This pickup truck is my best option.
There’s no way I’ll make it to the riverbank, or off the bridge, or into the shield of the rubble and debris flanking the road. Not without getting caught by a bullet or a fae.
I take the shelter closest to me.
I roll to flatten myself on my front.
Snow pushes against my cheek, instantly chilling me. I shimmy my way under the truck, until I’m flat on my front, shielded by the metal—and I snag.
My backpack hooks on something, something in the mechanical guts of the pickup truck.
Whatever it is, it catches too tightly and stops me from worming myself all the way under.
I’m still too exposed.
I reach around my trembling hand for the bag.
The horrid screech of my gloves comes, scraping over something like torn metal, before my fingers latch onto the edge of my backpack.
I tug—and tug and tug.
But it doesn’t come free. Doesn’t loosen.
I fumble for the strap around my shoulder.
My breaths are crushed, subdued in the crammed space, but I can’t get my fucking backpack off.
It’s stuck on something—the something that feels, against my gloved fingers, like loose bolts and undone screws, like someone has been here already and looted parts from the truck and didn’t fix it back up once they were done.
Now I’m caught in it, stuck with my cheek smooshed against the frost.
A grunt is burrowed in my chest, suffocated, as I try to tug my hand back to the ground.
My elbow juts, my shoulder aches, but the edge of my glove is snagged on something, one of those screws, a bolt that is loose.
Fucking, fuck, fuck!
This isn’t good.
This really isn’t good.
The panic is building in me.
It’s sinking into my head, spinning, and it’s times like these I really need Bee.
Maybe we’ve been friends too long, and I’ve become too dependent on her, the way I used to depend on my mum, but fucking hell I need her right now.
I know what she would tell me.
‘Breathe.’
‘Just breathe.’
So I that’s what I do.
My nostrils flare around my restricted inhale, suffocated by the sandwiching of the truck, the road and the pressure of my backpack.
Still, I force the breaths through me before I move onto step two. It comes to my mind with Bee’s familiar voice.
