The world spun around me, a jumble of yellow-gray sky, snow, and forest-green truck. Something slammed into my right shoulder, and I rolled down an icy hill. I plowed into fresh powder at the bottom, winding up splayed out and buried, with snow packed into my mouth and nose.
I rolled over. Spat snow from my mouth. Checked my shoulder. It felt like I’d slammed it in a car door six or eight times, but I could move it, so I figured it wasn’t broken or dislocated. I felt a trickle of warm blood seeping along my arm-I must have split open my gunshot wound.
The twin grain silos towered over me. Beside them slumped a burned out farmhouse and mostly collapsed barn. I couldn’t see the Peckerwood’s truck-the snow berm beside the road was in the way. A long, chaotic trail left by my thrashing limbs marked where I’d rolled down the side of the berm. It seemed far too quiet for the aftermath of a crash. Shouldn’t someone be screaming?
I tried to stand, but dizziness forced me back to my hands and knees. I slowly crawled up the snow berm, without using my bruised arm.
The truck had plowed into the berm and twisted so its back end was blocking the road. Its front wheels were stuck in the snow, raised three or four feet above the roadbed, so the entire truck was stuck at an angle. The front windshield was full of cracks, and a chunk about the size of a man’s head had been punched out of the passenger’s side. The windshield wipers had smeared the oil around, leaving long, half-moon streaks on what was left of the glass.
I crawled over the crest of the berm and slid down the far side. I grabbed the passenger door handle to pull myself upright, looked through the window, and recoiled in shock.
One of the guards was slumped against the passenger window, face pressed to the glass. Blood poured from his hairline, ran in rivers along his nose, sheeted over his sightless eyes, and dripped into his yawning mouth.
I took hold of the handle again. Turned it. The door opened easily. The guy fell out head first. The top of his skull was flattened and bloody.
Behind him, the driver held a pistol aimed at my head.