33. I’m Fine -Finn
Thirty Three
I’m Fine -Finn
“Shit.”
The road ahead was impassable. Cars were three deep across every lane, some resting atop others at angles that defied explanation, twisted metal sprawled from barrier to barrier.
Two burned-out shells sat in the middle, blackened to the frame.
Shattered glass covered every surface, catching the light like expensive jewels carelessly discarded.
No lane. No shoulder. No way through.
I let the vehicle idle, scanning anyway, hoping for an escape.
There wasn’t one.
“Okay,” Fiona said from the backseat, her voice strained. “We can go around, right? Find another—”
“No,” I cut her off. “We’re not forcing that mess. One wheel on the wrong piece of metal and we’re stuck in the middle with no options.”
“We’ll backtrack,” I decided. “Two miles, maybe less. There was an exit before the wreckage. We’ll take local roads, loop around this, and pick the highway back up further north.”
Lily leaned forward between the seats. “We’re going back?”
“Two miles,” I repeated. “It’s not a discussion.”
And nobody made it one.
I swung the Suburban in a wide arc, the suspension groaning at the radius, and pointed us back the way we’d come.
I hated backtracking.
But it beat the alternative. It always did.
“We need fuel,” I said, my eyes flicking to the gauge before returning to the road. “We’ll siphon something once we’re clear.”
Libby already had the hose out of the bag, turning it over in her hands. “Already ahead of you,” she said.
* * *
Not far off the exit ramp, we found a cluster of abandoned cars—a small knot of vehicles that had pulled over with some intention, only to have that intention permanently interrupted.
I kept the Suburban running, positioned it facing the road, and worked quickly and efficiently.
The hose was in, and gas flowed into the spare container within two minutes.
The sharp, chemical smell of fuel cut through the cold air.
“Tell me you’ve done this before,” Fiona muttered, watching from the window.
“A few times,” I said, not looking up.
“Of course you have,” Fiona replied.
Once the tank was full, we continued.
Off the highway, the lanes narrowed, the asphalt deteriorated, and the city peeled away behind us—concrete gave way to commercial, then residential, then a treeline, with the occasional dark house set back from the road, its windows blank.
Libby unfolded the map across her lap, her hands steadier than they had any right to be, given the past several hours.
“Stay east,” she said, her finger tracing a route I couldn’t clearly see. “We should be able to reconnect with the highway further up.”
“Should,” I echoed.
“Best I’ve got right now,” she said without apology.
We drove.
The construction detour appeared without warning: asphalt ripped open to the gravel beneath, heavy machinery abandoned mid-operation. A roller lay canted across the shoulder, and cones scattered in patterns that had ceased to mean anything.
I stopped the Suburban and stared for a long
moment. “Not happening,” I stated.
“Left turn up ahead,” Libby said immediately, already scanning, already problem-solving. “There’s another road—it should loop us back around and connect.”
I looked at her. She met my gaze steadily.
“Alright,” I conceded. “We’ll try it.”
The road we found was so narrow that branches brushed both sides of the vehicle in places.
It was a service road, a farm access road, or simply a road that existed without particular intention.
The asphalt gave way to packed gravel within the first quarter mile, and trees pressed in close from both sides.
“I keep waiting for something to jump out at us,” Lily whispered, almost to herself.
“Don’t,” Fiona snapped, sharp and immediate.
I kept my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel, saying nothing. Lily wasn’t wrong, and acknowledging it wouldn’t help anyone.
Ahead, the trees opened up, and the bridge appeared.
It was an old steel-frame construction, built for function rather than aesthetics.
Girders ran along both sides in a lattice that caught the light, throwing it back in fragments.
It was narrow—one lane, maybe wide enough for two vehicles moving slowly and carefully. A single way on. A single way off.
And empty.
Completely, perfectly, absolutely empty.
My thumbs pressed hard into the wheel’s worn grooves, a reflex I noticed only after the fact.
“Yeah,” I said, low and quiet. “I don’t like this.”
“Then we find another—” Libby began.
“There isn’t time. The longer we’re out here, the more we risk it.
If we move now, we can be on a boat before nightfall,” I cut her off, the flatness in my voice conveying everything the words didn’t.
We’d been backtracking and rerouting for the past hour.
The fuel we’d just siphoned wasn’t infinite. Night wouldn’t hold off forever.
Empty wasn’t safe. Empty was unknown. But the unknown had to be weighed against the certainty of running out of gas or being stranded when darkness fell.
“Stay low,” I instructed the backseat. “Both of you.”
I rolled us onto the bridge at low speed.
The sound changed immediately—tires meeting steel grating instead of asphalt, the engine’s hum bouncing off the frame, altered, louder, more exposed, advertising our presence to anything within a quarter mile.
Every yard forward felt like a commitment I couldn’t walk back from.
Halfway across—
They stepped out.
Three figures. Forward position. Spaced across the lane with the practiced precision of people who had done this before and knew exactly how far apart to stand. Masks covered their faces. Rifles were up and level.
I stopped. The Suburban screeched to a halt so abruptly I heard Lily catch herself against the seat in front of her.
I dropped it into reverse—
And they were already behind us. Same number. Same positioning. Same weapons. Blocking the exit with the same deliberate, unhurried confidence as the group ahead.
“Fuck.” The word came out quiet and controlled.
Six rifles. Open ground. The Suburban would last maybe one exchange before it became a different kind of problem.
“Libby.” I kept my voice low and even, leaving no room for anything but compliance. “Get the girls down. All the way down.”
She didn’t argue, hesitate, or ask what I was planning. She just turned to the backseat and said, “Down, now,” in a voice that borrowed from the same register I’d just used. I heard both of them drop immediately.
I pushed the door open and stepped out onto the running board, keeping the door between myself and the forward group.
Three forward, three back. My eyes dropped to the river through the grating—dark water moving fast twenty feet below. My hand was still on the door. I measured the distance to the nearest rifle, gauged the space between us, then glanced back at the river.
Nobody moved. Nobody rushed. Nobody shouted.
That told me the most. Desperate people moved fast and loudly. These people stood at their spacing, weapons up, breathing controlled, waiting with the patience of those who had done this before and already knew how it ended.
One of them shifted forward a half step, the movement small, deliberate, and somehow more threatening than rushing would have been.
I raised my voice to carry across the distance without shouting. “What do you want?”
Wind moved across the river below. The Suburban’s engine idled behind me, patient and steady.
“Step out of the vehicle.” The voice came back calm and unhurried, the tone of someone issuing an instruction they fully expected to be complied with and weren’t particularly bothered either way.
“Not happening,” I said, the words flat and immediate, because hesitation would have told them something I didn’t want them to know.
A pause. Not a surprised pause—a patient one, the pause of someone who had anticipated this answer and was simply moving to the next step in a sequence they’d already mapped out.
The figure tilted his head slightly, the motion almost conversational.
“Then we do this the hard way.”
“Stay down,” I said quietly, just loud enough to carry through the open door. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”
Then I faced forward and worked the problem.
“Finn—”
I cut her off. There wasn’t time for the sentence, and there wasn’t time for whatever came after it.
The decision was made. It was the only option that didn’t end with all four of us on our knees on a bridge while six armed men decided our fate.
I slid back into the driver’s seat in a single motion, pulled the door shut, locked it, and kept my eyes forward.
“Down,” I commanded, sharp and absolute. “All of you. Now.”
Libby hadn’t moved. Her eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that, under any other circumstance, I’d have had more time to appreciate.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting us through this,” I replied, my hands finding the wheel, my eyes measuring the gap ahead. “It’s the best option I’ve got. It’s the one we’re taking.”
“Finn—”
“Libby.” My voice dropped to something harder, leaving no room for negotiation, questions, or anything but immediate compliance. “Footwell. Right now.”
Whatever she saw in my face settled the argument faster than words could. She held my gaze for another second—reading me, making sure—then nodded once and dropped, pulling herself down into the passenger footwell and curling tight against the dash.
“Fiona, Lily—floor!” I hissed without turning my head.
“Already there,” Fiona confirmed.
“Stay down no matter what you hear,” I instructed. “Nothing that happens in the next thirty seconds is a reason to come up. Nothing. Do you understand me?”
Two affirmatives came from the back. Good enough.
My hand tightened on the wheel. The gap between the two figures ahead was narrow enough to demand absolute commitment. The engine idled beneath me.
They stood at their positions, rifles raised and weight balanced, watching the Suburban sit in the middle of the bridge. They were doing exactly what organized, experienced men did when they expected compliance: waiting without rushing, confident in the math of six weapons against one.
Let them be confident.
I shifted into drive. Drew one slow breath. Let it out.
Then I floored it.
The Suburban surged forward with a roar that bounced off the bridge frame and came back doubled. For one fractured second, the three figures ahead of us didn’t move—a moment of pure disbelief, the pause of men whose protocol hadn’t included the possibility that someone would actually do this.
Rifles came up. Voices shouted something I couldn’t parse over the engine noise. Two of them broke left and right, and the third—either slower or more committed to holding the line—stayed in the center of the lane for a beat too long.
“Hold on!” I shouted, and the first shot cracked across the bridge an instant later, the sound enormous and immediate.
The side window exploded inward, glass detonating into the cab in a spray of fragments that hit every surface and scattered across my arm, the seat, and the dash. The cold air outside rushed in immediately, and the sound of everything happening outside was no longer filtered.
More shots. Rapid now. The controlled precision of the first exchange gave way to the urgency of men who had miscalculated and were adjusting.
The Suburban caught the one who’d held his position; the impact sent a solid, sickening jolt through the frame. The two who’d broken to the sides hit the hood and the fender as we pushed through—one down, one clear.
I kept the wheel straight. Kept my foot on the gas.
Then something hit my shoulder.
Not like anything I’d been expecting. Not sharp.
Not precise. A sledgehammer impact snapped my head back, pushing me into the seat.
My vision went white at the edges, then slammed back with nauseating clarity.
The impact came first, a brutal shove. The understanding that I’d been shot followed a half-second behind.
Heat. Then pressure. Then the burning started, deep and immediate.
My right hand nearly came off the wheel.
I put it back, gripping harder than before.
“Almost—” The word came out between clenched teeth, pushing through what my body wanted to do and what I needed it to do.
We hit the open road on the far side of the bridge with a lurch as the tires found asphalt again. I didn’t touch the brake, didn’t ease anything, just pushed the engine harder.
The bridge disappeared in the rearview mirror.
I drove on.
“Finn?” Libby’s voice came from the footwell, shaky and thin, trying not to be both.
“We’re through,” I said, concentrating hard on delivering the words at something close to a normal register. “Stay down one more minute.”
I drove another hundred yards before I let my foot ease off the accelerator fractionally. Then another two hundred, putting distance between us and any follow-up that might be coming, scanning the treeline out of reflex while the burning in my shoulder intensified with every second.
“Okay,” I said finally. “You can—”
My voice faltered.
My arm had gone heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the wheel or the drive or anything I’d done with it in the last thirty seconds. I looked down at my shoulder the way you look at a bill you already know the number on.
Blood. Dark and spreading. The whole left side of my shirt had gone wet and heavy with it.
Too much.
“Finn—” Libby came up from the footwell, her eyes going straight to it. Color left her face in a single pass.
“Oh, God—”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You’re shot,” Fiona said from the backseat, her voice flat and professional. “Is it through and through? Can you tell?”
I tested the shoulder with a controlled movement that cost me significantly more than I let reach my expression. The burning sharpened into something with real edges.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But it doesn’t change anything right now.”
“It changes everything right now,” Libby said, her hands already reaching for me, already moving.
“Not yet,” I said, sharper than intended, yet not sharp enough to warrant an apology. “We are not stopping here. Not on this road, not this close to that bridge.”
She froze, her hands hovering, not quite touching. Her jaw tightened; she was clearly biting back several retorts, selecting the most helpful one.
“Okay,” she said, the word delivered with the controlled precision of someone making a deliberate choice. “Keep driving. Just—keep driving and tell me if it gets worse.”
Fiona’s hands reached over the seat, and something pressed hard into my shoulder. The road blurred for a moment before I refocused.
“It’s not going to get worse,” I stated.
She regarded me with the look of someone accepting a chosen lie.
I faced forward and drove.
The blood soaking through my shirt wasn’t going to change a thing until we were safe within four walls.