Prowlers: Wild Things

by Christopher Golden

  "They're going to come after us," she told Jack as she went to strap herself in.

  "Good."

  Stunned, she turned to stare at him. Jack gripped the wheel with whitened knuckles and kept the accelerator pinned as they approached the on-ramp for Route 87. Molly reached back to grab her seat belt and Jack gave her a quick sidelong glance.

  "Not yet, Mol. Get the key, climb in back, and get the shotguns. Maybe a couple of nines too. I want them to catch up to us."

  She reached down and grabbed the release catch on the front of her seat, then pushed it backward as far as it would go. Sliding down onto the floor she reached up under her seat, where a small black box was magnetically attached to the metal springs. Inside the box she found the key to the trunk, but before she crawled between the seats, she turned to Jack again.

  "Are you sure this is the best way to do this?" "No. I'm not. But let's face it, as investigators, we're not Sherlock Holmes. We know what questions to ask, or at least some of them, but we don't have a lot of luck getting answers. Thing is, we ask the questions often enough, and look what happens. We find what we're looking for."

  "Or they find us."

  "Same thing. 'Cause they always underestimate us, Molly. We're human, so they always think we're nothing but prey."

  Molly nodded grimly and pushed into the back seat, then over and into the cargo section of the Jeep. The trunk was covered with a couple of blankets that she pushed back just enough to get to the lock. Hurriedly she unlocked the chest and, with a grunt, threw open its top. Blankets slid off and bunched up while she reached in and pulled out two pump shotguns and a pair of nine millimeter pistols. The irony was not lost on her that Bill had procured the weapons from Prowlers, for them to use against Prowlers. Right now there was something delicious about that.

  Molly snapped the lock back on, tossed the key onto the floor in the back seat and lay the guns on the rear seat as well before climbing over. She put the nines in the front, then slid up into the passenger seat with her shotgun in hand. Twisted around in the seat to reach for the other shotgun, she glanced out the back windshield and saw the Toyota racing after them. Jack had to be doing eighty, but they were going much faster.

  "It's them," she said.

  "Good. Strap in."

  But just as she began to turn, bright light washed into the Jeep from behind. In the middle lane, right beside the Toyota, an eighteen-wheel rig roared, bearing down on them. The driver of the Toyota, the blond girl, waved urgently at the truck and pointed to the Jeep.

  The sky was split by the deep bellow of the tractor-trailer's horn and then it came on faster.

  "No," Molly whispered. She spun around, dropped into her seat and scrambled to grab at her seat belt. "Faster, Jack. I think that's Ford."

  "Yeah?" Jack replied. He shot her a quick glance. "Pick up the shotgun."

  "Jack!" Molly warned as the horn blared again, the lights seemed brighter, blinding as the truck bore down on them, sliding into the fast lane just behind them. There were plenty of other cars on the road but the lane ahead of them was clear, the nearest car a hundred yards up and going even faster than they were. Other motorists honked or swerved to be sure they were out of the way, but Molly knew that even if one of them called the police, time would have run out before anyone could help them.

  "The shotgun, Molly, come on!" he snapped. "I can't outrun them, not now."

  Heart drumrolling in her chest she grabbed the shotgun and pumped a shell into the chamber. "What are you going to do?"

  Jack stiff-armed the wheel with his right hand and reached with his left to hit the button that rolled her window down. The second it started to be drawn down inside the door, the splintered glass gave way and shattered, cascading down inside and outside of the speeding Jeep like a shower of rock candy.

  "Hang on," he yelled.

  The sound of the truck's engine filled the Jeep now, so close was it behind them. Molly saw the driver of a minivan shoot them the finger as they passed. Jack cut to the right and the Jeep swayed and slid all the way across to the slow lane. They had a couple hundreds yards of straightaway with no other vehicles in that lane, but Molly could see red taillights far ahead. A lot of them.

  "The exit's coming up for Hollingsworth," she told him anxiously. "Just get off, Jack."

  "Come on, come on!" Jack muttered to himself, ignoring her as he stared in the rearview mirror and then at the lanes ahead.

  Molly glanced back and saw the truck make the same insane cut across the highway. Horns blared, cars swerved, and a station wagon actually slewed off the road and onto the shoulder, nearly careening into the forest on that side. Then, again, the truck was gaining. Beyond that she saw the Toyota as well, and it began to accelerate as well.

  "Sit tight, Molly, and get ready."

  Her throat was dry, her hands damp on the shotgun as they raced along the slow lane. Again she glanced over her shoulder and saw the truck roaring up behind them. Ahead, to the left, there was a Chevy in the middle lane going far too slow, but beyond that, the lane was clear. Jack punched the accelerator a second before the big rig would have slammed into the back of the Jeep. They shot forward, past the faded red Chevrolet. The wind coming through the broken window blew Molly's hair in her face and she pushed it away.

  "Now!" he snapped.

  Jack cut the wheel to the left, the Jeep darted into the middle lane, and then he hit the brakes, pinning the steering wheel with both hands. The driver of the Chevy laid on his horn but Jack wasn't stopping, just slowing down. A lot. The engine of the Jeep groaned and the driver of the tractor-trailer started to brake as well, but at eighty-five miles per hour there was little he could do without jackknifing his rig. The truck plowed along in the slow lane, moving past them.

  "Do it. Shoot him!" Jack snapped.

  They had dropped back almost the entire length of the truck but now Jack began to accelerate again. The Jeep crept up beside the enormous, roaring gray dinosaur of a truck and Molly turned in her seat. The shotgun's barrel poked out her window and she aimed at the cab of the rig. The second she could see the silhouette of the driver, she pulled the trigger.

  The shotgun roared and glass blew out of the driver's window. Divots of metal were torn from the door as well. The driver ducked, but she could see he was bleeding. The rig wavered as he righted it, trying to avoid driving off the shoulder, crashing the same way it had been made to appear that Suzanne Robinson and Chet Douglas had crashed.

  Molly pumped another shell into the chamber. Even as Jack raced up next to the truck again, the driver turned to glare down at them.

  It was John Ford, all right, lips peeled back in a grimace of such fury that although he still wore a human face, he looked as savage as any Prowler. Molly pulled the trigger, but even as she did, Ford swerved the truck into their lane. Metal shrieked and tore, her shot went wide. The rear tire of the truck dug into the side of the Jeep and for a moment they were up on two wheels. She dropped the gun and screamed, eyes wide as the horizon tilted, and Molly was certain she was going to die.

  Then the Jeep's tires touched ground again.

  But Jack had lost control. He jerked at the wheel and he slammed on the brakes to try to keep it from spinning. The Jeep swerved, the station wagon coming up behind them jerked left and crashed into the Chevy.

  The Jeep started to skid sideways.

  Molly held her breath, afraid her heart would burst from the terror that spiked through her.

  The Jeep skidded off the highway, onto the soft shoulder, and then they were rolling, glass was shattering, airbags exploded into their faces as it turned over once, and then again, and came to rest at the bottom of the gulley along the side of the highway.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The crash seemed to happen in some kind of drag time, not slow motion, but a surreal version of time where Jack could mark each passing second. He felt the seat belt constrict across his chest as the windshield shattered and glass fragments made tiny, sharp cuts on h
is face and hands. The airbag slammed him back against the seat, held him there even when the Jeep came to rest upside down. He heard Molly scream and he prayed it was fear, not pain, that made her cry out that way.

  Then they were upside down and the engine cut out and all Jack could hear was the wheels of the Jeep spinning and screeching tires and car horns and shouts up on the highway. Time seemed to skip the way he remembered vinyl records doing on his mother's turntable when he was very small. Images and sounds seemed to fade in and out, lurching forward as though seconds of his life were being snatched away in ragged handfuls. It took Jack nearly a full minute to realize that he had been fading in and out of consciousness, yet at the moment that understanding dawned on him, his awareness seemed to come back to him fully.

  "Molly," he rasped.

  He hung there, upside down, trying desperately to orient himself. The airbag held him firmly against his seat, but he could feel a little give in it. With great effort, he craned his neck to get a look at Molly. Her hair hung beneath her and her face was dotted with tiny cuts, but from what little he could see of her past the white of her airbag, she seemed unharmed. Molly's arms hung akimbo, dangling toward the roof of the inverted Jeep, and her eyes were closed. Unconscious. Which meant she might have sustained more damage than he thought.

  "Molly," he said again. "Hey, Mol! Wake up."

  She did not stir and the spark of hope that had bloomed in him when he had seen no obvious injuries was snuffed. Jack cursed silently as he began to wriggle behind the airbag. He knew the Jeep had them, of course, but he had never fully appreciated the miracle of airbags, or even given any thought to their presence when he bought the vehicle. They were just another item on the list of things that came with the car, like the tow bar on the back that he had never used. At the moment, though, he regretted that lack of appreciation. Indeed, he felt like dancing a little jig and singing a hymn of praise to the divine airbag. And he might actually do that, just as soon as he was certain Molly was all right.

  The blood rushed to his head and his skull started to ache but he ignored that pain and glanced down at the ceiling of the Jeep. One of the nine millimeters and both shotguns lay there. That was bad. Cops and EMTs would be along in a few minutes. Also bad was that the guns were in the midst of a sea of shattered glass, the dome light peeking out from amongst the tiny square shards. That was safety glass. It broke like that, into a million little pieces, so nobody got impaled on huge chunks of windshield. But those tiny pieces were still sharp, could still cut, as his face and hands had found out. Small cuts, yes, but they stung. The idea of dropping down onto that broken glass had absolutely no appeal whatsoever, but the alternatives were equally unpleasant. If something was wrong with Molly and he just hung there waiting for EMTs to arrive, that could be bad for her, never mind them going to jail for the guns.

  Then there were the Prowlers. He had no way to know if the monsters would come back to see if they were still alive.

  "Screw it," Jack muttered.

  He had a light jacket on, thick enough to protect him as long as he didn't stick his hands in that pool of broken glass. With effort he reached out and grabbed the door latch, tried to push it open and found it jammed. The frame of the Jeep had protected them, but it had buckled enough to wedge the doors tight. Grunting with effort he worked his body against the airbag and managed to slip his right hand up beside his hip to the catch of his seat belt. He braced his knees on the airbag, thinking it might help hold him up, then stretched his left arm out to hold on to the armrest control panel that jutted from his door.

  After a deep breath to steady himself, Jack released the belt and then he was falling, shoving, sliding, while hanging onto the door as best he could. He poked his head out of the shattered driver's side window just as his back slumped down onto the ceiling full of broken glass. The impact jarred him and a spike of pain shot up from his right knee. He glanced down at his jeans but there didn't seem to be any blood. Must have hit the dashboard, he thought, hoping that it was only bruised or twisted. A shattered knee cap would be very bad.

  But when he hauled himself out onto the prickly brush on in the roadside gulley, the pain in his knee had reduced to a dull throb. Up in the breakdown lane, three cars were pulled over and it looked like more traffic had started to slow down and rubberneck for a glimpse of the carnage. Jack's memory of the minutes before the crash were only flickering images in his head, but he thought he remembered a couple of other cars getting into a fender bender as well. The good news was there was no sign of Ford's truck, or the Toyota with the other Prowlers in it.

  Guess we were asking the right questions, he thought.

  One of the people up in the breakdown lane started down the incline toward the overturned Jeep. Jack's mind flashed to the guns and he waved the guy back.

  "Just stay there!" he shouted. "I think I smell gasoline. Somebody up there have a cell phone?"

  A woman in a business suit held hers up and pointed at it to indicate that she was already on the phone, then she resumed speaking into the phone. Jack was relieved, but also panicked. He would have to hurry. The guy who had begun the descent was still partially down the hill into the gulley and Jack waved him back again.

  "Stay back. I'm just gonna check on my girlfriend," he said, hoping they would all listen. Then inspiration struck him. "And for God's sake, nobody smoke!" he cried with an air of melodrama that sounded false to him but seemed to have the desired reaction as the Samaritan scampered back up to the supposed safety of the pavement.

  That taken care of, Jack started around to the other side of the Jeep, beyond which there was nothing but forest. His knee felt swollen and he figured he had torn something but nothing was broken. Still, he was forced to limp as he hurried to Molly's door, and instead of kneeling he sat down beside her. There were a lot of tiny cuts on her face, and safety glass in her hair and on her clothes. One of the cuts, right on her cheek, had bled enough that a tiny tear of blood ran from it and down along her temple and into her hair. Though Jack tried not to think, tried to push away his fear for her, the sight of Molly hanging unconscious like that tore into him. His breathing became shallow and he felt as though his whole body were made of glass. And not safety glass, either, but the kind that really made some music when you broke it, long, delicate razor shards of ice.

  "Molly," Jack said, and his own voice sounded far away.

  He reached for her, and the moment he touched her dangling arm it was as though a spell was broken. He slid closer on the brush, reached down to touch her throat with one hand even as he felt for her pulse with the other.

  A pulse.

  "Molly!" he snapped.

  She moaned and shifted slightly, her arms pulling up toward her body, toward the air bag. Her eyes began to flutter open.

  In the distance, police sirens wailed, echoing across the highway and into the trees. Jack wanted to get Molly out of that car, but first things first. He had no idea where the other nine millimeter was, but he reached in through the shattered back window and withdrew the one on the ceiling along with the two shotguns. If he stood up, despite the darkness, the people up on the road might see him toss them. Even now they were shouting down to him, telling him that the police and ambulances were on the way, that if there's no gasoline leakage he should just leave her there, that it was going to be all right.

  The trees were very close. Jack scuttled toward them on his knees with one hand on the ground and the other cradling the guns. The throbbing in his knee increased to a spike of pain that lanced through him again with every foot, but in a few seconds he was slipping between trees and into the underbrush.

  The sirens came closer. He thought that he might even have seen blue lights against the night sky. One by one he threw the guns as far into the woods as he could without drawing attention to himself. Then he scrambled back toward the Jeep. He had not responded and so now the voices from up on the highway were calling even louder, asking if he was all right. Any second now,
if the police didn't arrive, that Samaritan whose instinct had tried to get him down here in the first place was likely to come running to the Jeep thinking he was in trouble.

  It was all right now, though. He hoped that the other gun had been thrown from the Jeep while it rolled, and that the cops wouldn't open the trunk. With a grunt he sat down again beside Molly, who moaned again as she heard him and her eyes fluttered open.

  "We're not dead?" she asked.

  "Not dead. Are you all right? Anything broken?"

  "Not that I can tell . . . I think I hit my head, though. Maybe on the door frame . . . I don't know. Got a big bump."

  "If that's all you've got, it's a double miracle. Let's sing the praises of the God of Airbags," he said with a grin. Then he reached out to touch her arm. "I was pretty afraid," he confessed.

  "Me too," Molly replied. "Of your driving. Get me out of this."

  Jack nodded. The cops would be there in seconds, but Molly wanted out and he did not blame her.

  "Can you release your seat belt?"

  "I think so." She pushed against the air bag and shoved her hair down to find the catch.

  Jack reached into her broken window and got a hold of her shoulders. "Lift your head when you undo the belt. Just keep your hands and your head from hitting the glass."

  "Ready?" Molly asked.

  "Go," Jack told her.

  Suddenly she collapsed into his hands and he hauled her upper body through the broken window. A second later and Molly was helping, scrambling out from under the airbag. They lay on the rough brush, breathing heavily, staring up at the stars that were scattered across the October evening sky.

  Something snapped in the woods.

  Jack began to turn just as the Prowlers lunged from the trees, keeping low and out of sight of the road, just as Jack had done. He started to get up, Molly cried out, and then the beasts were upon them. One of them struck him a hard backhand across the face that dazed him, then the monster hit him a second and a third time, and Jack slumped to the ground, blackness enveloping him.