“No.”
He jams the pistol into the back of my head hard enough to leave a bruise. “I won’t ask again.”
“You’re going to drive way out somewhere and shoot me and dump me in a ditch,” I say. “Might as well shoot me here.”
The pistol doesn’t let up. “One last chance,” he says, and he sounds bored, as if I’m failing to amuse him.
I want to move; in fact, part of my brain is screaming at me to move. It’s not that I’m paralyzed, although finally seeing Ponytail after all these years is terrifying. The fuck? he said, and then blew my family away. I’ve replayed that scene in my head so many nights, my bedsheets twisted and sweaty, my pillow hot as a brick from an oven. It’s like my own personal zombie has finally shown up at the door, grinning and savage, ready to eat me. Maybe it’s because I know he will kill me, but I’m not going to do what he wants me to. He may hit me over the head with his gun and throw me into the trunk, but he’ll have to do that. So I stand facing the trunk of the car and don’t make a move.
With a muttered curse, Donny shoves me to the side, his pistol tracking me. “Your sister’s in here,” he says. “So you need to get in, or I’ll start hurting her. Don’t need a gun for that, but I’ll use it if you force me to.” He reaches for the trunk latch.
“Don’t hurt my sister,” I say.
He lifts the trunk lid to reveal my sister lying on her side, mouth gagged, hands tied together in front of her. Her eyes are open and she stares directly at me.
Donny smirks. “You people live in a different world,” he says, and he reaches for Susannah’s eyes.
A red star ignites in the trunk. Susannah rises up, the star burning in her hands, and she thrusts it into Donny’s face. With a cry he stumbles back, away from the roadside flare, one hand raised to his face and the other bringing the pistol around. Before he can bring the pistol to bear on Susannah or me, I tackle him, and we fall to the concrete, me on top, the pistol knocked away and skittering into the corner of the garage.
Donny’s nose is an angry, raw red and his right cheek is charred and he is screaming and bucking underneath me. His burnt face smells like a hot dog dropped into an open fire. I nearly gag at the stench. Then he pops me in the ear with his fist and I fall off him, then scramble to my feet. He is weeping and cursing, the right side of his face like a bloody flank steak that’s been pressed to a hot grill, but he pulls out a switchblade and staggers toward me. I back into the garage and grab the lid of a recycling can, holding it in front of me like a shield. The switchblade stabs through the thick plastic of the lid, inches from my face, and then Donny withdraws it and stabs again and again frantically, so all I can do is hold up the lid. I try to duck and kick at him, and he swings down, cutting with a white-hot heat across the top of my right arm.
I step back, glancing past Donny at Susannah. She has dropped the flare to the concrete and is sitting up in the trunk, trying to untie the rope around her wrists. Then Donny thrusts the switchblade at my face and I duck just in time, the blade slicing the right side of my head above the temple. First it’s ice-cold, and then the cut burns. Blood flows down the side of my head, threatening to run into my eye.
I crouch and then thrust forward and up with the lid, catching Donny on the chin and shoving him back. It gives me enough time to wipe the blood out of my right eye, but then he bellows and advances again, his switchblade stabbing in the gloom of the garage. The plastic lid has several holes in it. I try to let him stab the lid and then use the lid to wrench the knife away, but he’s too fast, plunging the knife down again and again. I grope behind me on the wall, looking for anything to hit him with or throw at him. My hand seizes on a broom handle.
He swings down hard with the switchblade, slicing straight through the lid and gouging my left hand, which is gripping the lid handle. His switchblade is buried in the lid handle. He angrily shakes it to free the blade, and I let go of the lid. When he flings the lid to the ground, I thrust the straw end of the broom straight into his face, hard, knocking his head back.
With a yell, I run forward, using the broom to help me shove him back and out of the garage. My left hand is slick and doesn’t quite work, so I can only swing the broom with my right hand. I hit him once with it, and then he tears it out of my hand and throws it away. Bleeding in three places, I step back as Donny raises the knife, his burnt face hideous with a rictus grin as he comes at me.
There is a sharp thock and Donny’s head snaps to the side and he collapses, revealing Caesar behind him, a loose brick in his hand. Caesar’s other hand is clutched to his belly, which is clearly bleeding, and his left eye is swollen shut, but he still manages to raise an eyebrow.
“You look terrible,” he says.
Behind him, Susannah finally gets through her knots and tries to climb out of the trunk, half falling to the concrete. Then she runs to me and grabs me in a hug. “I’m sorry,” she babbles, “I’m
