Chapter 5 - The Highway to Nowhere
The Land Rover burst through the wreckage of the carriage doors, throwing two barking hounds sideways into the snowbank.
Ethan spun the heavy, unassisted steering wheel to the left, the knobby tires tearing through the deep drifts as he aligned the vehicle with the main iron gates of the estate. The gates were locked with a heavy chain, but twenty years of rust had eaten through the mounting brackets.
"Duck!" Ethan shouted.
Claire buried her face in her knees as the Land Rover slammed into the center of the iron gates at thirty miles an hour.
The impact was deafening. The iron bars buckled outward, the ancient masonry pillars cracking with a sound like dynamite, spilling heavy granite blocks onto the hood as the vehicle ploughed through into the darkness of Route 9.
Ethan cleared the debris from the hood with a sharp weave of the wheel, switching the high-beam halogen headlights on. Two solid shafts of yellow light cut through the blinding blizzard, revealing a narrow, winding mountain road completely untouched by snowplows.
Claire slowly raised her head, staring through the vibrating windshield at the open road stretching into the dark forest ahead.
"We're out," she whispered, her voice trembling with an emotion she couldn't name. "We're... outside."
"Not yet," Ethan said, his eyes glued to the rearview mirror.
Two hundred yards behind them, twin high-intensity LED beams exploded out of the estate driveway. A modern, supercharged Range Rover leaped onto the highway, its low-profile tires throwing plumes of slush into the air as it accelerated with terrifying speed.
"Arthur," Claire said, her voice dropping into a flat, panicked whisper. "He won't let us reach the town. The county sheriff is his cousin."
Ethan looked at the fuel gauge on the dashboard. The needle was hovering just above the red reserve mark, the tank stale and contaminated with twenty years of condensation.
"Where does this road lead if we bypass the town?" Ethan asked, pressing the mechanical accelerator pedal to the floor.
"It leads to the old iron quarry," Claire said, her memory pulling details from a childhood map she hadn't seen since she was five. "Then... then the bridge over the Deerfield River. But the bridge was closed in 2002 because of structural rot!"
"Is it still standing?"
"I... I don't know!"
Behind them, the modern Range Rover was closing the gap rapidly, its high beams filling the cabin of the old Land Rover with blinding light.
Arthur’s vehicle swerved to the left, its heavy front fender slamming into the Land Rover’s rear quarter-panel with a sharp CLANG of tearing steel. The old truck fishtailed wildly across the icy road, its tires screeching against the black ice before Ethan caught the slide with a violent counter-steer.
Arthur rolled down his driver’s window, raising the double-barreled shotgun with one hand.
"He's going to shoot the tires!" Claire screamed.
Ethan slammed on the heavy brakes.
The sudden loss of speed caught Arthur off guard. The Range Rover overshot them, surging ahead by fifty yards before its driver could react.
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"Hold on to something!" Ethan roared.
He cut the wheel hard to the right, driving the Land Rover off the paved highway and plunging down a steep, wooded embankment into the dark ravine of the quarry road.
