The bike raced past them, because the biker was speeding well beyond the limit and Molly had released her pressure on the gas pedal. The biker signaled as he pulled into their lane, and then within half a mile signaled to the left and coasted off onto an unnamed dirt road, where his small taillight glowed in the night like a lone ember.
While the bike made its pass and exit from their view, Lance and his mother remained silent, relief spreading throughout their tensioned bodies. A mile past the road where the bike had disappeared, Molly began to cry. She cried in earnest now, her shoulders shaking with the exertions of her fear and exultation. Lance looked over at her, his own small face pinched with emotion. They had made it. The town was only another five miles away. In less than ten minutes they would be on an interstate heading in a direction his father would never think to look. They would watch the sun come up together, watch it rise like a strange, new god from the earth in the east. There would be happiness in the daylight, which seemed like a possibility now, the edges of it beginning to creep into feeling like a fire blooming in the deepest winter. Lance decided then that he would apologize to his mother when the sun was up and a new life was dawning upon them. He would tell her he was sorry for accusing her, for making her cry, for thinking the things that he wanted to say to her earlier. For hating her just a little bit. Lance was about to ask his mother if she knew where they would go when he saw it.
A shape began to take form on the road ahead of them, the headlights nudging the darkness away. It was oblong and dull. Recognition started to emerge like a form beneath dark waters when his mother flipped on the high beams and let out a shriek.
An old Chevy pickup sat blocking both lanes of the deserted highway, and Lance’s father leaned easily against the front fender.
Screeching rubber filled the night air as Molly pressed both feet down onto the brake until she thought she would snap it clean off. The Caravelle slid to the right but careened back to the center of the road as Molly wrenched the wheel around in a death grip. Lance’s fingers dug painfully into his own thighs, and an involuntary moan escaped his mouth.
All the while, Anthony Metzger kept his relaxed stance against the truck. His arms were crossed over his chest, and a bored expression blanketed his thin face. Only when the car stuttered to a halt a mere fifteen yards from the perpendicular truck did he move. He reached casually through the open window of the Chevy and drew out a long black object. As he walked toward the car, his shadow beginning to grow and distort behind him, Lance recognized the shotgun he held in his left hand. It normally stood behind the porch door, and with a dawning horror, Lance realized it hadn’t been there when he and his mother had left the house.
Molly gaped out of the driver’s window at her husband as he approached, her breath hitching in her chest as panic began to wind up inside her like an old distress siren. Anthony lifted the muzzle of the twelve-gauge just enough to tap on the window, and then dropped the gun’s gaping eye back out of sight.
Slowly, as if in a dream, Molly rolled the window down, and a sheet of cold air assaulted them, though neither felt it. Anthony knelt down beside the car and stared into his wife’s face. His gaze was as cold as the night air around them, and his knife-like blue eyes pinned Molly to the seat. Unmoving, she looked back at him and began to mouth some half-whispered word that could have been please, but was lost before it truly formed. After what seemed like an eternity, Anthony looked over at his son. Lance just stared back, and realized he was no longer afraid to die. If this was the moment for him to leave this world, he was ready. At least the shotgun will be quick, he thought with a note of thankfulness.
“How?” Molly’s voice finally made its way from her throat and into the open.