The car stopped so suddenly it seemed to jump. They shot forward in their seats.
The deer darted safely across the road.
Val screamed involuntarily when the SUV struck them from behind.
Zoe tried to pull off the road, but the vehicles’ bumpers had twisted together. The driver jabbed his horn three times—long, longer, longest—then burst out of the SUV.
He stalked up to Zoe’s window, and banged on it hard.
“Roll this down!” he said. “Right this goddamn second!”
He looked about 50—doughy and pale, with blue eyes set too close together. He wore a baseball cap with a sexist silhouette of a woman and the words “Booty Hunter.”
Zoe made sure Val and Dallas weren’t hurt, then looked at the clock on the dash. They had ten minutes to get to the church.
She fished for her insurance card in the glove compartment. When she found it, she breathed out, and rolled down the window.
“My name is Zoe Bissell,” she said. “I’m sorry about your car.”
“It’s not a car,” he said. “It’s a friggin’ truck.”
He was seething. His pupils were so dilated that Zoe suspected he was high on something.
“I’m sorry about your truck,” she said carefully.
“I don’t give a shit about your I’m sorry,” he said.
From the passenger seat, Val spoke under her breath.
“I don’t like this guy—and his hat is pissing me off,” she said. “I’m getting out.”
“Stay,” said Dallas.
“Did you just tell me to stay?” said Val.
“You’re gonna make it worse,” said Dallas. “I’ll handle this.”
“No, I will handle it,” said Zoe. “Both of you stay.”
She went to open her door, but the man stood too close. He was trapping her in. He seemed to be deciding if he was going to let her out. Finally, he backed up.
Not much damage had been done to Zoe’s Taurus—it was hard to make the Struggle Buggy look any worse—but the SUV’s sporty front end was decimated. The headlights were smashed, the grille was sagging. The hood had popped open and been folded in half.
“You see what you damn did?” the man said. “That is a brand-new, thirty-eight-thousand-dollar vehicle right there, fresh off the motherfrickin’ lot—and that color green costs extra!”
“I didn’t want to kill the deer,” said Zoe.
“Oh, the deer!” said the man. “The precious friggin’ deer! Who gives a rat’s ass if they live or die. There’s about a billion of them, you dumb bitch!”
At the word “bitch,” Zoe’s friends got out of the car.
Dallas, whose first instinct was always to calm people down, offered the man his hand.
“What’s your name?” he said.
The man looked at him like he was nuts.
“My name is go to hell, you little prick,” he said.
“Okay, stop,” said Zoe. “You’re going to have to turn down your crazy. It’s just a car.”
“IT’S A FRIGGIN’ TRUCK!”
He screamed it so loud that a bolt of pain seemed to go through his head. He doubled over, and covered his face with his hands. When he straightened up again, Zoe blanched: the guy had burst a blood vessel in his left eye. A red cloud crept across the white of the eye toward the iris.
“Come on, what’s your name?” said Dallas. “I’m Dallas.”
“It’s Ronny, for god’s sake,” said the man.
“Hey, Ronny,” said Dallas. “This doesn’t need to be a thing.”
“It’s already a damn thing!” said Ronny. “It became a damn thing when she made me crash the thirty-eight-thousand-dollar vehicle my mother just gave me for my birthday!”
He was getting more angry, not less. Zoe didn’t like how close he was. He had morning breath.
“Could you take a step back, please?” she said.
He ignored her.
“She asked you to step back,” said Val.
Ronny looked Val up and down. He made a show, as men often did, of being appalled by her half-shaved head and the sci-fi color of her hair.
“What are you, her girlfriend?” he said.
“No,” said Val, “I’m into fat, middle-aged guys.”
“Val!” said Zoe.
Ronny snorted.
“You couldn’t even handle what I got,” he told Val.
“I’m calling the police,” said Val.
“Yeah?” said Ronny. “They’re gonna be too late.”
He charged to the back of his SUV, and returned with a rifle.
“Whoa, Ronny,” said Dallas. “Whoa.”
Ronny hit Dallas in the stomach with the butt of the gun.
“STOP! CALLING ME! RONNY!”
Dallas fell to all fours, gasping. The tie with the baseballs dangled down toward the road. Zoe went to him.
“I’m okay,” said Dallas, when he could speak again. “I’m okay.”
Ronny beat Zoe’s hood with the rifle.
“How do you like it?” he screamed. Zoe couldn’t tell if he was talking to her or the car. “This feel good? Does it?”
Dallas tried to stand—he wanted to stop Ronny.
“No,” Zoe said. “Let him do it. I don’t care.”
She looked around for help, but they were in the middle of nowhere: fields, trees, sky. No cars for miles.
Then something caught her eye across the farmland: a bluish glow in the woods.
The rifle went off. Ronny was shooting out her headlights. The cracks echoed across the valley.
“How’s that feel?” he said. “How about this?”
Val filmed Ronny on her phone as he bashed the car: evidence.
Zoe turned back to the trees. The light was morphing. It had been diffuse, like a mist on the ground, but now it gathered itself into a ball.
She went to the side of the road. A blurry figure hurtled toward them.
It had to be X.
How had he gotten out of the Lowlands? How had he known to come? Zoe squinted into the distance. He was still out of focus, still a smudge.
“There’s stuff I didn’t tell you guys about X,” she told Val and Dallas.
“This is a good topic for later,” said Val.
“Yeah, why are you bringing this up now?” said Dallas.
He leaned against the SUV. His shirt was untucked, and he was gripping his stomach.
“Because things are gonna get weird,” said Zoe.
Everyone followed her gaze across the field.
The figure was nearly on them. Ronny lowered his rifle, dumbfounded.
“You are so screwed,” Zoe told him.
The figure slowed as it approached the road.
Zoe felt her heart shrink and nearly vanish when she saw that it wasn’t X.
two
Ripper gave Zoe a slight nod, then advanced on Ronny. She looked furious. Her ragged ball gown rustled as she walked.
Ronny shrank backward.
“Who are you?” he said.
Ripper didn’t answer. She just kept coming.
Ronny lifted the rifle, fumbled with the bolt, and finally managed to pull it back. He pointed the gun at Ripper’s face.
Ripper didn’t even break stride.
“I dislike weapons,” she said. “Things were about to go badly for you—and now they will go very much worse.”
She made a come here gesture with her fingers. The rifle flew from Ronny’s hands and into her own.
Zoe could hear Dallas and Val whispering variations on WTF. She turned to see their expressions. Val had stopped filming. She and Dallas were frozen in surprise, like figures in a museum diorama: Americans, early 21st century, freaking out.
“Hey, that’s my gun!” said Ronny. “I’m a hunter!”
Ripper regarded him coldly.
“A hunter? Are you indeed?” she said. “So am I.”
She reared back and kicked him across the mouth. Ronny collapsed to the ground, blood spilling down his chin.
Ripper pushed the rifle into the pavement muzzle-first. The asphalt tightened around it, seized it like it was the Sword in the Stone.
Ripper went to stand over Ronny.
“Listen to me, you idiotic mushroom,” she said. “I was two thousand miles from here and weeping over my son Alfie’s grave when a trilling in my brain informed me that Zoe was in peril. In all your world, she is the only one I care for—and I care for her deeply.”
“Zoe, you know this person?” said Dallas.
Ripper made a lifting motion with her hand. Ronny’s body rose off the ground. Then Ripper pushed her palm forward through the air, and he sailed headlong into the ditch.
Zoe went to Ripper and hugged her.
“I thought you were X,” she said. “When I saw the light—I thought it was X.”