aluminum to her left, it read in
stencil-painted letters, TRUCKS BEGIN TURN NOW / CLEARANCE ONL —
And that was all she saw. Her open door and then Silas’ both
collided with the bollard, each slamming shut in turn with a thunderous bang!
Bang! Sparks showered and the aluminum alloy of the H4’s door panels
shrieked as the bollard’s plated side turned into a spangled wreck, an upright
jag that looked like a silver flower.
Silas cried out, his left arm twisted at an abrupt and misshapen
angle as the H4’s slamming passenger door hammered him in and down.
God, Sophie, you could have severed all his fingers. You almost
killed —
Reeling, tilting.
The H4 was turning, a precarious and dismayingly gradual arc as
the wheels scrabbled over warped concrete, rubble and ruptured sandbags.
Behind and to Sophie’s left, dozens of sprinting and hobbling skeleton-shapes
were chasing after the Hummer, half-envisaged through a cloud of fuel vapor,
smoke and incinerated rubber from the tires. If the H4’s speed had not been
limited by the first gear of four-wheel, a complete accident and error, it
probably would have flipped and both Silas and Sophie would have been trapped
to meet their Fate.
Instead, Sophie had a moment to recalculate, to let her foot off
the gas. She got the H4 into drive and running perpendicular to the onrushing crowd,
she was looking over her left shoulder as they all swept toward her in two blurred
striations: one swarm of naked and bleeding women, the other of armed men.
Between the two, the girl with the barbed cage around her head had somehow
gotten away from the man who had fallen into her. Her belly was streaked with
fresh running slicks of blood.
Sophie fumbled away from the steering wheel with her right hand,
padding the passenger seat for the submachine gun. It hadn’t yet fallen onto
the floor with her wild acceleration, because its utility cord was tangled in
the unused seatbelt which had flipped over the console.
Save the girl.
Sophie tried to both seize and ready the shifting submachine gun
without looking down, while staring out at the frenzied surge and crush of
people running toward her, gauging the distance between the H4 and the two
swarms, and the nearing girl. She tried even more to steer, to correct the
veering course which had now aimed the H4 at a chained-down Greyhound charter
bus, and even to keep Silas from tumbling over.
She tried.
“Save me!” The blood-girl was
running straight for her, limping and clutching her belly with one hand, waving
her other twisted arm like a mutilated puppet’s limb free from strings.
Twenty, fifteen feet away. “God, don’t leave me!”
And then, without meaning, without a fracture of comprehension or the
faintest visual sheen of ceremony, there was a crack and the top of the blood-girl’s
caged head erupted and became a crimson, gelid blossom, flowering open upon the
fluorescent-streamered wind.
* * * * *
Once, afar, in a mundane modern used-to-be world of elder years
and long ago, Sophie had been grocery shopping down in Cherry Creek and she had
seen a jar of bleached and fatty beef tripe perched up high in Whole Foods
Market shelving, pallid bovine stomach matter floating inside a crystalline jar
of cranberry jelly.
She had stood casually there in her khakis and her azure and
silken V-blouse, biting her lower lip. Stood there musing in an unnerved,
deteriorating mimicry of silence. What in the Hell is that? Disgusting.
Regarding the jar with detached fascination, she had not felt thirsty any
longer. She had shakily put her covered latte down into its holder in the shopping
cart. Revulsion had shivered up her throat, the inside of her cheeks, as she
realized this jar of exotic “food” poised upon the highest shelf on aisle nine
was the most revolting edible thing that she had ever seen.
A pair of young inebriated men, dressed gamely in CU Boulder
t-shirts and day-glo flip-flops, had
stencil-painted letters, TRUCKS BEGIN TURN NOW / CLEARANCE ONL —
And that was all she saw. Her open door and then Silas’ both
collided with the bollard, each slamming shut in turn with a thunderous bang!
Bang! Sparks showered and the aluminum alloy of the H4’s door panels
shrieked as the bollard’s plated side turned into a spangled wreck, an upright
jag that looked like a silver flower.
Silas cried out, his left arm twisted at an abrupt and misshapen
angle as the H4’s slamming passenger door hammered him in and down.
God, Sophie, you could have severed all his fingers. You almost
killed —
Reeling, tilting.
The H4 was turning, a precarious and dismayingly gradual arc as
the wheels scrabbled over warped concrete, rubble and ruptured sandbags.
Behind and to Sophie’s left, dozens of sprinting and hobbling skeleton-shapes
were chasing after the Hummer, half-envisaged through a cloud of fuel vapor,
smoke and incinerated rubber from the tires. If the H4’s speed had not been
limited by the first gear of four-wheel, a complete accident and error, it
probably would have flipped and both Silas and Sophie would have been trapped
to meet their Fate.
Instead, Sophie had a moment to recalculate, to let her foot off
the gas. She got the H4 into drive and running perpendicular to the onrushing crowd,
she was looking over her left shoulder as they all swept toward her in two blurred
striations: one swarm of naked and bleeding women, the other of armed men.
Between the two, the girl with the barbed cage around her head had somehow
gotten away from the man who had fallen into her. Her belly was streaked with
fresh running slicks of blood.
Sophie fumbled away from the steering wheel with her right hand,
padding the passenger seat for the submachine gun. It hadn’t yet fallen onto
the floor with her wild acceleration, because its utility cord was tangled in
the unused seatbelt which had flipped over the console.
Save the girl.
Sophie tried to both seize and ready the shifting submachine gun
without looking down, while staring out at the frenzied surge and crush of
people running toward her, gauging the distance between the H4 and the two
swarms, and the nearing girl. She tried even more to steer, to correct the
veering course which had now aimed the H4 at a chained-down Greyhound charter
bus, and even to keep Silas from tumbling over.
She tried.
“Save me!” The blood-girl was
running straight for her, limping and clutching her belly with one hand, waving
her other twisted arm like a mutilated puppet’s limb free from strings.
Twenty, fifteen feet away. “God, don’t leave me!”
And then, without meaning, without a fracture of comprehension or the
faintest visual sheen of ceremony, there was a crack and the top of the blood-girl’s
caged head erupted and became a crimson, gelid blossom, flowering open upon the
fluorescent-streamered wind.
* * * * *
Once, afar, in a mundane modern used-to-be world of elder years
and long ago, Sophie had been grocery shopping down in Cherry Creek and she had
seen a jar of bleached and fatty beef tripe perched up high in Whole Foods
Market shelving, pallid bovine stomach matter floating inside a crystalline jar
of cranberry jelly.
She had stood casually there in her khakis and her azure and
silken V-blouse, biting her lower lip. Stood there musing in an unnerved,
deteriorating mimicry of silence. What in the Hell is that? Disgusting.
Regarding the jar with detached fascination, she had not felt thirsty any
longer. She had shakily put her covered latte down into its holder in the shopping
cart. Revulsion had shivered up her throat, the inside of her cheeks, as she
realized this jar of exotic “food” poised upon the highest shelf on aisle nine
was the most revolting edible thing that she had ever seen.
A pair of young inebriated men, dressed gamely in CU Boulder
t-shirts and day-glo flip-flops, had
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