he van jolts, the tires spin. Giles feels the punch of Elisa’s body hitting the back of his seat. Burnt rubber wafts up. They’re stopped. Feet from freedom, they’re stuck. He looks over the Pug’s hood and sees the van’s front bumper locked with the bright green Caddy’s. He hears a broken scream—he thinks it’s a woman—but it’s a hulk of a man barreling toward the van in a silverback lope, holding some sort of bat.

Giles curses, cranks the van into reverse, pounds the gas. The van slugs backward a yard. Metal screeches. Broken glass pops like fireworks. The running man is fast; he’s halved the distance. Giles switches the gear to forward and stomps the pedal. Chrome crunches and the pinched bumpers whine. He looks up and sees armed men with raised guns calling for the running man to get out of the way so they can fire. The man, though, is crazed. He jumps a hedge, shouting nonsense. Giles rolls up his window, a pitiful defense.

And it’s good he does. The man’s bat strikes the window. A crack halves the glass. Giles cries out, twists the steering wheel right and guns the engine, then twists it left and guns it again. The man strikes the window again, creating a spiderweb. Then again and it shatters, hard little pellets raining against Giles’s face. It is then that the van’s bumper tears off and the man has to leap back to avoid being sideswiped. There are sparks as the Pug shears through the back of the Caddy, spitting green paint, a lot of it, multiple coats, it seems to Giles.