Fighting Only Gets You Somewhere - Rewrite

Chapter One

A series of curses pierced the silence that had been left behind when the SUV had travelled into a dead zone, leaving the occupants without both cellular service or a radio signal. The blacked-out SUV had fallen victim to a pothole that had threatened to sink the entire vehicle on the passenger side. All four of the vehicle's stoic passengers were jostled aggressively despite the seatbelts that anchored their bodies to the dark leather seats. The driver slammed his palm against the steering wheel, cursing someone for failing to properly maintain the vehicle and replacing the burnt-out headlights. In his frustration, however, he narrowly managed to avoid a second crater by pitching the vehicle to the left and turning the large SUV towards the overgrown weeds.

"Jesus Christ," the passenger bit, one hand instinctively reaching for the 'oh-shit' bar while the other laid flat against the dashboard in an attempt to stop himself from being thrown around like a ragdoll. The weeds concealed even more bumps and teeth-jarring holes, quickly thwarting any hope that the impromptu off-roading adventure was going to be any smoother than the deserted road they had veered from. "Where the fuck are you going? We're in the middle of absolute nowhere with shit service and you've decided you want to start off-roading? You're either going to blow a tire or snap a Goddamn control arm, and I would really rather not be stranded up a creek without a pot to piss in."

"It's up a creek without a paddle, dip shit."

Out of the corner of his eye, the driver watched as the passenger snagged the opened water bottle out of the cup holder and chucked it at his brother in the back. "Go fuck yourself with a paddle, Nate. At least you knew what I fucking meant."

"Would both of you shut up?" the driver all but roared, squinting through at the windshield in an ill-gotten attempt to avoid the hazards hidden away by the dying shrubbery and the non-existent headlight system. "Neither of you are going to have a pot to piss in and you'll both be up shit's creek without a paddle when I dump your dumbass here and make you walk back to the compound for your not so constructive criticism."

In the wake of the silence that followed, Will could hear the under carriage of the SUV scrape against something and he cringed; for once in his life, he missed the mind-numbing music that Damon would insist on playing through the expensive, after-market sound system each and every time he claimed shotgun position. While Damon thought himself akin to a DJ, he greatly lacked the ability to read his audience and the vehicle's bass would often wind up loud enough to recalibrate their heart rates, lest they opened the windows.

He did his best to see through the thick, bullet-proof windshield's after-market tint, but the all-encompassing darkness that surrounded them was nothing more than an endless black hole. Shortly after the radio had begun spewing static, he had heard Nate and Scott muttering in the back seat about how great of a shortcut the abandoned road had been, and, now, careening through underbrush that hadn't been cleared in years, he was likely to agree with them. Will had taken the darkened road on a whim when he'd realized that they were being tailed, and he had been determined to lose the sorry son of a bitch that had decided to follow them. At first, the road had been great – it was dark and deserted with plenty of places to hide their hulking SUV to gather the upper hand; however, it was proving the complete opposite. The endless pitch made it difficult to tell which way he had come from, and, with nothing visible in the horizon, he felt as if he had been circling the same area mindlessly for the better part of the last half-hour.

Slowing the large vehicle to a little above a crawl, Will was just about ready to slam his fist into the steering wheel a second time when something caught his eye. He squinted in hopes that it would help make out one shade of pitch to another, but all it did was make his eyes water. Edging the SUV on in its general direction, Will could feel the tug on the back of his chair as Nate leaned forward and the speculative, nagging feeling that he was chasing a mirage was sucked out of the window and he put a little more pressure on the accelerator.