Savage Drift

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE} DEAN

I carried Astrid to the car. She winced in the sunlight when I brought her outside.

“Bye!” Rinée said.

“We’re coming back,” I told her and J.J., who stood gaping on the stoop, as Lea helped me to put Astrid in the passenger seat.

“Bye, Ean!” Rinée repeated. Frankly, she seemed happy for us to go.

I drove. Astrid was moaning. The motion of the car was bothering her. Every bump we hit made her cry aloud.

“Please,” I told her, handing her the squeeze bottle of water that Lea had put in the cup holder. “Take a sip. Please.”

She obliged me.

Her hand was trembling violently, going for the bottle.

I got us on the highway, headed north.

“Are you feeling any better?” I asked.

She had her head hanging down, resting her elbows on the dash.

She vomited again, looking up at me with fear in her eyes. Green bile slick on her chin.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s going to be okay.”

She leaned against the window and I hit eighty. If a cop pulled me over, good. Maybe he’d give us an escort.

“Almost there, almost there,” I said. Though I had no idea how far Joplin was or how long it would take us to get there.

“It’s just a flu,” I told her. “They’ll get you fixed right up.”

“My head,” she cried. “It hurts so bad.”

Then she started shaking.

Her head whipped back and she was convulsing, arms flailing.

I cursed and swerved.

“Astrid! Astrid!” I shouted.

I pulled onto the shoulder and the cars screaming past wailed their horns.

I tried to hold her. Was I supposed to put my hand in her mouth to stop her from biting her tongue? I couldn’t remember and then she went limp.

“Astrid? Astrid!” I called to her.

She was unconscious.

A sob wrenched free from my chest.

What to do?

I got out. Tried to flag down a car.

“HELP!” I yelled. “Somebody help me!”

None of them stopped.

Nobody would stop!

Then I saw an Army truck approaching.

It was one, and behind it were others.

I got back in the car, belted myself in, and hit the gas.

The first truck had just passed as I got up to speed.

There were eight or ten big olive-drab trucks in the convoy and a flatbed truck carrying two of the same kind of jeeps we had seen in Roufa’s cargo plane back in Texas.

I honked at them, trying to wave them down, but they sped past me.

In a flash, they were ahead and I was behind. They were leaving me, literally, in the dust.

The last truck was filled with soldiers, and as I honked and waved my hand out the window, begging for them to stop, a soldier smoking a cigarette popped his head out and looked at me.

“Please stop!” I shouted, though of course he couldn’t hear. “I need help! I need help!”

The soldier took his cigarette and flicked it at me. Then started laughing and pulled his head back inside the canvas cover.

My foot slammed on the gas, like it belonged to someone else. I pushed the little Mazda for all it had, 80—85—90, and pulled up next to that last truck.

I saw the soldier in the passenger seat look at me, puzzled, and then I brought the Mazda closer and closer to the truck.

I would push him off the road, into the median. I would get their godforsaken help. I was going to get it.

The truck pulled onto the median and I heard a screech of heavy metal as it braked to a stop.

I slid out behind it, almost ramming it from behind.

Holy almighty, what had I done?

My door was jerked open and a muscle-bound soldier hauled me out by my shirt and slammed me into the car.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? You wanna get yourself shot?!”

“My girlfriend and I are wanted by the United States Army Medical Research lab for medical testing,” I said. “We’re turning ourselves in.”