The word jerked Lana’s muscles to action. Derek dashed to the trees, Caleb and Elizabeth close behind him, and Lana was on their heels until she dove for cover as gunfire opened up at the house. Her throat constricted. Elizabeth made an awful, choked sob of terror. The Apex agents were firing on Chester. He’d drawn their attention, must have realized they would be seen. A burst of automatic rifle fire filled the air.

  “Keys.” Caleb tugged at Lana’s arm.

  She’d been staring in horror at the house and the part of the porch she could see from where she was. At the agents taking cover behind the SUVs. The gunfire abated.

  “Lana,” her father said again, and squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t waste it.”

  Their chance, he meant.

  Don’t waste the chance that Chester had given them. Mute and numb, she pressed the keys to the truck into his hand. He moved to the garage’s side door and unlocked it with one of the keys on the ring. Lana followed him in, along with the others. Chester’s truck was inside. It was old, but big, a boxy, angular shape in the darkness there.

  At her father’s direction, the three of them slipped into the cab and crammed themselves as far to the passenger side as they could. Lana ultimately ended up nearly on Derek’s lap, but they managed to make enough room for Caleb to work the manual transmission.

  He didn’t bother to open the garage door. There wasn’t time and opening it would have drawn attention. So Lana expected it when Caleb gritted out, “Hang on.”

  The engine roared to life. Caleb put his foot to the gas and threw it into gear. The truck’s tires squealed on the cement slab foundation, filling the air with the acrid scent of burned rubber and exhaust for the brief second before it lurched forward and plowed through the door.

  The noise was instant and terrible as wood and metal shattered and squealed, and the garage door all but wrapped itself around the cab. Caleb jerked the wheel, and Lana was thrown sideways against her mother, who gripped the handle above the door.

  The truck skidded sideways and threw off part of the garage door. Gunfire cracked behind them as Caleb pulled a sharp turn and more of the door was thrown off. Another short run across rough ground and he slammed on the breaks to throw off the rest.

  Each time he shook off some of the debris, Lana was certain someone was going to be pitched through the door or the windshield, but somehow, they managed to cling to the ceiling, seat, and one another. When Caleb finally pulled back from the fallen door remains and gunned it again, they were headed toward the house, then around.

  “Everyone down!” he shouted as they passed the house and hit the driveway. The SUV’s flashed past them, along with agents bringing rifles to bear. Victoria was on the porch, clutching her arm, her mouth open as she screamed orders.

  A handful of bullets pelted the truck as Lana covered her mother. Derek seemed intent on wrapping himself around them both. The truck swerved, spraying gravel, dirt, and dust behind them as Caleb jerked the wheel one way and another.

  No more bullets struck that she could hear, and in another few seconds, the swerving stopped as Caleb pushed the truck as far and fast as it would go from Chester’s dirt driveway to the road ahead.

  Lana sat up and looked out the back window to see a cloud of dust and ash thrown up behind them. Behind it, Chester’s house. She hadn’t seen it clearly in the light, really. It was pretty. The sort of place that looked like someone’s home.

  “Everyone okay?” Caleb demanded. “Anyone hurt? Derek, check them.”

  Lana checked her mother as Derek moved his hands over her own torso and chest. “I’m okay.” He ignored her the same way she ignored her mother’s identical protest. It could take more than a full minute to realize you’d been shot, or that a piece of shrapnel had lodged itself somewhere, if it happened fast enough. “Mom’s clear.”

  Elizbeth wasn’t harmed, but her expression looked as though she’d been stabbed. “Oh, God.” She moved a hand to her mouth, covering it as pain blossomed on her face. “Chester... what was he... why would he do that?”

  “We can wonder about that later.” Caleb eyed their tail in the rear-view. “Lana, Derek—they’re gonna be on us soon. This truck isn’t going to outrun them.”

  “What’s the play?” Lana asked.

  Her father glanced at them, brow knit. “Does the back window open?”

  Derek twisted in the seat. “Yeah. Cover fire?”

  “From inside the cab?” Lana asked, incredulous. They’d be deafened.

  “Window’s pretty big,” Derek muttered.

  Oh.

  Lana swallowed, and glanced at her mother, who’s tear-stained face was now hardened and red. Then her father, who’s attention seemed sharper than normal and focused intently on the road ahead of them. This was her and Derek’s show, then. “Yeah, alright. Well... ladies first.”

  Derek started to move awkwardly, as if to let her get to the window, then gave Lana a sour but amused look. “Is this really the time?”

  He at least didn’t wait for her to answer before he began shimmying through the back window and over the toolbox just behind it to drop into the bed of the truck. Once he was out of the way, Lana started to follow.

  “Be careful.”

  Lana smirked, though her father wouldn’t see it, and passed her rifle through the window to Derek. “Just try not to roll the truck, old man.”

  She wanted to say something to her mother, but there was no time, and nothing she could say that would have lessened the sadness at what happened. The truth was, Lana was shocked by it as well, and if she gave herself the time to dwell, there was no telling how she would feel. The best she could manage was to focus on the present, and the danger they were in.

  She pulled her attention away and squeezed through the window. Derek helped her, and might have said something as she collected her rifle from him, but his words were swallowed up by the bitter, roaring wind around them. It threatened to pull Lana’s braid apart, stray hairs already whipping at her eyes. She ignored the sting and braced at the back corner of the truck bed as best she could.

  Derek’s hand drew her focus as he waved at her. He made a circular kind of motion, and mouthed or maybe even shouted, “Wheels.” Then made some other sign she couldn’t interpret but mouthed, “Grill. Engine.”

  Right. Targets for a car chase shootout. If Lana was a tech billionaire sending mercenaries out to whip the broken remnants of the country into a post-apocalyptic fascist hellscape, she’d probably equip them with bullet proof cars and crap. Trying to get shots off at the drivers likely wouldn’t get them much per bullet.

  The very short strategy session was nearly too long as the Apex vehicles skidded off the dirt driveway and onto the road, but Derek still gave her a tight, meaningful smile that said everything they might have exchanged if they’d had the chance. He had her back. She had his. Hopefully they didn’t die.

  They sank low against the truck’s tailgate, keeping as much cover as they could, and began taking shots as the three SUVs very quickly closed the distance between them.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  LANA

  Outside Odessa, MO

  Friday, July 20th, 9:01 am CST

  If Lana had the attention to spare, she would have reflected on all the movies she’d seen involving gun fights on the road. The way a well-placed shot could take out a tire or an engine and send a vehicle rolling off the road to explode. How the heroes fired with handguns and seemed to miss no more than five or six times before someone went down. How all of that was crap in real life.

  Even with the truck traveling relatively level ground, the wind made a precision shot impossible. Lana gave the trigger of her Apex rifle a careful squeeze, conserving ammunition, as she tried to put a bullet in a black grill or a tire. Even as the vehicles neared, it was like trying to bullseye a penny from fifty meters away, in a windstorm, balanced on one leg.

  Every time she fired, she saw a brief spark on an SUV’s chassis, or nothing at all as it missed entirely. One shot seemed to put a scratch on a windshield, but between the wind, the angle of the glass, and probably whatever tempered material it was, firing at the much larger target was going to be as useless as she’d guessed it would.

  Derek wasn’t doing much better and very quickly the people driving the Apex SUVs seemed to adapt to the haphazard assault. All three vehicles lined up in a tight formation, directly behind them, so that Lana and Derek had the narrowest possible view of the targets. They hung back just far enough that an easy shot was out of the question. At first, Lana thought it was a dumb strategy—at this rate, they’d just race down the highway until...

  Until the truck broke down from being pushed to its limit, or until the chase went so long, they ran out of gas. Chester’s old clunker couldn’t possibly get the kind of mileage these newer SUVs did. So, maybe not so dumb after all. And then, someone in full tactical armored gear peeked out of the top of the leading SUV.

  “Down!” Derek barked, just audible over the wind.

  Lana dropped, just in time to hear the sharp staccato of automatic fire, and the pinging of bullets off the truck’s tailgate. Small holes appeared where some of the bullets happened to slip through the wind at just the right angle, and each time one appeared she flinched away from it as if she could cram herself any more tightly against the side of the truck bed.

  Derek bared his teeth, jaw clenched tight. He waved for her attention, then pointed toward the SUV’s. “I’ll cover! Shoot low! Engine block!”

  She gave a nod and waited for him to time it out. Between the pelting sounds, he popped up and began spraying short bursts of fire at the SUV. A bare second later, Lana popped up as well, set the short snub-nose of the compact Apex rifle on the edge of the tail, and tried to line up a shot. The SUV swerved to the left, the other two following suit like a fish tail. She reoriented, and they swerved again. Derek barked something, but then they were under fire again. This time, Caleb swerved, and Lana rolled into Derek.

  He caught her and pulled her close enough that he didn’t have to shout. “I’ll cover. You line up your shot. They’ll go right, and I’ll shoot for the tires. Got it?”

  She gave a quick nod of agreement, and when the truck evened out again, she rolled back to her side of the bed. A moment later, Derek was up and firing again, and as before, she took up a stable position to fire. Just like the last time, the driver in front declined to give her an easy shot. He jerked to the left and Lana followed, taking one shot just in case she was lucky, and to get him moving back the other way.

  When he did, Derek sprayed bullets down at the front left side of the vehicle.

  Lana gave an involuntary hoot of victory as the front left tire took at least enough fire to shred. Inside, she could just barely see the chaos of people bracing themselves as the SUV’s front end dipped, and they were forced to peel off. One down, two to go. They started to try the same tactic again, but the professionals in the SUVs adapted almost immediately.

  Before Lana could get a shot off, the two vehicles split, and then gunned it toward them, quickly closing the distance and obviously intent on coming in alongside. Lana tried to take a shot at the tires, but the driver twitched away, nearly running off the road before coming in too close for her to fire without standing up to lean over the edge.

  Worse, when she tried to fire again, the rifle gave a silent click that she felt through her finger. Empty. She didn’t have another loaded magazine. “I’m out!” she shouted as she dropped.

  A moment later Derek took cover beside her. “What now?”

  They were screwed, that’s what. All it would take was a shot through the back window, or the side, and Lana’s parents were dead. The truck would crash. And Derek would die at that point, more than likely. It was all over. They were outgunned and cornered. The high-pitched roar of the SUVs’ engines closed in around them. Lana reached down to her thigh, where she’d strapped the knife she’d grabbed at the Apex staging point.

  Maybe if she leapt over to the SUV while the gunner was out of the top, she could take them out. Like some kind of action hero. For a few seconds, that fantasy played out in her mind. She saw herself surging up, leaping over the divide, and grabbing onto the agent, cutting his throat. Then pulling him out and diving down into the SUV to take the rest of them down.

  But that’s what it was, she knew—a fantasy. Still, she pulled the knife free and held it under-handed. Derek gave her a look of wild-eyed panic, as if he expected her to actually try something that crazy and knew she’d be killed in the process. He put a hand on hers and shook his head.

  And then, the two of them were slammed against the side of the truck bed. Metal and rubber squealed, and Lana lost her grip on the knife as she tried to keep from accidentally stabbing one of them. Derek’s head snapped to one side as she crashed into him, and his face went slack.

  She twisted herself to one side as the truck swerved again and jammed her feet against the opposite wall of the bed, pushing herself against him to try and pin him in place. Her knees strained, and something in her back gave a painful twinge as the truck nearly fishtailed. The bed struck one of the SUVs, another crash and a peel of rubber. Over the side of the truck bed, she saw the top of one of the vehicles as it began to roll.

  It was her father, she realized—he’d slammed the back of the truck into the front of one of the SUVs. It had cost them already, though. The stability of the truck was off. It wobbled rapidly, as if a wheel had come loose. Bracing herself on Derek’s chest, she rolled and lifted herself up enough to check behind them.

  Rapidly receding behind them was one SUV on its side. The other was coming around it, and quickly catching up with them again. With maybe enough distance to figure something out. There was no gunner at the top, at least.

  She looked around frantically. She considered chucking the spent rifles at them when they were close. But the weapons were light, probably made of some fancy expensive ceramic or whatever a billion-dollar arms budget got a person. No, she needed something heavier, or something...

  The toolbox. She scrambled toward it and tried to lift one side, but found it locked. The remaining Apex vehicle closed absurdly fast. She banged on the toolbox cover as if that might do something, before she turned to retrieve one of the rifles.

  Her father shouted through the open window. “Hold tight!”

  Before she could strike the lock with the butt of the rifle, she dropped and clung to the toolbox. Caleb veered left so hard, she was certain the truck would roll. Behind her, Derek slid across the bed of the truck and struck the other side. She winced, and hoped he didn’t break anything, but couldn’t do anything about him just now if he had.

  When they straightened out again, they were on a stretch of wide road, littered with a handful of vehicles on the sides of the asphalt ahead—they’d made it to the highway. Lana waited until the swaying stopped, then pounded at the lock with the rifle. After a few tries, she tested it and found the lid looser. A few more cracks and she was able to pry it open with her knife and throw the top up.

  Inside was a small arsenal, as far as she was concerned. Rusted tools filled the box. And just in time. She looked back to find the SUV on their bumper, close enough to identify Victoria Steen in the passenger seat.

  Lana grinned at her, picked up what looked like a two-foot-long plumber’s wrench that must have weighed twenty pounds, and hurled it like a spear at the tinted glass. The old iron crashed into the glass, and while it didn’t punch through like she hoped, it did obscure both her vision and the driver’s as a frosty spider-web of cracks burst out across the windshield. As she collected a miniature sledgehammer, the SUV twitched to one side, then back, nearly spinning out of control before the driver compensated. A helmeted head poked out of the top, and an agent began to emerge with a rifle.

  Thank you for being so predictable. She threw the hammer at the agent. If they’d been standing still, it was hard to know what would have happened. Being hit with a small sledgehammer would have hurt, but probably wouldn’t have crippled anyone. Lana was strong these days, compared to college, and the adrenaline certainly helped. But they weren’t standing still.

  The hammer only clipped the agent across the shoulder, but the way he thrashed and dropped back down into the SUV, it looked like that shoulder was never going to work again. As quickly as she could, she dug back into the toolbox and hauled out a small gas-powered chainsaw. This one wasn’t for throwing. Instead, she scurried to the back of the truck bed, peered briefly over the edge, and dropped it straight down into the path of the Apex vehicle’s front wheel.

  At the same moment the chainsaw disappeared under the SUV, the truck slammed against the ground. Lana’s knees buckled painfully, and the impact of the drop shot up her spine, momentarily stunning her breath.

  The SUV’s front end shot off to the left. It twisted and flipped violently.

  The truck swerved and for a moment, the world stood still. She was still inside the truck bed, SUV half through a second roll, Derek still unconscious beside her.

  Then she was flying.

  Somewhere distant, her father shouted her name. The asphalt passed under her. The ground came up fast and some instinct kicked her body into gear just as she struck. She tucked one shoulder and her chin, contorting into a violent roll that ended with a violent stop.

  Ash and dust billowed around her as she gasped for air like a fish. A coughing fit wracked her body. She’d hit something, and the pain in her hip warned her about a possible break that throbbed each time she spasmed with another cough. Dazed, she managed to get to her hands and knees with a groan.

  With a monumental effort, she pushed herself up and gave her right hip tentative pressure. Not broken, but the pain stole her breath. She forced her attention to focus, waving the ash out of her face as she staggered back toward the highway, trying to get a clear look at the wreckage and praying that the next thing she saw wasn’t a twisted heap of metal with her family dead inside.