A Maze of Glass, Chapter Nineteen, Pt. 3
Sirens rose up in the distance. The Belgian’s coven drove their getaway SUV northwestward, away from the scene of the pile-up and the two cemeteries and their own gruesome handiwork. Zoe swerved around the wreck and followed.
“What the fuck happened here!?” Omar shouted in her ear.
She ripped the earbud free and tossed it. The engine snarled. She swerved into the oncoming lane to pass someone, swerved back, and blared her horn at the truck she’d almost crashed into. She caught up to the SUV in twelve seconds. More shouting crackled through the earbuds. She ignored it.
“You don’t think that anybody can touch you,” she muttered, glaring through the windscreen. She tightened gloved hands on the steering wheel, moved halfway back into the oncoming lane to pull up alongside the SUV. “Well, then.”
She jerked the steering wheel and ran the side of her sedan into the side of the SUV. Her sideview mirror fractured apart. The SUV swerved, overcorrected, and overcorrected again. Gaining speed, Zoe swung the rear of her car into the front of theirs. They spun, tires keening. Zoe hit the brakes and turned, not wanting to lose them.
Horns roared. Both vehicles almost collided with traffic.
They recovered first, heading down a side street. Zoe followed, catching another horn blare from whomever she’d almost hit.
The road deteriorated beneath them. Asphalt cracked and potholed until the whole stretch became half-rubble. Another graveyard appeared up ahead on the left, fenced in. On the right, a row of rundown houses kept nearly no windows open to face the dead.
Zoe rode up on the sidewalk. The engine gnashed and growled, bringing her back alongside the SUV.
This time she didn’t let up. She slammed her car into theirs and kept the wheel turned in and the accelerator on the floor. Stuck together by inertia and violent stubbornness, they crashed through the chain link fence and jumped and bucked over crumbling tombstones. The grave markers exacted their revenge even as they broke apart, splintering chassis and smashing windscreen, tearing up the undersides of both vehicles. Finally, the SUV crumpled against a broad-bole’d tree. Zoe’s car slid, two tires popped, axles demolished, until it came to a stop against a tall tower of white stone, totaled. She unbuckled her seat belt, pushed her door open, and sagged out into the grass.
She’d gotten cut up in the rush. Bright red blood trickled down one side of her face and thinner tributaries curled around her left arm. Her bones ached from the shuddering, rumbling chassis and the half-dozen jumping impacts, and numberless bruises promised to swell across her body soon enough. Heaving herself to her feet with a groan, she reached back into the car and grabbed her submachine gun.
She didn’t wait for signs of life.
Approaching the crumpled SUV, she emptied the first mag in a series of three- to five-round bursts. She fired through the windshield, the passenger side door, and the passenger side window. Ejecting the first mag, she grabbed a replacement from her tac pack and reloaded. Crimson sprays slicked the interior of the vehicle. Airbags sagged, burst apart. Whoever sat in the passenger seat slumped over motionless.
Zoe moved in an arc around the side of the vehicle and poured most of her second magazine through the front passenger door and window. She didn’t bother counting bullets or managing bursts, she just squeezed the trigger until the recoil jumped her aim and then released it just long enough to realign her sights.
Nothing inside the vehicle stirred.
The rest of her second mag went through the rear passenger door. The first couple bursts of her third and final mag, too. After that, she continued her arching path around the rear of the SUV. She rattled more bullets through the trunk on her way to the driver’s side of the wreck. Turning the corner, she found the back driver’s side door hanging open.
Lacey crawled through the grass just a few yards away. Considering the compound fracture spiking through one of her legs, she’d made it pretty far. Zoe noted the woman’s location, turned back to the SUV, and ducked inside.
A man she didn’t recognize sprawled on the floor between front and back seats. A crack in his skull rivered red, and a scattering of small bulletholes drooled it. His half-lidded eyes seemed semi-conscious. Wheezy breaths came through fluid-filling lungs.
Zoe’s submachine gun roared and the wheezing stopped.
She’d miscounted bullets. Her last mag empty, she slung the weapon over her shoulder and drew her sidearm to replace it.
Lacey crawled, panting and gore-streaked. With only three good limbs, she wasn’t making it far. Zoe caught up to her in seconds. Lacey must have heard the approach because she turned over, holding a hand up as if the meat of her palm could protect the meat of her face. “Please, wait—”
Zoe shot her in the forehead.
When Lacey went limp on the grass, Zoe fired four more times. Lacey’s skull was a broken bowl spilling.
Another chorus of sirens rose up.
A sudden surge of vomit filled Zoe’s throat. She caught it in her mouth and palm, smearing chunks of it around her lips and chin as she swallowed the rest. Her heart hammered her ribs into piano keys. She couldn’t breathe. She had to make sure to contain the vomit. Her DNA tracked back to yet another person who wasn’t really her, but fabbing a DNA background was expensive and time consuming. She had to make sure.
She’d had to make sure.
She stumbled over a tombstone and caught herself halfway to the ground. A couple stray plops of ejecta tumbled into the grass. Straightening out, she peered over at her demolished car. The distant sirens grew closer. Dizziness swirled around her; she felt herself detach almost physically from the world.
Omar’s sedan rolled through the hole in the chain link fence. The man himself spilled out in a run, reaching for Zoe yards before he could touch her. “We gotta go!” he shouted, sprinting. “We gotta—” He slowed, face twisting, brow trenched, mouth curled open in shock. “What the—what the fuck did you do?”
Zoe stared at him, answerless.
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