Helltown by Jeremy Bates Read Free Book Online Page A

headlights. He eased fully onto the shoulder and slowed.
    Two seconds later the hearse thundered past, hogging the center of the road, bovine horn moaning. Noah tried to glimpse the driver, but the hearse’s headlights had blinded him. No one turned to watch the morbid vehicle depart. No one said anything. They were all staring in horror at the slewing BMW ahead of them. In the next instant it bucketed off the left side of the road into the mix of evergreen and deciduous trees.
    Cherry sobbed and screamed in the same breath.
    Austin shouted: “Go!”
    Noah was already accelerating again.
         

     
    When Steve realized he wasn’t dead, and when his shock subsided, he heard moaning from behind him. “Jen?” he said. “Mandy?” He tried to crane his neck around to check on them, and that’s when he saw Jeff in the darkened cabin, crawling through a hole in the windshield. Then he realized Jeff wasn’t crawling; his lower body was ragdoll limp.
    Steve couldn’t see the upper half of his friend, the half that had been launched through the windshield, because the glass had gone gummy and opaque with cracks.
    “Fuck Jeff,” Steve mumbled. “You stupid fucking fuck…”
    “Steve?” Mandy said shrilly. “What’s wrong? What happened to Jeff? Is he dead? Is he dead? ”
    Steve unclasped his seatbelt and collapsed onto the car’s ceiling. He twisted himself around so he could see Mandy and Jenny. They were both layered in shadows, hanging upside down like bats. Mandy was sobbing into her hands. Jenny was either unconscious or dead.
    In the distance came the unmistakable drone of an approaching vehicle. The hearse coming back for them?
    Steve maneuvered his body in the awkward space so he could grasp the door handle. He tugged it. The door was stuck.
    Tires screeched to a halt.
    Steve drove his heels into the window. The glass spider webbed. He kicked it again, harder, and again, harder still, until his feet stamped through it. He rolled onto his hands and knees and scrambled through the shattered window. He heard branches snapping, vegetation crackling, and he was suddenly filled with an exquisite terror, sure the driver of the hearse was going to be something with a hole for a face and leathery wings and—
    Austin shouted Jeff’s name; Noah, Steve’s.
    “Here!” Steve managed, standing and swooning into the upturned car. Austin and Noah and Cherry burst through the thicket. They came to an abrupt standstill.
    “Oh no,” Austin said, those two words barely audible but powerful enough to halt a marching band. “No, no, no…”
    Steve pushed himself away from the car on splintered pegs for legs and faced the wreckage. In the frosty light he could see it clearly enough. Jeff’s head and shoulders protruded from the windshield like a half-eaten meal. He lay on his back. Given that the vehicle rested upside-down on top of him, his nose kissed the hood.
    Noah brushed past Steve, dropped to his knees, and pried open the back door. He climbed in and spoke calmly to Mandy while attempting to extract her.
    Steve wobbled around the front of the car—the BMW’s distinctive headlights and kidney-shaped grille were an unrecognizable mash of metal—and all but collapsed next to Jenny’s door. Blood smeared the window. He gripped the handle and pulled, expecting the door to be stuck. It swung open with ease. He felt one of Jenny’s dangling wrists for a pulse, but his hands were shaking too badly to perform this action correctly. He unbuckled her seatbelt, lowered her body into his arms, then dragged her out onto the leaf litter. The fog billowed around her, caressed her. He noticed her chest moving up and down and said a silent prayer of thanks.
    Meanwhile, Austin had crawled into the gap beneath the hood and now he shouted, “Jeff’s alive! He’s breathing!”
    While Noah and Austin discussed what to do next in urgent tones, Steve patted Jenny on the cheek, urging her to wake up. All the while his heart was