In unison, they looked forward. The road remained straight for as far as they could see, but it ended in blackness. Anything could be hiding in the darkness, waiting for an out-of-control car to smash into it.

“The steering wheel won’t move?” Tick asked, knowing the answer anyway.

His dad unsnapped his seatbelt, squirming in his chair to turn around.

“What are you doing?” Tick yelled.

Dad reached over and unbuckled Tick’s belt as well. “Someone’s got to us, kid. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

~

From the backseat, Norbert stared at the two cars in front of him as they gained ground, knowing deep inside that something terrible was happening. He sensed frantic movement in Tick’s car—dark shadows bobbing and jerking around—and saw the calm demeanor of the person sitting in the one following them, barely revealed by the headlights of the car in which Norbert sat. They were almost on the stranger.

“It’s now or never,” Norbert said, then tapped the shoulder of the man driving. “Put the pedal to the metal, pal.”

“Do whatever he says,” the girl said to the driver like she was his mother.

~

Frazier laughed as he saw the man and the boy squirming inside their car, desperate for a way out of this little predicament. He looked down at his controller, trying to find the dial that would make the car ahead go even faster. He finally found it and turned it up just a little, loving every minute of this game.

When he finally glanced back up to the road, he yelped as a car zoomed past him on the left, then swerved to the right to cut him off. Overreacting, Frazier slammed on his brakes and twisted the steering wheel, shooting off the road with a horrible squeal of brakes before slamming into a massive snowbank.

His airbag exploded open, scorching his forearms and catapulting the Chu device into the backseat.

~

Tick felt like a sailor going down with a submarine. The front doors wouldn’t open; some kind of permanent locking mechanism kept them sealed.

“What could possibly be doing this?” Dad yelled, struggling to lean his huge girth over the back of the seat to check the rear doors. From the click of the handle being yanked and released, Tick knew they were locked, too. His dad groaned as he dropped back into the driver’s seat.

The car had inexplicably sped up just a few moments earlier, rocketing them faster and faster toward the unknown. The car remained on a straight path for now—the steep piles of snow on the roadside nudging the wheels back onto the road if they began to stray—but it couldn’t last much longer. Tick knew if they hit a turn, they’d be in a whole heap of trouble.