She was terrified.
Her fears were realized when the Subaru received a sudden jolt. Parkowski fell forward into the driver’s seat. She felt a slight pain in her neck but was otherwise unhurt.
“What the fuck was that?” she asked.
“Our friends in the last Suburban rammed us,” DePresti said. “Do you have any more tricks back there?”
“Do you have any more scuba tanks?”
“Fair point.”
She went over the rest of the scuba gear, but there wasn’t anything heavy enough to throw.
The only thing left was the emergency kit. Parkowski quickly went through it and smiled. “Mike, have you ever opened this kit up?”
“No, I just bought it and threw it in there, why?”
“You have road flares.”
He started to say something in response when they heard the now-familiar sound of gunfire. Parkowski dove to the floor as another round of bullets slammed into the Subaru.
“They’re firing again!” she yelled.
“I’m painfully aware of that,” DePresti responded. He drove the car to the far right lane and up onto the shoulder.
Parkowski poked her head up. The SUV followed them, cutting across all four lanes of traffic.
The rear driver’s side window was completely shattered now, the interior littered with shards of glass. Parkowski was aware of a few cuts on her legs, but none of them seemed to hurt or be bleeding particularly badly. The adrenaline rush made up for all of that.
The SUV was almost alongside them now, ready for another deadly volley.
Parkowski quickly read over the instructions for the road flares. They were similar to lighting a match; brush the removed cap against the tip to start it. There were all kinds of warning labels about not doing it inside your vehicle, but she ignored them. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
She lit a flare and peeked out the window. The SUV was only a car’s length away from them, both of its rear windows open. She could see darkly dressed occupants inside of it, two of them with submachine guns — the same type that was used at the pier and near LAX — at the ready.
Parkowski aimed and threw the lit flare.
She missed.
“Fuck,” she thought, and lit another. Parkowski took aim again and launched it towards the SUV.
This time the other vehicle’s driver swerved to avoid it. They were getting smarter.
Both of the shooters aimed their submachine guns at the Subaru and fired as Parkowski dove back down.
This time, they hit her square in the upper arm just below the left shoulder.
Parkowski groaned as she hit the glass-covered floor. It felt like Mike Tyson had just hit her with a punch. “I’m hit, I’m hit.”
“Oh shit,” DePresti said, more than a hint of panic in his voice. “Where?”
“My shoulder,” she yelled, daring to take a look. There was a lot less blood than she expected, but it was there, seeping out of a dime-sized hole. Parkowski felt around her back and found a slightly smaller one. Blood slowly seeped out of both wounds. “I think it went through.”
“Jesus,” DePresti said. “Press something up to it… I think. There’s a first aid kit back there if you can reach it. Let me try something, if this keeps up, we’re going to both die here.” He paused. “Hold on!”
Parkowski held onto the back of his seat with her bad arm — which hurt like hell — while holding her other hand to the exit wound. She looked out the window again.
The SUV had fallen back but was coming around for another pass.
DePresti turned the wheel hard to the right, then turned left into the other vehicle. Their opponents hadn’t anticipated an offensive move.
He caught the SUV accelerating. The taller automobile angled up slightly on its left wheels as DePresti pushed the accelerator all of the way down. The SUV then tipped over, its wheel spinning in the air as the car skidded across the freeway.
DePresti deftly turned left and continued east.
“How are you doing back there?” he asked Parkowski.
“I’m bleeding, but it’s not that bad,” she responded, a lot braver than she felt inside. “I think it went all of the way through, and didn’t hit any bones or anything.”
“Do we need to stop? Go to a hospital or anything?”
She shook her head. “No, keep going. I don’t see any more of them.”
Parkowski poked her head around. The highway was somehow almost empty.
DePresti took a deep breath. “I guess they’re gone.”
Parkowski climbed back into the passenger’s seat, her arms and legs a terrifying sight from the broken glass.
Her real concern was her shoulder.
She used some gauze from the kit and painfully put it on both wounds. Then, she grabbed a windbreaker from DePresti’s backseat and managed to tie it around her armpit. The blood from the entry wound had seemed to stop somewhat, but the exit wound still bled slightly.
There was a roll of paper towels under the seat, which she grabbed and started to clean up the superficial cuts on her arms and legs.
