Free Freelancers: Falcon & Phoenix by Anthony Thackston

have?”
    She steers the car to take up one lane while the bus maintains its position. Guns fire out of one side of the window. Phoenix takes her foot off of the gas and lets the bus get closer.
    “What are you doing?” Falcon asks.
    “Trust me.”
    The bus speeds past them. The flame of the second turbine shoots out of the back door. Phoenix watches the bus pull ahead of them. The flame goes out and two Marauders push the turbine toward the front of the bus. Phoenix then floors the accelerator and catches up to the Marauder vehicle.
    “Phoenix?” Falcon asks as he watches the vulcan cannon being set up in the open door.
    “Not yet.” She glances at the guard rail.
    The Marauders plant their feet in the doorway. One holds the fifty cal while the other grips the trigger.
    “Phoenix.” Falcon’s voice gets louder.
    “Not yet.” She glances back toward the guard rail as they get closer to the back of the bus.
    The barrel of the gun starts to spin. Slow at first, then much faster.
    “Phoenix!” Falcon yells as he starts to reach for the wheel.
    “Now!” With the right side guard rail, now gone, she steers the car to the left of the bus just as a hail-storm of bullets fly into the previously occupied section of street. She pulls the car up to the rear wheel and cuts sharply to the right. The impact, coupled with the wet road, makes the bus fishtail violently. It also causes Falcon’s and Phoenix’s car to spin out.
    The drivers of both vehicles try to correct their direction. They both fail. The bus is the first to roll and, without a guard rail to stop or slow it down, the Marauder vehicle rolls over and over off of the road and into a field.
    Phoenix’s car does hit a guard rail but, just like Rosario, it pops up over it and rolls into the open field on the other side.

11
    T he rain turns to a light sprinkle as the sun’s evening rays break through the dark, parting clouds. One of the rays hits Falcon and Phoenix right in their eyes. Phoenix is the first to put her hand in front of her face, blocking out the intense orange glow. She squeezes her eyes tight and starts to sit up.
    Falcon’s head rests on the open window of the door. He tries to bring his left hand up to block the sunlight but the unexpected drag of Phoenix’s arm stops him. “Oh yeah,” he says, displeased at the situation.
    “You, too,” she comments as she pulls her arm back towards her, finding some kind of middle ground between the two of them. She looks down at her jacket and her legs. They’re covered in bits of glass from the blown-out windshield. Popping her jacket gets the glass chunks off of it and she carefully brushes away the shards on her legs.
    Little Wang sits up in the back seat and looks around at the car. More glass is in the back and the interior has dents pushed in his direction, making the rear seat feel claustrophobic. His hand goes to his head. “Anyone get the number of that—”
    “Bad joke.” Falcon slowly turns around to shoot Little Wang a scolding look. He looks down in his lap and finds the gun. He ejects the magazine. Empty. He drops the useless weapon to the floorboard.
    Phoenix looks over Falcon then back to Little Wang. “We’re ok.” She opens her car door and it falls off of the hinges, crashing to the ground. She takes a disbelieving glance at Falcon before stepping out of the wreck of a car, dragging her sluggish prisoner behind her. They both look the car over as Little Wang stumbles out of the back seat and falls to the ground.
    “We’re ok. The car, though…” Falcon says, looking at the busted out glass and the bullet holes littering the hood. The roof looks as though it had bowling balls dropped on it.
    “The other car would have taken a better beating.” Falcon admits he may have been wrong about his choice of vehicle.
    “I won’t say I told you so.” Phoenix rubs the back of her neck with her right hand, pulling Falcon’s arm up with it. “At least we landed upright.” She