“I know.” My foot presses harder on the gas. I tell myself this is just a coincidence, but there’s no way I can talk my brain into believing that.

“It’s gaining on us,” Sarah says. She’s completely twisted around in the seat, her hands gripping the headrest.

I glance down at my speedometer. I’m already going sixty in a thirty, but I speed up even more.

“SHIT!” Sarah shouts, and I look in my rearview mirror again just in time to see the front bumper of the car disappear under my tailgate.

The car gives me a fairly light love tap—probably not enough to cause any damage but enough for me to feel it, and to rattle me pretty hard. It lets up a little, but it’s still trailing me by only a few feet. Instinctively, I speed up. The car does the same.

“Get back under your seat belt,” I yell at Sarah, who’s wiggled out of it to keep her eyes locked on the car.

“What do we do?” she asks.

My mind races. I can’t slow down. Luckily, the street we’re on is fairly straight, but there’s a curve coming up I’ll never be able to take at this speed.

“I don’t know,” I mutter. I’m pushing ninety and rising, but the car’s not letting up. I can barely make out someone behind the wheel—just a big black blob vaguely in the shape of a human. I wonder for a second if it’s a Mog or an FBI agent or some new type of alien we didn’t even know existed, because that’s a very real possibility at this point.

“What do they want?” I ask.

“Obviously to murder us,” Sarah shouts. She grips her seat.

We’re approaching the curve in the road when the car suddenly zips into the oncoming traffic lane and revs up beside me until we’re speeding along parallel to one another. The tinting on the car windows make it impossible to see anything but the reflection of the outside world—like the car is some sort of automated machine out for blood without an actual driver inside.

Sarah gasps. “Crap! Is it going to—”

I see what she’s guessing at a split second before it happens. I slam on my brakes. Sarah screams. The black car whips into my lane, missing the hood of my truck by what looks like inches. I can feel my antilock brakes pumping beneath my foot as the bed of my truck starts to slide to the right.

“HOLD ON!” I shout, bracing myself with one hand on the wheel and one gripping Sarah’s arm—as if I’m going to be able to hold us in place if we start to roll. I can feel the truck start to fall over.