Nobody but Us

by Kristin Halbrook

  “I saw them.”

  “For me?”

  She shrugs, then nods. “For us.”

  I kiss her again, slow, like there ain’t no one ahead of us and no one behind us. Then I tuck Zoe back into her seat. The truck in front of us inches forward, and I swerve the car out of the lane to see the barricade about half a mile up ahead. Police cars turned sideways with their lights flaring, orange cones, and officers directing traffic.

  They weren’t behind us—they were in front, all this time.

  The cars crawl through the barricade.

  I ain’t having none of that.

  “You better get your seat belt on.”

  ZOE

  HE SLAMS ON THE GAS AND MY HEAD SLAMS INTO the headrest. My arms flail, looking for anything to hold on to. I settle on the door and Will’s elbow and squeeze both.

  “I got this,” Will says as the Camaro growls like a rabid wolf. We leap off the highway and into the desert, mowing over short, thick shrubs with the car’s fat tires. There are shouts behind us as officers scramble into their cars and take to the sand. Will floors the gas, and the speed is electrifying. The ring of the cops’ sirens swirls in my ears, the wail trading time with my throbbing heartbeat.

  “Will!” I scream. I spin around, my hair whipping at my face, to see the cops closing in on us. Part of me wants them to catch up, stop this, take us somewhere safe. The other part wants us to run, run, as far away as we can. Just go forever.

  What have I done?

  A sharp turn to the left and I’m flung face-forward again.

  Will’s mouth is set in a tight line as he leans over the steering wheel and focuses on avoiding the rocks and cracks in the earth. But they’re hard to see and we hit a narrow valley, the Camaro dipping down for an instant, then flinging us into the air with a shout and a sharp spinning of the tires. We land, bounce once, twice, before the car settles back into its bumpy pace.

  It’s all I can do to remember to breathe. But the dust-filled air chokes me and I sputter against it, desperate to inhale pure oxygen.

  Will spins the wheel to the left again and my body slams into the door. My head bangs against the window and begins to ache. But we can’t stop for that.

  I check the side-view mirror and flinch when I see the flashing lights behind us.

  Objects are closer than they appear.

  “They’re right there.”

  Will grunts and throws the wheel to the right.

  My face hits his shoulder and I taste blood.

  “We’re not losing them!” I shout as we leap a larger shrub and our heads thump into the top of the car simultaneously.

  “How’d they know we’d be here?” he shouts back, his eyes flickering from me to the road.

  My heart races. I swear, I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I pant and shudder and grab the dash.

  It’s a rhetorical question, thrown out into the breeze because he doesn’t realize I know the answer. Because he never dreamed I could have betrayed him like this.

  But I did.

  “Will.”

  “Not a good time.”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you, too,” he says distractedly.

  I raise my voice to be heard over the sounds of the chase. “No, I mean….. I love you. I thought I loved you before we left. And a couple days ago I thought that, too … but what I feel now is bigger. The kind of bigger that makes me want to do the right thing. You make me need to do the right thing. Our love like this, grown while we committed crimes—it’s going to destroy us.”

  His eyebrows knit together as he tries to process what I’m saying in between steering the car around mounds and craters in the dirt. The words are rushed, falling over each other in their haste to get out of my mouth. He gives up and absently squeezes my knee before returning his hand to the wheel. I’ll tell you this again later, I promise silently, when this is all over and we’re together and life is better—the real better we planned it to be.

  We’re approaching jagged hills. We can’t go much farther and I want to tell him that, want to tell him how sorry I am, but he’s determined to get around them. We careen left, the tires skidding in the sand and the back end of the car rounding us off course. The cops are set to T-bone right into Will’s side. My heart races and I can’t let that happen; I can’t let him get hurt.

  In that instant I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, as long as nothing happens to Will. I have to get us out of here. How could I have called—how could I have destroyed us like that?

  My head whips toward Will as the cop car looms out of the desert at a speed that could rip Will’s car in two. I shove Will’s shoulder desperately.

  “Go!” I scream madly. “Go!”

  Will resets the wheel and presses the gas to the floor and we’re off again, the first police car dinging into the rear bumper as we break.

  It takes a few seconds for the cops to orient themselves to our new path, and by then Will’s discovered a dirt-and-gravel road. He swerves us onto it, and I hear the engine roar with pleasure as the speedometer needle rises.

  The road is still bumpy, and I clamp my teeth together to stop the chattering. It’s not just the road causing the tremors.

  The cops are farther behind now but shouting things at us. I hear their words echo off the rock formations. They’ve probably been shouting all along.

  “They’re going to shoot, Will.”

  “Tires are hard to hit.”

  “We can’t run forever.”

  “You just gotta trust me.”

  “I do. I trust you, and I love you, and I want you.”

  “Okay, then.”

  But tires aren’t that hard to hit, apparently. I shriek at the explosive sound of bullet hitting hot rubber, and we skid off the road. Will swears and tries to control the steering wheel, but it seems to have a mind of its own. My eyes widen at the size of the rock directly in front of us and I scream, but Will already sees it. He slams on the brake. The car locks up, but the sand can’t hold us and the crash sends my face into the dash and sets my ears ringing. I rub my nose gingerly, coming away with streaks of sticky, warm blood on my knuckles.

  “Zoe,” Will mumbles.

  There’s a gash under his eye, but he wipes at it carelessly and reaches for my face and covers my mouth with a kiss that dismisses thought and pain and sorrow and everything else but him and me.

  “You’re everything,” he breathes.

  My eyes water. The tears are filled with a million molecules of hurt and regret. My face feels like it went a round with my dad, but my tears are for something else. I suck a bit of air in and let it out as an agonizing sob.

  “I love you, Will.”

  “I know.”

  “Be-lieve me?”

  “Yeah.”

  I choke on the sobs and taste the snot and blood as it flows from my nose and over my lip.

  “I told.” I look away from him as my voice breaks. It takes everything I have just to inhale sharp little puffs of air and let them back out again. “I—told Lin. About Barstow. I thought … I thought you would be better without me.”

  His hand drops from my hair, and that makes it worse, makes the cries come harder. He’s given up on me, if he won’t touch me. I would abandon me, too.

  “That’s how they knew where we were.”

  I nod and wipe my nose on the back of my sleeve and hiccup.

  He breaks into that devilish smile I adore.

  “Damn.” He laughs. As if there’s nothing left to do but laugh. “If I’da known we were throwing in the towel, I would’ve enjoyed the chase more.”

  WILL

  THEY’RE YELLING OUTSIDE THE CAR, AND THERE AIN’T much time left.

  I take her face in my hands. Probably for the last time for a long time. Maybe ever. There’s guilt splashed across it and a look like she wants to die, and I stop smiling.

  My Zoe.

  “You did right,” I tell her. “You’re better than I could
ever be, you know that? ’Cause you do the right thing. You’re so fucking beautiful. You’re an angel. And you know—” I make a grasping, chesty sound. “You know fucking everything and … everything, about me. And you still love me, don’t you?”

  She nods. Then she flings herself into my lap.

  “I’m sorry,” she chokes.

  “You want to save me. Bad as I want to save you. I know about that.”

  She covers me with lips wet with tears, all over, and she’s part of me, everything of me, until there ain’t nothing left of Will and only this better unnamed thing that I am now, because of her.

  The cops are inching toward us. The morning sun glints off their badges, their guns.

  Zoe watches me with wide eyes and I smile at her. My chest explodes with the love I got for her. I press my thumb against her lips and she kisses it, sending tremors down my spine.

  “Let’s go,” I say. She waits, follows my lead. My head is bobbing at her in this sort of auto-nod. Like it’s going to be okay. Like I know they ain’t gonna take her from me. Like I know they ain’t gonna toss her back into that hell with her dad. Like they’ll understand everything and let us go.

  But this life taught me different. Nobody cares if it ain’t your fault or if you didn’t mean to. No one cares if you need some help—all there is is people spitting at you. It’s you against the world, and when the world’s bigger, what’s left to do but give up?

  Zoe can do better without me. She needs something better than this.

  She’s halfway out of the car when I reach under my seat, grasp the cold of a black metal handle in my hand, finger the trigger, fling the door open. All this in the time it takes her eyes to widen even farther.

  “Will—no!”

  But I’m already out of the car.

  ZOE

  THEY YELL WHEN THEY SEE THE GUN. NO, NOT YELL. They scream. A sound filled with shock and fear and fury. They scream at him to drop his weapon, that they will shoot if they have to.

  I run for Will.

  WILL

  I WANT HER TO STAY AWAY. I PUT MY ARM OUT TO keep her away. This was something she never should’ve been dragged into. But she comes anyway and I tuck her into me anyway because I can’t help it. I wish it were where she belongs. Where I belong. But she’s gotta get away from me.

  ZOE

  ONE ARM IS AROUND ME. THE OTHER EXTENDS beyond us, and I look away from it to the expanse of the desert behind us, try not to see it, pretend the arm and the curled fingers and the weapon at the end of it don’t exist.

  What is he doing? What is he thinking? Does he want to get himself killed?

  And then I realize.

  Sometimes, it’s just time. Time to pay, time to reckon. I’ve spent my childhood hiding who killed my mother. There’s no punishment big enough for me. Not my dad’s fists, not years of invisibility.

  I spin around. Fan my arms out. Face them. Face everything. Will holds me still. I want them to take me in the worst way possible. And I want him to let me fall when they do.

  This happiness was never meant for me.

  WILL

  THEY’RE GONNA THINK I’M HOLDING HER HOSTAGE. The way I got her. The blood under her nose, on her lips. Do they see the way her back’s pressed to me, the way her body trembles? Or are they only seeing what they want to see? Maybe it’s me that’s been blind all this time. I’ve gone and hurt people in my life. Now I’m gonna get what I deserve.

  ZOE

  “STAY BACK!”

  Will’s yelling at them. As if we could stand here forever, here in the desert with these figures in uniforms and suits and more pulling up as we stand. With the desert dirt and rock and the crushed Camaro. With Will hanging on with one hand, and in the other, a gun pointing at them and their guns pointing at us.

  I don’t know what Will’s doing, what he’s thinking, what he’s hoping, but I’m not afraid.

  WILL

  “LET THE GIRL GO!” THEY YELL, AND I HAVE THE MAD desire to laugh.

  I can’t. I need to, ’cause she’s gonna be better off, but I can’t let her go. They don’t get it, how she’s the only one who would’ve come this far with me.

  ZOE

  PLEASE DON’T SHOOT, WILL. PUT DOWN THE GUN.

  I want to live.

  WILL

  “DROP YOUR WEAPON!”

  I ain’t never shot a gun before. I don’t know if I can shoot this one.

  I can’t drop it. I can’t let it go. I don’t know what I’m doing with it, why it’s here. Why can’t my brain work as fast as my body?

  My hand shakes.

  I want to live.

  ZOE

  WILL’S BODY SHUDDERS. I TURN MY FACE TO HIS.

  WILL

  I PULL ZOE UP TO MY MOUTH AND PRESS A KISS TO her, a harder kiss than I’ve ever given. A kiss that burns us both. I memorize her face in the one second it takes for me to make this decision, then I push her away from me. I shove her into the dirt, toward them. I’m mean and angry, not ’cause of anything she did, but ’cause now I finally get it. It’s ’cause of everything I didn’t do. Of everything no one ever taught me how to do.

  What it means to be a man, to love someone this much. Enough to give everything I am.

  Life is meant for her. She deserves every wonderful thing. Without me, she’s gonna get it, too. All the good stuff. It’s time for me to go in.

  I surrender. Begin to raise my hands.

  They tremble.

  The gun shakes violently.

  There’s an explosive noise, close to my ear. My arm flings backward, farther than my shoulder should let it.

  Then there’re echoes all over the desert.

  I stumble.

  Zoe’s lifting her head, so slowly, like she’s emerging from ice.

  There’s dynamite going off in my chest. In my leg. My neck.

  Tingling in my arms, ribs. The ground.

  My head bounces off the dirt before it settles again.

  It’s slow. My legs are gone. Lungs won’t open. Bugs are crawling through my blood.

  But I don’t mind. Zoe’s right here. She’s fallen next to me. I reach my hand to her face, open my mouth to whisper her name, but there’s this awful taste in my mouth and a thick, warm liquid seeping in. I can’t speak. I gag on my words.

  Zoe’s eyes lock with mine and I can’t look away and it’s the sweetest, sweetest thing. She’ll be safe. They ain’t never gonna take her back to her dad. They’ll see they can’t. It’s the one good thing I’ve done in this life: kept that promise to help make her stronger. She’ll know where to go from here.

  I see it. In her eyes, in the set of her mouth. She won’t let them do nothing bad to her.

  I rest my head back against the ground. I’m so tired. All the exhilaration of the chase, of running, of standing my ground, has faded and left me damn tired.

  It’s dark.

  I did what I had to do.

  She’ll live. Live wonderful.

  And there ain’t nothing bigger than that.

  ZOE

  HE FALLS INTO ME AND ONTO ME AND OVER ME AND there is blood everywhere I can taste it in the air and in my mouth just like his kisses my blood and his, too, and in my nose even though it is impossible to breathe and I can’t find the air, the strength to suck it down.

  “You promised me. You promised. You promised you’d take care of me. You promised you’d take me to see the ocean. Get up. Get up and take me, you promised, you promised. I’ll take your promises now, I believed them then. I did really. Promise me something. Will, I’ll believe you!”

  The anger and the screaming are consuming and they feel so, so good right now, when I know that feeling anything else would kill me.

  The screaming is the only thing that keeps me from wanting to die, too.

  “No, no, Will. Will! God, no!”

  It’s like he’s letting himself go. Like he’s not fighting the holes, the rivulets of blood.

  I look at them. Those people.
r />   “You fuckers!” It tastes so good to say it. “You fucking fuckers! Get away from us!”

  They’re coming. They’re going to take Will.

  I clutch him to me. He’s mine. They can’t have him. They don’t know him, but I do. He’s mine. My everything. He made me see. He believed in me and my strength. I press my palm over his stomach. Another over his neck. But I don’t have enough hands and I have to stop the bleeding. I need to know how to do this, how to save lives. But I only have two hands.

  I lay on top of him. Press my cheek onto his chest and feel the warm, slippery oozing against my skin. The smell is overwhelming, but I won’t move. His blood gathers in the corner of my lips and seeps into my mouth. His taste is the same as mine, our blood is the same blood. I close my eyes because they’re still coming, but I have to stop the bleeding and they need to stay back while I stop the bleeding. My ear’s right there, right where I should be able to hear his life, but there’s nothing. Nothing.

  Nothing.

  I hear nothing.

  Feel nothing.

  The anger is over. And the screaming. People surround me, grab me, touch me. Touch Will. Kneel beside him. They’ve pulled me away and I only stare and wait to wake from this nightmare.

  His body is there.

  And I’m holding to a lost moment.

  Because I was right. The moment I stopped being angry, the moment the silence filled my ears like water, was the moment I wanted to die, too.

  I want to die.

  God, please. Please take me with him.

  Stop punishing me.

  ZOE

  “ZOE BENSON? YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. YOU HAVE the right to remain silent …”

  I don’t feel them put the handcuffs on me. Only later, when they are taking them off at the police station, do I realize they had ever been there at all.