“Ohhhhh god…,” she moaned.
“Diesel?” Grimm whispered. “Deez, love, listen, we’re in deep, we need ya.”
The girl blinked rapidly, flinched as another bullet smashed out what was left of the back window. With a groan, she twisted in her seat, squinted through the dark to the posse on their tail. Glancing at Grimm, she coughed, the black paintstick on her lips spattered with red.
“You a-always take me…to the best parties,” she whispered.
“What are mates for, eh?” the boy grinned.
“Who’s…the k-kid?” she asked, glancing at their driver.
“Um, excuse me?” Lemon demanded.
“She’s Robin Hood,” Grimm said. “Trust me.”
Lemon had no idea who or what a Robin Hood was, but her impending high-speed murder just seemed more of an issue right now. The lead truck was close enough that Lemon could see the driver clearly through the gloom. He didn’t look more than twenty, a gas mask over his mouth, his Brotherhood cassock billowing in the wind. A pack of Disciples with bulky shotguns and big greasepaint Xs over their faces were riding in the flatbed, lifting their weapons to take aim at Lemon’s tires.
Diesel took a deep breath, holding out her bloody right hand.
Lemon couldn’t be sure through the dust and dark, the sting of the sweat in her eyes. But as the girl’s fingers curled into claws, the road in front of the Brotherhood truck…ripped. A ragged hole opened up: a shimmering, glowing, nothing-colored tear in the asphalt. The girl held out her left hand, opening up another tear about five meters in the sky above the posse. And as Lemon watched, absolutely gobsmacked, the enemy truck plummeted into the first tear, and fell right out of the other.
The vehicle tumbled from the sky, landing right on top of another truck full of bullyboys. Metal shredded, both trucks crashed and flipped, the night alight as the pair exploded in a ball of orange flame. The other Brotherhood vehicles slewed wildly over the road, motorbikes spilling, riders and gunners eating their fill of asphalt at a hundred kilometers an hour.
Lemon pawed at her eyes, adjusted the mirror.
“What…the…HELLS?”
Diesel ignored her, gritted teeth smeared in red, turning to the next closest truck. Lemon saw Brother Dubya roaring warning, the posse spreading out across the road. Again the girl twisted her right hand, a glowing, colorless tear opening up in the ground in front of a pursuing 4x4 as another opened in the sky.
The 4x4 driver tried to swerve, his front tire clipping the edge of the rift and beginning to fall inside. But at the same moment, Diesel coughed a mouthful of blood, closing her eyes as the tears snapped shut. The 4x4 was sliced clean in two, as if by the sharpest blade, one half sent flipping and spilling across the road, the other half dropping out of the closing tear in the sky. It collided with another motorcycle rider, smudged him across the broken highway in a halo of flame.
The girl gasped, one hand pressed to the bleeding wound in her chest.
“C-can’t…” She shook her head. “Can’t…”
“You done good, Deez,” Grimm declared. “Rest up, I got this.”
Diesel sagged in her seat as the boy unloaded with the assault rifle. A spray of gunfire peppered the truck in response, Lemon shrieked and ducked low. The truck bounced hard as they hit the curb, careening down an embankment and into a stretch of rocky badlands. The Brotherhood were right on their tail.
A Disciple made a desperate leap across the gap between his cycle and the truck. A second Disciple followed, both landing safely on the tray. Grimm took out the first before his rifle ran dry. The second made it to the broken rear window, dove through and made a snatch for Lemon’s throat. His fingers closed about her neck, snapping her choker, her five-leafed clover glittering as it fell. Lemon planted an elbow in his face before Grimm grabbed his neck, Diesel hauled him back. The trio fell to brawling in the backseat, cursing and kicking right behind her head.
Lemon could hardly see for the dirt and grit flying in through the shattered windows. The truck careened sideways as a 4x4 crashed into them, a second truck slamming into their right, trying to drive her into the spurs of jagged badlands stone. Lemon squinted through the dark and dirt, saw Brother Dubya in the passenger seat, features painted with his big greasepaint skull, a smoking cigar at his lips.
The big man looked across at her and winked. And despite the chaos, Lemon took her hand off the wheel long enough to give him a good look at her middle finger.
Grimm was still wrestling in the backseat. Diesel took an elbow to the jaw, collapsed into the footwell, bleeding and gasping. The Disciple climbed atop Grimm’s chest, drawing out a pistol and thumbing off the safety when a long barb of cruel bone punched clean through his neck.
Blood sprayed as Hunter rose up from the passenger seat, her chest and belly dripping. Climbing into the back, the BioMaas agent stabbed again and again and again, finally opening the door and kicking the well-ventilated corpse out of the truck. Grimm looked at her with wide eyes, gasping for breath. Hunter reached into her bloodied cloak with bloodied hands, slipped her goggles down over Lemon’s eyes. Pale as a ghost, spattered in red, and, somehow, smiling.
“Hunter?”
The woman tore the throat of her outfit open, her remaining bees crawling from the honeycomb skin beneath. Rolling down the window, one hand to her bleeding chest, she looked at Lemon in the mirror.
“They will c-come for her,” she whispered, blood on her lips. “Fear n-nothing. A Hunter…n-never misses our mark.”
“Hey, wait…you don’t…”
“Lemonfresh is important,” the woman replied. “She is needed.”
“Hunter, don’t!”
The agent leapt out through the night, into the cabin of the 4x4. Her bees swarmed, the men inside the cabin screaming. Hunter hacked and slashed with her bone barb, the windows painted with dark sluices of blood. The truck veered away, skidded back into the path of another vehicle behind. The autos collided with an almighty crash, the 4x4 tumbling onto its side and bursting into flame.
Dubya’s truck collided with Lemon’s again, the girl shrieking as she fought the wheel. Grimm snatched up the murdered Disciple’s pistol, started blasting out of the side window. Dubya’s truck veered away, then swung back for another thundering collision, driving them toward a spur of desert rock. Lemon screamed, tossed about like a ragdoll. But though she hadn’t necessarily stolen the best truck for a chase scene, she had stolen the biggest. She jammed the wheel back hard, and Dubya’s truck was forced sideways, front tires clipping the spur, tilting up onto two wheels and finally flipping like a top.
Tearing metal. Shattering glass. Lemon wrestled the truck back under control, glanced into the rearview mirror and watched Dubya’s truck tumble end over end before crashing to a halt.