I’ve been here before.

This is how I died.

I’m back in the car, Connie beside me. We’re taking the long way home from Mom and Dad’s, chasing the fading autumn light. I told the autonav to find a scenic route back to the city and it charted a lazy, zig-zag path along densely treed side roads that’ll add an extra hour to our trip, but we don’t mind. We’re in no hurry.

Connie, her passenger seat partially reclined and pushed all the way back, has slipped off her sandals and absently drums the toes of her right foot on the dash, each tap launching rainbow pulses from the depths of her nails. Her face is turned away from me, lost in the passing blur of leaves, the violet beech, the tawny maple, the luminous yellow birch. Only a hint of her nose and the curve of one freckle-kissed cheekbone peek out from behind the loose twists of auburn hair that cascade to her shoulders.

The hem of her blue and white orchid-patterned dress—the one she bought beach-side the morning after we hopped to Cuba and married in the all-night chapel just outside the Havana airport's security duct—is bunched midway up her pale thighs, and rising.

She's swinging her left knee back-and-forth, slowly back-and-forth, tapping my leg at the apex of each arc, following some lazy rhythm only she can hear, and as she does, the fabric of her dress keeps rising. Little by little. Bit by bit.

Her cheek twitches with the flicker of a smile. She knows I've noticed. Her hand drops to the seat between her legs.

Neither of us says anything. We're enjoying these last few moments of quiet, content to be alone with each other for a few minutes before our lives resume and we’re back to scrawling quick notes in passing on the bathroom mirror.

Visits home aren’t stressful exactly, but Mom has waited for a grandchild for thirty years and she's stopped hiding her impatience. She wants us to see a specialist, get the process underway already, but with the reJuv treatments keeping us all healthy there's no reason for heroic measures. 

Not yet at least. We want it to happen naturally. We'll keep trying the old fashioned way for another year or two, then we'll see.

We've got time.

I lean forward to pick some music and there's a welcome pressure on my thigh, a spreading warmth—Connie kneading my leg through the fabric of my jeans. She leans closer, strengthens her grip.

Other than the double-sized AV up ahead—probably hauling a late harvest from one of the lake farms—the nav shows clear roads all the way down to the highway, not another car in sight. The way the pilot's been driving, we'll be past the big automated truck before the next bend and then it'll be easy-running for another thirty minutes. I’ll take over when we hit the outskirts of the city. Deserted country roads are one thing, but I don't trust the pilot in real traffic. I know what the stats are, autopilots versus human drivers, and I don’t care. We’re safer with my hands on the controls.

Besides, at our age? Thirty minutes is way more than we’ll need.

She reaches up, brushes the hair from her face. Her eyes catch mine and her dimples emerge as she spreads her lips without showing any teeth. It's a smile most people read as bashful. But I know it means she's about to get her way.

Maybe this'll be the time we finally make it happen.

The road rises, curving around a stand of thick trees that hang out over the asphalt. The AV is directly ahead, it’s articulated, high-backed cargo shell scrapes through the overhanging branches. The pilot accelerates, trusting the clear nav means it’s safe to pass, ignoring the double yellow that would have cautioned a human driver from overtaking around a blind corner.

Connie leans in to kiss me.

I move in to respond but the moment is interrupted by the AV’s flaring brake lights, two sudden scarlet strips slashing the windshield.

The automated truck lurches ahead of us. Shuddering tires hiccup smoke on the asphalt. A warning tone sounds and the dash pulses amber. The pressure on my thigh tightens—Connie squeezing hard enough to hurt.

It’s too late to brake. The restraints grab us tight against our seats and the pilot darts us into the oncoming lane, out and around the hard-braking AV. The truck swerves to the shoulder, catches gravel, fishtails.

I flail at the dash for support as we whip out to avoid colliding with its rear-end, wishing I hadn't suggested an indirect route home. Wishing I’d reset the pilot from aggressive. Wishing I was driving.

I brace for impact, but force my eyes to stay open and watch as we squeak past the AV’s bumper and glide back into our lane.

We both exhale at the same time, our sighs of relief loud in the small cabin. My heart’s thrashing, my vision pixelated with adrenaline, but I start the process to disengage the pilot and retake control. Married time can wait.

Connie tenses in her seat.

A gasp—the last breath she’ll ever take—catches in her throat. I pull my eyes from the dash, realising only now why the AV jammed on its brakes and cut for the shoulder.

Careening down around the bend, directly ahead of us, is the angular front end of an armoured TACvan.

I get one hand on the wheel and manage to cover the pads, but there's no response. The pilot won't give me control, not now. It's just seen the van too.

Bold letters scream at us from the windscreen, washing us in crimson light:

IMPACT ALERT.

This isn't a warning. It's a conclusion.

The TACvan straddles the road, a six-wheeled kinetic missile rocketing toward us. I catch the barest glimpse of the driver’s face through the van’s narrow window, his features a blur, lost in shadow, and then he passes out of view, replaced by the imposing bulk of the massive military vehicle’s jutting front-end.

I wrench the wheel in one, last desperate attempt to avoid what’s about to happen but it spins through my slippery fingers. All I can do is watch.

Connie swallows a scream and her fingers bite deeper into my leg. I cover her hand with mine and in a squeeze try to tell her that everything will be okay. That I love her more than anything. That I’ll always be with her, just like we promised. Just like we planned.

Even death won’t keep us apart.

The bags deploy, blinding and choking, then the van hits with a dull plastic thunderclap that bursts with the ragged non-sound of sudden violence, heaves my organs into my ribcage, blasts us with shards of shattered windshield.

In the time it takes to blink through the glass slicing at my face, the matte-black wedge of the TACvan's bumper is cleaving through the dust-choked cabin and a huge cabled tire is squeezing down on the front end of the car.

Connie's mouth is wide, teeth bared, head thrown back, the tendons of her neck taut—but there’s no sound, nothing but a concussive drone in my head and then her lower half is gone, chewed up by the relentlessly churning wheel.

I lunge out, try to grab her, but we're slammed from behind, compressed into the AV’s front end. I’m thrown sideways, helpless as the van bites down and charges through, churning composite and electronics and flesh as it passes.

The car catches the road, spins me around to watch the van’s rear wheels bounce and regurgitate a ruin of bloody debris.

In a second, every thing we had is gone. Everything we dreamed of chewed up and spat out.

Connie is dead.

Another half-turn and what’s left of the car flips, bounces with a hollow crunch. Something in my chest buckles. Pain spears through my abdomen. I barely feel it.

Died screaming.

The pain wracking by body is nothing, a sliver under the skin compared to the anguish that tears at my head and my heart and my stomach and my bowels.

The horizon rolls back around.

A dark crunch. A smear of bright pink.

The car bounces again and I'm weightless, somehow free of the restraints, free of the tumbling wreck, a weightless ragdoll in the air with the autumn breeze cool on my cheeks, and then the earth rears up and slams into me. I rebound off the pavement and skid, dead-limbed. Bands of white pulse across my vision as my face scrapes off. The road grinds through my clothes, my skin, and deep into muscle before, finally, thankfully, I stop.

More pain hits. Pain so intense it immediately loses meaning and evaporates. But the agony inside only grows, the fire of loss consuming me.

I’m facing back the way we came now. The van’s gone. Already. Already gone. Connie.

Everything.

Gone.

There’s a shoe nearby. Brown. Tread worn at the heel, foot still attached. Most of a leg too. Wearing jeans. My jeans.

My leg.

Connie's hand, bone and flesh raggedly severed above the wrist, clutches my thigh. Her wedding ring glitters in the sunlight.

The sight of it sparks something cold in the fire of loss raging within me, condenses to a frigid knot of anger spiked with bitter hatred for the man who did this to us.

For the man who took everything from us.

I try to roll, to get to my feet and chase the van down, but my body is smeared out around me. I’m not going anywhere, not now. Not ever.

I close my eyes, suck shredded breath, and hope death comes before the recovery team arrives.

The world bleeds to white, but a blink later I’m back in the car, Connie’s terrified hand on my thigh, the van dead ahead, and the driver a wild-eyed blur through its narrow viewport.

The van tears through Connie.

Throws me from the mangled car.

I bleed to white.

And blink.

Van.

Connie.

White.

Blink—

Van.

Connie.

White.

Again and again I’m dragged through the last twenty seconds of my life until, after reliving Connie’s death over and over, with every intimate second of her torment seared into me, every subtle nuance of her final scream etched into my brain, and an anger for the man behind the wheel calcified into pure, concentrated hatred, something finally changes.