Abram chuckles darkly. “I throw you in jail, watch you get tortured, then drag you out into the wilderness to probably get killed by my employers, and you say thanks.” He shakes his head again. “I shouldn’t have interfered with natural selection. You’re clearly not meant to make it.”
My mind drifts out the window and into the darkness, away from this turbulent chatter. I picture M wandering alone in the forest, gripping his head and groaning as his old self tries to dig a nest in his brain, maybe throwing himself off a waterfall to end the confusion, and a scared, selfish part of me envies him. The simplicity of his struggle. One man fighting one fight: his own. I understand inner conflicts. But to fight for and against other people, to engage with the world outside of me . . . this is a lot more complicated.
I look at Julie in the rearview mirror, hoping to make some kind of meaningful contact, to share a glance that says, What a mess we’re in! but she’s busy glaring out the window, stunned into silence by our driver’s impenetrable shell. I stare for a moment, trying to catch her eyes, and then I notice something in the window behind her head. Two points of light floating in the trees. They blink and flicker, disappear for a moment, then flicker back. Fireflies? Fairies? A memory creeps into my consciousness, not something from the forbidden basement of my first life but a dusty relic from the beginning of my second. I am wandering in the woods alone, dragged on a leash by the hungry brute inside me. I am trying to piece together the nature of reality—what trees are, what animals are, what I am—but reality keeps changing. There are strange things in the woods. Hovering hands and shadows that glow and faces peering from holes in the air. These lights in the window seem to belong to that dream. Floating eyes. The Cheshire Cat. Then they accelerate, they draw closer, and the whine of an engine erases all this whimsy.
Headlights.
“I thought we’d have a bigger lead,” Abram mutters, and guns the truck to speeds that wouldn’t be safe on a major highway, much less this leaf-strewn backroad. I hear the click of seat belts behind me.
Our pursuers gain steadily until I can make out the contours of their much newer, much faster vehicle: a nearly mint Porsche SUV.
“Why do they have a fucking sports car?” Nora squeals. “You’ve worked for them all these years and you’re driving this piece of shit?”
“I need you to shut up now,” Abram says through gritted teeth as he struggles to maintain control of the old Ford. Its creaky suspension fails to soften the constant barrage of potholes, and I feel my jaw rattling. The engine roars like a sick bear.
The Porsche pulls up directly behind us and flashes its high beams, a friendly notice from a concerned fellow driver: Hey buddy, you’ve got a taillight out. Then it rams us.
It’s only a warning bump, nudging us into a momentary skid, but at this speed the sensation is terrifying. Sprout begins to cry in short, panicked bursts, and Julie wraps an arm around her.
In the glow of the Porsche’s headlights reflecting off our tailgate, I notice a long steel tube mounted to its hood, with two hoses running back into the trunk space. I turn to Abram, who is concentrating fiercely on the road ahead of him. I don’t know how to break the news gently, so I just say it: “They have a flamethrower.”
A chuckle bursts out of him. He closes his eyes for a moment, gathering himself, then veers to the right and slams on the brakes. The Porsche rushes past us. He tosses a pistol into my lap and I stare at it like it’s alien technology, an exotic ray gun.
“I can’t.”
“The hell do you mean you can’t?”
“I can’t shoot.” I reach a shaky hand back to give the gun to Julie, but she’s busy trying to calm Sprout and doesn’t see it. The Porsche is pulling around. Nora grabs a rifle off the truck’s gun rack and climbs out the rear window into the bed. She drops to one knee and takes aim as the nimble Porsche whips a U-turn and comes up behind us again. She gets only one shot off before they ram us, knocking her on her back, but the driver’s side of the windshield is suddenly red. The Porsche stops. Abram hits the gas, and the Porsche starts to recede behind us before its driver is replaced and it comes to life again.
“Nora, get inside!” Julie shouts.
“Just a minute,” Nora says, taking aim. “I’m really good at this.”
She fires. One of the Porsche’s front tires hisses and starts to flap . . . then seals and re-inflates itself.
“This is so unfair,” she grumbles.
“Nora, get in! They’re going to—”