It was especially dark outside as we drove away from the city and its light. Only the glow of the full moon shined, casting an eerie quality along a thin layer of frost blanketing the cold ground. Spring would come sooner than expected thanks to an unusually mild winter.
There were few cars on the road this time of the night. Charlie hadn’t said much, and I left him alone to his thoughts. It was strange to have him so quiet, but I didn’t try to bring him out of his somber mood. Tonight, no matter what, I was going to tell him the truth about me. Now how to start the conversation…
Charlie stiffened and sat up straight. “Not now,” he moaned.
“What is it?”
He glanced in his rear view mirror. I turned around to follow his gaze. Behind us, a car’s headlights shined brightly in the distance.
“I’ve got that same feeling I had when the Deific was attacked.”
“But where? I don’t see anyone.” The car behind us had turned off, leaving us alone on the road.
Charlie glanced at my waist. “Put your seatbelt on.”
Knowing I was immortal, a seatbelt never seemed important, but I obeyed anyway. I pulled over the shoulder strap, but my hand slipped off. I stretched it out in front of me. “Um, Charlie, your seatbelt—” The gray seatbelt strap was jagged on one end as if it had been torn.
Charlie’s hands tightened further on the steering wheel. “Get in the back.”
I began to crawl in back of the vehicle but stopped. “The back ones are ripped, too.”
Ignoring the road stretching out in front of us, Charlie turned to me. “It’s you they’re after, isn’t it?”
It seemed an eternity that I stared into his eyes, when in reality it was only a fraction of a second before something big and hard smashed into the side of Charlie’s Toyota. It had come from a side street traveling at a fantastic speed. Our car flipped several times, and I rolled with it until I was finally thrown from the passenger window.
My body landed in the weeds on the shoulder of the road, and something cold pierced my chest on the right side of my sternum. I cried out in horrific pain, clawing at whatever had stabbed me.
The car stopped rolling several feet from me in a twisted heap of broken metal and glass. The still night held its breath, and so I did, too. I wasn’t sure who could be around, and I didn’t want to give my location away. The ground was wet, and it soaked through my sweater and to my skin. But the icy coldness was secondary to my pain. I lifted my head. There was some sort of a stake sticking out from my chest.
Charlie’s moan from within the car broke through the silence. The night gasped for air in a voice of a thousand different sounds: a horn honked in the distance, a dog barked, crickets chirped, and a loud engine revved. The truck that had hit us slowly crept forward; one of its headlights was broken. The remaining good light shined on the upside-down Toyota.
Charlie was cursing as he struggled to get out of the car. After kicking the door open from the inside, he crawled out. His clothes were torn and his head bloody.
“Eve!” he called.
“Here,” I whispered loudly, hoping those in the car wouldn’t hear me.
Charlie limped toward me, dragging one foot behind the other. The truck slowly turned, following his movements. The one good headlight turned Charlie into a dark shadow.
He knelt next to me, and his expression turned to horror when he saw my condition. I could only imagine what I must look like. Many of my wounds had already healed, but I could still feel sticky blood covering my body. Charlie inspected the stake in my chest, the one wound that wouldn’t heal until he removed it.
“What is this?” I asked, clawing at it again.
“I think you’ve been stabbed by a roadside memorial cross,” he said, his voice cracking.
Whether from shock or because it really was funny, I began to laugh.
“How can you be laughing?” Charlie said. “You should be dead!”
He tore the bottom of his shirt and held it tightly against what he thought was another wound on my head.
The truck behind us inched forward, reminding me of our dangerous predicament. “Charlie, you have to listen to me. I need you to drag my body into the woods.”
“No way! I’m not moving you. You could bleed to death!”
“But they’re watching us. Pull me into the woods—now!”
For the first time, he remembered the truck and was surprised to see it still there. He stood up and shouted, “What do you want?”
Its engine revved.
“Get me out of here,” I whispered again. I didn’t want whoever was in the truck to see me heal.
This time, Charlie didn’t argue. He took my arms and pulled me into the woods, away from the threatening truck. An unexpected ravine made Charlie stumble, but he managed to keep me on my back even though I practically slid to the bottom. The light from the truck remained above us, spreading along the tops of the tree branches.
“Get this thing out,” I said once we were safely into the forest. I stood up and used my own hands to try and pull the cross out.
Charlie looked dumb struck. “How can you be standing?”
“I still have legs. Please, help me!”