The Remaining: Trust: A Novella by D. J. Molles

with one hand, held the other out, palm facing them, and he shouted, though he knew they could not hear him. “Stop! Stop!”
    Both occupants just continued to stare.
    Eighty miles an hour, going forward.
    Eyes affixed on Abe, they didn’t see the vehicle in front of them.
    The driver tried to swerve out of the way. Abe watched his hands crank the steering wheel. Smoke flew from the brakes, and the Jeep’s wheels pivoted right, but they slammed into it, taking off the front bumper in an explosion of mechanical parts and bits and pieces of fiberglass.
    Abe flinched away from it, swearing loudly.
    The Jeep canted, spitting blue smoke as its tires tried to stay on the ground, but the mangled front axle sent them into a counterclockwise spin, leaving black streaks of burned rubber behind them. Then the left wheels lost their grip on the ground and the vehicle pitched onto its side with a horrendous crash. The glass seemed to explode out of the vehicle, every window detonating simultaneously. On its side, the vehicle continued to skid for another fifty yards, turning as it did until it was pointing in the opposite direction. It slid into the dried grass of the median and kicked up a cloud of brown dust that enveloped it like the earth was swallowing it whole.
    “Put me down!” Abe ordered.
    The helicopter banked left, swung a wide circle across the interstate and back toward the plume of gray and brown smoke that was settling slowly, revealing the bulk of the blue SUV laying like a felled beast in the median. As they raced back toward the vehicle, Abe could see a side window, all the glass shattered out of it, and it sprouted two arms. Then a pair of legs. Then a head.
    “Got one exiting the vehicle,” the pilot stated.
    “I got him,” was Abe’s only response, though he kept thinking manically, Put me down! Put me down! Put me down!
    The Little Bird lowered within five feet of the ground and Abe already had his lanyard unhooked. He slid off the outboard bench, hitting the ground heavily but coming up quickly with his rifle shouldered.
    Ahead of him, maybe twenty yards or so, the man was still squirming out of the window.
    “Don’t fucking move!” Abe bellowed. “Stay where you are!”
    The man—a middle-age black guy—turned to look at Abe. His eyes met Abe’s and relayed the same look of fear and loathing as when they’d seen the helicopter alongside of them. The man was out of the vehicle window now, but he reached back inside, eyes still on Abe as he closed the gap.
    Abe knew. He fucking knew. “Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Lemme see your hands!”
    His finger left the magazine well. Touched the trigger.
    The man pulled out of the vehicle. He held a rifle. Some sort of AK variant.
    Abe put a double-tap into his chest.
    The AK fell from his grip, and the man seemed to lose all stiffness in his legs. They went to water underneath him, and then he pitched forward, face-planting into the side of the vehicle, still on his knees, hands clutching his belly. He slid forward just a bit and then lay still, ass half in the air. One arm splayed off to his side. Blood poured out of his mouth and onto the dusty side of the vehicle. He was still blinking when Abe reached him, his mouth still moving like a fish out of water.
    Abe didn’t speak to him, because he knew he would get no response. He stared at the man for a fraction of a second, his lips seized down to a bloodless grimace. He just kept thinking, You stupid, stupid fuck! He pivoted as the man’s eyes stopped blinking, their wetness drying over like a glaze. Abe worked his way around to the front of the vehicle, getting low to try to see in through the windshield. It was broken and caved in, and great pieces of it were missing.
    The driver was slouched there, his back against the crumpled windshield.
    He was moving.
    “Hey!” Abe shouted, his finger already on the trigger, expecting a repeat. “Lemme see your hands!”
    The driver held up both hands. Empty.