They must have been tracking us for hours after that.
Ursula was driving, as usual, and I was in the front passenger seat, holding the map. I know that I don’t know how to use it anymore, but I liked to keep it anyway. Knowing we still had it made me feel safer, for some reason. Like I still know how to get us to New Orleans. Even though it was afternoon, the heat of the day still hadn’t broken yet, and I was bracing a hand against my brow to cut the glare, leaning back against the headrest. The keys jangled lightly in the ignition as we bounced over the potholes.
“Do you hear that?” Ursula asked me. “It’s like engines.”
“What?” I raised my head and squinted. The sun was so bright and everything was so flat. The light reflected right off the ground, like a mirror. At first I couldn’t see a thing.
Then an open-back jeep shot past the front of our hood.
“Everyone down!” Ursula shouted. The RV surged beneath us—her foot jamming the pedal into the floor. I screamed as the tires squealed. From nowhere, suddenly we were surrounded, Ory. They’d been in our blind spot somehow, or were lying in wait and pulled onto the main road from ditches or something.
“They’re everywhere!” I cried to Ursula.
“How many?” she yelled back.
“I don’t know!” I tried to count. “Five cars at least!”
“Seven!” Lucius called. “No, eight!”
“Dhuuxo, get the gun!” Intisaar cried.
A dusty jeep screeched by and something hit my window, shattering the glass all over me. “God damnit!” Ursula shouted as I ducked, covering my face from the shards.
“Faster!” Intisaar wailed.
“Shadowless,” the stranger driving the jeep next to us said to me through the open air of the destroyed window when I looked at him. He put his hand out as if he could reach me from his seat. Even terrified, I was transfixed by the dark image of the shadow of his arm as it hung over the sandy ground between our two vehicles, rippling from the speed. Shots erupted on the other side of the RV, from Dhuuxo, and there was screaming and cursing. She waved Ursula’s gun triumphantly and pointed out her open window. “Two down!”
“Go!” the one who must have been their leader called from his motorcycle, and the bandit beside me revved his jeep closer to the RV, slamming against our right side. Victor and Ysabelle shouted behind me as they tried to keep balanced and fight back, but the jeep slammed us again and they fell backward into the cabin in a tangle of limbs. “I have one!” the bandit beside me cried, and reached out of the open window of his jeep again and into mine.
“No!” I tried to punch him, but his fingers were like iron when he finally snatched my arm just above the wrist. “Ursula!” I cried, and then, “Ory!” Between us, against the bright, sandy ground of the highway shoulder, the shadow of his arm pulled and pulled, pulling nothing.
“Stop him!” Ursula was shouting. She grabbed at the rifle that Dhuuxo had dropped when she tripped, but the RV teetered, and she had to take the wheel again. “No!”
I felt myself start to lift from my seat, to be dragged through the window. Only then did I finally realize what the man was wearing—layers against the sun and heat, every piece from head to toe a pure, ghostly white.
“It’s Transcendence!” I screamed before the bandit cracked me in the head with the butt of his pistol.
I’m okay still, Ory. I’m okay. So far.
I hope the speaker’s picking this up. I have your recorder hidden under my shirt, and I’ve pulled my collar up to hide my face while I whisper. I don’t know if the guards would care, but I can’t risk it. I don’t know what I’d do if they took it away. If I couldn’t talk to you. You’re all that’s keeping me going right now.
Even if the speaker actually is catching this, you’d still probably have no idea what I’m talking about—what’s going on. I wouldn’t blame you. I’m only beginning to understand it myself, too.
When I finally woke up, everything was quiet and dark. Something was hovering in front of me. A face, only the eyes visible, the rest veiled in a layer of white gauze. A voice I didn’t recognize was speaking softly to me, trying to draw me back from unconsciousness. Something touched my head, where it ached from the blow.
“Stop,” I mumbled.
“I need to keep pressure here.”
“She said stop,” I heard Ursula say behind me.
“Ursula,” I said. I felt her hands grasp my shoulders, to say, I’m here.
Things began to come into focus. We were together, thank God. All alive, and not grievously wounded.
“Enough, stop,” I said again, pushing the stranger’s hand away. We weren’t bound, I realized.
The face draped in white, gauzy fabric looked down to check the cloth that had been pressed against my scalp. The small red stain was dry. “That’s very good.” It was a female voice.