David Wisehart: Blood Alley

Keys.

Drive.

Now!

Claire moved over into the driver’s seat. Stabbed the key into the ignition. Turned it.

The engine cranked.

Wouldn’t start.

Trevor and Dakota tried to outrun the thresher. It gained on them. The blades spun only inches away. Trevor pulled Dakota to one side. They barely escaped the blades, as the tractor roared past them.

The thresher came straight for the Hummer. Close enough now for Claire to see the driver.

Ethan?

Claire tried again to start the engine.

Ethan and the thresher were thirty feet away—twenty feet—

The Hummer started up. Claire stepped on the accelerator. The engine revved, but the car stayed in place.

What?

She studied the controls.

I’m doing it wrong.

The thresher was ten feet away, and closing.

The car was in park.

Claire shifted into reverse.

The Hummer backed up.

The thresher smashed into the front end.

Claire wasn’t wearing her seat belt. The sudden jolt threw her out of her seat. She bumped her head on something hard and landed sprawled on the passenger seat.

The Hummer spun from the impact.

Outside, Trevor yelled, “Claire!”

The car stopped spinning.

Claire was dazed but shook it off. She saw the thresher turning, with Ethan in the driver’s seat.

Not Ethan, she realized. The Highwayman.

Claire climbed back into the driver’s seat. Buckled up.

I have to stop him.

The thresher turned back and aimed not at the Hummer this time, but at Trevor and Dakota.

Claire was too far away. She couldn’t help them. She pressed down on the horn and screamed a warning. “Trevor!”

Trevor saw the thresher coming for him. Ethan had smashed it into the corner of the Hummer, but he didn’t seem to care about the car anymore. Now Ethan— The Highwayman —was coming for Trevor and Dakota.

He wants us dead.

If they could get to the car, they could escape. The thresher was deadly, but it wasn’t fast. Faster than a man on two feet, but slower than the car.

But they couldn’t get to the car without running past the thresher.

Too dangerous.

And the barn was no protection. The thresher had smashed right through the walls.

Have to get to the car.

They’d have to run another way—the back way—

Around the house.

He stopped Dakota. “No, this way!”

They ran behind the farmhouse, with the thresher in pursuit.

Circling the house, Trevor saw an old chicken coop.

They raced past it.

The thresher smashed through the chicken coop.

Wood and old feathers went flying.

A piece of wood hit Trevor in the leg and almost tripped him up, but he caught himself and kept running.

Behind him Dakota yelled, “Trevor!”

He glanced back.

Dakota was on the ground.

The back of her head was bleeding. She’d been hit by debris.

The thresher was going to run Dakota over.

It was three feet away from her—

Two feet—

Trevor wasn’t close enough to reach her in time.

Nothing he could do but watch.

Dakota was sprawled on the ground. Something had hit her in the back of her head and knocked her down. She heard a mechanical roar in her ears, growing louder.

She turned and saw the thresher. It loomed like a giant above her. Coming closer. Without mercy. Steel blades spinning inches away.

Dakota rolled to one side.

The thresher blades sliced past her.

One of the blades caught the sleeve of her sweater.

Chewing it up.

The sweater pulled Dakota back toward the sharp cutting edges.

She heard Trevor shout, “ No! ”

Dakota twisted.

Got her arm out of the sleeve.

Wriggled out of the sweater as the thresher ate it.

She fell free of the thresher blades.

The deadly machine moved on, aiming now for Trevor.

“Ethan, stop!” she screamed, getting back on her feet. “What are you doing? ”

Dakota saw Trevor run for the back door of the farmhouse. He would be safe inside. He tried the handle, but the door didn’t open.

Locked , she realized.

With his elbow Trevor shattered the window, then unlocked the door from the inside.

The thresher bore down on him.

Hurry, Trevor!

He opened the door.

Ran inside.

Slammed the door shut behind him.

Dakota heard another engine behind her.

It was the Hummer, driven by—

Claire?

The Hummer stopped next to Dakota.

Claire said, “Get in!”

Trevor paused inside the farmhouse. He’d stepped into some kind of pantry behind the kitchen.

Safe.

The noise of the thresher grew louder.

He looked back through the busted window.

The harvester-thresher charged right at him.

It was going to ram the building—

Oh, shit.

Trevor backed away from the door.

The thresher burst through, obliterated the back wall, and tore into the house. Old wood splintered away.

Trevor turned and ran.

He ran into the kitchen.

Another wall exploded behind him.

The thresher emerged from the wreckage.

It couldn’t be stopped.

Trevor ran from the kitchen into the living room.

The thresher came after him.

Chewing up the floorboards.

Trevor ran for the front door, his feet pounding on the old ratty rug.

The thresher caught the rug.

Pulled it into the blades.

The rug slipped under Trevor’s feet.

He fell onto it.

The rug dragged him toward the spinning blades.

He rolled away.

The floor trembled beneath him.

Above him, he saw a flood of blood-red moonlight as the sky opened up.

The roof was caving in.

The house was collapsing all around him.

Trevor scrambled to his feet

He ran for the front of the house, the thresher at his heels.

No time to open the door.

He aimed for the window.

And dove through the glass.

Claire drove around the side of the house, with Dakota in the back seat. Trevor was somewhere inside the house. The thresher machine had smashed right into it. The house quaked with a terrible crashing noise that kept on going.

“Claire, let me drive,” Dakota said.

“I got this.”

She was getting the hang of it. Once the car was in the right gear, it really wasn’t that hard. You just pushed down on the gas pedal and turned the steering wheel and tried really, really hard not to hit anything.

Don’t screw this up.

The walls of the old farmhouse were caving in.

Claire rounded the corner to the front of house. She saw Trevor dive through a window pane as the house imploded behind him.

He landed on the porch, saw Claire in the Hummer, and ran for her.

The thresher emerged from the ruins of the house like an angry metal god.

It chased Trevor over the open ground, gaining on him.

Claire honked a warning. “Trevor!”

She drove straight for him.

Trevor ran straight for the car.

She was going to hit Trevor.

Out of the way!

The spinning thresher blades were inches behind him.

Trevor jumped up onto the hood of the Hummer.

Rolled over the roof.

The Hummer and thresher collided.

Claire felt herself thrown forward as her face hit the airbag.

Trevor rolled over the hood of the Hummer and felt the collision under him. He grabbed the sunroof and held on like a rodeo rider. Metal bucked beneath him.

He saw Ethan launched forward through the shattering windshield of the thresher and into the spinning blades.

The boy’s body was sliced apart.