by Tarah Benner
It took only one lap around the kitchen for Bernie to locate the keys to the car parked outside. She snatched them up and let herself out the front, but the car wouldn’t start. Bernie suspected that the battery was dead from sitting idle too long, but they had a car, and she was determined to make the old-lady mobile run.
Half an hour later, Portia was sitting ashen-faced in the front seat of their new Crown Victoria while Bernie strung jumper cables from the blue Yaris parked on the lawn.
When the Crown Vic finally groaned to life, Bernie let out a triumphant whoop and climbed into the Yaris. She parked it three blocks down and hauled ass back to the old woman’s house. Their new vehicle was registered to one Alberta Clemens, and Bernie couldn’t help but think of the woman as her fairy godmother.
“It smells like old people in here,” Portia snarled as Bernie slid into the driver’s seat.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she chided as she adjusted the overlarge seat and pulled out onto the road.
They drove through the neighborhood at a crawl, Bernie weaving around the block a few times before she found the main drag leading to the highway. As they picked up speed, she looked over just in time to see Portia dry-heave over the spotless floorboard.
“Watch it!” snapped Bernie, rolling down a window to get some fresh air circulating in the cabin.
As proud as she was about her acquisition of the Crown Victoria, she had to admit that Portia was right. Despite the condition the car was in, there lingered an off-putting odor of old-lady perfume, white Tic Tacs, and too much baby powder.
They got back on the highway — 380 east — and Bernie pulled out the atlas they’d salvaged from the Yaris. Portia didn’t look as though she were in any shape to navigate, but Bernie handed her the map anyway.
Portia traced their route with a thin pale finger while Bernie watched her out of the corner of her eye. Portia was still a little green around the gills and looked absolutely exhausted. Her skin was waxy, her hair hung around her face in limp clumps, and her fingernails had a bluish tint to them — as though she’d been shivering in a meat locker for several hours.
They drove for about an hour and a half before Portia let out an aggravated growl and threw the atlas onto the floorboard. “Will you stop it?” she snapped.
Bernie swallowed and stared at the road. “Stop what?”
“Stop looking at me like you think I might drop dead at any second.”
“I’m not looking at you like that,” said Bernie guiltily. “You’re just, um . . . pale. That’s all. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” growled Portia. But she didn’t look fine.
“Did you read that part of What to Expect where it talks about vitamin deficiency?”
“Why?” Portia snarled. “You’re just going to tell me what it says anyway.”
Bernie took a deep breath, swallowing the storm of retorts she longed to hurl at Portia. “Well,” she said patiently, “the book says that pregnant women can become anemic.”
Portia rolled her eyes.
“But I guess they probably would have given you something for that back at —”
“I didn’t take anything they gave me.”
“What?”
“I didn’t take any of that crap,” said Portia in a defensive tone. “I didn’t want them knocking me out or —”
“Or giving you a goddamned vitamin?”
“Hey! Nobody told me what they were,” Portia snapped. “I spit them out as soon as the nurses weren’t looking.”
Bernie rolled her eyes and smacked the steering wheel. “Well, shit. That explains a lot. We have to get you something for —”
She stopped mid-sentence, staring into the rearview mirror. A car had just crested the hill behind them, and it was quickly gaining on them.
Portia turned to look at her, unsure what had gotten Bernie’s attention, and her face grew somber.
“What the fuck?” Bernie squeezed the steering wheel tighter, fighting the suffocating panic that had just erupted in her chest.
“You think . . .”
“I don’t know.”
They were too far away to see the car clearly, but she could tell that it was a dark sedan. Bernie’s internal alarm bells were going off like crazy. She was sure it had to be the same car she’d seen back in Roswell, but whether the car was following them or not, she couldn’t be sure.
“Maybe we should just let them pass,” said Portia.
“What if it’s the feds?”
Portia shrugged.
“Have you seen any other cars since we escaped?”
“No . . . But we ditched the Yaris . . .”
Bernie nodded, but she didn’t feel any better. It was crazy and irrational, but somehow she just knew that the black car was tailing them.
“Why would they even be looking for us?” asked Portia. “The whole fucking world has gone to shit. What do they care about a couple of escaped inmates?”
Bernie didn’t answer. Her mind had drifted back to the night she’d tried to escape with Lark and the others. They hadn’t made it very far. The drones had appeared seconds after they’d scaled the wall, and Finn —
Bernie gulped, physically resisting the urge to vomit. Panic thrummed in her veins, and she punched the gas as hard as she could.
It was the sensor. The health sensors embedded in their arms had allowed the killer drones to track them once they’d scaled the outer wall, and Portia’s sensor had alerted the guards to their escape. Axel had made them all cut out their sensors before they left the premises, but Portia must have still had hers. How in the hell had Bernie forgotten to check?
“Holy shit,” she breathed, watching the speedometer creep toward ninety. The Crown Victoria moaned as she forced it up to speed.
“What is it?”
“Your sensor,” said Bernie, mentally throttling herself. “They’ve been using the signal to track us.”
“What?”
Bernie pounded her hand against the steering wheel, groaning aloud at her own stupidity. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten about the sensor. She should have cut it out of Portia’s arm the second they left the prison grounds, but she’d been so caught up in where they were going and the fact that she’d just strangled a guard that it had completely slipped her mind.
They crested a hill, breaking ninety, but the car behind them didn’t fall back. If anything, it was still gaining on them.
Bernie straightened her good leg — practically standing on the gas pedal — but the car wouldn’t go any faster. A little red light flicked on over the sedan, and Bernie felt the blood pool in her feet.
“Shit,” breathed Portia, watching the siren swirl in the rearview mirror. “Step on it!”
“I am!” Bernie wailed.
“Lose them!” cried Portia, rummaging in the glove compartment. She produced what looked like a multi-tool and fiddled with it until a knife attachment popped out.
“What are you doing?” Bernie screamed.
“I’m gonna cut this thing out of me.”
“It’s too late,” snapped Bernie, her hands vibrating on the steering wheel. She wanted to sock Portia in the side of the head. She knew it was her fault for not remembering the sensor, but somehow all her panic and frustration was directed at Portia.
Bernie twisted around in her seat, trying to convince herself that they were losing the black sedan, but it was still gaining on them.
“Look out!” yelled Portia, throwing out her arms as though she meant to brace herself.
Bernie turned just in time to see an enormous brown buck staring at her with wide, unblinking eyes. They flashed in her headlights like two iridescent coins, and for two long seconds, Bernie’s brain left her body.
She screamed and slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. They hit the deer with an enormous thud, and the poor animal flew over the hood as though it weighed nothing at all.
They fishtailed dangerously on the road, but before Bernie co
uld right them, two more deer trotted out in front of her. She swerved to try to avoid them, but the car was moving too fast. They skidded over the rumble strip on the shoulder and careened into the ditch.
Half a second later, they were airborne. The Crown Victoria rolled end over end, and the world turned itself upside down. Bernie felt a sharp pain along the side of her neck, but it was just her seatbelt holding her inside the car as the earth shook itself out on its axis.
All the tumbling turned Bernie’s brain to mush, and she couldn’t see anything except a brownish blur of dirt and grass as they rolled down the hill.
Somebody screamed, and the car jolted to a stop. Something punched Bernie in the face. Her head hit the window in a blinding flash of pain, and everything went dark.
twenty-one
Bernie
Perfume. Gasoline. Melted plastic. The chemical stench that hung in the air was the first thing Bernie noticed as she crawled back to consciousness.
Something was burning. She could feel heat radiating from the front of the car, and she was in excruciating pain.
She lifted a hand to her head and felt blood dripping from a cut just above her left eyebrow. Her head was pounding where it had struck the side of the car, and her nose was tender from the airbag’s sudden deployment.
She peeled her eyes open and fought back a shudder. The sun was sinking beneath the clouds like a great ball of fire, illuminating long golden cracks in the sky. The airbag was drooped over the steering wheel, partially deflated, and there was a grisly smear across the windshield that looked horribly like blood.
Her heart was pounding in her temples, and she realized with a bubble of psychotic laughter that she was hanging upside down. The jagged golden lines sparkling in front of her weren’t cracks in the sky — they were cracks in the windshield. She was still suspended by her seatbelt, and a girl was hanging in the seat beside hers.
Portia. The name came to her from very far away, as if she’d run into an old friend in an airport halfway across the country.
Slowly the details began to sharpen, and a strong sense of foreboding came over her.
Her injured leg was throbbing. She thought she might have a concussion, and she was going to have a permanent indentation across her upper body from the seatbelt. But it was the pungent stench of gasoline that stoked true urgency inside her.
They had to get out.
Bernie reached over and shook Portia’s shoulder. Her head swung uselessly from side to side, and Bernie’s heart thudded harder.
She craned her neck to see where they’d landed, but all she could see was dirt and tree bark and a smear of entrails that must have belonged to the deer.
She took a deep breath, and a glint of metal caught her eye. Fighting the ache in her neck, she turned to look above her and saw what looked like a pair of pliers with a knife sticking out of the side: the multi-tool.
Bernie groaned in relief and reached over her head to grab it. The multi-tool was lying a few inches behind her, and she had to strain to reach it. She gasped with pleasure as her fingers closed over the cool metal, and then she began to saw at her seatbelt.
It was tricky work. The knife was small and very dull, but eventually the material began to fray. By that time, the smell of gas was hardly bearable. Bernie felt herself growing lightheaded from the fumes, and she wondered if the car would explode before she’d get the chance to free herself.
Dozens of horrible images flitted through her mind: being blown to bits by shrapnel as the car burst apart, burning alive in her seat as she struggled to break free. She pictured herself crawling away from the vehicle and being charred in a chemical explosion as she dragged Portia’s lifeless body behind her.
Bernie gritted her teeth and sawed faster, preparing to catch herself when she fell out of her seatbelt and praying that she wouldn’t impale herself on the knife.
She collapsed headfirst onto the ceiling of the car. It was coated in some strange fuzzy material that felt almost like carpet, and she had to pause for a moment and fight the urge to faint. Her head was spinning, her leg was throbbing, and Portia was beginning to stir.
She had a nasty cut along her hairline, but she looked otherwise okay. Bernie stumbled forward on her hands and knees and began to saw at Portia’s restraints.
She let out an audible groan. “You . . . fucking moron.”
“Easy,” said Bernie, too dizzy and panicked to feel offended.
The sirens. The deer. The feds. The air was more fumes than oxygen at that point, and the heat radiating from the engine was almost unbearable.
Bernie sawed furiously. She had no idea where the black sedan had gone. Had the driver seen them fly off the road? She didn’t know how long she’d been out. It was possible that the feds had radioed for backup and that they were already surrounded.
Bernie was so preoccupied with thoughts of the black sedan that she wasn’t paying attention to Portia’s seatbelt. Suddenly the few remaining threads snapped, and she tumbled head over shoulder onto the ceiling of the Crown Victoria.
Bernie groaned as Portia’s lower half slammed down on her injured leg, and she gently pushed her away. Portia coughed.
“Are you all right?” croaked Bernie, anxiously inspecting Portia for any signs of injury.
Portia didn’t answer. She just bent over and vomited onto the cabin light.
“Good girl,” said Bernie, crawling toward the driver’s side door. She tried the handle, but everything was much more difficult upside down. The handle moved, but the door wouldn’t budge.
“I think you hit a tree,” said Portia weakly, crawling forward to try the passenger-side door.
Bernie squinted numbly into the darkness. Sure enough, she saw what looked like a trunk outside the driver’s side window. She felt cool air on her cheek and realized with a jolt of surprise that the window was broken.
She sniffed. Noxious black smoke was wafting from under the smashed hood. They had to get out.
Portia swore. She and the passenger-side door were engaged in a ferocious battle, and Bernie crawled across the bumpy ceiling to help. She wedged one of her crutches through the crack to force the door open, but she only succeeded in bending it.
Bernie was starting to feel desperate. She was lightheaded and sick from hotboxing in a car full of gasoline fumes.
A sudden flicker of light caught her eye, and she realized the car was on fire.
“Shit!”
Portia banged on the passenger-side window — which miraculously wasn’t broken — and Bernie had the sudden, startling realization that they might die in that car. Smoke was rapidly filling the space around them, obscuring Bernie’s vision and making her cough.
She looked around desperately, searching the vehicle for anything that might help them escape. All they had were a few books, two flimsy crutches, and a few cups of hospital pudding. It occurred to Bernie that she might be able to disassemble the door with the multi-tool, but she’d dropped it somewhere in the smoke-filled car, and there was no time to look for it.
In a panicked frenzy, Portia opened the glove compartment and wrenched the little door to the side. It was secured to the vehicle by two little hinged arms that wobbled dangerously as she pulled.
With an animalistic yell and a tug, Portia ripped the door off its hinges and tumbled backward onto the ceiling. She wedged the thick plastic between the car door and the frame, and with a hard push, she was able to pry the door open.
They tumbled into the tall grass with a painful groan, and the fresh evening air hit Bernie like a deluge of freezing water. She gasped and drank it in as though she’d been drowning, wishing she could just lie there in the weeds and breathe it in.
In her haze of relief, Bernie had a chance to examine the wrecked car. The Crown Victoria was crunched around a tall oak tree ten or fifteen yards from the road. Flames were lapping at the hood of the vehicle, and she couldn’t for the life of her imagine how they’d survived the crash.
She couldn�
�t see where the deer carcass had gone, but there was a splatter of blood across the hood and a chunk of fur stuck in the grill. He’d never stood a chance.
She cast around for Portia and saw that her hands were red with blood. Portia must have cut herself trying to pry the door open, and she was frozen in shock.
“Come on,” Bernie croaked, groping for her crutches and crawling away from the rumpled heap of metal. “We have to get out of here.”
Portia was kneeling in the weeds, alternately coughing and retching as if she hoped to expel all the noxious fumes they’d been breathing in. Bernie grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away, but Portia wouldn’t move. She’d dug her knees into the ground, as if she planned to anchor herself there forever.
“Let’s go!” Bernie yelled, more desperately this time.
Portia shook her head, looking as though she needed to hurl. Bernie grabbed a fistful of Portia’s sweatshirt and pulled her through the grass, desperate to escape the stench of burned rubber and melted plastic.
Portia yelled something around a cough, but Bernie had no idea what it was. Flames had ignited a puddle of gasoline, engulfing the front end of the vehicle. She could feel the rush of heat, but she turned and focused on getting back to the road.
Just then, a deafening explosion erupted behind her. She threw herself facedown on the ground, clenching fistfuls of grass as a burst of heat seared over her back.
Bernie shuddered. Her clothes were still intact, which meant her skin likely hadn’t been flayed off her bones. With a soft cry of pain, she pulled herself onto her good knee and looked around.
Portia was doubled over in the grass, still hacking from the fumes. Flames were dancing dangerously around the Crown Victoria, so Bernie grabbed her crutches and started to pull herself out of the ditch.
She felt drunk and unsteady as she wrenched herself into an upright position. The bottom of her crutches caught and dragged in the weed-choked dirt, but after lots of swaying and swearing, she reached a worn dirt path along the shoulder where she could hobble with ease.
