“What the fuck? Jesus, what the fuck?”
Chelsea squints against the sun and shields her eyes. There’s a man standing there, just outside her window, white and in his sixties with a gray beard and wearing a red hat and a Hawaiian shirt. Weren’t her feet just on the dashboard? And wasn’t Jeanie driving? Why are they stopped in a field?
She looks to Jeanie, but…
Jesus, what the fuck is right.
Chelsea struggles out of her seatbelt and throws the door open, knocking the old man over, then jumps out and scrambles away to vomit in the waist-high grass.
Jeanie is…
Jeanie is dead.
Very dead.
Her head is a pulpy mush as she slumps against the driver’s-side door of Chelsea’s minivan, which is parked fifty feet off the road’s shoulder, caught on an old barbed-wire fence in an overgrown pasture.
No, it’s not parked. It’s still running.
“What happened?” the old man asks as he staggers over. He leans into the van to put it in park before following Chelsea to where she’s doubled over in the grass, staring down at most of a McFlurry splattered over a fresh cow patty. A bit away, a cluster of black cows stare back. “You-all swerved like crazy and tore off into the field.”
Chelsea goes to wipe the vomit off her chin and notices that her hands are covered in blood. She quickly stuffs them in her pockets.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
It’s true, but Chelsea knows full well it’s more than that.
It happened again.
The Violence.
She lost time, and now Jeanie is dead, and she’s lucky she didn’t die, too, lucky that her minivan swerved off the highway and fetched up harmlessly against the fence instead of zooming into traffic or over a barrier. She touches her chest, and it’s tender where the seatbelt was. Jeanie must’ve tried to stop the van. The airbags didn’t deploy. The crash could’ve been a lot worse.
And things could still get worse.
Since everyone with the Violence is required by law to present themselves at an intake center for quarantine and testing, Chelsea knows that she’s in big trouble, especially since the old man is staring at her in that angry, crafty way that suggests he’s put all the puzzle pieces together and knows what’s up and would love nothing more than a chance to take the law into his own hands.
“You infected?” he asks.
“No. Of course not.”
“Then let’s see your hands.”
He’s between her and the minivan now, his big, overdone truck purring loudly on the shoulder off to the side. Chelsea does the math. She does not show him her hands.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean I’m an adult and you’re just some creeper who followed me into a field, and you need to get out of my way.”
He squares off, gray sneakers planted, eyes alight. “Look here, missy. If you killed that woman, you need to do the right thing.”
Chelsea stares at him.
First in surprise and then with blooming rage.
She has always done the right thing.
The thing she was told to do.
What was best for her, her mother, her husband, her daughters.
Maybe a few weeks ago, she would’ve hung her head and let the old man drive her to the nearest police station, sitting in the bed of his truck for his own safety. She can imagine how smugly he would bind her wrists with something from his truck, the speech he would give her about how he was only doing the right thing, which was of course whatever he’d personally decided was right.
He takes a step toward her, and her body reacts with a jolt of adrenaline and a single animal call: Escape!
Escape!
Escape!
He takes another step toward her, hands up like she’s a stray dog he’s going to grab. Chelsea reaches for the cow patty and grabs a big handful of vomit and shit and lobs it right at his face. He starts dancing around, trying to scrape it off, and she bolts directly for his truck.
It’s unlocked and running, so she throws herself into the front seat, slams the door, and screeches onto the highway.
Her foot can barely reach the pedals, so she’s scooted up on the edge of the leather seat like a little kid, no seatbelt, pedal to the ground, motor howling like a wolf on a full moon. She doesn’t look back to see what the old man is doing. By the time he gets himself under control, gets what’s left of Jeanie out of the front seat of the minivan, and starts driving, she’ll already be long gone. The exits here are far apart, but that doesn’t mean as much when there’s no one on the road and you’re doing 110.
Chelsea knows this feeling well—pure terror. The only difference is that this time she’s allowed to run when before, it’s never felt like an option. Her heart is thundering, her feet are numb, her breath comes in the pants of an animal. Her mind screams that same word over and over: Escape.
Escape.
Escape.
She has to get away. Can’t be caught again.
She doesn’t know what happens in the government’s quarantine facilities, but she’s certain it’s not good, especially for those who actually have the Violence. And if she’s captured, if the police take her, she knows David will find her. She’d have no choice but to sit there, waiting to be cornered by the predator who wanted her punished long before she’d done anything to actually deserve it.
She takes the third exit and parks outside a drugstore. She’s still shaking, her teeth stuck together. She realizes that she doesn’t have her phone, her clothes, any of her belongings, except the slender wallet in her back pocket, which is too small to fit more than a little cash. They’re all in Jeanie’s car—no, oh shit, her minivan. All her things. Everything so essential from her life—her old life—is gone now. It’s back with the old man and Jeanie’s body and all of David’s tech, the things she was trying so hard to keep away from him.
The things that can now be used to identify her.
Shit.
She thinks about turning around, doing a hundred again but with her seatbelt on, and…Jesus, what’s she going to do, threaten to hurt an old man who started out just wanting to help? No. Obviously not. But without what’s in that car, she has no resources.
Or does she?