Before I Ran || Perrentes

Chapter 6: Fingerprint Bruises

Tony was thrown forwards and then sideways in his seat, jammed back into place by the seatbelt as the car lurched, brakes squealing, and pivoted rapidly. The car behind had to emergency brake and it swerved dramatically to the left to avoid T-crashing, leaving a sizeable space in the road for Mike to slip down, now driving in the opposite direction as before. There was gunfire behind them, and Tony ducked - but none of the glass broke, and all there was in place of shattering was the sound of metal pinging off glass.

"You're kidding," he gasped. "This shit is bulletproof?"

"Not our first drive by," Mike explained, and then as the car behind them swerved around he straightened the car out and stepped on the gas. The car took the bend in the road easily, hugging the curve - the car behind was not so skilled, and it skidded as it pulled around the tree line. In the back, both Vic and Jaime were rolling the windows down, and then, careful to avoid the bullets flying at them, took aim and fired their own guns, leaning back into the car after each shot.

"This one is bulletproof too, Mikey," Vic shouted urgently above the growl of the engine.

"Shoot for the headlights," Tony said, spinning round in his seat. "They'll make the airbags go off. And you can't bulletproof wheels."

The brakes slammed again as Mike jumped the car into a controlled swivel, giving Vic and Jaime better vantage points. They both fired at the same time; one bullet missed but Vic managed to catch the front left headlight, and Tony just about saw the two front seat air bags explode before the driver lost control and the man with the gun was crushed against his seat, and the car swerved into the ditch at the side of the road, just below the tree line. Mike slowed the car gently from sixty and stopped a few hundred yards away from the crash site.

"Come on," he said hurriedly. "Go, go, go."

Instead of driving away as Tony expected him to, he opened the door of the car, unbuckled his seatbelt and leapt from the car, gun held by his hip, Vic and Jaime in close pursuit. Heart hammering against his chest like a tiger attempting to free itself of its cage, Tony opened his own door with shaking fingers, quickly pulling his own pistol from the shoebox by his feet. He's never held a gun before, and it was heavier in his hands than he'd thought, and although Danielle has given him a crash course in using it he didn't have the first clue about what to do in this kind of situation. Oh well. Now, he reasoned, was as good a time as any to learn.

He followed the other three down the road in a light jog, copying their actions and holding the gun by his hip. Thin wisps of smoke or steam drifted upwards from the twisted body of metal which has been crushed by an unsuspecting tree, and as Tony drew closer he saw the passenger slumped in his seat, airbag deflated, blood trickling from a wound on his head. They slid, one by one, down the side of the ditch, and upon closer inspection Tony could see the man's head twisted at an awkward angle. Broken bone jutted beneath the skin on the back of his head, and his eyes were open and unseeing. He was dead, for sure.

But the driver was nowhere in sight.

"Shit," Vic cursed. "Balls. Fuck-a-doodle-do."

"My thoughts exactly," Jaime added. Mike hesitated, checked in the car for other passengers. There were none.

"We can't just let him get away," he shook his head, stepping away from the wreck. "He won't stop tailing us, and next time he'll bring backup. Come on. Tony, stay with Vic, Jaime with me."

Too shocked, startled and shaken to argue, Tony followed Vic as he sprang off into the trees and Mike and Jaime headed in the opposite direction. The scenery was, by all accounts, beautiful. The trees were tall and slim, the sky was sapphire blue, the clouds were puffy and floated across the sky like lost ships. But Tony just didn't have the time to appreciate the scenery.