She hops in, and I follow. The carsmellslike a ’90s buddy-cop movie: cheap cologne, sweat, and unwashed bodies. I clutch my backpack on my lap and rest my knuckles against the hatchet dangling from its loop. Ripley presses her nose against the window and pants in the heat of the car.
Sheriff Cory slides into the driver’s seat and turns the key. He glances back at me through the metal grate.
“Hotter than a whore in hell.” He shakes his head, then rolls down his window. “Almost forgot. Hey!”
Clarence, who was just about to climb into his ancient turquoise Ford truck, frowns at the sheriff waving him over. The sheriff shifts in his seat, doing something I can’t see.
Clarence makes his slow, old-man way over. He stoops to look down through the window. “What’s the problem—”
And then Clarence’s head explodes.
Sometimes in a movie or a book or even a graphic novel, the world will freeze when something stunning and horrible happens. There’s no freezing in this world. There’s only red in the air like a mist, and Clarence’s body crumpling on his front yard.
Ripley is barking and I’m yelling. I lunge for the door handle. Locked.
Sheriff Cory turns in his seat and aims a gun with a silencer at me. That’s what I couldn’t see. “You shut that mutt up or I’ll shoot it.”
I pull her close. “Ripley, enough.”
Thankfully she listens. Still, her tail is tucked and she keeps making quiet little sounds of distress.
“Good,” he says, and backs up out of the driveway.
I strain to see Clarence, to see if he’s moving, if he’s still alive, but I can’t see him past the curve in the driveway.
“What are you doing? What’s going on?”
Sheriff Cory glances at me in the rearview mirror, then looks back to the road. I slap the metal grate. My breath iscoming too quick. My pulse is rushing in my ears. I think I’m having a panic attack.
What do I have on me? What can Ido?
There’s my hatchet. It’s curved on one end and pointed at the other. I could break one of the windows with the pointed bit. It’d take at least three or four swings. The space is cramped. With Ripley taking up half of it I could easily hurt her. The sheriff could shoot her or me while I try to break it.
I glance down. The pepper spray is right where I put it after our encounter with the coyote.
Letting it off in an enclosed space is maybe the dumbest thing you could do with pepper spray. It literally says not to on the label. If we can’t get out, both Ripley and I will be trapped in here with it. And him.
Something Emma said to me after recounting a story she heard on one of her favorite true crime podcasts comes to me.
“If you don’t fight, you’re fucked. If you do fight, you’re still probably fucked.
“So you might as well just fight.”
“He was kind,” I say, slipping my hand into the side pocket. “And you’re a piece of shit.”
He cranks the radio, which is perfect because now he can’t hear me uncapping the spray.
I raise it to the grate separating us. “Hey, asshole!”
He glances in the rearview mirror, then does a double take when he sees the spray. He half turns, his mouth open to say something.
Pepper spray hits him directly in the face.
He curses, and yells at me to “Fucking stop!” but I don’t let up. I don’t let up when my eyes, my lungs, my throat burn like I’ve swallowed hot coals. I don’t let up when Ripley whimpers and wipes her paws over her eyes.
The car lurches to the side.
And then we’re weightless.
