Allie's War Episodes 1-4(38)

Slamming his foot on the gas once he cleared the gravel, he bounced us across a weed-choked stretch of grass dotted with broken bottles, plastic bags and scrub brush. I glanced at the speedometer, saw it edging towards 60 mph, then glimpsed a large rock and cried out, but Revik had already jerked the wheel to clear it, jumping us into oncoming traffic.
“Jesus! Revik—”
“There are things I haven’t told you,” he said, over the screech of tires as he straightened the car out from a skid. For the barest instant, his eyes glinted silver. “...About Terian.”
I swallowed as his eyes faded back to clear.
“Is he here?” I said. “In the physical?”
Revik barely looked at me. “No.”
I glanced over as he wiped his nose. I didn’t notice the blood until his fingers came away covered in it.
“What happened?” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I’m losing light.” Reaching into his pocket, he dug something out and tossed it at me. Small and bright, it landed on my lap. It was a key.
“I'm not chasing you anymore,” he said.
I snatched the key off my leg just before he swerved again. Revik rammed the GTX over the path of an eighteen wheeler, sliding past as the man honked. Still watching the road, I unlocked the cuffs from around my wrists, dropping them to the floor.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded curtly, not looking over.



Earl Redding knew a sicko when he saw one.
He’d been running long-hauls across the whole of this country for 27 years, including all over California, and that mecca of perverts and terrorists, San Francisco. This dark-haired fellow, who obviously had some Oriental in him, had the audacity to impersonate a cop. Luckily, Earl saw through it. And a good thing, too...not five minutes later the Chink fuck went on to shoot three of Washington’s finest dead on the highway onramp like some kind of cop serial killer.
That poor white girl was clearly one of his victims. Whatever his intentions, whether he wanted to sell her, rape her some more, or kill her, Earl couldn’t let it stand.
He’d watched the whole thing, calling in details on his radio, then, when he saw the shooting and the green muscle car heading for the freeway proper, he’d turned the wheel, making the beginnings of the arc needed to clear the island around the onramp. Once he’d straightened out the length of his rig, he downshifted and jammed his foot on the gas, driving up the shoulder past the line of cars.
Up ahead, a couple of highway workers stood beside the remaining cop car parked up on the shoulder. They were in the process of covering one of the cop’s bodies with some kind of tarp. A line of cars stood in the left lane, waiting for the space to clear. Horns honked, a few drivers cheered the highway workers as they huffed the second cop car up the steep incline and back towards the road, some even helping, wearing civvies as they pushed along with the orange jumpsuits.
Earl pulled further up into the shoulder, glancing to his side to make sure he wouldn’t tip the rig. He started yanking on his horn. When the highway workers didn’t look back, Earl pulled harder, more urgently, finally just holding it down for a long, continuous bellow.
First one worker looked up, then another.
Earl saw the second react, eyes widening to white-rimmed dots in a cartoon-like face. Earl waved his hand out the window, telling them to get out of the way. One shouted to the others. Another tried to wave Earl off, but Earl only hit the horn harder. All five of them finally scattered, three in the right direction, two in the wrong one.
The front grill of Earl’s truck slammed the back end of the cop car.
The car leapt forward on the hill then abruptly off to the right and into the main onramp, rolling straight for the gravel bank at a quickly accelerating rate. It knocked over one of the highway workers, hitting another a glancing blow that threw him 10 feet where he promptly began to skid down the sharp gravel of the hill. The car shortly followed him.
Earl only saw part of this. Glancing once in his rearview mirror, he patted the 12-gauge wedged between the cushion of his seat and the plastic storage containers that held his music collection and audio books for driving. Muttering, he aimed for the freeway down the sloping frontage road.
Seeing the green GTX on the weed-choked field between the town and highway, Earl hit the gas, and the giant engine thrummed louder.
“You’re going to put that girl down, boy,” he muttered, wiping a hank of greasy hair out of his forehead. “Then you and I are are going to have a talk...yessir.”
He propped the gun against his knee, dislodging a photograph that had been wedged in the ashtray since he’d quit four years earlier. On it, a little boy and girl smiled, encircled by the arms of a woman with long, streaked-blond hair.