The Dragon's Tooth by N. D. Wilson Page B

swerved. Glass shattered. Bullets rained down.
    John Horace Lawney jerked and fell to his side.
    The car jumped off the road, roared down a bank, and sent a wire fence sprouting into the sky. Cyrus bounced against the ceiling and grabbed at the door. Antigone rattled on the floor with Horace.
    “Hang on!” Gunner yelled, and he cranked the wheel. The car twisted sideways, sailing at airplane speeds through a pasture of sun-browned grass. Seed heads lashed and whistled at the doors, and a cloud of dust and chaff and splattered plant rose up around them.
    On his knees, Cyrus stared out his window. Bellowing cows were running, cows that hadn’t been meant to run, two-ton milk jugs, spotted black and white. One of them froze, panicked, unable to choose a route.
    Cyrus braced himself, but the car swung in time, slamming his face against the glass. Antigone and a bleeding Horace tumbled up beside him.
    Another fence flipped up the hood and off the roof, and they were heading downhill, past a barn, sliding by a farmhouse, through someone’s garden and beneath a tree, thumping an ancient tire swing into orbit, jumping a ditch, and fishtailing onto a gravel road.
    “Everyone okay?” Gunner glanced in his mirror. “We all alive?”
    “No!” Antigone was stretching the lawyer onto his back between the seats. “Stop! Horace got hit in the shoulder, right by his neck.”
    “Can’t stop.” Gunner shook his head. “He breathing?”
    “I think so!” Antigone yelled. She leaned her ear down to Horace’s mouth as he coughed, misting her cheek with blood.
    “Get some pressure on the wound!” Gunner yelled. “Cyrus, get your window down and squeeze on out. I need your eyes on the sky the next couple miles. And hang on! I don’t want to lose you!”
    Cyrus cranked his window down and immediately went deaf with the roar and rattle of gravel and wind. The driver lobbed back a pair of goggles.
    “Pull ’em tight!” he yelled. “Tight!”
    Antigone, white-faced, was crouched on the floor, pressing a wadded-up suit coat against the little man’s shoulder. Looking into his sister’s terrified eyes, Cyrus took a breath, pulled down his goggles, and fished himself out the window and into a hurricane.
    Gripping the inside of the car, Cyrus eased his rear up onto the door, and his chin rose above the roof. The goggles shook, and his nose felt like it might disappear. The roof of the car was pocked with holes, and dust tornadoed on the road behind them. Gradually, gently, Cyrus looked up. At first, with his head shaking in the wind, he could only make out two contrails. And birds. Three of them. Maybe hawks or crows. High and circling.
    Too big. Wrong wings. Kites? Hang gliders? The three shapes crossed paths and adjusted, forming a triangle. They were descending, following the car.
    Cyrus turned his face forward, into the car’s absurd speed, and the spatter of bugs stung his cheeks. In the distance, Lake Michigan, a smooth plane of perfect blue, stretched to the horizon. Beside it, the buildings of Milwaukee were clustered like a collection of models.
    A minute later, gasping and wiping his face, Cyrus told the driver what he’d seen.
    “We have to get to a hospital,” Antigone said. “We have to call the police.”
    “We have to change routes,” said the driver. “No more front gate for us. They’ll be waiting. It’ll push our time, but you can make it. And don’t you worry about Johnny Horace. Not just yet. He’s taken worse. He doesn’t know how to die.” The car accelerated even more. “Let’s see how fast the old girl can run.”
    Cyrus and Antigone bounced on the floor of the car, popping like corn around the unconscious lawyer, taking turns pressing down on the man’s bloody shoulder until Antigone began to be sick and Cyrus pushed her away.
    “C’mon, Horace,” he muttered, leaning all of his weight against the wound. But the car still bounced, and his hands bounced with it, releasing pressure. He had