Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

Then I hit the ground-hard. The impact made my bones ache. Glass and wood rained down on top of me. Bullets whispered by overhead.

After the dark hall, the sunlight was blinding. The air was cool and fresh and filled my gasping lungs. I felt an unreasoning surge of hope and crazy joy. I was out-out of the prison-out in the open air!

But there was no time to think about that. Already I was rolling away from the window, fighting to lift myself to one knee. Already I heard more of those thunderous footsteps inside the building behind me, the prison I’d just broken out of. I heard more shouts: “Don’t let him get away! Let’s go-go!”

Dazed and stupid with panic, I knelt on the hard earth and looked around. I was in a broad compound of some sort. I saw gray barrack-style buildings. A fence with barbed wire on top. Guard towers rising against the forest behind them. Inside the towers: men with guns.

Somewhere, an alarm bell started ringing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw red lights begin to whirl and flash. I heard those guards shouting: “Get him!” Those thundering footsteps. The roar of an engine…

An engine. Where? My eyes wide with fear, I turned toward that roar. I saw a big old pickup truck bouncing over the rough ground near me. I caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel. He seemed oblivious to the emergency unfolding around him. The alarm and shouts and whirling lights hadn’t reached him yet, hadn’t registered on his brain. He was still relaxed, steering the truck with one hand, leaning the other arm on the frame of the open window. The truck was heading toward a gate in the fence, the exit of the compound. The guards there were swinging the gate open to let him out. They were just now pausing, just now trying to figure out what all the noise and fuss were about.

All this I took in in a single second. In the next second, I had to act-had to act without even thinking.

I ran at the truck. Just as it passed me, I leapt at the window.

I caught hold of the window frame. The driver-a square-jawed white guy in his forties, maybe-turned to me in stunned surprise, his jaw dropping, his mouth a wide O.

There was no running board, nothing to rest my feet on. There was nothing I could do now but grip the frame of the open window and try to pull myself inside. With all the wild force of my terror, I yanked myself halfway through the window. I heard the driver curse. He swung the wheel. I felt the truck swerve hard, lifting up on one side. I clawed my way over him, into the cab.

The truck swerved again. The driver cursed again as I tumbled in on him. He tried to punch at me, but I was right on top of him. We were too bunched up together for him to get any force into the blow. His fist beat weakly at my shoulder. I wouldn’t have felt it at all except for the fact that I was already bruised and burned and beaten, already in so much pain.

But that didn’t stop me. I was in the truck now, sliding over the driver, falling into the passenger seat.

I caught a quick glimpse of the scene racing by outside the window. I saw the guards with their Kalashnikovs come storming out of the prison barracks in which I’d been held. They were all shouting at one another. One of them was pointing here and there, giving orders to take up positions. Another one was lifting his rifle, training it on the truck. But he couldn’t get a shot at me, not without killing the driver.

But the driver… he had a gun of his own. It was a sidearm, a pistol, in a holster on his belt. He was driving with his left hand now, reaching for the gun with his right, unsnapping the flap of the holster to get at it.

He hadn’t taken his foot off the gas. He kept the truck going full speed. He wrenched the wheel, trying to keep me off balance while he drew the gun.

It worked. Balled up on the seat next to him, I was thrown hard against the dashboard, then thrown back against the seat. I reached out my hand to brace myself against the dash, to steady myself. The driver had his holster open now. His hand closed around the handle of his gun. He started to draw it out.

I pulled my knees tight into my chest, then shot both legs out in front of me. I landed a powerful double kick to the side of the driver’s head.

I heard him grunt above the engine’s roar as the double blow struck him. The truck swerved again, lifting up so high on one side this time that I thought for sure it would turn over. The driver’s gun hand flew up in the air.

The pistol flew out of his grip, bouncing off the back of the cab, sailing back past me to drop onto the cab floor.

Quickly, I squirmed my body around, going after the gun. I reached down. I felt it. I grabbed it.

I was thrown against the dashboard again as the truck lurched suddenly to a stop. I struggled to sit up while the driver sat still behind the wheel, shaking his head, dazed.

I grabbed his shirt collar. I put the gun against his temple.

“Get out!” I shouted.

The truck had now pulled up next to one of the barracks at the far edge of the compound-far, I mean, from the prison barracks where I’d started out. Out the window, I could see the armed guards rushing across the compound toward us. The driver looked at me sideways, angry, confused.

“Get out now!” I shouted, pushing the gun up hard against his head.

That reached him. Frightened, he fumbled for the handle of the door. The guards outside saw the door opening and pulled up short. They lifted their AKs.

As soon as the door cracked open, I gave the driver a hard shove. He was big, but he was still dazed from the kick to the head. He went tumbling out the door like a side of beef and dropped hard onto the ground. Even as he was falling, I was sliding into his place behind the wheel.

With the driver out of the way, the guards outside had a clear shot at me. I saw them lifting their rifles again, pointing them at the open door of the truck.

But now I had the steering wheel in my hands. I had the gas pedal under my foot. There was no time to close the door. I just hit the gas.

The truck jolted forward. The door swung wide, hit its limit, and bounced back, slamming shut. At the same moment, the guards outside opened fire. I heard the deadly sputter of their guns above the engine’s roar. I heard the bullets ripping into the steel of the truck. I couldn’t see where they hit. I didn’t plan to wait around and find out.

I floored the pedal. I wrenched the wheel. The scenery outside-the fence, the towers, the barracks, the guards-it all went into a swirling blur as the truck turned and turned. I caught sight of the compound gates, the guards standing beside them. I pulled the wheel back over. Dust flew up on every side of me as the truck righted itself and shot forward.

A cloud of dust rolled up over the windshield. I peered through it desperately, trying to see the way. Dimly, the world outside took shape again. There were the gates, there were the gate guards. Only seconds had passed since I’d broken out of the barracks. The two guards had been swinging the gates open to let the truck out. The gates were still open-or half-open, anyway. As I drove the truck toward them, I saw the two guards frantically trying to push them shut again.

The engine roared and I roared, my eyes peering through the dust, pinned to the closing gates. As the truck sped toward him, one of the guards let his gate go. He left it half-open and turned to level his machine gun at me.

The next moment, a jagged bullet hole appeared in the windshield, a spiderweb network of cracks instantly stretching out on every side of it. I heard the bullet sing past my ear. I heard it rip into the back of the cab just behind my head.

Panicked, I wrenched the wheel again, but before the truck could get out of the line of fire, I guess another bullet must’ve struck because now the windshield shattered completely.