Heather climbed back into the cab. “Can’t you lose these guys?” she asked Finster.
“Doing my best,” he said. He pulled the truck to the right and then to the left, swinging the cargo into a police car. The car veered off the road, but two more police cars took its place. “These guys don’t quit!”
Mark was tense. We’re going to jail. We’re going to die or go to jail. They needed to lose the cops.
“Hang on,” Heather said, looking behind her. Mark followed the direction of her gaze to the holes in the cab and in the cargo walls. She crawled through them and beckoned Mark. “I have an idea. Keep the truck steady, Finster.”
In the cargo hold, she reached through the back door’s opening that Lydia had made. She unlatched the door and lifted it up. “Get one of the canisters,” she said, reloading her gun. Coming up behind them were three cars, sirens wailing.
Mark rolled a canister over to her. Heather kicked it out the door. It bounced toward the middle car. She aimed carefully and shot several times. The SN91 gushed from the canister, covering the cars in its gas. One slowed down as the other two crashed into each other.
“Quick, get another!” Heather said. Mark complied and she pushed it out. She missed her shots, but the canister collided into the remaining car’s windshield. “Got him!”
The truck lurched from side to side, causing the canisters to sway. There was a dying siren and a thunderous crash! Heather and Mark clung to the walls. Mark knocked several canisters over, and they fell out of the cargo hold. One soared into an upcoming police car, tangling itself in the car’s wheels. The police car lifted into the air and flipped onto its roof.
“Finster!” Heather shouted. She closed the cargo door. Together, she and Mark made their way back into the cab. Heather slapped Finster on the back of his head. “I said to ‘hold it steady’!”
“You’ll thank me for getting rid of those guys!” Finster said, pointing at the rearview mirror. A couple of police cars, the last of their pursuers, were in a ditch, engines smoking profusely.
Heather sat back and kicked the floorboard. “That maniac Rooke tried to kill us! What was he thinking, releasing SN91? I’ll kill him. I swear on my life, I’ll kill him.”
“Do you think he meant to kill us?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know,” Finster said. “Maybe he thought we were already gone.” He paused. “What about the other factories?” He looked at Heather, who took out her cell phone.
“No signal?” she said, holding her phone out. “How can there be no signal?”
“Maybe you got bad reception,” Finster said. “Let’s get into town and we’ll call from there.”
“Until then, let’s assume he released the gas in the other factories.”
The memory of that cop’s face pressed to the glass door at the factory came back to Mark. He shuddered at such a fate, the gas working into his body so that he choked, gasping for breath as his body became useless. “At least it would’ve been quick if we had been infected,” he muttered.
Heather mused aloud, “Too quick for any cure. What if the canisters. ..?” She looked at Finster. Mark glanced between them and realized what she meant. The canisters in their cargo hold held the same type of instant SN91. “Drive faster,” she said. Finster nodded and sped up.