Eddy was laying into the horn, trying to get everyone ahead of them out of the way. If they could just speed up, they could easily leave the tank behind. It was a tank, and they were in a sports car. Do the math. But the problem was that the interstate was so busy that it was all Eddy could do to avoid them getting run over by the tank, all while being shot at by the remaining motorcyclists.

“Ye-ye-ye-ye!” howled one of the bikers on Cara’s side, jumping from his bike towards the car. At the last second, Eddy saw it coming and spun the wheel to mess up his trajectory. The biker slammed into the side of the car loudly, busting open the window and also his visor. His face was a sickly yellow with serious goblin-like features. If Cara had seen a picture of him in a book, she would have known: goblin. The large nose, small eyes, sharp fangs, and ugly features were all a dead giveaway of a classic goblin.

He grabbed something from his belt and tossed it through the now-open window. “Catch, ladies!”

Adrianna shot the unfortunate goblin in the face.

His head snapped back and he rolled off the car, but the thing he’d thrown inside started beeping.

“Get it out!” Adrianna yelled, trying to grab the little orb. It bounced over to Cara, who grabbed it and chunked it out the window. It sailed through the air for a moment before landing under the tank’s fearsome treads. It blew up a second later. The tank bucked wildly, but was otherwise unaffected. “Born to be Wild” missed a beat before getting back on rhythm.

“Eddy, get us out of here!” Reuben yelled.

A motorcycle came up beside him and shot him with one of the blue bullets. He snarled in pain and anger, and pushed open the door into the guy. At the speed they were going, the goblin lost control and slammed into a ‘keep left’ sign.

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Eddy yelled back. “They’re everywhere!”

To Cara, everything was in slow motion. She’d heard that in times of extreme stress and danger, people saw things in a slower time frame. She hadn’t ever believed it. She’d always just assumed it was a common myth like alligators living in the sewers: fun, but completely wrong. She learned on that car ride that it was no myth. She felt strangely alive and excited and even calm. She knew it was crazy. She was not a soldier, unlike all of the other people in the car, but she supposed her adrenaline had simply kicked in.

It was in slow motion that she saw Eddy get shot.

Again, the blue bullet hit square on. Eddy didn’t have the incredible strength and stamina that Adrianna or Reuben had. He was, near as Cara could tell, a human that had powers. He jolted around before slumping. The car’s wheel started to spin wildly, but they weren’t slowing down.

Reuben grabbed the wheel and slammed the goblin into a large truck. He then tried to either get Eddy to wake up or pull his foot off the gas so they didn’t keep accelerating towards the traffic that was trying to get out of the way. He accomplished neither goal.

“His foot’s stuck!” Reuben shouted. “I can’t get him free!”

Cara wasn’t sure what got into her, but she jumped between the front seats to land on top of Eddy. She was the only one of them that could actually fit between him and the steering wheel. Her thighs were pressed up against the wheel, but she took charge of the vehicle and swerved to keep them from going off the interstate onto the smaller roads below.

Reuben kept tugging on Eddy’s foot, trying to get it unstuck. Cara couldn’t see what Adrianna was doing, but she could hear gunshots. Cara was panicking so much that she didn’t quite register the fact that she was driving a getaway car from a hoard of goblins that apparently wanted a reward on her head for angering a vampire clan.

That was one to put on the resume list, right next to “computer science major” and “eight years of writing experience.”

She tried to remember how famous drivers did it. They had to have some sort of easy steps to follow, right? Do this, then this, and you’ll be fine. Then again, she reminded herself, professional drivers get a nice oval space to drive around in. They didn’t have to worry about hitting people just trying to get to work in the morning.

As she veered to avoid a car, something boomed and the back half of their vehicle shot up in the air before crashing down, sending the remains of the windows into the seats.

“What was that?” she yelped.

“The tank is shooting at us!” Adrianna told her. “Get off the damn road!”

If only it were that easy. People on the interstate could hear the chase coming and were pulling off to the sides of the road to let the chase go right through the middle. Whether they planned it that way or if that was just how it worked out, Cara didn’t know. What she did know is that it completely blocked their little group from getting off at any of the exits.

Finally, she saw one that was half unblocked. She shot towards it while the tank fired off a couple more shots at them. Each one made the car swerve and pushed Cara’s heart further into her throat, but she zoomed towards the small hole as fast as she could.

Fifty feet… Twenty… Ten… Five… One.

She hit the sides of the cars on both sides, but other than scratched paint and a horrid screeching sound as the doors lost part of themselves, they were through and they were okay.

The tank, meanwhile, attempted to follow them, misjudged, and plowed through the guardrail. The driver attempted to correct, but it was too late.

Watching a tank fall off an elevated interstate highway was unlike anything Cara had ever seen. It kept playing “Born to be Wild” as it fell.

Boom.

It didn’t explode, which made Cara somehow disappointed. It just hit the ground like a huge boulder instead of an intricate machine. Whatever was inside was unconscious at best, but was most likely dead from the impact.

“Oh my God!” Cara yelled. “Reuben, get his foot off the pedal!”

Driving on the interstate full speed in a very fast sports car was one of the scariest moments in Cara’s twenty-eight years of life, but a close second was trying to drive it on the side roads. There was less traffic, sure, but there were also more stop lights. More than once they barely managed to avoid getting creamed by unknowing traffic.

They saw the lights of a police car once. That was it. The cops stood no chance against Eddy’s car, as they were gone almost before they showed up.

Finally, Reuben managed to untangle Eddy’s foot from the pedal. They came to a stop on a dusty road by what they could only assume was a series of huge old farms.

“Is he okay?” Adrianna asked Reuben as he checked Eddy’s pulse.

“He seems okay,” Reuben replied. “He’s breathing. I think he’s just unconscious.”

They sat in the steaming hot car for a second. The right door randomly snapped off and clattered to the floor. Adrianna sat in the backseat, holding her gun and wincing from where they had shot her with the electrical bullets. Cara just sat on Eddy’s lap, hands still tightly gripping the wheel and staring straight ahead at nothing.

Reuben sighed. “Long day,” he muttered. “Long damn day.”