The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

right, then the first left with everyone inside tilting to counter the vehicle’s sway.

Kershaw gripped the handle above the door with his left hand and kept the AR in his right and asked Rison, “How’s it feel?”

“Heavy. We should have tested it with a full bed.”

He took another right, another left, and continued that pattern to stair-step away from their last known position.

Bruder looked through Kershaw’s window and watched for any Romanians roaring down Spruce, which was now four blocks to the east, then out his own window when Rison came to an intersection and turned left.

The northbound road out there didn’t go all the way to the highway, so anyone following them would have to start from the same entry point, or close to it.

Rison said, “Keep going or find a place to hole up?”

“Keep going until we can’t,” Bruder said.

Connelly said, “You think they’re calling everybody in? If the checkpoints get sucked in to trap us, we can loop around and get the hell out of here.”

Bruder shook his head.

“Not if they’re smart. They know where we are now, still inside their bubble. It’s just a matter of time before they see us again. How do we get to Nora’s from here?”

“Uhh…”

“Don’t bullshit.”

“I’m not, I’m trying to figure it out!”

Connelly looked around.

“She’s southwest of here, I know that…Turn left there, right there, and keep going south, I think…yeah, this road gets us out of the neighborhoods.”

Bruder said, “Does it intersect with anything coming from the north-south highway?”

He was thinking about Romanians coming from that direction and cutting them off.

“No, uh…No. Once we get out of these blocks, there’s nothing that connects to the highways. It’s all just the crazy farm road loops.”

“Is this the only road that gets us out of downtown?”

Connelly was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t know, man. Shit. Sorry.”

Bruder was also thinking about their back trail. If this was the only road out of the neighborhoods, the Romanians would know for sure they’d used it.

Everyone else in the truck was thinking the same thing.

Rison got onto the straightway and pushed the truck past one hundred miles an hour. A woman standing in her driveway holding a folded newspaper watched them blow past with her mouth hanging open.

“At least one eyewitness,” Kershaw said.

They cleared the residential blocks and got into farmland, which still had some of the larger, newer houses and of course the farm spreads, and Bruder saw one of the loops coming in from the west.

Rison jammed the brakes and the truck responded with rubber squawking on the asphalt.

“What are you doing?” Bruder said, pushing against the back of Connelly’s seat.

“Leaving some false footprints.”

Rison glanced at his side mirror and grinned, then stomped the gas again and whipped past the road on the right.

Bruder stuck his head out the window and saw the black marks in the road behind them, looking like they’d braked in order to make the turn.

Rison shrugged at him in the rear-view.

“Might help, can’t hurt.”

He was right, so Bruder just nodded and watched the road.

No other vehicles in front or behind.

The Romanians were either very slow to respond after the single shot they’d taken, or they knew there wasn’t any reason to hurry.

They knew the white truck was in the southwest quadrant somewhere, and it wasn’t getting out without somehow getting back onto the west- or southbound highways.

So why hurry?

Then Rison said, “Ah, fuck me.”

They all looked through the windshield and spotted the vehicle coming at them.

The vehicle was still a mile away, but there were no other intersecting roads within view.

No turnoffs or two-tracks, nothing except the flat fields stretching off to the left and right.

“Another farmer?” Connelly said.

Rison shook his head.

“They’re coming on fast. And look, they’re straddling the centerline.”

“Must have gotten a call from town,” Kershaw said.

He moved the bundled camouflage parka away from his feet so he could turn sideways and get ready to lean out the window with the AR.

“Wait,” Bruder said.

There wasn’t a lot of leg room in the back row, but he managed to slump down in the corner between the seat and door, below his open window, angled so he was looking past Rison and out the driver’s door.

“You do the same,” he told Kershaw.

Kershaw did, and ended up looking past Connelly and out the front passenger window.

Bruder set the AR on his knees and lifted them so the barrel followed his line of sight.

“Half a mile,” Rison said. “It’s a pickup truck, lifted for off-road.”

He glanced into the back seat and looked straight down Bruder’s rifle.

“Shit!”

“Just keep your chin tucked in,” Bruder said.

Then, to Kershaw: “You good?”

Kershaw peered through the holographic sight, past Connelly and out his window.

“As long as Connelly doesn’t stick his tongue out.”

“I don’t like this one bit,” Connelly said.

Bruder said, “If either one of you has to move, keep it close to your body.”

Connelly moved his pistol to his left hand and set it in his lap.

“What’s the point of hiding? They have to know this is the right truck.”

“They’re looking for four guys,” Bruder said. “Anything that causes hesitation, or doubt—even for a few seconds—is good for us.”

Rison said, “Quarter mile. Looks like two guys in the cab. They’re waving. I can stop now, we all jump out and put a magazine into the cab. Problem solved.”

Bruder sat up long enough to take a look.

“Are you sure they’re even Romanians?”

Rison paused.

“No.”

“Then we do it this way until we know.”

He grabbed the camouflage poncho and spread it over himself and Kershaw like a tarp. He wedged himself back into the corner and adjusted the poncho, so the only gap was at the end of their rifles.

He told Rison, “Go around them if you can.”

“I can’t. They’re taking up the whole road.”

“Anybody coming behind?”

“Nothing so far.”

“Then stop. Whatever this is, let’s get it over with.”

Bruder’s view through the slit was of Rison, the window, and blue sky beyond, so it was hard to tell exactly how fast they were going.

But he felt the truck