CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
I mimicked the chief, tossing us into reverse.
The Jeep liked the ease of going backwards.
It found traction and moved us, dodging just enough that when the truck collided with us, it exploded into the front, missing my door by a hair.
The momentum of the impact spun our lightweight vehicle, whipping our cars together with a horrendous clang.
His passenger door smacked into my door, but it wasn’t a direct hit, so the Jeep’s body held, protecting us for the most part. Even better, hitting us didn’t end all of his momentum. Pierce carried on through the ditch, crashing into a tree.
When the proverbial dust settled, and the ringing ceased in my ears, we were mostly back on the road.
I tried to keep reversing the front tires out of the ruts, but he’d done something to the front driver’s side tire.
His truck bed, pressed right against where my window would have been, blocked my ability to lean out and check.
I could only assume he’d rendered the thing useless.
We wouldn’t be able to drive.
“Okay, now we go!” I screamed, climbing over the console and rushing him along in the breaths of stillness that followed. “Hurry! Into the woods before he backs up!”
Manuel fought against the door. It’d jammed.
The entire frame of the Jeep was out of whack.
Just when I began yelling to open the window and shimmy out, it broke loose.
Manuel hopped out, turned, and tugged me out in one go that nearly dislocated my arm.
We cleared the vehicle not a moment too soon either.
Pierce reversed his truck as we scrambled up the embankment. His heavier vehicle rocked and jostled the Jeep like it weighed nothing, even as steam billowed from beneath his hood.
He’d damaged his radiator or sliced a hose when he impacted the tree.
If we’d still been standing there, the Jeep would have hit us.
“Keep going,” Manuel yelled, gripping my hand as he pulled us along. “Don’t look back. We have to get into the trees!”
I listened, because what else could we do? Our options were run and escape or run and get run over. Either way, watching Pierce wouldn’t help. What it would do is make sure I tripped on some root like a horror movie extra who was too stupid to survive.
We slid uphill, climbing the slippery embankment through sheer adrenaline powered force of will and edged into the first protection.
The tree barely spanned two hands’ widths around.
Did his truck have the ability to climb that small ridge?
Because I doubted these trees would do much but bend aside when he came charging through.
“Come on,” Manuel urged, his grip tight and as solid as steel. “This way!”
No!
I shivered, feeling the ripple of energy burst through my nerves.
Something invisible urged me in the other direction.
Should I trust it?
Pierce attempted the hill. I’d heard the same song a million times at Green Dunes Park. The motor growling, the suspension squeaking as it bounced into the foot of the incline, and then the rev of the engine under load, so I also knew without looking that he’d gotten stuck.
Manuel did too.
We turned in unison to verify.
Sure enough, Pierce might have had enough power, but his nasty, modified beast lacked the clearance. The grill had dug into the compacted earth with frame snapping force. His hood crinkled, and steam billowed out in a hiss, looking like a giant black dragon about to breathe fire.
The amount of water vapor quadrupled compared to his hit with the tree. I’d been wrong. This time, he’d damaged the radiator. The boiling hot water evaporated the instant it met the much cooler evening air. Soon, the area flooded with steam, carrying the sweet smell of coolant.
Visibility dropped in a second as it provided a temporary smoke screen.
I dug my heels in, nearly getting my arm popped from the shoulder joint for my troubles. It’d have been easier to wrangle a raging bull. My arm had endured a lot of abuse tonight courtesy of Manuel. Of course, the other one had faced a truck, so it seemed like an even trade.
His steps hadn’t faltered.
I tried another tactic. “Manuel, Manuel! Follow me!”
Manuel slowed, thankfully, because I wouldn’t be stopping him anytime soon. “Why?”
“Just—a feeling, I think!” I glanced back. Surely Pierce would need a breather after that impact. “Hurry, while he can’t see us.”
“Okay, yeah. It’s smart to change direction too. It might throw him off.” Manuel pivoted, letting me lead, even as he questioned it. “Is this a ghost thing?”
“Maybe?”
Our adrenaline had to be blocking our pain.
We’d suffered two direct impacts and a glancing third.
Mud would be mixed with blood along the left side of my face from a dozen glass cuts.
Manuel, too, had a line of liquid red streaking from his temple.
He must have cracked his head on something during one of the hits.
I huffed, trusting the silent nudges when they arose and leading us blindly but confidently through the forest. “My side is going to be black and blue tomorrow.”
“You know what, Willa? It’ll be the most beautiful sight in the world.
” Manuel controlled our slide down the valley when it appeared out of nowhere.
We splashed through a small, glittering black creek, and he tugged me along as we scaled up the opposite side of the ravine.
“Because it will mean we survived this night from hell. Worst night ever.”
He was panting too, and I prayed he wasn’t more injured than he was letting on. Visibility was next to nothing, but his movements didn’t read like his gait was off or that he’d picked up a limp.
“Joke’s on you. This is not my first rodeo being chased through the woods.” Memories of that night superimposed themselves on the present. Then, I remembered how much worse it’d gotten the next day when I woke up in a holding cell. “And it’s not my worst night.”
The same man who’d threatened me then for the death of his son now chased us. Previously, Pierce wished that he’d been the one to find me, because he would have killed me. The universe seemed hell-bent on granting him a second crack at it. Would he get his wish?
At first, Manuel didn’t comment, but then he added, “Yet. The night is still young. Give it time.”
Not much compared to getting a guy so sweet as Ben murdered, but I didn’t say that out loud. It felt like an unnecessary challenge for said universe to up the ante. “True.”
Another turn, my legs automatically trusting our invisible guide.
Suddenly, we skidded into a moonlit opening.
A crude gravel parking lot, surrounded by familiar barbed wire fencing, stretched before us.
Overgrown patches of weeds, like a teenager growing his whiskers, sprouted here and there, circling and climbing dump truck sized piles of rubble.
Beyond this, a ribbon of the interstate, complete with blinking lights zipping by at top speeds, peeked through.
At the epicenter stood an unfinished, multistory building, towering like a monstrous monolith in the moon’s pale beams.
We’d come up on the rear of the construction site.
Manuel dropped my hand on a hissed breath. “Here? Your ghost guide was leading us here?”
In the distance, we heard someone crashing through the brush and leaves. Pierce had begun his foot pursuit.
“Come on! This way. There’s a cut in the fence. Pierce might not know about it.”
How I knew this, I hadn’t the foggiest idea. The singular time I’d visited in person was when I’d fallen asleep in bed, only to blink awake here with this looming, ghostlike building shooting up into an inky sky.
“But—” Manuel began.
“Seriously, we only need to buy time for Veritas and his team to catch up. He said they were ten minutes behind. They can use the phone to track us here.”
Manuel swore. “Shit, your phone!”
I turned. “What about it?”
“It’s in the car!”
“What?” I cried before lowering my voice. “It’s in the Jeep?”
“Don’t judge. You try hanging onto a phone while another vehicle plays Whac-A-Mole with ours,” he hissed. He spotted the cut in the fencing before I did and helped stretch it open for me.
I ducked through and returned the favor.
We were inside, running through the mounds of dirt and stone.
The entire scene echoed my dreams so closely that I glanced behind us to make sure no shadow creatures chased us.
Instead, I made eye contact with Pierce as he cleared the tree line.
“Willa Walker! I’ll kill you!”
His promise reverberated all around us, poisoning the air.
Inside! Up! The voice in my head rang clearer, as if the needle on the radio tuned more to the ghost’s channel. Was it because of my proximity to the site?
I didn’t need to pull Manuel in the door’s direction. He calculated our dilemma, clocked Pierce, and bolted that way, tugging me along for the ride.
Inside, Manuel slammed the door behind us, hitting me with another wave of déjà vu. The ghost had done the same thing. “It won’t take Pierce long to find his way through the fencing. Help me find something to block this!”
This was my first time inside this building in reality, but the layout lined up with my dreams to a tee, down to the moonlit staircase. “There’s nothing!”
Manuel glanced around for himself, discovering the same problem I had. The concrete box that made up the bottom floor seemed fairly empty, and even if it wasn’t, we’d be stumbling around in the dark long enough, searching for a makeshift barricade, that Pierce would catch up.
“How will Veritas know where to find us without a phone?” I asked, panicking. I felt like a cracked dam, edging toward collapse for too long.
“He’ll find us,” Manuel reassured me calmly. “His team will find the Jeep, see the wreck… We passed a gravel mouth when you were looking for the hole in the fence. That road we were on probably leads right here.”
I nodded, attempting to regain my levelheadedness.
It proved to be a challenge. Every gasping breath felt like a great feat, and my nausea hadn’t improved any.
Pierce’s bellows and threats cut through the thick walls, filling me with dread and inevitability. Was he pacing the perimeter like an enraged tiger, or had he breached the chain-link fencing?
“Okay,” Manuel declared. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll wait behind the door in the far corner over there. When he comes charging in, he’ll have to look for us. He’ll go for the stairs since they are lit up.”
I glanced at them again. They glowed pale in the moonlight like a tempting salvation from the open-walled upper stories—an eerie version of a staircase to heaven.
Manuel’s hand sought mine as he continued outlining a plan. “Once he’s far enough in, we’ll rush outside and shut the door behind us. I’ll hold it shut while you grab a piece of rebar. There was some sticking out of the rubble. The door swings inward, so it should trap him inside.”
I didn’t question if Manuel would be able to hold the door against Pierce. Maybe he planned to do it sneakily and holding it was just in case. “Pierce could always jump down from the second story.”
“But we’ll be back out the fence and on the road by then, hopefully before he sees us heading in that direction.”
“And we can meet Veritas on the way.”
Manuel’s voice sounded smug. “Exactly.”
“It sounds like—” A wave of sickness choked me.
No, go upstairs.
I shook.
“What? What’s wrong?” Manuel whispered. For some reason, his touch strengthened the connection the ghost held on me.
His voice boomed out. Go upstairs, Willa.
My free hand rubbed my temple. “He wants us to go up.”
“Up?”
I nodded, fighting the encroaching migraine.
Manuel tightened his grip when I moved to release him. “He who?”
“I don’t know, but we have to go now!”
Manuel glanced at the door, then at the stairs. “Fuck,” he swore at last and dragged us upstairs.
Stairway to heaven indeed.