Then Officer Honeycutt appears, hat knocked off, clutching his side and leaning on the doorframe. Twisting, he spins and falls out of the doorway as a black fist flashes over his head. A chunk of wood spews from the doorframe as the policeman desperately crawls away.
Emerging from smoke and darkness, the stranger reappears.
Honeycutt is on his hands and knees, palms bleeding, scrambling to his feet. His eyes aren’t really seeing. His clenched teeth are bared, lips fluttering as he breathes through his mouth. Keeping low, he staggers toward me.
“Yes,” I’m saying, pushing my lips to the slit of open window. “Yes, come on! Hurry!”
The attacker steps out onto the sidewalk, turns his faceless, helmeted gaze to Oleg. He kneels smoothly beside the broken man. Reaching down, he lifts Oleg’s face up by his hair and speaks to him.
Oleg’s eyes open slowly. He blinks a few times, confused, and then fear erupts onto his face. I can’t hear what they’re saying.
I hook my fingers over the slot at the top in my open window.
“Officer!” I shout. “Over here!”
Dazed, Honeycutt looks over to me. His radio is hanging off his shoulder on its black coil, dancing crazily. Blood is coursing down the side of his face. He stumbles forward and nearly falls, pressing his chest against my car door. I notice a dent in his cheek, the skin puffy where he’s been hit hard by something.
Behind him, the stranger stands. Oleg isn’t moving anymore.
“Please,” I whisper through the crack in the window. “Please hurry. Open the door. Get inside.”
Honeycutt is pawing at the door handle, grunting. His eyes are closed, breath whistling through clenched teeth. Each exhale is spraying a mist of blood and spit over the window. He slips and smears it with his cheek.
He’s trying to pull on the door handle but something is wrong with his hand.
Behind him, a lanky silhouette crosses the abandoned parking lot.
“Hurry. Please,” I beg.
Groaning, the cop manhandles his car keys out of his pocket and pushes them against the bloody car window.
“Here,” he is saying. “Go.”
I jam my fingers out of the top of the cracked window as far as I can. The keys rattle against the glass. Splaying my fingers, I reach for them.
Still too far.
The man in black breaks into a trot.
After three massive strides, he leaps. A concussive thump rocks the cruiser on its suspension as he lands full force against the police officer.
Honeycutt’s face bounces off the glass. My fingers are stretched, wrists pushed painfully through the crack in the window. For an instant, I feel the hard metal of the keys as Honeycutt slides down the side of the car. He collapses on the sidewalk, breathing shallow, eyes closed.
Now the stranger stands before me, expressionless in his mirrored helmet. Up close, I can see the dark streaks of blood and glitter of broken glass clinging to his armor. I can see my own desperate face reflected in his visor.
And I can see the glint of the car keys, hanging from my fingertips.
I sprawl back, falling across the car seat as the stranger sends a gloved fist crunching through the window of the police cruiser. Cubes of safety glass explode into the car, cascading over my face and into my hair. It smells like ozone and plastic, my cheeks stinging from tiny impacts. Wriggling away, I hook my left arm through the open Plexiglas divider separating the back and front seats and pull myself up.
I’ve still got the car keys clenched in my right hand.
“No!” I’m shouting. “Fuck off!”
The black arm retreats through a fist-size hole in the glass. The leather glove is torn. I glimpse sea-serpent ridges of bright knuckles, flashing at me like polished brass. The sight sparks a memory. Something familiar.
Those shining ridges remind me of gilded medieval gauntlets. A second skin of burnished brass, worn by sixteenth-century knights to intimidate and inflict injury. But who the fuck wears gauntlets?
Leather jacket creaking, the wordless man leans over to look inside. Watching his silver-faced helmet through the fractured car window, taking panicked breaths, it strikes me how still he is—like he isn’t even breathing.
Distantly, I hear sirens. The helmet rises as the man scans the parking lot suspiciously. It’s the moment I need.
Clutching the car keys to my chest, over the relic that hangs around my neck, I pull up with my left arm and shove myself through the square hole in the Plexiglas divider. Wriggling, bucking my hips, I let the hard plastic scrape over my breasts and ribs. The cruiser shivers as the arm jams back through the broken window, reaching for me. Knuckles rap against my shins. Fingers close over my foot.
I’m screaming now, incomprehensible words, kicking and pushing.
My heel slips from the stranger’s crushing grasp as I slither into the front seat, immediately smashing my forehead against the sticker-covered laptop mounted between the seats. Diving into the driver’s-side floorboard, my legs fall across the passenger seat. The steering wheel looms over me.
I reach up and fumble the key into the ignition.
Cranking it, I hear the engine start.
Wham.
Something big rocks the side of the cruiser. Scrambling, I turn over until I’m right side up in the driver’s seat, car bouncing crazily on its suspension.
Wham.
Briefly, I consider making a run for it out the driver’s-side door. But with that monster stalking outside, I decide against it.
So I pop the car into drive.
The stranger hits the car again, sending it up on two wheels—and this time he keeps pushing. I fall against the driver’s-side door, hanging from the steering wheel. The car is nearly tipped over—the horizon tilting crazily as I jam the accelerator.
In a wobbling fishtail, the cruiser lurches forward on two wheels and squeals across the parking lot. The horizon levels as the car falls back onto all four tires. On impact, my teeth clack together, my vision blurring. I hear the back window shatter.
Hanging on to the steering wheel with both hands, I mash the accelerator pedal into the floorboard with both feet. The rearview mirror pops off the windshield, leaving a thumbprint-size smudge on the glass. Cubes of blue-white glass waterfall from my hair into my lap and raw panic races through my limbs.
Go, go, go.
I barely notice the guy in the gray knit cap, jumping out of my way as the car squeals across the empty parking lot on a wobbly tire. The suspension bottoms out as I pop the curb and swerve onto a deserted two-lane highway. As I pass by, I see knit cap guy has still got his phone out, a square of blue light, blurring as he gestures frantically at me.
But I’m safe on the road now, speeding through the twilight.
I will myself to ease up on the accelerator. The cruiser sends silent pings of light off a wall of trees that hug the winding highway. I’m wondering how to use the cruiser’s radio when a thought intrudes.
Something bothers me about the kid in the knit cap. He wasn’t gesturing at me angrily. There was panic on his face—a warning.