The black Volvo tore down the windy, narrow coastal road, the driver pressing the souped-up engine for all it was worth. The weight of the car pushed the suspension side to side as it leaned around corners. At least the roads were dry, the fall rains taking a brief night or two’s break. Each peek to the rear revealed a pack of cars burning south down Highway 101 in pursuit of the Volvo.
Luke and his crew hoped to stay ahead, making it to the Astoria-Megler Bridge and back into Oregon. They needed to get to their nearest allies, the Coast Pack. If they could make it across the Columbia River, through Astoria, and a bit further south, they could divert the chase pack onto private land where a brutal response awaited any vampires stupid enough to mess with the pack’s friends.
“They’re gaining, Luke!” Delilah said, watching the lead car slowly close the distance.
“I know,” Luke said. “This isn’t as easy as it looks.” He focused on the road ahead, eyes squinting in concentration as he planned his lines around the corners to keep the heavy vehicle from spilling too much speed. Every mile per hour mattered.
“We’re not going to make it to the bridge…” Pablo said.
“I know. If we were using your truck, we’d have more muscle.” He loosened his grip on the wheel, his knuckles gripping too tightly. There was a lot of road ahead of them, and he didn’t want to tire out his hands.
One of the pursuit cars tried to pull into the lane running the other direction, but its steering wheel was quickly yanked to avoid the oncoming delivery truck. As soon as the truck passed, the car tried again to make its way around their Volvo. With a bit of a straightaway to work with, Luke pushed the speed as hard as he could with the old car. Even with all the upgrades Jorge had implemented, it wasn’t a thoroughbred vehicle like some of the luxury sedans and sport cars trailing him. Fortunately, another car in the oncoming lane forced the vampire attempting to pass to return to its lane.
Luke snorted and laughed when another car, pulling up to take the place of the one that’d darted into the oncoming lane, swerved off the road, flying off the edge and down into a thick Doug Fir tree. One down, but still enough to cause a lot of mischief. Giving the chase cars a quick look, Luke thought they might be opening a bit of space between each other to avoid another such mishap.
“How far are is it to the Astoria Bridge?” Luke asked, his voice tight with the strain of keeping the Volvo on the road.
“About seven miles,” Delilah replied, anxiety lacing her voice.
Luke eased the Volvo into the center of the road as they approached the Chinook River Bridge, effectively cutting off any attempts to move around them. As they rocketed over the short bridge and returned to regular highway, Luke swerved slowly back and forth, taking advantage of a lack of headlights coming at them. One of the pursuit cars tried to use the left shoulder to move around him, sending up clouds of dirt and rocks, but it tipped and rolled over when one of its wheels caught in the ditch. It slammed into a tree trunk.
“Another one bites the dust.” Luke smirked.
“Luke… We warned you about bad quipping,” Sam said, shaking her head.
“Come on, you’ve got to let him have that one. There was dust and everything,” Pablo said.
Delilah turned to Pablo, shaking her head in disappointment. “I hardly think you’re a neutral advocate, Pablo.”
“I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em. That was a funny pun. Punny, if you will.” He reached up and patted Luke’s shoulder.
“If I had a newspaper and it was safe to do so, I’d roll it up and swat Luke on the nose for that one.” Delilah pantomimed rolling up paper.
Pablo shrugged. “Sorry, buddy, I tried.”
Luke grunted, concentrating on swerving the Volvo back and forth over the middle line, the tires occasionally hitting the rumble strip augmenting the yellow paint and vibrating the car. Since they had the entire road but only a skimpy portion of the shoulder, the vampires took advantage and flared out, trying to find an open gap. Every time one tried to make a move, Luke would yank the wheel over to cut off the pursuer. One got close enough that Luke rubbed bumpers with it before the pursuers jammed on the brakes.
They were lucky it was as late as it was, and most of the sparsely populated Long Beach Peninsula was in bed asleep. That didn’t mean there still weren’t other cars on the road, like the one pulling around the corner into the oncoming lane. Luke kept barreling down the center of the road, the driver blaring their horn at Luke. The vampire cars weren’t as brave as Luke and pulled into the right lane. Luke stayed put until the last moment, bouncing over the rumble strip as the car whizzed by.
As they rounded the corner, Luke crept back into the middle, slowly adding more speed until the road straightened. Then, he put everything the Volvo had left onto the road. After a bit, the Volvo vibrated oddly as it flew down the road.
“I’m not liking this shimmy. I gotta back it down some or we’re going off the road. We can’t get to the bridge if we’re dead in a ditch.” Luke slowed down until the Volvo stabilized.
“Luke, slow it down some more. You got a curve, then a town… Chinook,” Delilah instructed.
Luke nodded and followed her instructions. So far, their luck had held, and the road stayed free of traffic. Seeing the approaching town, he grumbled. The road widened, adding thicker shoulders as they breached the town limits of Chinook. The sidewalks weren’t making him feel any better.
Luke returned to his swerving pattern, but this time a few of the cars chasing flared out wide. “Fuck.”
“Luke, they’re uh…on the sidewalks.” Pablo’s voice rose, a sign of his growing anxiety.
Giving up on the swerve in favor of speed, Luke pushed the gas back down, aiming straight down the road. The shimmy returned, this time adding a weird knocking.
Luke gripped the wheel, his knuckles white. “Come on, baby, keep it together.”
Everyone kept quiet, letting Luke concentrate.
“Oh no…” Sam said. “We just passed a parked cop.”
“Hopefully, the car’s just parked and empty… And no, lights are on,” Pablo added.
“Nothing we can do about it now,” Luke said. “They’ll be behind the fangers.”
The high-pitched oscillation of the siren filtered through the engine’s increasingly loud noises. Scanning his peripherals to check the cars on the sidewalks, a slight sense of relief washed over him as he saw them fall back. Turns out a car half on, half off the sidewalk wasn’t going to be a real speed demon, even if driven by one.
Delilah looked at her phone, expanding the image on the screen. “Once we get out of town, the road is looking narrow without a lot of passing opportunities. There’s a tunnel, then we’re running by the water.”
“Cop still back there?” Luke asked.
“Yeah. Still there,” Sam replied.
“Almost out of town.” Luke pulled back into the right line. “Car coming.”
The tension ratcheted up as everyone checked the cars behind him. This time, the vampires didn’t tuck back in behind them.
“Come on, move over.” Luke’s eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror. “Damn it.” The car honked at them, then held it down. His eyes drifted back to the oncoming car—still moving toward them.
“Luke…” Delilah said, the edges of panic seeping into her voice.
“I’ve got it,” he bit out as he yanked the steering wheel to put the Volvo back into their own lane.
The oncoming car screeched to a halt and swerved off the road into someone’s yard. The vampire cars didn’t let up. They’d have likely plowed headfirst into the oncoming car.
“At least they didn’t crash,” Sam said.
Now that the extra space evaporated as the sidewalks and wider shoulders disappeared in the rearview mirror along with the town of Chinook, they were on the last stretch, assuming they could reach the Astoria-Megler Bridge and make it out of Astoria. And that was becoming a bigger assumption by the mile as the Volvo picked up new sounds, knocks, and rattles. The poor old beast wasn’t meant to be pushed so hard for this long, even with the upgrades.
Luke did his best to mix in aggressive driving to box out any cars trying to get around him and using any straightaway to scrape all the speed he could from the struggling engine. When the tunnel came up, Luke hogged the middle of the road. When they blasted out of the tunnel, he resumed swerving. The only worrying moments were when they drove over a section with a middle turn lane.
A pair of cars—a white Suburu WRX and noisy, souped up Honda Civic—tried to flank him and pass on both sides.
“Hold on,” Luke called.
He hit the brakes just enough to drop them back so the nose of the Volvo was lined up with the rear end of the two smaller cars. Before the vamps could adjust, he pulled the wheel hard to the right, slamming into the rear quarter panel of the Subaru. Its driver wasn’t expecting it and overcompensated, spinning into the boulders that served as a guardrail along the right side of the highway above the mouth of the Columbia River. Luke managed to evade the Suburu’s demise, only taking a scrape and bump from its front bumper as he passed.
Before the Civic to his left could do anything, Luke used his momentum to plow into the rear of the Honda. The driver jammed on his brakes, the car’s tires screaming in agony as the car went sideways. Luke eased his speed back, disconnecting from the fanger’s car. The tires bit into the ground and the momentum took the Civic onto its side and into a roll, spraying destroyed parts as it tumbled off the road into a ditch. As soon as the road was clear again, Luke accelerated. The Astoria-Megler Bridge was just visible in the near distance. Luke focused on the road while his crew focused on the bridge—a long metal and asphalt runway to freedom.
“Almost there…” Luke mumbled. “Alright, get ready!”
Luke swung the Volvo to the left side of the road and braked, hitting the turn onto the Astoria-Megler Bridge with the best line possible to keep speed. As soon as he entered the bridge, the Volvo’s line carried them over to the left oncoming lane.
“Luke…headlights.”
“I see them.” Luke waited until the car had settled from the long, wide turn and eased back into their lane. “Fuck!”
The oncoming car pulled into their lane, coming head on. Two sets of headlights bore down on them.
“Why are we slowing down?” Delilah asked.
“Shit, shit, shit… I’m losing the car,” Luke said.
A loud thunk shook the car as the rattle turned into screeching metal. The smoke and stench of burning oil and grinding metal filled the cabin. The Volvo had reached the end of its range, slowing as it bled its power out onto the Astoria-Megler Bridge.
“Get your guns ready!” Luke cried, yanking the wheel and using the last of the car’s momentum to bring the car broadside to both lanes, effectively blocking the bridge.
“Hold on!”
The last thing Luke saw before the car slammed into his Volvo was the feral face of a vampire, fangs extended in a grim smile of destruction. Sam screamed behind Luke. A second car plowed into the other side of the Volvo, sending it spinning between the two cars in a grim ballet of screeching metal and shattering glass. A third car plowed into the Volvo, followed by a fourth. Horns, stuck in a rigor mortis, blared without the hand of a driver. An engine sputtered. Another revved but had nothing to apply power to. Flames licked at the crumpled hood of one of the vampire’s cars. Wedged between four destroyed cars, Luke’s poor Volvo looked like it’d gone through a car crusher.
As the cabin of Luke’s Volvo filled with smoke, cutting down on visibility, Luke’s throat felt raw as he tried to blink the burning sensation from his eyes. Two vampires, shocked by their impacts, stirred in the crumpled cabins of their cars. One kicked out the shattered glass of the windshield and crawled onto the wreck of Luke’s Volvo.
“What the fuck!” The vampire stared into the Volvo, his eyes wide with shock.
Guns opened fire on the vampire from inside the wounded Volvo, splattering the vampire into a pile of goo that temporarily tamed the flames before igniting them further. So far, the fire remained on the outside of the car, but it was only a matter of time before the flames found ingress.
Gun fire poured out of the Volvo from all directions as more cars stopped on both sides of the collision, vampires scrambling out armed and angry.
As one, the fangers opened fire on the five car pileup without regard for what car they hit—or whether they took out Luke and his friends or one of the vampires who’d finally brought the car chase to a spectacular end. A couple vampires pulled grenades from their pockets, pulled the pins, and lobbed them over their friends to land and roll into the heap of twisted steel that lay across the Astoria-Megler Bridge.
“Down!” a vampire yelled.
A few seconds later, the grenades went off, sending shock waves of steel, glass, and shrapnel everywhere. A few vampires, unlucky to take wounds, groaned and crawled back toward their cars, cursing the idiots who hadn’t waited for the crowds to clear before throwing the grenades.
“Everyone back!” boomed a voice.
The vampires scrambled to their feet, helping those near them, and hid behind their cars. Two vampires pulled out rocket-propelled grenades from the back of a truck, took aim, and fired them into the burning hulk that was the Volvo 240DL wagon. When the rockets hit and exploded, the shock wave knocked vampires onto their asses and shattered a few of their windows.
The twisted corpse of the Volvo burned along with the four bodies inside.