With a meaty thunk, Johnson went sailing over the hood of the car, his pants still unzipped. I jammed my foot on the brake, grinding to a stop with the Chevelle sitting at an angle, half on the road and half in the grass. I sat still, breathing fast and staring at the stop sign in front of the idling red jeep. What had I just done?

  I hadn’t been sure what to expect. During my drive, I’d wondered what would happen, whether Johnson would collapse or slowly fade away once I hit him. I hadn’t expected him to sail over the car. My windshield was shattered on the driver’s side, where his body had hit before bouncing up and over the roof. What now? I supposed I would need to get out and confirm that I had properly dispatched the body…whatever that meant in this case.

  I froze with my hand on the door handle of the Chevelle. I had never seen a dead body before. I had a strong feeling in my heart that Johnson wasn’t really dead, but I assumed he would at least LOOK dead. I needed to focus and get myself out of the car before someone else came along one of these roads. It was late, but it really wasn’t that late. I took a deep breath, one that was interrupted by the bloody fist that crashed through the driver’s side window to punch me in the side of the head.

  “You! You son of a bitch!” I heard Johnson slur through a mouthful of broken teeth. “I always knew you were a bastard!” He reached through the window to grab me by the neck and began trying to choke me. His arms and hands were covered with dirt and leaves, and blood dripped from the mess that was his nose and mouth.

  My hand instinctively slid across the front seat, searching for something, all the while thinking that I was surprised how little his efforts were hurting me. Was that adrenaline? He tried to slam my head forward into the jagged glass, but when I didn’t budge, he released me to stomp back to his jeep, where he flicked open the back hatch. He began stumbling back toward the Chevelle, a tire iron in his hand. I watched, feeling like I was watching a television show, more like a member of the studio audience than a member of the cast.

  As he neared the car, Johnson leaned close to the open window, swinging the tire iron for my head in a blur of motion. My left hand shot out instinctively, catching his wrist mid-arc. My right hand snapped out, punching the Bowie knife deep into Johnson’s neck with a wet thud before I yanked it back out.

  The sound that came out of him wasn’t human. Air and blood hissed out of the gaping hole, spraying my face in a hot mist. “Dammit!” I screamed, turning my face from the thick, pulsing stream of blood that fountained out, painting the inside of the Chevelle like someone had released a fire hydrant.

  Johnson staggered backward, clutching at his throat, but every squeeze just forced more blood between his fingers. He made a choking, wet, gargling noise. A dark rope of vomit and blood spilled down his chin, splattering across the front of the Chevelle. The smell of iron and bile hit me, and I struggled not to gag.

  He staggered, but somehow was still on his feet. I quickly threw the car into reverse, my blood-slicked hand sliding on the gearshift, and squealed to a stop, then gunned it at the dying man. I hit him hard, pinning him against the back of his Jeep, but still he stared at me, eyes open and glazed as he vomited more blood and bile. He didn’t disappear. He didn’t fade away. Panicked, I threw the car into reverse and hit him again before he could fall to the ground.

  “Come on!” I screamed. “Why won’t you die? Take his soul, already!” With the third smash of the Chevelle into Johnson, his head ricocheted off the hood, leaving an eye behind. His head flopped back down, and everything was still.

  My heartbeat thundered, shaking my whole body. Steam rose out of the Chevelle from where I had rammed into the Jeep, which had deployed all of its airbags. Shaking, I put the car into reverse. The body came with the Chevelle's hood. The more I backed up, the further I dragged it.

  My hands shook, and the Bowie knife slipped from my grip to fall to the floor. Beside me, the phone vibrated, the screen illuminating the whole front seat. Suddenly, I felt all of the fatigue from the day fall off of me, and the rising nausea disappeared. I realized that in completing the fare, I must have leveled up my license.

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  With the clearing of my head, I felt the horror of the confrontation with Johnson more vividly. I did my best to steady my hands and reached for the door handle. My blood-slicked hands slid off it. I wiped them on my pants and tried again. When I managed to get out of the car, I immediately saw why Johnson’s body was stuck to the front bumper, and my nausea returned.

  The two front horizontal metal strips that held the grill in place had broken off and punctured Johnson’s stomach. Yellow, red, white, and brown liquids dripped from his body and spilled over the bumper to the ground. I carefully breathed through my nose, trying not to vomit. In the distance, I caught the glimmer of headlights through the trees. I had to hurry.

  Sucking back my rising gorge, I ripped Johnson off the metal spikes, intending to throw him toward the woods. Instead, my foot slid in all of the body fluids, and I landed flat on my back next to the jeep, Johnson’s corpse squarely on top of me.

  The headlights turned onto Longley Rd. It was too late. I was going to be busted. I lay still, hoping I was entirely hidden behind the Jeep. The headlights slowed, and it was clear they were stopping to check out the scene of the accident.

  I thought about leaping to my feet and running. I thought about diving into the woods, but I would need to get back to the Chevelle eventually, so I just lay there hugging Johnson’s mutilated corpse.

  The vehicle slowly came into view. It was a rusty pickup truck of sorts. I peered at the windshield, trying to see the driver, but was blinded by a bright flash. The engine roared as the truck sped off into the night.

  What in the hell just happened? Had the driver gotten spooked and taken off? What was the flash? Did the driver just take my picture? If that was the case, I was fucked. fourth_wall had reminded me not to get caught.

  Slowly, I stood and dumped what was left of Johnson into the woods. Back in the steaming Chevelle, I busted a U-turn on Longley Rd, heading back toward Bull Run. I drove for a few minutes before I realized I could see out the driver's side windshield. While I had no idea when exactly it had happened, the car had shifted back to my Honda Accord. The side window and the front windshield were back to normal, and there didn’t appear to be any blood on the inside of the car…except for what was all over my clothes and skin.

  The covered bridge behind the Bull Run ran above a substantial creek. The water was ice-cold when I submerged myself, but it did the job. All manner of sticky bodily fluids flowed off of me and into the water’s current. After a few minutes, I was both as clean as I was going to be and just barely on the positive side of freezing. At least if I were pulled over on the drive home, I wouldn’t look like I had just stepped out of the Overlook Hotel. But as fate would have it, I did not get pulled over, and I did not run into any more trouble.

  I pulled into an open spot on the side street near The Central and leaned my seat back, watching and waiting for the sun to rise. The sky was already beginning to lighten. I wasn’t tired, but I wished I was. Sighing, I scrolled through the messages I’d missed on the Elysium Pro.

  fourth_wall: I see that you are in pursuit. I will follow your progress.

  fourth_wall: Congratulations, Endr! You have completed your first fare. I have advanced your license to D2. Please select your vehicle and equip your upgrades.

  fourth_wall: Holy hell, Somerville! axel_roads just sent me the picture of your first fare. What the hell did you do to the body?

  So that’s who drove by the scene of the crime. The Ramcharger Killer, or as Dan Driver had referred to him, axel_roads. He was one of the other two Endrs in Massachusetts, and he was the one who snapped the incriminating picture of me.

  Max: It wasn’t pretty, but it’s done.

  fourth_wall: Take some time off. From the look of this picture, you’ve earned it.

  Dispatch forwarded the picture, and I got to see just how grizzly everything was in the light of the flash photograph. I had clearly been taken by surprise, and my eyes were wild. I had a feeling that my expression, along with the one-eyed corpse lying on top of me, would forever be burned into my brain.

  - - -

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