The broadhead smashed through the windshield high and to the left of where he’d been aiming, although he still could have hit the man. The black Tahoe fell back again. Peter had more arrows below him in the long box, but he wasn’t about to ask June to hand him more. The road curved sharply ahead, the mountain on the left, the wide rocky bed of a drought-lowered river on the right.
As he bent his knees to drop back into the car, he heard the blast of an air horn. Blaat blaaaaaat.
He turned as he dropped to see the dirty red nose of a giant logging truck coming around the curve, hogging the road and growing fast.
“Omigod omigod omigod.” June’s voice rose up in a losing battle with the truck’s air horn.
The logging truck was two hundred feet away.
At their combined speeds, Peter figured they had about two seconds.
The world slowed. June’s knuckles white on the wheel, braking to buy time as she steered them toward the nonexistent right lane. No air bags in this old car.
Peter planted himself in his seat, precious fragments of a second lost as he maneuvered the awkward bow over his shoulder into the back, then jammed his feet to the floor, hoping the box of arrows would be trapped under his legs. Loose arrows could kill them as easily as the crash.
A hundred feet.
Blaaaaaaaat blat blaaaaaaaaat.
The wandering gravel road was not designed for two vehicles to pass at speed. Definitely not when one of them was a giant semi-tractor. Reaching for his seat belt with his right hand, Peter remembered the time in Oregon he had driven in reverse for twenty minutes to find a spot wide enough for a fully loaded logging truck to get past.
Fifty feet.
The Subaru was halfway onto the shoulder, a weedy slope that dropped unpredictably toward the rocky riverbed. The truck’s front grille was enormous, taller than the car. Peter could see giant bugs crushed on the glass of the headlamps.
Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.
Peter’s hand found the buckle, pulled it down and across, and snapped it into the latch as the car left the road. He planted his feet hard and threw out his left arm to keep June’s head from banging into the steering wheel. The front passenger wheel dipped. He reached for the dashboard with his right hand, locked on tight.
Gravity changed.
The landscape whirled around, the sky beneath them, weeds overhead. Then sky above and dirt below. Now clouds beneath and rocks above. Crap floated through the air as the car rolled, energy bars and water bottles and lemonade packets everywhere. Peter banged around in his seat like a toy shaken by an angry toddler, banged in the chest and legs and back over and over for what seemed like forever, until the car finally came to rest.
Peter looked out his window. The glass had disappeared completely.
The sky was up and the ground was down. They were on the dry section of the riverbed.
He looked over at June. “Are you okay? June. June!”
She looked back at him, blinking. “Oh, man,” she said sadly. “I really loved this car.”
“Are you hurt? Is anything broken? Look at me. Look at me!” All the while taking an inventory of his own injuries, the aching shoulders, the pain in his ribs that hurt when he breathed in, the left leg on fire.
She had a bruised lip that would get nice and fat, and a bloody elbow, maybe from all the glass in her lap. No compound fractures that he could see. Her window was mostly gone, but the windshield was intact.
The hunters. The black Tahoe.
He tried to open the door, but it was stuck. He looked for the bow, couldn’t find it. He looked down at June’s feet and saw a black short-barreled revolver on the floor. “What the hell?”
He forgot he was belted in when he bent over to get it, and his ribs howled in protest. He gasped and straightened enough to unbelt himself, then bent again. His cheek brushed against her thigh as he reached for the gun, pressed against fine blond hairs and warm tanned skin. Her legs smelled like sunshine and lotion and he wanted to fall asleep right there. His hands were shaking with the aftermath of the crash and it took him a few fumbling seconds to come back up with the gun.
“Hey,” she said, “I always wondered where that went.”
She was dazed but oddly lucid. Peter figured she was in shock.
“My dad gave it to me. I was fourteen. Kind of a weird birthday present if you ask me. My mom kept telling me to get rid of it, but then I couldn’t find it. That was years ago. I haven’t cleaned out this car in forever.”
It was a Colt .38, the walnut grips worn but solid, the finish starting to go, maybe an old police model long out of service. It looked clean enough except for the gum wrappers and dust from where she’d lost it under the seat. He found the cylinder release and flipped it open. Five beautiful brass rounds, nothing under the hammer, a lovely circle of daylight through the barrel. He’d been a little worried he’d find a crayon jammed in there. He snapped the cylinder shut with a flick of his wrist.
“Stay here a minute,” he said. He’d check her more fully when he came back. “Don’t go anywhere. Okay?” Without waiting for an answer, he stood on the seat to climb painfully out through the sunroof.
The Tahoe lay on its side like a beached whale about thirty yards away.
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