The burnt-orange beat down on the car, and if it hadn't been for all the extra holes and the missing windscreen, it would have been unpleasantly hot. Danielle wasn't sure how long it had been since Sarah asked her about Geddis or how long it had been since she started thinking of diplomatic ways to say no. The clock hung limply from the dashboard by a strand of wire, and her own watch had shattered in the crash. She'd struck her wrist far harder than she'd realised, and now that she was coming down off the adrenaline, a steady ache had crept in.

  Harry and Sarah barely moved since the shooting began, and sat snuggled under Mr. Tirren's arms with their eyes closed and their ears covered. Without having his arms free to brace himself, he had taken much more of the impact than Danielle had, but she could see in what remained of the rear-view mirror that he'd fared better than both her or the car. She clutched the wheel tightly and stared unblinkingly ahead as the car heroically wheezed its way down the open road to a destination she hadn't really decided on. From behind them started a low growl that filled the car and pulled everyone from their mental wanderings.

  She grabbed the rear-view mirror without really thinking and tried to adjust it to get a better view of the road behind them; it broke off in her hand, so she dropped it in the foot well along with the rest of the detritus that was bouncing around and hitting her shins. Sarah and Erica about-faced on the back seat. From the off-ramp came the largest truck they had ever seen, though that wasn't to say much, as they could count the number of trucks that they’d seen – both large and small – on one hand. And not one hand each, one hand between them.

  Any shape that the truck had, outside of being a big square on wheels, was derived from the sleek hive-like body panels that covered the front and rounded out the sides. Like the armour of the men from earlier, the black paintwork somehow managed to appear highly polished but reflect next to no light or offer the slightest glimmer. The large windscreen was one solid sheet of metal, with small apertures in the middle to see out of. This, of course, made it very hard to see where they were going, but that was more of a problem for everyone else.

  Horns screamed futile defiance as the cars they regretted belonging to veered and swerved to put themselves out of reach of the armoured behemoth to little success. The truck didn't concern itself greatly with mundane details, such as being able to fit safely in one lane. As far as it was concerned, it could – it didn't feel endangered at all. Any car that couldn't get out of the way in time – which usually consisted of leaving the overpass and taking their chances with gravity – was either crushed beneath the thick treads of its tires or flipped into the air and over the top of the truck.

  “Can we go faster?” Erica asked. “Really think we should go faster. Danielle, put your bloody foot down!”

  “We need to get off the road,” Bosco panted.

  “Oh really? I'm so glad you told me,” Danielle snapped. “We can't get off the road until the next turn-off, unless you like skydiving.”

  “There’s something else coming,” he cautioned.

  “I don’t like bees,” Harry coughed. His eyes were bloodshot and watering, and his chest tickled from the fumes. He closed his eyes and tucked his head back under his papa’s arm. Danielle’s question was pre-empted by a whining mechanical hum that tried, but didn’t quite manage, to drown out the sound of the truck. At either side of the behemoth emerged a black motorcycle. They bore no resemblance to the truck – no sleek black panels and armour plating, just rust and metal and a very large engine. They barely even bore resemblance to one another, with the one on the right being at least a couple of decades older and having a different shaped headlamp. The men from earlier – or men like them – clung to them for dear life.

  The bikes converged in front of the truck, then split off again to place themselves at either side of the rear of the car. The bike on Bosco’s side drew up close to the window, veiled by the thick cloud of smog that came from the engine. The rider reached for something on his belt, then flicked his arm to the side. The baton lashed against the window several times in quick succession. It shattered inwards and littered Bosco’s lap with pebble-sized pieces of glass that he was quick to sweep away from Harry. “Stop the car!” the rider shouted. The demand was punctuated by a whip of the baton towards Bosco’s face. It struck just below his right eye and solicited a small whimper. Blood trickled down the side of his face and pooled in the creases of his jowls.

  “Mr. Tirren!” Sarah cried. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  The baton lashed out a second and third time, each strike in more or less the same place, and each opening the wound further. The rider whipped back his arm and brought the baton down for a fourth time; Bosco’s hand came up to meet it and seized the man around the wrist. The rider struggled against the vice-like grip, though his wrist was infinitely more protected against its crushing force than Brandon’s was, but no more capable of escaping it. Bosco tugged sharply on the rider’s arm and gave the man the choice: either pull closer to the car or be yanked from the bike. “I’ll take that, thank you,” Erica said as she snatched the baton from his hand and rapped the man firmly across the knuckles with it. He squirmed under the blow and renewed his efforts to free himself.

  Cars swerved to avoid the smoke-spewing mountain of metal, swapping from lane-to-lane in the hopes of getting around it as it weaved behind Danielle’s car. The more they swerved, the more Danielle swerved, and the more she swerved, the more the behemoth behind her followed suit. Many of the cars and their screaming occupants ended up as part of one of several independent multi-car pileups, while those less fortunate were ground into metal confetti under the large wheels. By virtue of his hand still being attached to his body, the biker had no choice but to follow. The second bike fell back and hovered close to the rear of the car.

  “What are we going to do?” Sarah yelled over the cacophony of car horns and crunching metal.

  “I have an idea,” Danielle shouted back. “But you won’t like it.”

  “We don’t like much of any of this. Doubt it could get much worse,” Erica said.

  “If you say so.” Danielle veered into the path of an oncoming truck. The biker, and by extension his bike, and by further extension the arm that Bosco was holding, disappeared under the truck-shaped blur that rattled past the window close enough to scratch what was left of the paintwork. Bosco sat wide-eyed. He opened and closed his finger, and tried to process exactly where the arm he was holding a second ago went. The truck, and by extension the bike, and by further extension the biker and his arm, struck the pursuer. The lower half of the truck crumpled out from below the cab as the remains of all three flipped up and over it and landed in a smouldering heap in the middle of the road.

  “You didn’t have to do that!” he barked. “I had him!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, your highness. You think I wanted to do that? You think I bastarding well wanted any of this? Erica, I’m all out of mirrors. Did that stop the thing behind us?”

  “Not bloody likely, and other rider is still behind us,” she said. “Try not to kill this one, please.”

  Five separate warning lights vied for attention on the dashboard, which was two more than normal and one less than Danielle’s personal best. “Engine is starting to throttle – we won't stay ahead much longer. I'll take whatever idea anyone has, even the stupid ones.”

  Erica watched in amazement as a single car squeezed between the railings and the truck. It ended up a little thinner than it started, and she wouldn't want to have to use those door afterwards, but it remained more or less in a single piece that more or less wasn't on fire.

  “Erica, what is it? What do you see?” Bosco tried to adjust his body enough for him to swing his head around, but between the size of the back seat and Harry wedging him in tighter, he had to accept that he wasn't moving.

  “I see a stupid idea, Mr. Tirren.”

  “Won't work without a distraction, or with that man on our arse,” Sarah added. “If we can get around it, it's too big to turn and chase us,” she said with the absolute belief that nothing could possibly go wrong, somehow oblivious to the fact that it already had for at least a dozen different people in the last two minutes.

  “In for a penny,” Danielle sighed. “Get away from the back window, seat-belts on.” She counted to ten, then gently applied the brakes. The car juddered and the seat-belts snapped taut in unison. The biker struck the window and fractured it like a bad piece of stained glass, then disappeared out of sight.

  “Shut up,” Danielle pre-empted. “You didn’t have a better idea.”

  “Window?” Sarah panted.

  “Window,” Erica agreed. “Okay, I think the plan is this. We get as close to that thing as possible, then we block their tiny window long enough for us to squeeze down the side.”

  “Well, I asked for stupid,” Danielle said. The trail of emissions from the car turned from an ashen grey to a thick black, but this was nothing compared to the emissions of the truck behind them. Unlike the truck behind them, though, her car very definitely wasn't supposed to be doing it. The engine grumbled and there was a noticeable decrease in speed and handling and, perhaps most egregiously, the air conditioning had turned off. She struggled to keep the car going, but it had already been fully engulfed in the enormous shadow of the vehicle following behind.

  “We need something to throw at it,” Erica called, her eyes transfixed on the intricate details of the truck that she was unable to make out before – particularly all of the blood.

  “I have a toolbox,” Danielle offered.

  “Great. Where?”

  “In the... boot.”

  “Oh, bloody bollocks,” Erica sighed. “Can you open it from in here?”

  “Yeah, but you might have noticed we're still moving.”

  “And you might have noticed, I didn't ask that,” Erica said as she started to wind the back window down.

  “You can't be serious, Erica!” Bosco once again struggled to extricate himself from his, now that he thought about it, rather comfortable position, and tried to reach for Erica.

  “I am, Mr. Tirren.” The gruff, snapping tone she took with Danielle began to fade, replaced by more than a tinge of sadness. She put her hand in his and squeezed, then she reached across and ruffled Harry's ears – he looked up and gave a little splutter before settling back down.

  “This is the best chance we have, and there's no-one else who can do this – I'm not even sure I can do this. And don't you bloody try it, Sarah. I love you all. Well, I really very much tolerate you, Ms. Ostler.”

  “I tolerate you, too, you little bitch.” Danielle gave a pained smile, a tear ran into the crease of her mouth and down her chin. “Just don't die.”

  “We'll laugh about this later,” Bosco lied. Sarah didn't say anything, she just hugged her sister and clasped her gently around the legs. Erica put her hands on the lip of the roof of the car, arched her back, and slid her body out through the open window. Sarah kept tight a hold of her legs until she had adjusted herself fully. With a little nudge of her foot, she signalled for Sarah to let go, which she did – eventually.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Danielle! Open the boot!” she called, her hair whipped back into her mouth and stifled her words somewhat. Danielle reached beneath the steering wheel and clicked a small button, a mechanism inside the boot of the car clicked, and the hatch flung open with enough force to crack the back window in all the places it wasn’t previously. On the bright side, Erica thought, if she lived through this, it would be impossible to ever have an idea that verged on being this stupid ever again. Contrary to that, if she didn't live through this, it would also be impossible. She tightly grasped the luggage rack and slowly pulled her legs through the window, anchoring one foot on the door as soon as she'd gotten her first leg free. It wasn't until she had both feet on the door and was awkwardly hunched over the roof that she realised quite how fast they were going, or quite how large the looming metal beast behind them was. She swallowed nervously, the taste of sulphur and metal sliding along her tongue and down to the pit of her stomach.

  Cars zoomed by in perilous proximity as she struggled to stand fully and stretch across to the rear of the car. As they passed by, almost in slow motion, she dared a glance at one the drivers; their face changed from the very angry driving face that she was used to seeing – which was a thing all drivers did regardless of whether or not they were angry – to puzzled confusion brought on by a small girl surfing a car. In the several seconds that followed, that look was replaced by wide-eyed terror. She waved and shouted at the oncoming traffic to slow down, but it was pointless.

  Several times Erica reached for the hatch as it whipped around like a door caught in a storm, and several times she was both close to grabbing it and equally close to being yanked off the side of the car and onto the perilous tarmac. “I can't reach it,” she yelled, the wind flapped her cheeks as she spoke. Sarah scanned the inside of the car and looked for anything hefty enough to be of use. She picked the rider’s baton off the seat and swung it towards the rear window, then ran it around the inside of the frame to break off any small, jagged pieces of glass that had been left behind.

  “Mr. Tirren, I'll need to borrow your arm, because it would be awfully embarrassing if I fell out of the window.”

  “Just embarrassing?” he asked.

  “I imagine that to be the overriding feeling, yes.”

  “It is,” Erica shouted.

  Bosco grabbed Sarah firmly by the ankle and watched in horror as she lunged towards the car boot with both arms outstretched. She fumbled the grab with her left hand, but barely managed to place her right on the handle. Sarah pulled herself up and slightly further out of the window, her right arm braced with her left; it was remarkably uncomfortable, but she reckoned she'd be able to keep it in place for a few moments before her arm came off.

  “Go on, then!”

  “Bloody cheek,” Erica tutted as she again positioned herself to make a grab for the hatch. It struggled and rattled in the wind, but it hadn't quite managed to wrest itself from Sarah's grip. She shuffled as far along the door as she could, then stretched towards the hatch and wrapped her fingers tightly around the edge. If it tore from Sarah's grip now, she'd probably be pulled out of the window and, well, she didn't want to think about it too much if you don't mind.

  Erica relaxed her legs and gave her knees a quick bend to see if they still had any idea how to be knees, and then she jumped. She pulled herself towards the rear of the car, her sister still on top of the struggle to keep the hatch from snapping down and throwing her onto the hard and unforgiving road surface. She landed right foot first on the boot and immediately tilted backwards, her left leg dangled in the wind. The air pressure buffeted her foot as the cars in the opposite lane continued to speed towards their inevitable destruction. As she tried to reel her leg in, because the prospect of having it torn off ever so slightly didn't appeal to her, the car juddered, perhaps hitting a bump or the scattered, corpse-like remains of a car that had landed further down the road, and she slipped. Erica fell forward and landed knee-first where her foot had previously been, and she knelt hunched across the boot. She could feel her knee already starting to go purple, but however badly it hurt, it didn't distract her from what she was doing, and what she was doing was trying not to die horribly.

  She pulled her left leg in so she now knelt fully on the side of the boot. Rather than lean all of her weight on the hatch and make things harder on Sarah, she tensed her legs and pushed towards it, pushing it back and towards Sarah while still clinging on for dear life. She raised her arms as high as she could and shifted her weight forward, her head ducked. Her knees slid off the side of the boot as she tumbled forward, her shins scraped across the metal. It was unceremonious and her legs stung where she’d no doubt scraped a large deal of skin off – even through her thick trousers – but she now lay face down in the boot. Normally, this wouldn't have been seen as an upgrade to circumstances, but she was very happy with what she had. Her heart raced in her chest, her muscles burned from their short-lived abuse, and the joints of her fingers and wrists throbbed with a dull pain. She briefly pondered whether or not this is what it felt like to get old, then she struggled to her hands and knees. “I'm all right,” she called. The collective sigh of relief from everyone else threatened to knock her over again.

  “I see the toolbox.”

  “Is it any good?” Sarah asked.

  “Bit rubbish, really. Why don't you come and have a look?”

  “No, no thanks. I'll take your word for it.”

  Erica slid the small metal toolbox towards her and unclasped the lid; there was a reasonable selection of tools, but most were coated in a thick layer of rust, much like the box itself. The hatch clattered down above her like a rumble of thunder – everything descended into darkness.

  “Sorry!” Sarah shouted. Erica shoved the hatch up with her shoulders and the back of her head, then she held it in place so Sarah could reaffirm her grip on it.

  “You will be!” she grumbled. “I hate to ask this, but can we get a little closer?” An expletive drifted out towards her and the car slowly fell back towards the road tank; it was as horrifying a view as she could have ever hoped for. Right, then, she thought – here goes nothing. She'd never really considered the benefits of aerodynamics when looking for a good tool, and whatever happened today, she expected this to be the last time she did. She took a ball-peen hammer, not ideal, and lined up her shot. With one eye closed, she aimed roughly for the right window, and flexed her arm and adjusted her aim like she had all the time in the world. She hurled the hammer end-over-end with what she considered not an unimpressive amount of force. Her aim was true, but even with the increased proximity to the truck, the hammer fell short by a significant distance. It landed on the road ten or so feet in front of the truck before being consumed as everything else had.

  “Did you get it?” Danielle shouted.

  “Does it sound like I got it? I'm never going to be able to hit that damn window from here or anywhere else. I don't know what to do.”

  Erica rolled over and flopped to her back. She stared at the hatch as it swayed around in Sarah's grip, it squeaked like an irate mouse – she knew a few of those – and occasionally obscured her view of the burnt-orange. The truck was either speeding up or they were slowing down, she guessed it didn't really matter too much – the important part was when they met in the middle. They'd come all this way and had mostly done what they'd set out to do. And what about poor Geddis? He hadn't even gotten this far. It all seemed so- “Bollocks,” growled Erica as she kicked against the hatch as it swayed closer. The hatch rattled with the familiar sound of cut corners. She rolled to her knees and crawled over to the corner of the boot, the bolts holding the hatch on, on the side she’d kicked at least, hadn't been tightened nearly half the way. Now she came to think about it, that was probably the reason for it not being able to stay open.

  She tucked her head in and turned very awkwardly on the spot. The bolts on the opposite side of the boot held no better. She went back to the toolbox and threw everything that was of no use to her out onto the road. For catharsis, she put quite the arm behind the first couple of tools. Chisels were pretty aerodynamic as it turned out, though they still fell short of their intended target. Halfway through this great tool purge, she became worried that what she needed may not even be there at all, but gazing up at her from the bottom of the toolbox was an adjustable wrench. It was just as rusty as everything else in the toolbox, but she didn't need perfect – which was just as well, really, because what she got was a barely functional piece of metal that probably wasn't very good when it was new.

  To her surprise, the first few bolts came out without any particular exertion. They fell to the bed and clinked around, occasionally hitting each other and adding another layer of noise to the already rattling car. For good measure, she grabbed one and threw it towards the truck. She didn't know what she intended to achieve, but quite liked the aimlessness of it all, so threw another one. The last remaining bolt on the right side required her to brace one of her legs against the side of the car and pull. The bolt stripped and she fell backwards and clattered her head against the toolbox, which found itself the next thing to be forcibly ejected from the car. It was satisfyingly crushed beneath the front wheels of the pursuing death-truck. “Bastarding thing.” The right hinge slipped from its mountings and the hatch partly collapsed into the boot itself.

  “Bloody hell!” exclaimed Sarah. “What are you doing?”

  “Something stupid, like we agreed. You need to keep a hold of it just a little longer – let go when I tell you to. Danielle, we need to drop back further – keep it straight.” Another expletive drifted towards her as the car slowed and the truck rapidly filled Erica's view, blotting out the road completely. She crawled to the opposite side of the boot, painfully aware that the hatch now sat much lower and she had less room to work with. It wasn't exactly as she’d intended, but as she found herself unfastening the second bolt, the hatch began to tear away from the car, the metal slowly peeled away like an apple skin.

  “Now!” shouted Erica over the tumult of the tarmac and the roaring engine behind her. Sarah let go of the hatch and slunk back into her seat to nurse her shoulder. The hatch tore from the car with the kind of energy that could have easily taken a very small girl bouncing down the road with it had she held it a moment longer. There was nowhere for the hatch to go except into the path of the road truck, which it did. It struck the windscreen, and while it did nothing more to the truck than slightly inconvenience the paintwork, it lodged itself across the drivers’ side of the window.

  Danielle swung the car to the right and aligned it with the gap between the truck and the flimsy railings, those flimsy railings being the only thing between them and a drop that was far enough for you to be able to meditate on all the terrible life choices that led up to it on the way down. “Hold on,” she said, not entirely sure if there'd be anything left to hold on to in the next few seconds, and slammed the brakes on. The car ground to a halt, yet continued moving as it was carried along the railings by the truck, spitting sparks and shedding metal like cat fur. As the car crumpled and buckled, the pressure eased and it dropped back behind the truck. Erica and Sarah ducked for cover best they could, Bosco could neither dive nor duck, so just shrugged and hoped he'd not have to do either one any time soon. As they passed, Danielle turned to look at the truck. Through the side window – which happened to be half the size of the windscreen yet somehow managed to exist as a window and not a pin-prick – she could see a man. His head animatedly bobbed about as he signalled to the driver to swing the truck across and crush them against the railings.

  Having seen the previous outstanding work the railings were capable of, Danielle expected they'd go through them long before they were smeared against them. The railings squealed as the truck closed the gap, dropping away and falling into the ever-dark. If they’d landed on someone or something, there'd be very few ways to tell. Considering how high up they were and how heavy the average strip of railing was, not being able to see what it landed on was the only conceivable benefit the ever-dark had to offer. The railings fell and, as they did, the right-side wheels of the car teetered on the edge of inky oblivion. The lack of railings, while not something that could be categorised as a good thing or even a somewhat neutral thing with the possibility of going bad, gave the car a small amount of breathing room and some respite from the truck. The last two-feet of the now sort of triangular car slipped behind the truck and gradually fell further and further behind it.

  “Is everyone okay?” she asked. She looked at the rapidly disappearing truck and reminded herself to breath.

  “Just fantastic,” Erica panted as she crawled over the back seat and flopped down next to her sister. She was bruised and battered, and somehow managed to cover her knees in oil, but she was in one piece.

  “We're okay,” confirmed Bosco, who still tried to right himself in his seat. Harry opened his eyes and blinked a few times. If he was being completely honest about it, he’d slept through most of the commotion. His stomach hurt, so he patted it reassuringly and tried to work out what breakfast exactly it was that he was up to. He couldn't quite remember, so thought it safer to start again. From his jumpsuit he removed one of several cereal bars that nice Mr. Geddis had given him and began the ceremonial unwrapping. He’d fashioned himself a makeshift bandolier out of some sticky tape and several pieces of that nylon parcel cord that requires a chainsaw to cut. It wasn't his finest work, but it safely and conveniently held the rest of the day's breakfast supply. It did sort of itch, though.

  “When are we going after Mr. Geddis?” Sarah asked.

  “I don't know,” Danielle snapped. “What do you want me to do? We can't just walk in there – you saw that thing. You saw it!”

  “But we need to do something, he's our friend.” Sarah leant between the gap in the front seats and pleadingly placed her hand on Danielle's shoulder.

  “I won't leave him either,” Bosco added – there was no pleading.

  Danielle banged her head against the headrest until it started making the kind of noise that implies you should stop. They were right – her brain knew that and was fighting fully to get her mouth to agree with it. Geddis for all of his many, many flaws, had risked everything to do the right thing. Whether or not he was mostly terrible at it was irrelevant.

  “Okay,” she said. “We need to get you home, unless dystopian shitholes are your new thing. If we can work out how to do that, I can pick the idiot up on the way out.”

  Danielle turned into the outbound lane and headed as fast as she could in whatever direction the truck wasn't in; it wouldn't be too long until it found an off-ramp and came back for round two.

  “Where’re we going, then?” Erica asked.

  “Blackout. If that thing follows us down there, it'll be standing on milk crates before the day is out.” She was only half-joking.