In the ambulance, Slater clung to the steering wheel and Nika braced herself against the dashboard as the vehicle did a full, unimpeded circle before finally coming to a stop, its front fender thumping into a mound of snow.
After the initial jolt, Slater looked out his side window again, just in time to see the patrolman kneeling, one arm bracing the other, and firing several rounds at the back of the fleeing vehicle.
At first, the shots appeared to have no effect, but then, after the last one, Slater saw the van suddenly zig and zag on the bridge, cutting from one lane to the other, before banging into a guardrail so hard that two wheels left the pavement, then all four. As it flipped over, tires smoking and glass spraying, it spun, like an upside-down plate, halfway down the deserted bridge.
“You okay?” Slater said to Nika.
“Yep,” she said, in a shaky voice, “but I’m not so sure about the ambulance, or the Vanes.” She, too, was looking off at the wreckage on the bridge.
He told her to use the radio to call for medical backup. “And stay on the radio until they get here. Keep away from the accident scene.”
Then he leapt out of the ambulance, and raced toward the bridge.
“Who are you?” the patrolman hollered, still holding the gun. Slater was relieved to see that the patrolman, too, had a face mask—the word had gone out—but it was dangling down around his neck.
“Stay clear!” Slater shouted, running past the damaged patrol car. “And put your mask on until I tell you otherwise!”
“On whose authority?”
“Mine!” Slater declared. “And that’s an order!”
Before the cop could issue another challenge, Slater ran right past him, his eyes fixed on the van … and praying that this was as far as both of the Vanes, and the virus, had traveled.
Chapter 56
It was the chimes Charlie noticed first.
He was upside down in the van, his head up against the broken roof light.
The chimes, the ones that went off whenever you hadn’t fastened a seat belt, or closed your door properly, were dinging sweetly.
It took him a few seconds to orient himself.
He remembered slowing down for the roadblock, and he also remembered thinking, What was the point of trying to get past it? They’d have a chopper tracking him down next. And then, before he knew what was happening, Harley had flipped out in the backseat and started screaming, “Go through it! Go through it!”
But Charlie wasn’t going to be that stupid anymore; he’d seen enough trouble in his life, and he was a reformed man now, anyway. He was trying to reason with Harley when his brother, with the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, lunged over the back of the seat and punched the accelerator lever.
“Go through!”
The van blasted off and Charlie, knocked back as if he were an astronaut, groped in vain for the hand brake as they smashed into the front of the police car, then, instantly picking up speed again, hurtled past.
His fingers were just able to graze the wheel as the van lurched onto the bridge, but Harley was hanging over him, trying to steer. He thought he’d heard a shot—or was it a tire exploding?—and then they were crashing into a metal guardrail, the windows shattering all around. Gas canisters and gear from the back of the van flew in every direction as the wheels hit an ice slick, and the whole car flipped in the air like a pancake on the griddle.
And now all he could hear were the chimes. The inside of the van smelled like gasoline, tinged with the astringent smell of blood. His neck and shoulders aching, he glanced at the front of his coat, where a wet, dark stain was slowly spreading. The punctured airbag was hanging down like an empty saddlebag, and the glove compartment gaped open. Its contents, including the cross and icon, were scattered somewhere in the jumble of pulverized glass and twisted metal.
“Shit.”
He heard that. It was Harley’s voice. He was alive—but where?
Gradually, other sounds came to him, too. The dripping of gasoline, the creak of mangled steel, the tinkle of falling glass. The world was returning … and with it, agonizing pain.
Charlie tried to turn, but the seat belt was coiled like a snake around his waist, and his legs of course were as useless as ever. He tried moving, but only one arm came up from the wreckage. He tried to reach for the buckle on the seat belt, but the bulk of his coat was bunched up and in the way.
“Where are you?” he asked through gritted teeth.
He heard a moan, and something twitched behind his head. He had the impression it was a foot. “Try not to move,” he said, mindful of his own paralysis. “They’ll get a medic out here.” But how long would that take? They were in the middle of nowhere, in a snowstorm.
“I told you,” Harley groaned. “I told you I was gonna die tonight.”
Charlie had to admit he hadn’t been far off. But the good Lord still seemed to have some other plan in mind for them.