The left wheel hits and glances off a half-buried rock, and we veer over it. I hear the metallic crunch of collision, and the whole steering assembly shudders out of my hands, jumping wildly. I grab hold again, heart thudding in a steady staccato race, and realize that the axle’s broken. I’ve lost control of the front wheels and the steering.
I can’t go around the next rock, which is big enough to smash us right in the center of the Jeep’s hood and send us all flying forward into the restraints, hard enough to leave bruises, and I know the airbags deploy because I feel the puff of it against my face, the impact, the burning smell of the propellant. My face hurts and feels hot from the rush of blood and friction. I’m more aware of surprise than pain, but my first instinct is not for myself. I twist in my seat to look frantically at Lanny, at Connor. They both seem dazed but okay. Lanny makes a little whimpering sound and probes at her nose. It’s bleeding. I realize I’m bleating questions at them—are you all right, are you okay—but I’m not even listening for answers. I’m grabbing up handfuls of tissues to press to the flow of blood from her nose even as I’m looking anxiously at Connor. He seems okay, better than Lanny, though he has a red mark on his forehead. The flaccid white silk of a deflated airbag is draped over his shoulder. Side curtain airbags, I remember. Lanny’s deployed, too, which is why her nose is bleeding.
Mine might be, too. I don’t care.
I compose myself enough to remember that we didn’t just accidentally get into a car wreck, that there’s a truck full of drunken men rambling over this same hillside, hunting us. I’ve screwed up. I’ve put my children in mortal danger.
And I have to fix it.
I scramble out of the Jeep and almost fall. I catch myself on the door and realize I’m trailing fat drops of blood in a ragged line down the front of my white shirt. Doesn’t matter. I shake my head, sending red drops flying, and fumble my way to the back of the Jeep. I do have two things: a tire iron and an emergency flashlight that strobes disorienting white and red with a flick of a switch. It even has a built-in piercing alert signal. The batteries are fresh, because I changed them out just last week. I grab it and the heavy iron curve of the toolbar, and before I slam the driver’s-side door again, I find my cell phone and pitch it to Connor, who seems more together. “Call 911,” I tell him. “Tell them we’re being attacked. Lock these doors.”
“Mom, don’t stay out there!” he says, and I worry that he won’t lock the doors after all. That he’ll hesitate and get dragged out. So I open the door and trigger the locks, which thunk down solidly. Then I roll up the windows to leave him, Lanny, and the keys inside.
I turn with the tire iron in my right hand, the multipurpose flash in my left, to wait for the pickup truck to get closer.
It doesn’t make it. Halfway down the hill they hit something, skid sideways, and I watch as the men in the back throw themselves out, yelling, as the truck overbalances on the downhill side. One screams in a way that makes me think he’s broken something, or bent it pretty badly, but the other two bounce up the boneless way drunks have. The truck rolls over in a long screech of metal and a cymbal crash of shattering glass, but it doesn’t keep going down the hill. It stops on its side, tires spinning, engine still roaring like the driver hasn’t the good sense to take his foot off the gas. The three inside start yelling for help, and the two still upright from the truck bed scramble to help them. They nearly overbalance the whole thing and send it tumbling farther downhill. It’s a bit of a comedy.
I see the Johansens’ SUV suddenly start up and peel out hastily on the road, as if they just remembered they are late to their own party. I’m assuming they faint at the sight of blood. Even mine. I know they won’t be calling the police, but it hardly matters. Connor’s already done it. All I need to do, I tell myself, is to keep anyone hostile occupied until the lights and sirens show up. I haven’t done anything wrong.
Not yet, anyway.
One of the drunk guys peels off and heads my direction, and I find myself tremendously not surprised that it’s the one from the range, Carl. The one who insulted Javi. He’s yelling something at me, but I’m not really listening. I’m just trying to see if he has a gun. If he does, I’m sunk; not only can he kill me from where he stands, but he can claim I attacked him with my handy tire iron and it was self-defense. I know Norton well enough to guess how that will go. They’ll hardly pause for five minutes before they acquit the bastard, even if my kids give testimony. I was in fear for my life, he’ll say. The standard defense of murderous cowards. Problem is, it’s also the defense for legitimately frightened people. Like me.
A relief: he doesn’t seem to have a gun, at least, not that I can see, and he’s hardly the type to be coy about it. He’d be waving it around if he had it, which makes my tire iron into a real threat.
He pauses, and I realize that Connor is hammering at the window of the Jeep, trying to make me look at him. I risk a glance. His face looks desperately pale. I hear him yell, “I called the cops, Mom. They’re coming!”
I know you did, sweetie. I give him a smile, a real smile, because this might be the last time I get to do that.
Then I turn on the drunk guy, whose other friend is heading toward us now, and I say, “Back the fuck off.”
They both laugh. The one who’s just arrived is a little broader and a little taller, but he’s also even more drunk and has to hang on to the first guy as rocks turn under his feet. Keystone Kops, but deadly serious about the violence they’d like to do.
“You fucked up our truck,” he says. “Gonna have to pay for that, you murdering bitch.”
Back at the overturned truck, the passenger-side door is creaking up like the hatch in a tank, but unlike a tank—and I could have told these idiots this—car doors aren’t designed to flip back and lie flat. The attempt to throw the door up and out of the way causes it to hit the hinge point and rebound at the man pushing it with vicious speed.
He yelps and lets go of the sides of the truck just before his fingers are crushed. It’d be funny if I weren’t scared shitless and responsible for two innocent children, whereas these jackasses aren’t even responsible for their own selves.
When the two facing me decide to rush me, I flip the stun function switch on the flashlight and keep it pointed away from me as I activate it. It’s still like a brick to the face; the strobing, asymmetric, incredibly bright lights and the ear-shattering shriek are bad enough behind the thing, much less ahead of it.
It knocks Carl and his friend flat on their asses, mouths open in frantic yells I can’t hear over the din. I feel a bitter, fantastic rush of adrenaline that makes me want to smash the hell out of them with the tire iron and make sure, absolutely sure, that these assholes never threaten my children again.
But I don’t. I’m on the thin, shivering edge of it, but what stops me is the idea that I’ll just prove Prester right. Prove myself a murderer. Local blood on my hands. As quickly as they’d acquit someone else for shooting me, they’d strap me down for the needle if I hit these guys when they’re down. It’s really all that keeps me standing there, holding the strobe and siren on them instead of finishing this for good.
Even though I’m blinded by the strobes, I know the police are coming when Connor rolls the window down next to me and grabs my arm. He’s pointing down at the road, and when I look that way, I see a cruiser pulling up with its light bar slashing the night. I see two figures get out and start toiling up the hill toward me, flashlights bobbing and illuminating startling patches of green brush and bone-pale rocks.