Eden (23 page)

I rolled down the window.

“
What are you doing?”
Jared yelled.

“
Your gun!” I said, my
heart pounding against my rib cage.

“
Here!”

He pulled his Glock out from behind
him, and placed it on the seat between us. I grabbed it, and then
leaned out the window. Jared grabbed a fistful of my dress to keep
me from tumbling to the road below. The small man stood in the
parking lot, chin down, watching us flee with his unnatural black
eyes. I stretched out my arms in front of me, and pointed the gun
at him, aiming at his forehead.

“
What are you doing?”
Jared yanked on my skirt, pulling me into the cab of the truck.
“You can’t kill him!”

“
Why in the hell not? He
was going to kill us!”

“
Once the demon leaves,
the Shell is human again. He’s an innocent, Nina.” Jared pressed a
button on his door, and my window rolled up, cutting off the wind
that had blown my blonde hair into a wild mess.

I turned to keep an eye on the Shells.
There was no telling how many had turned. The fuel line swaying
against the asphalt distracted my attention. The nozzle finally
broke free of the Tundra, and rolled into the ditch. A loud boom
vibrated the truck, and a ball of smoke and fire rolled into the
sky. The small man still stood in the street, glaring at us, just
in front of the roaring flames.

“
Jared!” I
cried.

“
So much for that,” Jared
said, frowning. He peered into the rearview mirror to assess the
damage. A column of fire shot up from fuel pumps. It would be a
miracle if any of the people we’d left behind survived.

“
Those people,” I moaned,
touching the palm of my hand to my forehead. My eyes filled with
tears, and I turned to face the front.

A few miles later, two large fire
trucks, a pumper truck, and an ambulance raced toward us. All four
vehicles ran hot, full lights and sirens screaming, fading away as
they passed. The ambulance trailed behind, but the second its back
bumper was in line with ours, it flipped around.

“
Jared?”

“
I see it,” Jared said,
grabbing his side arm from the seat. He reached over, pulling my
seat belt tight, and then without slowing down, jerked the Tundra
to the right, turning one hundred and eighty degrees until we were
face to face with the black-eyed ambulance drivers. Jared held his
Glock outside of the window and aimed, shooting at their tires. The
ambulance fishtailed, and then Jared jerked the truck again until
we were once again facing north, with the ambulance behind
us.

The ambulance skidded, and then
tumbled forward, finally cartwheeling across the road and into the
field on the opposite side.

As I watched it seemed to happen in
slow motion, but within seconds of seeing the emergency vehicles,
Jared had taken out the ambulance’s front tires and righted the
truck so we could go about our journey. My mind hadn’t quite caught
up with the events, but my heart was ripping through my
chest.

“
I thought you said not to
kill them!”

Jared put the gun back in the seat and
peered into the rearview mirror. “I hope they’re not
dead.”

He picked up his phone and held it to
his ear. “Claire. They’re shelling. I need backup.” He snapped the
phone shut, and then pushed the phone under his thigh.

“
Is she
coming?”

He nodded once. “They all are. We just
have to get to them.” The Tundra surged forward when Jared stomped
on the gas. The speedometer climbed from seventy-five, to
eighty-five, then ninety-five. The engine screamed a deafening
soprano as Jared desperately tried to get us closer to his
sister.

“
Maybe we lost them,” I
said, more to comfort myself than to convince my
husband.

Jared reached his hand across the
console and gripped it around mine. We were vulnerable, and he knew
it. Any human we came across was a threat. Jared’s hand squeezed
tighter, and all color left his face.

“
I can’t decide if I
should turn off the highway to a road that’s less traveled, or stay
and cut down on time.”

“
This particular stretch
didn’t seem busy when we came through. Maybe we’ll get lucky. It’s
the cities I’m worried about.”

We passed only a car or two over the
next ten minutes. Every time I saw something in the distance, I
tensed and waited. Each time the car would pass without so much as
a wave, and the adrenaline would absorb back into my system. I was
beginning to feel sick and dizzy after an hour, but I knew we
couldn’t stop.

“
They’re up to something,”
Jared said. He was squinting, trying to focus as far out as he
could to see any impending danger.

“
How long before we meet
Claire?”

“
I don’t know when they
left. I’m assuming right away. Considering the time of the call and
how fast Claire drives, I would say less than an hour. Maybe half
that.”

I nodded quickly, trying to make
myself feel better. “Thirty minutes. We can hold on for thirty
minutes. What could they possible throw at us that we couldn’t
handle for that long?”

Jared didn’t speak for a solid minute
while he studied the road ahead. When he finally focused on a tiny
dot in the distance, his face fell, and his breath caught. “Oh, my
God.”

I knew my human eyes wouldn’t have
been able to make out the dark blur several miles ahead, but Bean
gave me focus I might not otherwise have had. The long, dark blots
on the road, dancing against the heat off the asphalt, barreled
toward us.

It wasn’t until I tried to form a
sentence that I realized my mouth was gaping open. “What do we
do?”

Jared released my hand and reached
under the seat. He offered me an extra handgun, and then put both
hands on the wheel.

A caravan of Army vehicles, a Humvee,
three Jeeps, and a large supply truck moved toward us at full
speed. The back of the truck reminded me of a covered wagon, only
one covered with camouflaged tarp.

“
You’ve got to be
kidding,” I said, breathless.

“
They’re probably on their
way to Fort Story,” Jared said.

“
I don’t care where
they’re going. This is why things have been so quiet, Jared. Hell
knew about that caravan and planned to shell them the second they
crossed our path. You have to leave the road.”

“
They’ll just
follow.”

I sighed in frustration, and then
looked down at my watch. “Maybe they aren’t armed.”

“
That FMTV transport has
an armored cab. It could obliterate the Tundra if I let it get
close enough.”

I turned to him and tried a nervous
smile. “Please don’t.”

Jared returned my smile, and then
nodded, gripping the wheel. He pressed on the gas. I wasn’t sure
what he had decided, but he had a plan. It was possible that the
drivers of those trucks wouldn’t shell at all. We could pass them
without a problem like we had the previous ten or so vehicles.
That, of course, was just empty hope. I could feel a strange
burning deep inside my bones. Every one of those soldiers had
already turned.

Chapter
Fourteen

The Most Important
Thing

The jeep passed first, and then the
Humvees. I was just about to allow myself hope when the transport
truck jerked into our lane. Jared didn’t twitch; he just drove
faster. The needle on the speedometer vibrated at one hundred miles
per hour. I gripped the door handle so tight that my knuckles
turned white under the pressure. I trusted that Jared had a plan,
but at the same time, soaring down the road to meet an armored
truck in a head on collision didn’t sound like a good idea to
me.

“
Hang on, sweetheart,”
Jared said, his voice low. “When I get out, take the
wheel.”

“
When you get out?” I
said, instantly panicked.

In a move that was so smooth it seemed
choreographed, Jared swerved to the right and jerked the wheel
again in a nearly perfect half-circle around the Army truck. As the
Tundra spun off the road, Jared opened the door and stepped out,
shooting directly at the Army truck’s tires. I heard several
popping noises, but I was focused on grabbing the wheel and getting
my foot on the break. Although I was terrified, the move was
effortless, and before I had time to be afraid, the Tundra had come
to a stop on the shoulder.

I peeked over the steering wheel to
see the truck skidded to a stop, all of its tires blown. Jared held
one of the soldiers in the crook of his arm. The soldier went limp,
and Jared lowered him gently to the ground. I counted eleven men on
the ground, all of them unconscious.

Jared’s eyes met mine, and then he
looked behind him, noticing the other vehicles circling around. He
took off in a sprint, pointing behind me. I turned to see two shiny
dots in the distance. I squinted, focusing in on the objects, and
made out a motorcycle and a black sports car. It was Claire’s
Exige, traveling at a speed manageable only to Earth’s most badass
Hybrid.

I turned the wheel and stomped on the
gas, picking Jared up along the way. My foot was flush against the
floorboard as we raced toward our family.

Jared had barely broken a
sweat.

“
Are you okay?” I
asked.

“
Yes. The shells don’t
have the strength of demons because they don’t have the same hold
on them that they do when they take the time to possess. I didn’t
want to kill them, so I incapacitated them.”

“
Will they come after us
after they wake up?”

“
It’s possible,” Jared
said, turning around. “Faster, honey.”

The jeeps and Humvees were gaining
ground, and with a quick calculation, I figured if we were lucky we
would reach Claire when the Army vehicles caught up to
us.

Jared leaned out the window and aimed
at the tires of the first Jeep. His gun clicked, and he popped out
the clip. He leaned into the back seat and pulled out a bag,
dropping it to the passenger floorboard. It was full of ammo and
handguns.

“
Where the hell did that
come from?”

“
Claire helped me pack.”
He shoved another clip into his gun and flung his top half out the
window.

He got off only a few more shots
before ducking back inside. The Exige swerved to one side of the
road, and Bex’s motorcycle went to the other, creating a clear path
for us. I looked to my right, and everything went from hypersonic,
to a snail’s pace. Claire came into view, and half of her mouth was
pulled up into a smile. She winked. Ryan was in the passenger seat,
showing me his fist. His index finger and pinky was up, and his
mouth was open, his tongue hanging out.

When they passed, I pulled off to the
side of the road and made a wide turn. One of the soldiers manned
the Tourette of one of the jeeps, aiming in Bex’s
direction.

“
What should I
do?”

Jared reached over and turned off the
ignition. “We wait.”

Claire drove until she was behind the
caravan, and then flipped around, pulling alongside one of the
Jeeps. Her tiny arm appeared outside her window, gun in hand. She
pulled the trigger once, shooting out the front tire. The Jeep
swerved out of control, and then cartwheeled toward the
Tundra.

“
Jared?”

My husband held my hand. “It’s
fine.”

The Jeep continued to roll at us, end
over end..

“
Jared!”

I pulled the keys from his hand and
shoved the keys in the ignition, and then paused as I watched the
Jeep skid on its side and come to a halt inches away from our
bumper. My heart started beating again and a puff of air escaped my
lungs.

Gunfire drew my attention down the
road. The Exige fell behind what was left of the caravan, driving
strangely straight and at a decent speed for a moment before Claire
popped out of the passenger side, In the next moment, Bex was next
to her on his Ducati. As if they’d practiced the move a million
times, Claire jumped onto the back of Bex’s bike—backward—with two
guns.

Bex pumped his wrist, and the
motorcycle took off like a rocket. Claire’s platinum hair whipped
into her face while she took out another Jeep’s tires, but the
soldier on the next Jeep began firing on them.

Bex maneuvered close to the Jeep and
then he jumped off his bike high in the air, flipped, and landed
sure-footed behind the soldier. After a short scuffle, the soldier
flew off the Jeep and rolled onto the shoulder. Claire flipped
around and drove the bike next to a Humvee, punching through the
class and pulling the driver from his seat and into the road. The
Humvee fishtailed and then rolled six times, finally slamming into
a tree.

Claire skidded the bike to a stop, and
then hopped off of it, pulling the remaining soldiers out of the
Humvee. She checked each for a pulse, then picked the Ducati off
the ground and pushed it to the Tundra. Ryan slowed the Exige to a
stop just a few feet away, and then got out.