Page 70 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“What if they stay there for hours?” I counter. “They might as well kill Ruby themselves.”
“Then you have to think of Mattie,” Kerry replies. “Getting killed yourself won’t help her, you know. Ruby might be…past saving, but Mattie isn’t.” She stares at me steadily, and I have an urge to slap her face, to scream. I amnotgiving up on my daughter.
“I’m going,” I state flatly, and I can tell Kerry doesn’t believe me. “I mean it. I’ll go cross country. They can’t follow us through a field, right, even with those wheels?” I point to the farm fields stretching out on either side of the street. “That’s the way to Eagle Rapids, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but…” Kerry looks sympathetic but also reluctantly admiring of my reckless courage, or maybe my stupidity. “They’ll just cut you off at the road, Alex. They’ll wait till you come out by the bridge—”
The narrow, one-lane bridge spanning the Madawaska River. Eagle Rapids is maybe four miles past it. “Then I won’t come out by the bridge.”
“You’ll have to.”
“No,” I tell her, “I won’t. The river’s frozen, isn’t it? I’ll just drive across.”
Kerry’s eyes widen; she hadn’t considered this. “I don’t know if it will be thick enough to hold a bike. Rivers don’t freeze the way lakes do—”
“We’ll find a place where it is.”
“And then there’s the bank. It’s really steep—”
“I can make it down the bank. They can’t, though.” I sound far firmer than I feel, but I am that determined. “Kerry, my daughter isdying.”
“Okay.” She nods slowly, looking accepting, resigned. We both know how unlikely it is that any of this will ever work. “Okay, let’s do it.”
As quietly as we can, we right the bike. We push it along the bottom of the ditch until we are behind the cover of some trees, and then together we heave it up the ditch’s bank. We’re a couple of hundred yards from the gas station, where the guys are still parked. They’re strolling around like they own the place, and maybe they do. I can see their guns glinting in the moonlight from here; they’ve got several each, and knives, too, handles gleaming. I think I recognize one of the men—the crumpled red baseball cap, the plaid woolen jacket. He was the one who tried to rape me.
I glance at Kerry; her face is taut and pale, and she nods. I get on the bike, Kerry behind me. As soon as I start it up, I know, the guys will notice. They didn’t hear us before because they were in the truck, but it’s completely silent now; if one of us so much as coughed, they’d probably hear that too.
“Gun it straight across the road,” Kerry whispers, so close to my ear that her lips brush my lobe. “And then through the field. Cut to the right as much as you can, to give us some distance. If you hit a fence, you’ll have to drive alongside it until you come to a gate.” She expels a shaky breath, right into my ear. “Honestly, Alex, I don’t know if we’re going to make it. If we don’t…”
I can’t think of what those men might do to us if they catch us. “If we don’t, you can shoot me,” I state without a single tremor in my voice. “And then shoot yourself…if you want to.”
“Blowing my head off with a .22 rifle? Wow.” She laughs softly, and improbably, I find myself smiling. “What a way to go. I’m not even sure it would kill me.”
“Well, it would sting a bit,” I reply, and she gives another soft laugh. I downshift into neutral, my thumb on the accelerator. My heart is thundering in my chest, and yet at the same time I feel weirdly, almost supernaturally calm. I take a deep breath and Kerry tightens her arms, wrapped around my waist.
Then I gun it.
The bike shoots out of the ditch, across the road, the world around us streaming by in a freezing blur. I think I hear shouts, but I’m not sure. I drive straight across, into the field; we hit a rock almost right away and nearly catapult off, but somehow, we manage to hold on and keep going. The engine whines in protest and I kick up a gear, snow flying up, stinging my face even though it’s covered by the goggles and scarf.
The snow has a hardened crust, which, if we go fast enough, means we won’t get stuck; but if the wheels sink too much, it will be slow going indeed. Kerry glances behind us and swears under her breath.
“They’re in the truck, following us along the road.”
I veer right, deeper into the field. The wheels are sinking, the engine groaning, but we’re moving, at least. It’s a clear view from us to the truck, and I can see their headlights in my peripheral vision, a menacing sweep of blazing white. I’m trying to focus on the field in front of me when a scream escapes Kerry as we hear the crack of a gunshot.
“They didn’t hit me,” Kerry shouts into my ear. “You?”
“No.” At least I can’t feel anything.
Another shot rings out. Kerry clings to my back. “Make for the trees, for the love of God, Alex!”
There is a fringe of pine trees separating the fields, and I drive toward it, while the guys in the truck shoot at us twice more. I don’t know how close the bullets come, but there is a prickling in the center of my back; I’m bracing myself to be hit, to be killed. I don’t know if I’m imagining their cacklinglaughter; I think I must be, from this distance, but I hear it echo in my ears all the same.
I drive along the fringe of trees until the next field; by this time, we are far away enough from the road that they can’t get a clear shot. My breath is coming in ragged gasps, and so is Kerry’s, and the quad bike sounds like it’s gasping for air as well.
“I can’t see them,” Kerry says, as we clear the trees, and I cut the engine, just so I can take a breath. In the sudden stillness, we strain to hear the truck, and, after a few seconds, we do, a distant, menacing, gravelly purr.
“They’re heading to the bridge,” Kerry says dully. “I knew it.”
