He must choose now.
"The cut," Gavin says, and turns the wheel.
The van drops off asphalt into the dirt track along the drainage swale. Potholes slap the chassis; the wheel jumps in his hands. Behind them, heat pushes the night forward.
"Hold on," he says. "Low and constant."
"Copy," Rick says, knuckles white on the towel bar.
Madison braces one hand on the dash, the other on the hammer. "We can't stop," she says.
The dirt narrows between the swale on the right and a cinderblock wall on the left. A sagging chain is strung across two posts ahead, a PRIVATE DRIVE sign twisted in the middle.
"Chain," Rick warns.
"Seatbacks," Gavin says. He doesn't brake. The bumper kisses the chain; metal yelps. The posts bend; the chain snakes over the hood and drums the roof, then disappears into dark.
The track kinks left. A low concrete culvert mouth gapes at water that isn't there. The right wheels slide toward it. Gavin feathers throttle—just enough to keep momentum without digging. The tires surf loose grit. The van drifts sideways, weight rolling slow.
"Easy," Madison breathes.
"Let it skate," Gavin says. "Don't fight what you can steer."
A shadow lopes along the cinderblock top. It drops into the cut twenty yards ahead, misjudges the dust, and slides on its side. It rises and angles toward them on all fours.
"Left of it," Gavin says. He splits the distance. The thing tags the rear quarter with both hands as they pass, palms slapping metal like a swimmer's turn. It sprints three steps, then the ditch lip gives it a new idea. It goes in headfirst and vanishes in a soft thump.
Rick exhales a laugh he didn't mean. "Teaching moment."
The shoulder collapses where a service truck once cut the corner. The van's right front sinks. The engine note turns into a laboring whine.
"Stuck," Madison says, quiet with the knowledge.
"Not yet." The tire spins, finds marbles, chews them to smaller marbles. The van settles another inch and tilts toward the dry culvert.
Voices float behind them, not words—mechanical breath hauling meat. Feet work the gravel with the quick, low cadence of clingers. Heat comes as smell first, then touch.
"Plan," Rick says.
"Lighten. Traction." Gavin hits hazards. "Madison, you drive on my call. Rick, with me—back doors."
They pile out. The rear door throws up: cargo is moving blankets, a coil of ratchet straps, a box of packing tape, a milk crate of cheap tools, a roll of nonskid floor runner, three banker boxes labeled PAYROLL, and a folded dolly.
"Dump paper," Gavin says, dragging the banker boxes to the cinderblock side. Rick yanks the cab mats and the nonskid roll.
"Tell me when," Madison calls, steadier now that she has a job.
"Wheel three-quarters left," Gavin says. He and Rick wedge the mats under the right front, then unroll the runner like a tongue. He feels the heat more now, like a hand getting bolder.
Shapes lope around the bend behind them: three, then five, then more—moving wrong and efficient. The lead one's forearms are slick to the elbow.
"Now," Gavin says. "Easy throttle."
Madison feeds power. The tire bites mat, then runner, then dirt. The van shudders, lifts, starts to slip, catches, and climbs. Rick whoops—half celebration, half self-scaring. The rear tire drops into the rut the front left, then climbs out with a sway that sloshes stomachs.
"Go," Gavin says, shoving the dolly back in and snatching the straps. He slams the door as the van moves. Rick scrambles and gets a hand on the jamb. A slick palm slaps metal inches from his knuckles and slides. More shapes pour down the track, feet quiet as falling books.
Gavin runs three steps, rides the handle, and swings into the seat. Rick tumbles across the cargo floor, bangs the dolly, and boots the door shut. Madison keeps the van steady, face locked on the path like she's threading a needle with a fist.
"Beautiful," Gavin says. "Straight and smooth."
"We left the boxes," she says.
"They'll invoice the apocalypse," Rick pants.
The track curves behind warehouses: roll-up doors, dock plates like tongues, a forklift sleeping inside one bay with its forks halfway up. A metal gate blocks the only paved exit, padlock new and smug.
"Gate," Madison says.
"Through the building," Gavin decides. "Loading bay, out the front." He angles for the open dock, rides the bump. The front tires climb the concrete lip; the rear scrapes and pops up. An alarm bleats itself into a steady scream.
"Good," Rick says. "Call everyone."
The forklift's key is in. Gavin twists it and raises the forks a foot to clear their hoodline. On the roll-up, he yanks the chain and drops the door most of the way so the screaming hall becomes a throat, leaving a foot of gap at the bottom.
"Grab tape, strap, the pry bar," he says. Madison rolls a moving blanket and jams it in her lap as a cushion. Rick hands him the pry bar through the seats.
"Straight run," Gavin says. "Through racks to front."
They drive into rows of shelving stacked with fittings and hose. Fluorescents flicker like they're flinching. Mirrors skim steel uprights with squeaks that sound like argument.
From the back, hands probe under the gap they left. Fingers multiply. A face appears sideways and squints at floor level with the patience of a cat.
"Move," Gavin says. The front office is a glass box; beyond it: the street through a glass storefront with a metal mullion that will pretend to be strong when pushed by a van.
"Seatbelts," he says. "Heads back."
"Wait," Madison says, sawing tape into strips with her teeth. She bandages Rick's ear with professional indecency. "Don't let me make you pretty."
"I've never been accused," Rick says, eyes wet and bright.
The first clinger slides under the back gap like water that learned fingers. It scuttles on elbows, finds its knees without ceremony. Three more follow, one losing a necklace in the door like a shed skin. The lead stands into a trot, eyes finding motion like magnets.
"Hold them," Gavin says, eyeing the forklift like a chess piece. He stabs the brakes. "Rick, wheel."
Rick slides into the seat. Madison fences at the lead clinger with her hammer through the passenger window, buying seconds. Gavin runs to the forklift, shoves the forks under a pallet stack two bays high, tips back, and trolls the stack into the aisle like a slow wall.
"Go," he tells Rick. Rick eases forward six feet. The clingers commit to the van like it owes them something. Gavin drops the forks and lets the pallet stack go. It falls with a teaching crash, boxes rupturing into fittings that roll in a glittery storm. He drags another pallet crooked into place, making a low barricade. The lead clinger climbs, then the slats crack; it disappears and thrashes in brass and cardboard.
"Drive," Gavin says, ugly joy at using the building like a tool. He jumps back in. They sprint the aisle toward the office glass.
"Glass is toughened," Rick says, reading mullions.
"Brake then push," Gavin says. "We want weight, not speed."
He sets the van a car-length from the storefront, foot on brake, tension in the wheel like a bowstring. Through the glass: loading zone, hydrant, air that isn't on fire.
"Now," he says, bleeding off brake while feeding throttle. The van shoulders the mullion right of center. The glass opalizes and bursts outward in sugar. The van climbs the curb with a hop and births itself onto the sidewalk. Safety glass rains down in a soft, illegal glitter.
"Out!" Madison says. "Out, out."
Gavin swings left to miss a pole and right to miss a hydrant. A man in a stained dress shirt runs at the van with both hands up like he's calling a timeout. His pupils are a mistake. Gavin threads past him with a drift that places his shoulder against empty air. The man hits the rear quarter and spins.
Behind them, more bodies hit the busted storefront like a low tide turning. Pallets tumble again. Something screams that learned the pitch from alarms.
"Gate's still locked up front," Rick says. The lot exit wears a fresh chain with a smug padlock.
"Angle," Gavin says. He sets the van at forty-five degrees to the chain and eases in. Links throw fits when you ask for diagonals. The chain bites the bumper, rides it, and spits them sideways through the mouth like a letter through a slot. The padlock skitters away, suddenly concept instead of object.
"Right," Madison says. "Street's clear that way—for now."
They take it. The van rides the gutter, grateful to be back in a geometry that doesn't shift with every foot. Smoke threads the air from the freeway, a hesitation in the lungs. Sirens cross and recross each other. A helicopter thuds somewhere, hunting facts.
Rick peels tape from his cheek and grins without humor. "Every play is fourth and long."
"Every play is first and goal," Gavin says, because his brain needs lies with end zones.
They pass a billboard that glitches between a car ad and a warning that thinks words can fix this. A dog runs across their bow with its leash attached to a collar and nothing on the other end. It looks at the van and chooses a fence like a good idea.
"Next move," Madison says.
"Find a bridge over the creek," Gavin says. "Water makes moats. Or it used to."
Ahead, the street kinks around a tire shop. Beyond it: a long straight that ends in red lights and a sideways bus they saw from the ramp, now from the other end. A figure walks the bus's roof like a surveyor, then drops off the far side.
"Left before the bus," Madison reads. "River Avenue. Bridge icon."
"Perfect," Gavin says, meaning "not terrible." He sets the turn.
Metal scrapes under the van. The sound is new. The wheel tugs. The van complains with a harmonic that says something is wrapped where spinning should be clean.
"What is that," Rick says.
Gavin glances at the mirrors. A long steel strap dangles from the rear axle like a tail, sparking the street. It whips, catches, then wraps tighter like it wants to win a knot contest with physics.
"Shit," he says, as the strap tightens and the wheel lurches once, the van choosing which law to obey.