whoop of glee as Dave jerked the wheel to the side, slamming his car into the other and sending the bastard careening wildly to the side of the road. The biker easily swerved to miss him, taking the time to give his cohort a thumbs up in appreciation of a job well done, as the driver corrected his course and rejoined the chase.
Joe screamed at the sight of Dakota’s twitching body, its heart pumping the last of his life fluid in spurts. Dakota’s hands shook, his fingers clenching independen
tly from one another. His feet kicked under Pam’s seat for a moment, sending a final protest of his body’s vicious violation, before slumping back in the seat, leaning slightly in Joe’s direction. Joe screamed again as he shoved Dakota’s body back, not wanting it near him. Pam wiped the speckles of blood and brains that had been splattered across her cheek, spreading it into smears.
“Are you hit?” Dave yelled to her. Pam looked absently at her hand and the viscera smeared across it. She wiped her face again, this time more vigorously. Dave repeated his question, releasing the wheel with one hand and grabbing her arm to force her to answer him.
“No,” she said quietly, staring blankly at her hand as they came out of the turn and began toward the straightaway leading to the hill. Dave hadn’t heard her speak, but he’d read her lips and knew shock was setting in.
“Pam! Pam!” he shouted, shaking her as he did. Her eyes fluttered for a second and then focused in on his. “I need you here right now!” he told her.
“He was just sitting there,” Pam said as her eyes began welling with tears. “And they shot him…”
“I know, and we will make them pay for it,” Dave replied, squeezing her arm hard enough to make her wince. “But I need you here so we can!” Pam nodded and Dave turned his attention to Joe as the jackals formed again behind them.
“Joe! Joe!” he shouted, watching his son in the mirror. His lips were moving but Dave couldn’t hear him or make out the words. “Goddamn it! Joe!” Dave yelled louder. He jerked the wheel to the side, attempting to shake Joe and get his attention. Joe banged his head against the doorframe to his back and he slowly turned his head to glare at Dave. “Welcome back,” Dave said to him through the mirror. “You want to shoot those fuckers, or what?” he asked.
Joe nodded, twisting in his seat and getting on his knees. Placing his arms on either side of the headrest, he emptied his magazine out the back window at their pursuers. The cars swerved and the biker immediately braked and swerved right, placing the muscle car between himself and Joe’s spraying bullets.
“I’m out!” Joe shouted, holding up his gun to show Dave his breech was locked back in the holy shit, you’re out of fucking bullets position.
“Maybe you should reload!” Dave suggested forcefully. This idea seemed to make sense to Joe, who ejected the magazine into his lap and began fumbling with the box of shells he’d grabbed from his apartment when they’d left. “You too!” Dave shouted at Pam. To her credit, she didn’t question his instructions and stuffed more shells into the shotgun.
“Where the hell are you guys? We can hear gunfire in the distance. Was that you?” Mike’s voice crackled over the radio.
“We’re coming to the base of the hill,” Pam shouted into the walkie-talkie. “Be ready!”
“Are you guys all okay? Over,” Brigette asks.
Looking into the back seat at the corpse behind her, Pam replies, “Mostly,” before letting the radio drop next to her.
As they started to ascend the hill, Dave pressed his foot to the floor, trying to squeeze every ounce of power from the machine as their car broke the hundred mile an hour mark. The front end was beginning to shake, and Dave knew there was no room for fancy driving or mistakes at this speed. All he needed to do was beat them to the top of the hill, but because of the steep grade, he also realized their velocity wouldn’t last long.
The tip of the speedometer needle just touched ninety-five when another shot exploded from the biker’s pistol and punched a hole through the front windshield, a second before the two cars hit the gas. The bullet hole spiderwebbed, filling the windshield with cracked glass, making it almost impossible to see. Dave fought the instinct to stomp on the brakes and forced himself to hold the accelerator down. He wanted to lean his head out his window to see where they were going but decided that wasn’t the safest idea. He’d seen enough horror movies to know that kind of shit ended in decapitation, and they’d already had enough of that. The top of the hill was a half mile up and their pursuers were making their move, taking advantage of their powerful engines and the Nissan’s lack thereof. Dave couldn’t help wishing they were on a respectable hill in the Pacific Northwest, with a steep drop off to one side that he could push one of the cars over. But no such luck here in the Midwest. This road straddled the center of the earthen rise, leaving a clear shoulder on either side. There wasn’t so much as a guardrail to bounce them off. The muscle cars surged ahead, and the biker made his move, going out onto the smooth shoulder. Dave straddled the lanes, trying to keep the car between the lines as the cars began to pull up along both sides of them. Dave fanned the wheel, veering the car from side to side but fearing he’d miss something to cause him to lose his precarious control of the vehicle. His mind played out the scene of them flipping end over end and rolling a few times, their lifeless limbs hanging limply out the shattered windows.
Pam fired the shotgun at the same instant the car on the right punched the gas. Double-ought pellets peppered the fender and hood. She hadn’t hit the tire, but the throaty purr of the car’s engine changed to a loud knocking and it quickly lost speed as they approached the crest of the hill. Dave hoped Mike and the others could hear them coming, or at least the shots being fired and were ready to greet them.
The car on his left roared as it began to pull past them, and Dave did nothing to deter the driver. The biker also saw his opportunity and wrenched the throttle on the bike. Having successfully reloaded his gun, Joe took another shot out the window, but adrenaline continued to make his hands shake and he missed his target. The greasy rider leaned forward as he flew past them toward the peak of the rise. When he was reasonably certain he was clear, the rider drifted to the center but never let up on the gas. Dave lifted his foot from the gas pedal and applied both feet to his brake, trying to press it through the floor and making the anti-lock braking system earn its keep. He fought to keep the car skidding in a straight line rather than tumbling recklessly like he’d envisioned a few seconds before, as it began to drift sideways. The wounded car to their left skirted past them as they slowed, with the biker leading them over the top.
Dave knew their plan was to get past them and block their way. Then they could take anything they wanted, and Dave knew deep down, in the darkest place inside of him, one of those things would be Pam. He felt sickened when the greasy fucking biker had leered at her through the window, ignoring Dave’s presence altogether. Dave snarled in malevolent satisfaction at the fucker who dared to have impure and probably violent thoughts about his wife, as his bike caught a couple feet of air over the crest. The guy must have been doing over a hundred and twenty when his wheels left the ground. This left him with nowhere to go and nothing to do when he saw the firing line assembled on either side of the road. Under Brigette’s direction, they’d positioned themselves in similar lines, rather than facing each other and firing as the marauders passed between them. This eliminated the chance of cutting one another down with friendly fire and would send an inescapable barrage of bullets toward the bastards attempting to run them down.
The air exploded with gunfire as the biker caught the first volley, peppering his body and machine with a barrage of high caliber fuck yous. The bike exploded in the air, turning into a flaming ball of twisting metal as it hit the road and tumbled down the center of the lanes. Burning biker parts riddled with holes flew in every direction as the corpse became one with his ride and the pavement.
The rest of the family didn’t have a spare second to cheer as the guy who’d killed Dakota was the next over the hill. He’d seen the explosive blossoming of the biker and was already trying to bring the car to a stop. While Lynn watched Jaxson and Braxton inside the Mercedes, Mike, Zack, Brigette, and Ben, unleashed their pent-up anxiety and fear on the windshield of the car. The glass imploded instantly, and they kept firing, making the driver dance convulsively with each bullet that slammed through him and finally slumping him to one side. The car and its dead or dying driver rolling off into the brush that cove
red that side of the hill.
The car Pam had shot limped over the top of the hill and rolled to a stop when Brigette put a burst of rounds into the windshield. Dave crept their car over the precipice not wanting to be mistaken for an unfriendly and waved his arm out the window in greeting. Brigette waved back as the cavalry picked up their pace to meet them, but Dave was already moving. Taking the shotgun from Pam, he exited the vehicle and cautiously approached the barely idling car. The engine was knocking loudly, and smoke billowed from under the hood. Because of the ridiculously tinted windows that were still in place, he couldn’t tell if anyone was alive inside the car. It was possible someone was waiting to exact final revenge before joining his friends in the fiery hereafter. Not wanting to take any chances, Dave waved to Brigette, held up two fingers and pointed at the car. She nodded and sent two more 5.56 greetings into the windshield, but it still held in place.
Dave approached the driver’s door, listening intently for any sound of deception, although after the firestorm his ears had just been subjected to, he wondered if he’d ever be able to hear anything clearly again. Reaching carefully for the door handle, he jumped a bit when the car gave a final shudder at the exact second his fingers made contact with the metal. The car fell silent and black smoke from under the hood grew thicker. Dave lifted the handle and began opening the door slowly, keeping the barrel pointed at the door as the others cautiously approached. Pam was heading for Dave’s side, but he motioned her to stay where she was, out of harm’s way if this fucker was playing possum.
Inside the car, the driver glared at Dave as he swung the door open. Blood pumped from a hole low on his chest and pooled in the seat beneath him. There was another bullet hole in his right shoulder, his arm hanging limply. It didn’t look to be life-threatening if he received some immediate medical attention. Either way, the arm was probably a loss. Dave’s eyes passed from the driver to the large caliber revolver on the floor of the passenger side, out of the driver’s limited reach. He scanned the dash, looking for the more dangerous weapon he hoped wouldn’t be mounted there.
The F*cked Series (Book 3): Mean Page 3