The Flesh Cartel #9: Trials and Errors

Apparently mirages weren’t just for deserts.
    Dougie looked like he was on a fucking death march, just waiting for the end to come and swallow him up and take away his pain.
    An end would come. Dougie’s pain would be taken away, too. But not in the way he clearly thought.
    And just like that, the brighter ending came: a car rattling up the highway from the east, an old rust bucket by the sound of it, its muddied headlights cutting a huge curve across the scenery as it rounded a bend, blinding Mat as they hit his eyes. Dougie, too, judging by how he shielded his face with his forearm.
    Mat lurched forward, throwing himself onto the shoulder, waving his arms wildly.
    “Help! Help!” he shouted through the gag, and then, halle-fucking-lujah, Dougie snapped from his fugue and joined in too, screaming in a high, hoarse, but clear voice: “Help! Please, help us!”
    When it started to look like the car might pass them by, Mat realized just how insane he and Dougie might seem to some innocent driver. Like a pair of drunks or drug addicts, or worse, some psycho kinksters out cruising for unwilling victims. Fuck-all knew how long it’d be before another car came along. He couldn’t take the chance of losing this one, not after all the screaming they’d just done, not after everything they’d been through, not after Dougie had finally snapped out of his fucking nightmare and realized it’d all just been some awful dream. He couldn’t .
    Without another thought, he freed his hand from Dougie’s and ran full tilt into the middle of the road. If the car hit him, so be it. At least then it would have to stop. At least Dougie would make it home.
    It didn’t hit him.
    The driver braked hard, swerved nearly sideways, but managed to pull the car to a stop just a few feet short of impact.
    Dougie rushed up beside Mat and grabbed his hand like he thought he could stop him now from throwing himself into the road. The figure inside the car seemed to stare at them for a moment, unmoving, and he and Dougie stared back at the darkened shape of him—her?—behind the wheel, afraid to spook their would-be savior, afraid he’d start up again and run them over, afraid that if they stepped out of the way for even a second, he’d just take off into the night and—junker or not—leave them in his dust.
    But then the driver waved to them, leaned across the front seat, and threw open the passenger door.
    The time for hesitation and caution had passed. Do or die, quite literally.
    Still clutching to each other, tears streaming down both their cheeks, Mat and Dougie rushed over and climbed inside.

Bookended
    Giving an Inch (Professor’s Rule, #1), with Amelia Gormley
    Apple Polisher (Rear Entrance Video, #1)
    Wallflower (Rear Entrance Video, #2)
    With Violetta Vane :
    Mark of the Gladiator
    Galway Bound
    The Druid Stone
    The War at the End of the World
    Hawaiian Gothic
    “Salting the Earth,” a short story in the anthology Like It or Not
    Cruce de Caminos
    Harm Reduction
    The Saturnalia Effect

    Power Play: Resistance, with Cat Grant
    Power Play: Awakening, with Cat Grant
    Master Class (Master Class, #1)
    Sublime: Collected Shorts (Master Class, #2)
    Counterpoint (Song of the Fallen, #1)
    Crescendo (Song of the Fallen, #2)
    Anchored (Belonging, #1)
    Where He Belongs (Belonging, #2)
    Break and Enter, with Aleksandr Voinov