Birdie spots the red Jeep in the dusky light. The sight of it is enough to steel her for the remaining steps that stand between her and freedom. She puts more weight on her legs with each step, peeling herself from Vanessa when they reach the vehicle. Vanessa reluctantly lets her go and Birdie makes it to the passenger side door where she loses her footing, falling to the dirt, the air sucked from her lungs by the impact.
“Fuck!” she screams. She draws the word out, a primal noise and a primal word. Dust billows in a cloud around her and she draws a sharp breath, the red dirt polluting her lungs. She sees stars dance at the periphery of her vision. The pain is too overwhelming. She’s going to pass out.
“Get up!” Vanessa is suddenly at her side, pulling at her good arm, forcing her to her feet. Birdie allows this, nearly limp against her benevolent captor’s grip. Her head lolls forward and she can smell the infection—the sweet and rotten scent of dried blood covering her bandages—and it’s enough to bring her back for just long enough to help Vanessa’s efforts to get her into the passenger seat of the Jeep.
Birdie lets her head collapse against the headrest. The sound of the door shutting is distant. Her eyes flutter open and she sees a Vanessa-shaped shadow jog to the driver’s side of the Jeep. She throws the door open and the interior light comes on, momentarily blinding. Too bright, she thinks. She squeezes her eyes as tightly shut as she can and sees the veins of her eyelids glowing like tiny red rivers on a map.
Vanessa jumps in the Jeep and keys the ignition, killing the cabin lights. Birdie is grateful for this small mercy. The pain she felt earlier seems distant now. Her shoulder like a lighthouse far away in the fog, signaling the danger of landfall to a boat that’s lost its sail. She thinks she might capsize. And the thought isn’t at all terrifying.
The Jeep is a cocoon and she settles in at the sound of the engine turning over. Suddenly, she’s reminded of road trips that she took with her cousins as a child. Never with her own parents, always her aunt and uncle. Her own household hadn’t been stable enough for anything as mundane as a road trip. She was grateful for those summers. She can smell the beach—Padre Island, Texas—but when she opens her eyes, she only sees the desert landscape of the panhandle of Oklahoma.
Vanessa turns them around in the makeshift driveway area in front of the main house. She guns the engine, taking off too quickly, and Birdie rocks into the door. She groans at the impact but it’s dull compared to the fall she took only a few moments before. The thought that the pain is lessening troubles her.
I’m going into shock, she thinks.
The thought covers her like a wool blanket. It suffocates her. Her breathing quickens. And just up the long gravel drive, maybe two hundred yards from the house and still a football field from the road, Vanessa stops the car.
“Birdie,” she says as she kills the engine. The hum dies and leaves an aching silence between them. Birdie forces her eyes to focus on Vanessa. The quiet of the isolated car surrounds them, presses in on them. It makes Vanessa’s voice seem to take up physical space.
“What?” Birdie asks, a knot of dread twisting itself and tightening into a noose in her stomach. Something is wrong.
“You and I both know you don’t want this baby,” Vanessa says. “I’ve known it for a long time. You never have. You didn’t come here to bear Tom’s children.”
Birdie stirs, shifting in her seat.
“And I know that the baby’s not coming yet,” Vanessa says.
Birdie’s blood chills in her veins. And like summoning something from another realm, Birdie’s water breaks.
“Oh, God,” Birdie murmurs. The pain in her shoulder is almost enough to distract her from the fact that she’s going into labor now. For real. “My water just broke.”
Vanessa’s eyes widen as fluid runs down Birdie’s legs, the seat soaked and the floorboard collecting a small pool that glistens in the moonlight.
“You can have the baby here,” Vanessa says, her tone convincing.
Birdie can’t deny that throughout her entire pregnancy she never felt a mothering instinct. Her greatest fear was that she wouldn’t love this child. She hadn’t wanted it. It had been an accident on her part. Tom was elated, but Birdie was concerned. Not for the child’s health, but for the fact that she felt nothing for it.
But as Vanessa speaks the words—as her voice fills the Jeep like a threat—Birdie knows that this child can’t be born here.
“I’ll lay the backseat down,” Vanessa says. She throws the door open and begins rearranging the layout of the car’s seating.
Birdie seizes the opportunity. She summons whatever supernatural energy she believes might be out there and she grabs the door handle.
And then she stumbles into the woods.
VANESSA
Vanessa hears the seatback click, releasing the mechanism that holds it upright. She leans it back, creating a makeshift bed for Birdie. The Jeep dings with the keys still in the ignition and the front and rear driver’s side doors open. The sun has completely set, leaving only the faintest lingering hint of twilight on the horizon. The dome light illuminates the interior of the car but makes it impossible to see beyond the windows or the windshield.
Vanessa walks around to the passenger side of the car and sees that the door is open. But when she steps up, the seat is empty. Birdie is gone. She hears the rustle of leaves and
