She whips it around wildly. The stream hits Fat Dude's eyes, and he howls, swatting at the stream like somehow that'll help. A blade swishes through air and she blasts Gray Pubes, too. Hot Dog makes a play, grabbing her wrist with his hand –

A baby deer on wobbly legs runs out into the middle of the road and stops there, standing in the darkness, framed by the bright circle of a motorcycle headlight. Hot Dog's too busy kissing some old tattooed chick with a volcanic archipelago of cold sores around her mouth to see, and by the time he extracts his tongue from her snaggletoothed maw, it's too late. He turns the bike, just missing the deer's little white flicking tail. Tire catches gravel. The bike skids, then flips. Hot Dog isn't wearing a helmet. Face meets road. Gravel and asphalt form a belt sander. It takes half his face off like it wasn't more than ground beef. Eye tumbles from shattered socket. Rag-doll body folds end over end, his spine bowing, then snapping. The chick flies overhead like some confused superhero, her arms pinwheeling. She cries out. The baby deer runs into the brush.

– and Miriam sidesteps, thrusts the pepper spray into his mouth, and fills his throat with the stuff. It only takes two seconds before he falls backward, throwing up onto the bar's cold concrete floor, face red, eyes like blisters, snot and sweat in a steady stream.

Miriam pulls Ashley up.

"We have to run," she says.

Fat Dude claws at his eyes with a broken hand.

Ashley grabs the other half of the broken pool cue and smashes it over Fat Dude's head. Miriam shoves him.

"I said, run!"

Ashley bolts, laughing.

On the way out, Miriam hurls a twenty dollar origami boulder behind the bar, where Paleface is hiding. Her shoulders hit the door, knocking it open. The outside air hits her, along with the smell of wet asphalt and spilled beer. It's almost dizzying. She damn near trips on a hunk of broken parking lot. The piss-yellow street lights are otherworldly. The distant sound of cars on the highway fills her head. She feels lost. Where to go? Where to run?

Ashley's hand finds the small of her back.

"This way," he says.

She follows. He fumbles in his pocket for a set of keys, and before Miriam knows it, he's popping the driver's side door of a white late-1980s Ford Mustang.

"Get in!" he yells.

Like the cockroach from Del Amico's motel room, she does as told.

The car's interior is dark, cluttered, dingy. Vinyl is torn in places. Coffee cups and plastic soda bottles form a sticky trash pile at her feet. A pair of playing card deodorizers dangle from the mirror, but they've long lost their ability to conceal the cigarettes-and-feet funk.

Ashley twists the key in the ignition, but the engine gutters. It turns over again and again – guh-guh-guh-guh, a stuttering asthmatic – but never starts.