“I hit one guy dead in the chest,” he says, sounding dazed. “If those freaks catch us now, they’ll skin us alive.”

“They still coming?” I ask, trying in vain to see behind us in the jouncing rearview mirror. All I see is distant lights.

“Oh, yeah. Faster now. There must be ten bikes back there.”

A bolus of fear blasts through me, raising every hair on my skin. As I struggle to coax some more speed from the old truck, a drumroll of lead slams into the tailgate.

“They’re shooting back,” Lincoln says. “That sounded like a goddamn machine gun.”

“What can I do?”

“Can you kill the lights?”

“Sure. It’s staying on the road that’s the problem.”

The trees that lined our escape route to this point have vanished. Now water stretches away from both edges of the road. My margin for error is gone. With a pang of guilt, I release Wilma Deen’s neck and clench both hands on the wheel. If we go off into swamp water with those bikes behind us, we’re going to die, one way or another. Drowning in slime, or getting shot trying to crawl out of it.

Another staccato burst of lead slams into the truck. With a silent prayer, I kill the lights.

“Only two rounds left in the rifle,” Lincoln says. “I’m going to let them get closer, make these count.”

In my mind I see a God’s-eye view of our predicament: a lumbering beast being pursued by hunters on steel horses down a narrow causeway, the hunters rapidly closing the gap—

“Come on, come on,” Lincoln murmurs.

As I brace for his next shot, something slams into my seat back, then cracks against my head. Jerking forward, I risk a look behind me. Two booted feet are flailing around the cab. It’s Snake, kicking wildly from the floor of the truck. Now he’s trying to hook a foot around my head.

“Make him stop!” I yell. “I’m gonna wreck!”

“What?” Lincoln asks, still aiming the rifle through the back windshield.

He doesn’t even know Snake is conscious. While I try to keep the old man’s feet off my head, his boot glances off the seat and connects with the dome light, which flashes on again, illuminating Lincoln as he aims his pistol down at Snake’s thrashing body. I’m not going to stop him this time, but before Lincoln can fire, another fusillade rips out of the dark behind us, and he flies forward with an explosive grunt.

“Lincoln!”

Panic hits me with a force that makes fear seem trivial. Twisting in my seat, I scrabble in vain at the dome light with my right hand, then hammer it with my fist until it breaks. Blessed darkness envelops the cab once more.

Lincoln’s breath is a shallow wheeze in my ear.

“Talk to me, man! Where are you hit?”