His brow furrowed. Al sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his blood-stained hand. “What are you talking about?”
Stella smiled. “Exactly what I said. The green fog has changed some of us. For example, I know things I didn’t before—things that are going to happen—things that always come true. And I know something about you, Alvin Rutland.”
When Stella didn’t continue, his lips twisted in irritation. “What do you think you know about me?”
“That you’re a dead man walking. That bloody nose of yours is going to kill you if nothing else ends your life before it. I know that for sure. So, do you really want to meet your god, or whatever you believe in, with their deaths on your conscience?”
Al’s face flushed red again, and then he threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, girly, that’s a good one!” Then his laughter slid away, and his expression went flat. “But you’ve saved me another burr. Might as well go first, and your friends will join you.” Rutland turned the rifle on Stella. “Say bye-bye.”
Ford exploded forward as he shouted, “Mercury, get the gun!”
Rutland squeezed the trigger of the automatic rifle just before Ford reached him. The machinegun blast tore through Ford’s chest, but his momentum carried him into Rutland. Ford hit him low, like a professional linebacker. Legs pumping, Oxford Xavier Diaz lifted Rutland, and the two of them flew backward together into the wave of green fog.
“No!” Mercury screamed as she wrenched open the passenger door, popped the glove box and pulled out the .38. She flipped off the safety and raced into the green fog just as Al was pushing Ford off of him and raising the assault rifle again. Mercury fired the pistol, and kept firing it as she strode forward. Later, she remembered that she’d been screaming the entire time. Then, during that moment, she heard nothing except the thunder of her own heartbeat as Rutland’s body convulsed and fell backward.
Mercury shoved the pistol into her jacket pocket and reached down into the fog, grabbed Ford under his arms, and pulled him up and out of the lapping green. She carried him as she sprinted back to the truck. Stella was already behind the wheel. Mercury jumped into the cab, pulling Ford with her. “Get us out of here!” She yelled as Khaleesi whimpered and pressed against Mercury’s side.
Stella floored the truck and they raced from Mitchell up 26 and into the mountains above the fog.
“Ford! Ford! Can you hear me? Wake up, Ford! Wake up!” He lay across Mercury’s lap. Blood poured from holes punched through Ford’s chest, front and back. If felt to Mercury as if she would drown in his blood—that it would fill the cab and turn her entire world red. “Hurry, Stella! We have to get him to Gemma! Hurry!”
“I am! I am!” Stella sobbed as the truck sped along the highway, tires screaming while she dodged sinkholes and stalled vehicles. Stella shrugged out of her sweater and tossed it to Mercury. “Use this to try to stop the bleeding.”
Mercury pressed the sweater to Ford’s chest. He drew in a shallow breath and his eyes opened.
“Ford! It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay! Stella will get us to Gemma. She’ll fix you, just like she did me!” Mercury hugged him to her, cradling him in her arms like he was a child. “So you have to hold on. Please hold on!”
“Gemma cannot save a dead man.” He rasped the words as blood bubbled between his lips, from his nose and ears and dribbled onto his beard.
“No! Don’t you dare give up!”
“I breathed in the fog. It—it broke me. I can feel it… worse than the bullets.”
“No!” Mercury sobbed.
Ford lifted his hand and touched her cheek. “Bellota, I would have liked to have made a new world with you.”
He breathed in a rattling breath, let it out slowly, and then Oxford Xavier Diaz breathed no more.