Betty's vision was blurry as her eyes started opening. She was completely disorientated and her head was pounding and something was stinging on her forehead. She let out a groan as she pulled her head away from the steering wheel, blinking her eyes a couple of times as she tried to centre herself.
Everything came rushing back and she jerked upright. She groaned at the pain in her neck and the thundering in her head increased and her hand went to her head. As she pulled her fingers away, they were sticky with blood, so she must have cut herself as she had crashed. Betty's vision was still a bit blurry as she looked in the rear view mirror, and she saw the car that Chuck had been driving and Clifford had been in the passenger seat of was pulled over at the edge of the road behind her. Obviously she had only been unconscious for a split second, but that was already too long, because Chuck was slamming the driver door shut and starting down the ditch with a gun gripped firmly in his hand.
Betty gulped in a few breaths and turned her head to the side, ignoring the way her neck twinged as she turned it, and looked over to the passenger side of the car where her phone had been. She couldn't see it and she tried to lean forward to see if it had fallen on the ground, but then there was a pounding on her window, and she let out a squeak as she turned around to see Chuck there.
He was furious, his eyes wide and his teeth bared. He smashed his hand down on her window and she could hear him grabbing at the handle. The doors were still locked, and so he lifted the butt of his gun and pounded it against the window. It would only take a few more pounds of his gun against the glass before it would break and Betty tried to scramble over the centre console to the passenger side, but then the glass was shattering, spraying all over her and a few sharp shards hitting her cheek.
"Get the fuck out!" He snapped at her, and then he reached in and one strong hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled savagely. Betty cried out, trying to tug away from him, but Chuck was a lot stronger than her, and it felt as though he was actually trying to detach her hand from the rest of her body as he yanked on it again. Betty winced, but it was in her best interests to go along with what Chuck wanted, because he didn't doubt for a moment that he would continue pulling until her shoulder dislocated if he needed to—and then probably keep right on going. Betty maneuvered herself back to the drivers side of the car and then awkwardly swung her legs out. The car was on a lean, given the shallow ditch that it had fallen into, and the rain began soaking through her stockings almost immediately. She shivered, but it wasn't just the cold that was sending the tremors through her.
"How much did you hear?" Clifford demanded and Betty couldn't help but arch an eyebrow as she finally managed to get her footing on the slippery slope of the ditch. That was a pretty stupid question, because even if she hadn't heard anything, the fact that they had chased after her and run her off the road would definitely had told her that something was wrong. "I said," Clifford stepped down the slope, and Betty tried to step back, but shifting her weight from one leg to another made her wince and she realized that she must have hurt her leg as well in the crash. "How much did you hear?"
"Everything," Betty snapped, shaking out her hair from side to side, jutting her chin forward and gathering all of the strength and confidence that she could. "I heard that you're dealing drugs—undoubtedly the drugs that are killing people left right and centre—by the way; do you even care that you've killed children? You have two kids of your own!" There wasn't a shred of remorse on Clifford's face. "You're about to be a grandfather!"
"Which is why I'm not going to allow you to get free and run your little mouth," Clifford growled down at her and Betty narrowed her eyes before twisting her head to look up at Chuck. She could feel the blood from the cut on her forehead beginning to drip down her temple and congeal in her eyebrow.
"And you!" She hissed. "How could you kill Moose?" She saw something in Chucks eyes falter, but the grip on her arm was relentless. "We've all known each other since we were twelve! And he wasn't just someone that we went to school with and you were good friends with—he was your brother. When you joined the Serpents, you swore an oath to protect each other! And then you killed him!"
"You wouldn't understand," Chuck said through gritted teeth and Betty couldn't hold back her slightly maniacal laugh, mainly out of sheer panic but also because it was ridiculous that she couldn't understand something that Chuck had managed to get through his thick skull.
"You decided to turn your back on your brothers and your town by shacking up with this asshole—" Betty jerked her thumb up at Clifford, just realizing now that he had a gun in his hand as well. She paid it no heed, because he looked more out of place with it in his hand than Cheryl did when she was standing in the middle of the Serpents clubhouse. "—For what reason—money?"
"Something like that," Clifford muttered under his breath, although Betty barely heard him over the wind and rain. Her hair was completely wet, sticking to her face and her neck and the drops of water were sliding down her neck and underneath her jacket. Clifford opened his mouth to speak again but there was the distinct sound of roaring motorbike engines in the distance. Betty turned her head to the side, looking back down in the direction that they had come from.
"Oh," Betty couldn't help but smirk, even though her head was throbbing and her leg was aching. "Did I mention that my boyfriend called and I told him what you'd done?" Chuck's face twisted and the arm that wasn't gripping her—the one that was holding the gun—whipped up and smacked her across the face. The smirk dropped from Betty's face and she groaned as her head snapped to the side. The metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth and she screwed up her nose as she her eyes filled with tears. She doubted that either men would be able to discern the tears from the rain that was tracking down her face, but she refused to let the tears fall anyway, out of principle.
"We need to get out of here," Clifford's voice shook and Betty was glad. Glad that he was scared.
"There's no way that we're going to get out of here. We can't outrun them," Chuck said, and even though his voice didn't shake in the way Clifford's did, but there was still fear. She could hear it. "They're on bikes and we've only got that shitty thing." In the time that the two were talking, the bikes had gotten even closer, and Betty saw them come around the bend.
It wasn't just Jughead, and FP, and Archie.
On quick glance, there were nearly twenty bikes.
It was more than just the Serpents.
Despite the sting on her lip, she smiled.
She knew that Jughead would come.
There was never any doubt.
"Come on," Chuck growled, and he shifted his grip. He passed the gun from one hand to another and then held on tightly to Betty's bicep. His other hand went behind her, and she felt the gun shove into her lower back. She swallowed hard as she felt him push her forward, forcing her up the hill. Her left leg almost gave out from underneath her as she stepped forward and he had to carefully shift her weight to her other foot. She got to the top of the ditch in a couple of steps, so that she was standing next to Clifford.
"Just kill her and get it over with," Clifford hissed. "And then we can get out of here." Betty knew—just as well as Chuck—that they were both dead if she was. He also knew that there wasn't anyway that either of them were getting out of there alive unless they had some magic bartering chip.
Which they did.
Her.
When the motorbikes finally reached them, the three of them were standing in the middle of the road. Clifford was standing right next to them with the gun in his hand, Chuck also had the gun in one hand and Betty gripped with the other, positioned in front of him. The gun was pressed into her side, finger on the trigger, and that was what caused the Serpents to slow down while they were still a couple of metres away, and get off their bikes. Jughead was in front and he stormed forward, not stopping until he was only a few feet away from them.
"Are you okay?" Jughead's voice was clipped.
"I'm fine," Betty said, although from the way his glare intensified, she was guessing that the blood in her mouth was visible, probably in her teeth. Archie, FP and Fred all moved forward so they were next to Jughead, and the other bikers all moved into a group behind them, all looking intimidating and furious.
"So what happened here, Chuck?" Fred shook his head, looking more disappointed than angry. "Why did you do this?"
"Money, of course," Clifford spat out. "I've got a lot more on hand than you do." Fred's eyes turned to Clifford and that's when they narrowed and became a whole lot angrier. FP's lips were pale from how they were pursed together and Archie's hands were curled into fists, it looked as though they were all itching for a fight.
"Let her go, Chuck," Jughead growled out. "You know that if you hurt her anymore, then you're dead." He definitely wasn't softening his words.
"If I let her go, then I'm dead as well," Chuck snapped, although Betty felt his grip on her falter slightly. "We're going to get in that car—" he jerked his head in the direction of Clifford's car. "—And we're going to take her with us. Once we're far enough away that we're safe, we'll let her go."
Betty doubted highly that that was going to happen.
And she wasn't going to let them get away with what they had done.
She wasn't going to let Clifford get away with what he had done to others—including children—around the town.
She wasn't going to let Chuck get away with what he had to Moose and the Serpents.
She could hear Chuck and Jughead shouting back and forth to each other, but she wasn't paying any attention to what they were saying. She felt Chuck lurch and then loosen his grip just slightly on her. That was when she jerked her elbow back into his stomach and jammed her head backward. Chuck let out a strangled groan and he dropped his hand from her side. Betty lunged forward, diving for Jughead. She heard the crack of a gunshot, and her eyes flicked to the side just in time to see Archie jerk backward with a shout.
Betty's feet felt foreign beneath her as Jughead reached her, and she really wasn't sure what was going on around her, and she looked back over her shoulder as Clifford lifted his own gun. Jughead grabbed her with one arm, pulled her in against him, and then she heard another gunshot go off.
Um...My song recommendations for this week would be Hitchhiker by Demi Lovato, All You Need To Know by Gryffin featuring Calle Lehmann, Rollercoaster by The Jonas Brothers and All This Time by Drax Project, which has just officially been released. The studio version doesn't quite hold up to the live version, it's like there's too much synth and they tried to downplay how powerful the sax it's, which is the best part of the song. I've got this recording of when we saw them at smaller concert, at a club, and the whole atmosphere is fucking amazing when this song comes on, if we're friends on Facebook or Snapchat and you want a copy, let me know and I'll send it through :) But I still recommend the version that's out there on Youtube and Spotify.
Moviewise...John Wick 3 was incredible, as expected. I bawled by eyes out in Rocketman, but it was so, so good. I adore Taron Egerton and Richard Maddon, and they played their roles so well. I don't recommend the new Ted Bundy film, tbh. I was looking forward to it, I love Zac Efron and Lily Collins, and Ted Bundy is a fascinating study subject, but...I just felt like it glorified him so much, and it honestly made me feel a bit sick. TV shows I would recommend would be Madam Secretary, Harlots and High Seas. Also, did anyone watch the first episode of Euphoria? It is absolutely fucking amazing. I bawled my eyes out and my heart hurt and there were parts that hit a little close to home, but shit, it's so fucking good.
Lyric of the week...'My daddy put a gun to my head/Said if you kiss a boy, I'm gonna shoot you dead/So I tied him up with gaffa tape and I locked him in a shed/Then I went out to the garden and I fucked my best friend'...