Pitch

CHAPTER TWELVE

Everything was black.

That, more than anything else, brought on the panic. It rolled over me in waves until it sucked me under and I was drowning in it. My mind flashed through the last five seconds of memory over and over again, like a film reel stuck on repeat.

Braking. Spinning. Screaming. Flying.

Braking. Spinning. Screaming. Flying.

Braking. Spinning. Screaming. Flying.

Above me I heard voices. The words were broken up. My ears were buzzing. I tried to concentrate on what was being said. I needed something, anything to distract me from the darkness.

“…out of nowhere. Couldn’t… in time.”

“Is… dead? Oh God, all… blood.”

“…move her? Is it okay… move her?”

“I… know. I DON’T KNOW!”

“Stop yelling.” The words come out of my mouth sluggishly, like I was trying to speak through molasses. I heard a sharp intake of breath. A muffled sob.

“Lola, you’re alive.” Travis.

“Everything is going to be okay, baby. You hear me? Everything will be fine. Can you… Can you move anything? Your fingers? Your toes?” Dad.

Of course I could move my fingers. I could move everything. Nothing hurt. There was no pain. But I couldn’t see. Why couldn’t I see?

“Travis, look! She’s moving her fingers. She’s moving her fingers!”

You’d think I just won a gold medal at the Olympics. I sat up and reached out, my awesome fingers stretching towards what I could hear but not see. Someone locked their hand with mine. Travis. I could tell that girly grip anywhere.

“I went through the windshield and I’m alive,” I said, my voice oddly detached, as if it belonged to someone else. I went through a windshield and I’m alive. That was strange. Didn’t people die when they went through windshields? Maybe not. Maybe they just went blind.

“You’re alive,” said Travis. He squeezed my fingers. In the background I heard quiet weeping. Dad. Still not very good in crisis situations.

“Travis,” I whispered. “I can’t see. Why can’t I see?”

“Lola, your eyes are closed.”

Oh. That made sense. The rush of color was nearly overwhelming when I forced my eyelids apart. I cringed away from it, away from the scrap of metal that vaguely resembled a car, away from the glass that covered everything, away from the blood that covered the glass. Instead I looked down at myself, examining the cuts that sliced through my flesh like I had been wrapped in thin red ribbons. I touched my face and didn’t need to glance at my fingertips to know they would come away bloody. I could feel the blood, running down my cheekbones, sliding into the corners of my mouth, dripping off my chin.

“Travis, you should go stand over there with my dad,” I said, concerned. “You know blood makes you queasy.”

His eyes wrinkled at the corners. “I guess I got over it. Lola, no offense or anything, but you should be dead. What happened?”

It was a good question. I think I knew the answer, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud. Not yet. Not when I wasn’t sure what the reaction would be. “I have no idea,” I lied. “Just lucky I guess. Help me up, would you?”

Travis hauled me to my feet. Pine needles prickled up between my toes and I saw I had lost one shoe.

“Here,” said Travis, handing me one of my own t-shirts that I had packed away. “Use this.”

Gratefully I took the shirt and used it to rub my face clean, then my arms. When I was finished the shirt had gone from white to red. I tossed it in the bushes. “Dad,” I called out. “Dad, it’s okay. You can come back now.”

He appeared instantly from behind a nearby grove of trees. It was obvious he had been crying. I didn’t hold it against him. Grown men do cry. Especially when they see their daughter get tossed through a windshield.

“Lola. Lola. Are you all right? I thought you were dead. I thought… Oh my God it’s a miracle. A miracle.” His arms enveloped me. This time I hugged him back, because I could have lost him just easily as he thought he had lost me.

He drew back to study my face and frowned. “But all that blood… I was so sure… You aren’t in any pain?”

“None,” I assured him quickly.

His frown deepened.

“I mean it’s probably shock,” I amended. “My body is in shock. It will hurt later. A lot, I bet.”

“We have aspirin,” he said, as if a couple of aspirin would help me if I really did feel the pain I should have been feeling.

“You’re cuts are closing up already,” said Travis. He didn’t look as convinced by my evasive answers as Dad was.

I shrugged. “Blood clots in seconds, Travis. We learned that in health, remember?”

“Yeah, but -”

“What about you?” I said, flipping the subject around. “That looks like a pretty big bump on your head. And you, Dad. You have a gash on your forehead.”

“I bailed right before the car hit the tree,” said Travis, rubbing the sizable lump that had formed just below his hairline. “I’ll be fine.”

My eyebrows shot up. I was impressed. Usually Travis was on the ground crying for a doctor if he got a paper cut. Running away from blood thirsty vampires has been good for his confidence, apparently.

“I’ll be fine too,” said Dad. “But the car…”

Collectively we turned to survey the damage. It didn’t look good. The car was nothing more than a crumpled heap of metal. What supplies had been salvageable were neatly stacked to the side, which had to be Travis’s handiwork. I glanced up at the road, shading my eyes against the sun. The car had gone an impressive two hundred yards (give or take, I had never been great at eyeballing distances) into the woods after it had sailed over the ditch.

“This is all my fault,” said Dad. “If I hadn’t been going so fast… If I had been paying closer attention…”

“It’s not your fault, Mr. V. Someone blew up the road.”

So there really had been a crater in the middle of the road. In the middle of the road right where the exit for the interstate was. The only exit we had. They planned this, I thought. They planned everything.

I consulted the watch Travis always wore on his left wrist. “It’s almost noon. We have seven hours until it starts to get dark. That’s plenty of time to walk back to town, restock our supplies, and get another car.”

“Go back to town?” Travis looked like I had just suggested we head out for Timbuktu. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

It was nice to know my best friend hadn’t gone completely fearless on me. “What other choice do we have? Stay here in the woods?”

“Lola is right,” said Dad. “Over half our food and water was destroyed. We have to get more.”

“And then where are we going to go?” Travis asked. “You saw the road. It’s the only one out of here.”

A valid point. There were other roads, of course, but none that headed north to where we wanted to go. I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, trying to think of another idea.

“The old Renner Hotel,” Dad said abruptly. His entire face brightened. It was the happiest I had seen him in weeks. “Out past the elementary school. It’s been abandoned for years. No one ever goes out that way.”

I instantly thought of Angelique and how Maximus had said it would be easy for her to track me if I was near. I opened my mouth to object, but Travis spoke up first.

“That could work,” he said, scratching his chin. “At least it would be a good temporary solution until we figure out something better or help arrives. Great idea, Mr. V.”

“Thanks,” said Dad, looking pleased. He looked at me. “Lola?”

I should have told them about Angelique right then and there, but something stopped me. Maybe it was the fact that a normal girl should not have survived crashing through the windshield of a car at ninety miles per hour. A normal girl definitely could not have gotten up and walked away unscathed. Yet I had done both, which meant… Well, I didn’t know what it meant. Or at least I didn’t want to admit what it could mean, not to myself and certainly not to Travis and Dad. “I, uh, don’t think that’s a good idea. I still think we should try to get to the mountains.”

“How would we do that if the interstate is blocked off?” asked Travis. “The hotel is our best shot. It’s been empty for so long they wouldn’t expect anyone to go there.”

“Or they would expect everyone to go there because it’s been empty for so long,” I pointed out.

“Travis is right,” said Dad. “It’s our best shot.”

Two against one. I had a bad feeling about this, but what could I do? Either admit one of the Drinkers had bitten me, or keep my mouth shut and go along.

Pinching my lips together I swung my duffel bag over one shoulder and headed up to the road, leaving Dad and Travis scrambling to catch up.