Collision

Jackie spat in rage and frustration. He swung the knife hard where he thought Ben was, the razor-sharp edge hissing through the empty air. He pawed one-handed at the blinding grit, trying to clear his vision.

Ben stayed low, running for his car. He shoved his bloody hand into his pants, fingers findng his keys.

Jackie’s hand closed around the weight of his pistol. He fired, aiming at the sound of retreating footsteps, and Ben heard the crack of the shot pressing just wide of his shoulder.

Ben reached his car, got in, hunkered low as he started the engine.

In the rearview he could see Jackie running toward him, wiping his eyes, vision clearing. Jackie paused to sheathe the knife under his pants leg and then, blinking, fired the gun at the purr of the engine’s ignition. The bullet dinged the Explorer’s bumper.

Ben floored the car in a peal of rubber. He veered away from the curb and Jackie’s next shot almost got lucky, starring the rearview mirror on the driver’s side.

Ben pressed the accelerator hard against the floor. The Explorer- graceless, then finding its speed-roared down the street. A stop sign stood at the end of the street but Ben accelerated, took the turn hard, a police car honking at him as it slammed on its brakes. The development was all new, curving streets and cul-de-sacs and circles, and the wrong turn would leave him no place to go.

Wiping grime from his eye and steering with his elbow-his right arm hurt as though a lit match had been jammed under the skin-Ben saw, in the rearview, the police car closing in on him. Perhaps someone had heard the sounds of shots inside Delia’s house. He weighed stopping, telling the officer everything, and started to slow down. The police car came close behind him.

But then, revving up behind the cop, came a black Mercedes, sleek as night.

He couldn’t stop now; Jackie would kill both him and the officer. He gunned the engine and arced away from the curb as the Mercedes revved, accelerating with its much more powerful engine.

The Mercedes caught up with the police cruiser and Jackie poured gunfire. He still couldn’t see well and the spray mercifully hit tires instead of flesh. The police car screeched to a stop. The officer fumbled for a weapon, got out, and aimed at the Mercedes.

I’m not sure I can outrace him, Ben thought, and he slammed hard into a left turn. Jackie stayed close. Ben thought of all the car chases he’d ever seen in movies. Always on highways, or in urban cores, with lots of options to turn and nip and evade, the cars dancing with the cameras to delight the audience. But this terrain was gently rolling prairie shaped into newborn suburbia. He had no place to hide. There were new houses and half-built houses and empty lots. He was going to die on these newly minted streets.

The road curved, dead ending, and Ben took the turn hard enough that he felt the Explorer’s wheels lift and crash back to ground.

He faced a cul-de-sac of new houses, one finished, the other four in various stages of completion, one bricked, two more framed, the other just foundation waiting for wooden bones. Ben floored the car into the circle and didn’t stop.

The back window exploded, shot out. Glass peppered the back of his head, sharpened confetti, nipping at his neck and ears.

He couldn’t win on pavement. The Mercedes was too fast. Ben peeled past one of the houses being framed-a driveway had already been poured, circling back into a side-entry garage that was nothing but concrete and lumber. He drove off the driveway to flat dirt, veered hard past the skeletal house, tore into the empty, matted ground around the unfinished shells.

The Mercedes closed on him.

Ben leaned into a hard turn, pluming up dust and dirt, praying the tires wouldn’t puncture on a stray nail. A flat tire meant the end. He saw the Mercedes drop back, unable to handle the ridges of dirt at the same speed. Ben roared back onto the main road.

Beyond the edge of the road was flatland, cleared and fenced for future lots, rolling slightly downward to a dip that he guessed was a creek. But beyond that would be another road.

He could make the creek-maybe-but the Mercedes couldn’t.

Ben powered onto the flatland. The Explorer jostled and bounced.

In the rearview the Mercedes rocketed onto the cleared land.

What would Pilgrim do? The thought nearly made him laugh past the nausea of loss of blood and pain. Then he knew: He would think more than one step ahead.

The land began to slope down; there was no creek as he’d imagined but a fence of strung wire. He hit the fence at seventy miles an hour.

The Explorer tore through the wire, pulling posts from the earth, and one of them rammed against the passenger door like a fist. Wire scoured the paint off the hood. A post clobbered the front windshield into a web of shattered glass. The Explorer spun out, and he floored it again, trying to regain speed.

In the rearview the Mercedes glided through the gap in the fencing he’d made.