“You have to get us out of here,” said LaDonna insistently.
As she looked down, checking to see if she was still in one piece, her bench wobbled. It was then that she noticed Eve, who’d been seated on the first-row passenger side, was lying half in and half out of the van. Her head was sitting on her body wrong. All Cara could see of the new girl was her bleached hair, which was now red and gray. Blood and... brains?
Cara vomited rainbow-colored bile onto her orange jumpsuit.
LaDonna’s voice was tight but calm as she coached her. “I’m stuck, so you have to get both of us free. Find the COs and grab their keys.”
Below them, something popped and started hissing.
Cara’s seat support had loosened from the floor, and the right side of her bellyband was pinned beneath it. If she lifted her bench and pulled the chain out from under it, she would still be shackled—but free.
“Hurry!”
The bench seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. It was awkward to lift, but she somehow did it. LaDonna groaned as Cara climbed over her and stumbled out of the back of the van.
Cara fell to her knees, then stood up into a scene of utter devastation. A mangled pickup truck rested on the center stripe. Beyond it, a jackknifed semitruck lay on its side. The front half of the transport van was in the ditch on the opposite side of the road.
Cara stumbled across the asphalt, her steps clipped by her shackles, smelling gas and an unfamiliar chemical smell. The two COs were still buckled into their seats, but the front part of the van was face down in the weeds, all of its window glass destroyed. She climbed awkwardly into the ditch on the passenger side and pulled the door handle. It fell open toward her.
Officer Vozenilek had been decapitated. His head lay in the footwell. Officer Poff was intact but unmoving.
If she had had anything left in her stomach, she would have vomited again.
She held her breath as she reached for Vozenilek’s belt.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she unclipped his bloody key ring.
Crouching in the rocky ditch, she tried every key until she found the one that unlocked her restraints. Without pausing to rub her aching wrists, examine the red rings around her ankles, or consider how good it felt to be free, she recrossed the road.
And was nearly hit by a car. A red sedan with a gray hood veered onto the shoulder and accelerated past the wreck without stopping.
“Thanks for helping!” LaDonna pressed her wrists against the damaged cage as Cara reached her. “Do my handcuffs and give me the keys, Goldie. I’ll do the rest.”
Cara’s hands shook as she fumbled to get the key into the lock. The cuffs finally opened with a satisfying click.
LaDonna was bleeding from her forehead and her arm but didn’t seem to notice as she unlocked her shackles. Then she kicked the metal grate out of the way like a bona fide superhero and quickly climbed out of the van.
“As much fun as it would be to costar in your reality show, I’ve got three kids, and I plan to see them again,” she said.
“You’re leaving?”
“When the Lord giveth a miracle, who are we to turn him down?” LaDonna said.
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll catch you?”
“If they do, I’ll say I had shock or amnesia. Both, probably.”
With that, LaDonna jogged across the highway, climbed over a sagging barbed-wire fence, and headed into the dry, brown grass. After a moment, all Cara could see were her head and shoulders. Then they, too, disappeared.
For a second, Cara wondered if LaDonna might have allowed her to tag along. But then she surveyed the tangled metal and smoking mess around her. Eve, New Girl, Poff, and Vozenilek were all dead, but there were two more vehicles. If anyone was alive in them, there was no one but her to help. The pickup truck in the middle of the highway was closer, so she made her way there first.
It looked like a tin can crushed with a brick. Through the open driver’s-side window, she saw a freckle-faced teen no olderthan seventeen pinned between the steering wheel and the compressed roof of the cab. She looked hopelessly trapped.
Dear God.
Trembling all over, Cara reached inside and brushed the girl’s lavender-tinted hair away from her blood-streaked face. She seemed only half conscious. Her eyes stared, unfocused, as she took rapid, shallow breaths.
“Everything’s going to be . . .”
