Previously…
– Diane and Samantha joined Landon in racing to Mount Hood to try and rescue Tori from Zane.
– A distracted Zane crashed the car with him and Tori in it into a guard rail. When Tori awoke, Zane was passed out, and she was able to escape the vehicle.
– Sarah and Matt caught up to Zane at the crash site, just as he put the vehicle back in motion.

“Follow them!”

Before Sarah Fisher Gray has even finished shouting the words, her husband has pulled the truck into an urgent U-turn. It crosses to the other side of the two-lane highway and begins pursuing their daughter‘s car, which just moments ago backed away from crashing into the metal guard rail and took off in the opposite direction.

“Is that car even drivable?” Sarah asks in astonishment. 

“Guess so, looking at how fast Zane‘s driving,” Matt comments. 

Sarah strains to get a look into the sedan as Matt closes in behind it. She can see Zane’s dark hair over the driver’s seat, but all she can make out in the area of the passenger seat is the whitish-gray airbag. And the fact that night is falling all around them, making it even tougher to get a look into Tori’s car, doesn’t help matters.

“Is Tori even conscious?” Sarah wonders aloud. Matt’s lack of a response — even though he has no way whatsoever of knowing the answer — fills her with even more dread.

“So what do we do now?” Matt asks as he white-knuckles the steering wheel. “We can’t run ’em off the road–“

“No!” Sarah says. “No. If I can get the local police to form a barricade up ahead, maybe–” 

Her thought is interrupting by the ringing of her iPhone. She grabs it frantically and sees that it is not the authorities calling, but her best friend.

“Diane. Hey,” she says into the phone. “We found them.”

“You what?!” Diane Bishop’s voice cries over the line. “Where?”

“On the highway. They had crashed the car — but it’s driving, and Zane turned around and is headed back toward Mount Hood. We’re by exit…” She strains to see the sign up ahead. “…127.”

“We aren’t that far from there, either,” Diane says. “What’s the plan?”

Sarah hesitates as she cranes her neck to try and get a better look inside the vehicle, but she still can’t see Tori.

“I don’t know yet,” Sarah says. “I’m figuring that out. But it can’t be too late. It can’t be.”

—–

The first thing Tori Gray becomes aware of is a persistent itch on her cheek. Her hand is reaching up to scratch it before she is even aware of the movement, and when her head lifts to allow the fingers access, she realizes that she is lying down on something that feels hard beneath her but has a soft but ticklish texture.

Grass.

The understand hits her, and it somehow makes sense. She feels tired and heavy, and it seems like she is… outside? Despite the near-darkness around her, whatever is above her looks like the sky, and her limited field of vision shows the top of a building and a tall tree, and–

Grass.

The word comes at her again. But this time it makes much less sense. Why am I lying in the grass?

Her head pounds as she attempts to lift it more than a few millimeters. Her entire left side feels so sore that she cannot fathom what kind of workout she must have done to wind up this way. But it is worse than that soreness; it goes deep, feels like it is still punching at her muscles internally.

“Why am I…” she breathes, more to test out her own voice than because she is expecting an answer. When she finally struggles to a seated position, she confirms that there is no one around to answer. A shockingly loud whoosh from behind her causes her to turn, uncomfortable as it is, and she notices the highway that is only 50 — or maybe 100, or who knows how many because it’s hard to estimate — yards away from where she sits. 

“Oh my god.” She speaks the words at full volume, and pain radiates through her chest from the effort. Now the memories ooze into and through her brain, gliding over one another like bursts of gas. She was with Zane. In the car. He had a knife. And she was thinking of jumping…

Did I jump from a car going 60 miles an hour?! she thinks, and it occurs to her that the fact she is too fearful of chest pain to actually say the words aloud must mean that she did jump from a car going 60 miles an hour.

Part of her wants to lie back down, just for a few minutes. Doing anything else seems far too hard. But she can see the gas distance not that far away. Well, far away. It does seem far away. But it’s not much further ahead of her than the highway is behind her. And she knows that she needs to call 911 or this pain could become a lot, lot worse. But the prospect of walking that far is so daunting.

She thinks about it for a moment. Then she drops herself onto all fours and begins crawling through the grass.

—–

Down the road, Zane‘s eyes dart constantly between the road ahead and the rearview mirror just to his right. The headlights of Matt’s truck feel as if they are burning through the back of the car Zane is driving. The rapidly encroaching darkness makes those lights feel more intense, and even though it seems like the cover of dark would make it easier to evade Matt and Sarah, it doesn’t. 

He is rattled by a sudden, unexpected thumping noise. Immediately afterward, the car pulls hard toward the right. Zane’s shaky hands desperate yank the steering wheel to the left, and he straightens out his course before the car hits that guard rail again. 

His gaze flicks back toward the mirror. The headlights seem even brighter now. He just wants to shout that he doesn’t even have Tori with him, but he can’t decide if that would get them to peel away or would make them run him off the road.

Thump! The wheel jerks right again. Zane reacts as fast as he can, but it takes more effort to right the car this time.

“Fuck!” he exclaims. “Fuck!” The car miraculously seemed drivable after his crash, but now he realizes he should have done a full inspection before he started it up again. 

Thump!

The vehicle pulls right, and Zane, more prepared this time, corrects it immediately. This time, he steps on the accelerator even harder, desperate to lose those headlights. 

—–

By the time Tori makes it to the edge of the gas station’s parking lot, her knees are soaking wet beneath her dress, and her gooey hands have touched things that she doesn’t want to think about. Her head is pulsing with a pain that fits like a helmet, but it has become a little easier to breathe the longer she is awake. However, when she attempts to climb into a standing position, she feels as if she is going to topple over in three directions at once. Her feet do not trust the ground at all. So she sinks back into a crawling position and continues over the hard concrete, which makes her knees practically long for the wet grass and dirt. She keeps her eyes on the sole car parked at one of the pumps, fearing that it won’t see her in the dark if it takes off too quickly.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take that much longer to make it to the main building, which houses a mini-mart. She can see the bright fluorescent lights on inside. She crawls onto the curb and then comes to the door, which she can tell from its bottom is one of those doors that swings open. Driving her shoulder into it, she pushes it in, and as soon as her head pushes past the door, she starts screaming.

“Help! Help me!”

—–

“Police are setting up a barricade about three miles up,” Sarah tells Matt as she hangs up the phone.

“What about us?” Matt asks from behind the wheel. “I don’t want us slamming into him.”

“Start hanging back a little,” Sarah says uneasily. “I don’t like the way that car keeps jerking, anyway.”

Matt is quiet for a few seconds until Tori’s car does it again. 

“Probably axel damage,” Matt says. He carefully presses on the brake to place some distance between the truck and Zane. 

“This has to work,” Sarah says, nearly under her breath.

Matt looks over at her solemnly. “We’re not letting them out of our sights.”

Sarah’s phone rings again. Her eyes snap toward it, but instead of seeing the number for local law enforcement, she sees another number with a local area code. 

“That might be one of the officers,” she says before answering. “Hello? This is Sarah–“

“Mom!” Tori’s voice cries through the phone. “Mom! It’s me!”

“Tori?”

Matt’s head snaps toward Sarah. “It’s her?”

“Tori, we’re following you. The police are–“

“I’m not with Zane. I got out. I– I’m at a gas station…”

“We’re coming,” Sarah says. “Your dad and I are coming.”

—–

“How are we supposed to see them when it’s this dark?” Landon Esco asks as he drives his own car southbound on the same highway.

Samantha Fisher, who is seated in the passenger seat holding onto the handle above the door, strains to see through the darkness. Reflective markers illuminate the divider between the two lanes, but otherwise, the darkness does not reveal much about the rural area around them.

“Are we sure we’re even on the right highway?” Samantha asks.

“I double-checked with your mom,” Samantha’s own mother says from the backseat. 

In the distance, they see a pair of headlights cutting through the night. Samantha leans even further forward.

“Is that Tori’s car?” Landon asks. 

“I can’t tell,” Samantha replies.

“That’s Sarah and Matt following him,” Diane says as a second set of lights appears behind the sedan. “That’s his truck.”

The trio continues down the road but watches in confusion as the truck makes a sudden U-turn. Its taillights begin to disappear in the opposite direction, while the lights of Tori’s car grow closer. 

“Why would they turn around?” Samantha says, confused.

Diane leans forward and grips the shoulder of Samantha’s seat. “I don’t know. Maybe they got word from the police–“

But she is interrupted by the sight of Zane’s headlights swerving suddenly, and then they all see the sedan swerving onto their side of the road. 

“What the hell–?” Landon blurts out, doing his best to steer out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. But the headlights come right at them, and the sounds of twisting metal and shattering glass overtake the air.

END OF EPISODE 1130

Will Sarah and Matt make it to Tori?
Will the crash claim any casualties?
Is Zane’s reign of terror finally ending?
Discuss it all in the comments below!

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