Chapter 101: S1 NNF Tyler EP 101

The first hit was a goddamn earthquake.

One second, I was white-knuckling the wheel of the stolen truck, engine screaming as a light rain slicked the dusty road, turning it into a slip-n-slide of pure terror. The next, a violent, metallic concussion slammed through the chassis and shot straight up my spine.

The whole truck shuddered like a beast kicked in the ribs. My teeth snapped together. Headlights rushed the ass-end of the truck and winked at me.

Shit. Aaron. Had to be.

I didn't need to look in the rearview mirror. I knew the vehicle's blunt, reinforced grille in pursuit belonged to him. He’d talked about the fucking front end of his truck a few days ago, when he installed the bitch.

Damn. I knew the weight behind the hit. This wasn't a warning tap. It was a fucking takedown.

"Hold on!" I yelled, but the words were swallowed by the shriek of tortured rubber.

Alice huddled in the passenger seat, making little distressed sounds. A choked gasp left her lips. It was all the terror she couldn't put into words. Her hands were braced against the dash, her face a pale smudge in the flickering green light of the instrument panel.

I fought the wheel, my shoulders burning with the effort. The back end of the truck tried to swing out, to overtake the front in a wild, fishtailing dance. I corrected, turning into the skid, my foot feathering a brake pedal that suddenly felt useless.

The tires found a moment of purchase on the wet gravel, and for a split second, I thought I had it. I thought I could pull us out of it.

Fucking idiot. Hope was a luxury no one could afford here.

The second impact was worse. It wasn't a jolt to the system. It felt like a battering ram. A solid, grinding shove that lifted the rear wheels and turned my desperate correction into a death spiral that could rival any amusement park ride. The steering wheel spun free in my hands like useless fucking plastic. The world outside the windshield became a meaningless, whipping blur of dark trees and an even darker sky. We were no longer driving. We were being thrown. Tossed around like goddamn rag dolls.

The sound was the worst part. Not the engine's red-lined whine, but the deep, guttural groan of the truck's frame twisting, followed by the high-pitched scream of tires losing their war with physics.

Gravel, and God knows what else, hammered the undercarriage like a hailstorm of bullets.

I had a single, crystal-clear thought: This is it. This is the end of attempt number two.

Then the road disappeared.

The truck careened sideways, off the gravel shoulder and into the soft, rain-soaked earth of the ditch. The passenger-side wheels dug in, and the momentum did the rest. The world didn't just spin; it flipped.

One moment, the headlights of Aaron’s truck were burning holes in my retinas through the back window. Next, they were above us.

My stomach lurched into my throat. What the ever-loving fuck?

Gravity became a suggestion, then a sick joke.

My body strained against the seatbelt, the strap digging a brutal line across my collarbone and hip. Alice was thrown against her own belt. A small, sharp cry tore from her throat.

Loose shit in the cab—a wrench, a half-empty water bottle, and boots—became deadly projectiles in the sudden, violent tumble.

The world was a kaleidoscope of mud, sky, and twisted metal.

Sky.

Ground.

A deafening crunch as the roof buckled.

Sky again.

The passenger-side window exploded inward, a crystalline supernova of tempered glass.

Cold, wet air and the smell of churned earth rushed in, carrying with it a spray of glass shards that felt like angry hornets against my cheek. The roar of the crash was suddenly intimate, right inside the cab with us. It was the sound of a giant metal can being torn open.

We rolled again. This time was slower, heavier, a final, grinding surrender. The truck landed on its side with a bone-jarring impact that rattled every joint in my body. For a half-second, there was a strange, suspended silence.

Then the world slammed into me.

My momentum, checked by the seatbelt, carried my upper body forward and sideways. The first thing my head connected with was the steering wheel. Not the soft, padded center of the safety bag, but the hard plastic rim.

A blinding, white-hot flash of pain erupted behind my eyes, sharp and absolute. Stars exploded in the darkness. My vision swam, the green glow of the dash dissolving into a nauseating smear.

Before I could even process the pain, the truck settled with one last, violent lurch, dropping the final few feet into the bottom of the ditch. My head snapped to the left, and the side window frame met my temple with the solid, final thud of a hammer hitting a nail.

Darkness, shot through with threads of crimson, swarmed the edges of my sight. The roaring in my ears faded to a dull, distant hum. The rain, now falling harder, pattered against the bent metal roof above me. Each drop was a tiny nail in the coffin of our escape.

Failure.

Total and complete.

The thought wasn't angry. It wasn't panicked. It was cold. It was quiet. And it slowly settled into the space where the adrenaline had been. Now, a block of ice set in my gut.

Brute force wasn't going to work. Not against them. Not against this fucking place.

My vision tunneled. The last thing I saw before the darkness took over completely were the twin beams of Aaron's headlights, cutting through the rain, pinning us in our metal tomb like a bug on a display board.

The darkness wasn't a void of nothingness.

Fuck, no. That shit was thick, syrupy, and filled with the low thrum of my own blood pulsing against my skull. A sound like a distant engine turning over, failing, then trying again. Consciousness returned not like a light switching on, but like a slow, painful acid tide creeping in, bringing with it the wreckage of the last few moments.

Pain was the first landmark. A sharp, splitting agony behind my left eye that radiated out in hot waves, followed by a dull, insistent throbbing at my temple. I was hanging, suspended sideways. The rough fabric of the seatbelt was a hot wire cutting into my bare shoulder and hip. It was the only thing keeping me from falling onto what used to be the driver's-side door.

Cold water dripped onto my face, each drop a tiny shock against my skin. Rain.

My stomach churned, a nauseous lurch that had nothing to do with the crash and everything to do with the cold, hard certainty solidifying in my gut. I blinked, trying to clear the swimming static from my vision. The green glow of the dashboard was still there, a fractured, watery light that illuminated very little.

The world was tilted ninety degrees. Wrong. Everything was fucking wrong.

“Alice.” The name was a shard of glass in my throat.

I forced my head to turn, a movement that sent a fresh spike of pain through my skull. My neck muscles screamed in protest. She slumped against the passenger door, which was now the floor. Her body was limp, held in place only by her seatbelt. Her hair, usually so bright, was dark and matted against her temple.

A line of something blacker than the shadows snaked down from her hairline, stark against the pale skin of her cheek. Blood.

I failed her. Again.