“Yes.”
The bend was coming up, its sharp corner a wall of old-growth pines larger than a man could put his arms around. He pushed the gas harder.
“Quinn?” Alice said.
“It’s okay.”
“Quinn!”
“Shoot. Now!”
Alice spun in her seat and began blasting at the truck behind them. Quinn’s damaged ear rang with each concussion, the gunshots so loud they filled up the world. The lead truck jerked to the side as Alice fired, avoiding the rounds, and revealed the second vehicle directly behind it.
The trailing truck’s windshield spiderwebbed, and the left headlight burst. The front wheels jerked to the right and bit into the gravel at the edge of the ditch. The truck left the road, roared up the opposing bank, and collided with a towering oak. Quinn caught a flash of something man-shaped blasting through the broken windshield, but then the curve was there and his foot was on the brake, the steering wheel shuddering like something dying in his hands. Alice screamed, ducking low to hold onto Ty as the boy shrieked for her. The back end of the Tahoe skidded, the street like ice beneath the tires. None of them were wearing seatbelts. They would all be thrown free when the big SUV rolled and smashed into the pines. There would be pain and then nothing. This life and then the wide ocean. He could almost see his father’s eyes looking at him through the cracked windshield, feel Teresa’s hug.
The driveway was there on the right, his eyes finding it, latching onto it as he kept the wheel cranked. His foot left the brake and found the gas, the rear tires sliding and then catching on the shoulder of the road before peeling free. They shot off the street and onto the driveway, barely missing a conglomeration of mailboxes mounted on a steel pole. He slammed his foot down, and the brakes screeched again as they came to a stop.
“What are you doing?” Alice yelled.
Quinn threw the transmission into reverse, listening to the sound of the approaching truck over his rushing blood as he craned his neck around and stared through the empty back hatch. The remaining truck’s blue paint flashed between the trees on the corner and Quinn punched the gas.
They rocketed backwards, coming even with the road as the truck passed by. The rear end of the Tahoe met the truck’s passenger side in a furious impact of glass and steel. Quinn’s head snapped backward, meeting the seat’s headrest hard enough for flashes of light to flicker in his vision. Alice rose in her seat, and he snagged her arm, holding her tight while she tried to cover Ty with her body. There was a shriek of shredding metal and then they were still as the truck continued down the road sideways, its tires catching and turning to the sky. Sparks flew as the truck flipped over and coasted to a stop on its hood, the cab rumpled into a flattened mass.
The Tahoe’s engine chugged and hissed, vibrations shaking the wheel beneath his numb fingers. He watched the truck for movement, his vision shuddering with each thunderous heartbeat. When no one climbed from the wreckage, he turned and found Alice still crouched over Ty in the rear foot space.
“Are you guys okay?”
Alice sat up, a dazed sheen covering her white face. A thin line of blood ran down from her right temple, and her eyes were clouded, blinking slow and methodical. Ty rose from beneath her, peeling himself from his mother’s embrace.
“I’m okay, mom; I’m okay.”
“Does anything hurt?” Quinn asked, his gaze beginning to run frantic over their forms, searching for a gaping cut or the hump of a broken bone. They were uninjured.
“I think we’re okay,” Alice said, swallowing. She coughed once and winced, holding her ribs. “Side hurts, though.”
“Can you walk?” Quinn said.
“Yeah.”