Joe Victim: A Thriller

The explosion is almost ear shattering. There is no fire, just smoke and glass and twisted pieces of metal. The car is picked up like a child’s toy, and just as casually dismissed like a child’s toy—it’s launched three feet high and a couple of feet to the left before landing back on its wheels. The shock wave blows all the windows out. Bits of flesh hit the interior like paintballs exploding across a wall. People start screaming. Some are running from the blast, others are caught in the shock wave and thrown outward, the explosion an epicenter. Cut faces and cut clothes and a few people aren’t running at all, a few of them are lying on the road surrounded by, and impaled by, shrapnel. The side mirrors go flying, bits of tire, nuts and bolts and screws, and engine components are tossed in all directions, along with pieces of bone and tenderized body parts.

Schroder’s shoulders climb up around his jaw in expectation of an impact. Kent twists in her seat and looks behind her. Schroder keeps driving, glancing into the mirror back at the explosion. It came from a car that was only twenty or thirty yards behind them. A decoy explosion. Something to shut down the intersection and fill the streets with scared and panicked people.

“Oh my God,” Kent says. “Somebody was driving that car.”

“Oh fuck,” Schroder says.

“I know, I know,” she says.

“She was in my car,” he says.

“What?”

“She was in my fucking car!” he shouts, and he slams on the brakes. “Get out, get out,” he yells, taking off his seat belt.

“What—”

“Get the fuck out,” he shouts, and he opens his door and so does Kent. People are running toward them. Away from them. In every direction. He slams the door closed behind him, hoping it will help contain the shock wave and blast that Melissa is going to use to help her escape.

“Get back,” he screams. “Everybody get back.”

“Carl—”

He looks back over the car. “Fire some shots in the air,” he shouts. “Get—”

His car explodes right in front of him. He sees Kent ride the shock wave ten yards through the air, where she is thrown into a parked car, where she smashes the windshield and enters it. Only it looks like twenty yards because he’s riding the shock wave in the opposite direction. A lot of people are. Twisted metal. Smoke. Flesh and blood.

Then darkness.





Chapter Sixty-Seven


Two explosions and Melissa tosses the second remote onto the floor. The padding against my wound is soaked with blood so I replace it with some fresh stuff, which will no doubt soak up just as quickly. I realize there are two holes, one in front and one in the back, right through the right-hand side of my chest. I can’t move that arm. I don’t know what’s been hit. I don’t even know really what’s in there. Bone and muscle and tendons, I guess, which means reconstructive surgery and physiotherapy or a future of having a gimpy limb. It seems too high and too far to the side to worry about lung damage, but I don’t know—I’m not a doctor, and nor is Melissa—so I worry anyway.

I get onto my knees and clutch the wall and the back of the driver’s seat and stare out the windshield as Melissa heads through the next intersection, then another, then turns right at the following one. Now we’re heading back toward the courthouse, only one or two streets over. Then she pulls over.

“Nobody is following us,” she says.

“Why are we stopping here?”

“Just wait a minute.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

“Melissa—”

“Trust me,” she says. “I’ve gotten you this far, trust me to get you the rest of the way.”

“Who shot me?”

“It’s complicated,” she says, “but it was a clean shot.”

“How do you know that?”

“It was an armor-piercing bullet. It wouldn’t have broken apart on impact. It went through cleanly. Anything else would have made a small hole going in and a much bigger hole coming out.”

“Why are we waiting here?” I ask.

“We can’t be the only ambulance heading away right now,” she says, “because the police will be looking for us. We have to blend in.”

“What?”

“Trust me, babe, just stay patient. We’ll be out of here in a few moments,” she says.

“If you know it was an armor-piercing bullet, then you know who shot me,” I tell her.

“There was a plan,” she says. “It was the only way to get you out of there in an ambulance.”

“But you were getting me out because I was sick,” I tell her. “Did you know about the sandwiches?”

“What sandwiches?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say.

“I was waiting there for you to get shot, but then that security guard came out and asked for my help because you were sick.”