Chapter thirty six
9:29pm.
That was what my watch read when I'd driven for twenty minutes nonstop. The snores from the backseat couldn't keep my mind at a spot.
Honestly, I wasn't exactly sure what to do with Max; giving him a headshot was straightforward and boring. Burying him alive felt so much of a stress to me. Just then, something popped into my mind.
Fire.
Killing him like he'd killed my brother was only fair enough. I didn't mind locking him up in here and setting a second car on fire; anything painful worked for me.
"You're even crazier than I thought," his voice startled me for a second or two, made my heart skip a beat and my grip around the wheel tighten.
From the back seat, he yawned twice and struggled to return to reality. "You really involved Emily."
Looking on the bright side, I enjoyed a convo with my victims before death." Welcome back, Cooper. Or should I say, Max."
He spent some time trying to rise from where he'd laid. After a million groans, he did manage to sit up.
From the rear mirror, I watched him look out the window and try to make out our location. When he didn't have much luck with that, he shut his eyes because of a probable headache and tried to raise a hand to feel his head.
However, having realised both hands were cuffed together, he met my eyes in the rear mirror. " You son of a bitch."
"Mind the language, Coop," I warned and looked back to the road. " I tend to get irritated easily."
"Do I look like I care?" He laughed, seemingly getting quite comfortable upon the seat. "That's something you and that crazy brother of yours have in common."
That was it.
Abruptly, I swerved the car suddenly into a branching street that was more or less as empty as I needed it to be.
He'd smacked his head against the glass consequently, a sight that was oddly pleasing. "Don't you dare bring Noah into this."
"Or what, Kid," he laughed an evil sort of thing. "Here we are alone in a locked car in the middle of an empty street. Do you really believe the person probable to die is me? Or have you forgotten the lesson I gave to you months back on that boxing ring, Jeffery Olen Thompson?"
Suddenly, he surged forward and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. At this point, my heart beat was the only thing I heard, my gasps husky.
Certainly, as much as I hadn't been sure of how to kill Coop, dying with him was not an option. With both our hands in control, the car's motion turned unsteady, moving from one side of the road to another dangerously.
Instinctively, I sent a fist hitting against his jaw, one that sent him jerking sideways.
Soon, he came back at me. The cuffs I'd placed him on came around my neck in one tight loop.
This was bad! I felt myself running out of air slowly. It was entirely difficult trying to stop him from strangling me while keeping the car moving safely.
Round the bend, a large bus approached us with its headlights almost blinding. Could this night get any better?
Cooper's pull around my neck tightened simultaneously, my hands struggled vainly while my brain had totally different plans.
Reflexively, I gave the car one hard turn right before we were about to smash into the oncoming vehicle.
Narrowly, we did escape the crash, and Max's cuffs did leave my neck. However, a new nightmare replaced those.
The car lost its grip on the road and began its flipping journey down the hill beside it.
***
The first sense that came to life was my smell. There was smoke, choking, clinging to my lungs and filling it like a suffocating disease.
It seemed like it came from a distance, like a smouldering piece of junk that left the distasteful gas hovering in the air around me.
Next, I began to feel. Apart from an extreme level of heat, there was pain. Pain that tore through my flesh and into my bones; my head, torso and mostly my ankles.
However, I was alive.
Very slowly, I peeled my eyes open to confirm the thought. Blurry images filled my sight. Firstly, of the moon, and then the sky as a whole.
For a while, I waited for the blur to come to an end and my eyes to adapt to seeing once again.
But, when that didn't happen, I realised the blur wasn't because of my eyes. Smoke had filled the air.
I didn't wait for anything else before struggling up from the ground. I was on grass; dry, sparse grass.
Sitting up was too much of a job with the dire weakness I was feeling. Consequently, I stopped trying and only propped myself upon my elbow to study around me.
Honestly, I was having a difficult time remembering what had really happened; but when I looked up to find the road on the top of the uneven hill, it all came flooding right in.
The first thought that popped in that moment was…Max!
From nowhere, strength filled my body slowly and I'd begun to move. I rose to sit, taking my eyes anxiously around me for any sign of him or the car.
My heart raced, fears rushed, my body shivered.
Little flames were scattered on several metal junks that surrounded the area. Car junks.
Blood flowed down my face from a mar on my head; but, as much as it hurt, I needed to know Cooper's bearing.
At my south wing, I did find the car rolled upside down upon a clearing. Several dents ruined its body permanently, causing me to curse the day I bought that car. Why would anything cost as much as it did when it wasn't eternal?
Little parts of it were on fire; yet Cooper was nowhere to be found.
But then, a seemingly weak sound reached my ear. It sounded like I was being called unto, like an urgent, distressed voice asking for…
"Help me," there it went again screaming out to me. I stared towards the direction it came from; only then did I finally find Max.