The near-final chapter! Please enjoy this one, the ending is a sudden turn!
Chapter 14: Cliff Hanger
They drove across Jagged Road, and reached the old shack by the road in where Jill told them she would be.
"That's where they are," said Mush, and they pulled up into the old house.
Mush and Frank ran out of their car to see Jill and Peach outside their house, talking to the police. The police turned around and saw the two of them approaching, as they both halted to stop. The police were after them.
"Hey, aren't you the guy who killed the man in the middle of the street?" demanded a stout police officer to Mush, who seemed to have a remarkable account of memory. "There was a video in the back of the truck which recorded all the evidence, and we saw you throw that piece of metal. Put your hands in the air, now." Frank backed away, but Mush stood his ground, thinking of his next act. The police didn't seem to be moving at all.
Peach reacted quickly and grabbed Jill's hand, then shoved the police officer in front of her onto the dirty ground in a rough shove, and then dashed towards Frank's car.
"Get inside!" she shouted, as the four of them hurriedly made their way into the car and started to drive away from the police. The three police cars immediately drove after them, their sirens echoing through the empty road.
"Frank and I have already intervened Death," Mush told them, just as Frank took a two-hundred seventy degree turn to another road.
"Shit, the police are coming," said Frank. "We're so screwed because they think we're criminals or something. Who the hell wants to be a police officer when they grow up?"
"What happened to your face?" Peach asked Frank, and Jill looked at Frank's face in slight disgust. Nobody could really tell if the person was Frank or not with the slight disfigurement from the burn. His face had been permanently changed.
"I was burned alive in a chest, goddamnit," said Frank in an annoyed voice. "And then Mush almost exploded from a trail of gasoline."
"I'm wondering," said Jill. "Peach, how did you cheat death from the train wreck? You were meant to die, but you survived."
"I had a premonition," explained Peach, wiping her sunglasses on her sleeve. "Just like Mush did, I saw the train crash. I knew I was supposed to die from the burning blimp, so I saved myself from simply crawling away when the train finally skidded on the ground."
"But are these premonitions given to us by Death, or do we receive them by ourselves?" Mush asked her. He looked behind him to see if the police was still following their car, but he saw another completely different scene, a dark cliff hundreds of feet above water. He blinked in bewilderment, and the road was immediately changed back to normal. It was the strangest sight he had ever seen, and knew at once it was another sign.
"I don't know," Peach said. "But I doubt that Death would save us with premonitions. All Death wants to do is kill and leave marks, like he did to Frank."
"If he was skipped, then-"
"So I'm next!" realized Jill out loud, just as Frank gasped and accidentally crashed head-on into a giant rock, which suddenly reminded Peach of Daisy's death when she had been crashed onto a rock and full speed. They all screamed as the car flipped over, shattering the windows and hood, until they flipped back to the normal position after flipping a total of two times. They all sat in their seats, horrified and stunned. As the car was flipping, Frank had held onto the reverse lever too hard, malfunctioning the reverse switch and causing the car to back up slowly. He tried turning off the car, but the key was stuck in place. Peach looked behind her, her eyes growing wide with fear.
"We're on the Koopa Beach cliff," the princess said urgently, and they looked behind them to see the edge of a foggy cliff roughly thirty feet away, where one of them would be plummeting down. The car slowly moved backwards towards the cliff, as the four survivors struggled to open their doors in fear of their predicament. Mush cracked his window, and managed to crawl out, followed by Frank, and then right after him came Peach, her hair being without a problem to get out through the window. But Jill wasn't moving, as the car rolled further to the edge of the cliff.
"Jill, get out!" said Peach in a tone of fear, but she could see that Jill couldn't get out of her seat. Jill's seatbelt has been tightened when the car had crashed, and a wooden stake was lodged into her seatbelt lock, preventing her from getting out. The car was rolling further backwards.
Mush went to the other side of the car and smashed her window open and then tried loosening her seatbelt. He could clearly see that her seatbelt was stuck.
"Please hurry!" cried Jill, looking fearfully behind her. The cliff was only fifteen feet away, as the car went backwards even further. Peach got a large rock and tried to pop open the tires, but it was no use as it kept on moving. Mush tried his hardest to cut the seatbelt, as his foot was pressed under the slowly rolling tire, painfully and slowly.
"It's too dangerous!" cried Jill. "We can't stop the car!"
"No Jill, I won't just leave you like this," cried Mush, getting up and pulling Jill with all his might. It was the wooden stake which was preventing her from getting out. "You won't die now. We'll make it together to find the design."
Jill just held her breath in terror, as she realized she was less than ten feet away from falling to her death. The car let out an engine gas from the bottom of it, spraying Peach to the floor. Her eyes were stinging with pain as she fell back.
"Mush, thank you for everything you've done. I'm sorry that I was mad at you!" she cried, as the car continued to roll backwards further and was only five feet away to the edge. The car let out a wheezing noise as Mush pushed against it, making the car skid against the ground, blowing dust and mud all over. He skid his legs into the ground, a useless effort as the car reversed further.
Mush pulled at the stake with all his might, and looked at their predicament in intense horror. He could see the edge of the cliff only a few feet away from him, and the waves that splashed all the way at the bottom, the deadly rocks to pierce Jill if she were to fall in her car. As the car was halfway off the cliff, he placed a piece of log under the front tire, making the car skid and turn slightly. The car wobbled, and Jill screamed in terror as the car was about to plummet to its doom, a part of the car already past the edge and wobbling dangerously.
"Hold on Jill!" yelled Mush, and he pulled out the wooden stake at the last second, freeing her seatbelt and pulling her out of the car. The car rolled off the edge of the cliff and fell hundreds of stories below into the murky ocean below, as Mush and Jill were on the ground, holding each other and looking off the edge of the cliff, seeing the car crash into the rocks below as it blew up into the water. Peach was astounded and relieved, and Frank, who was covering his eyes from the scene, was overly amazed when he saw the two of them on the cliff, escaped from the car and in no harm. Jill was saved, but someone else wouldn't.
"It can't be!" gasped Peach in a voice of joy, as the others ran over to see what it was. In the dirt was a number, scratched out by Death.
4
"What is that?" asked Frank, brushing his hand against it.
"I believe it's over," said Peach, her eyes full of wonder. "The four of us, to live on. This isn't a coincidence."
"Could it be?" asked Mush. "But how?" He felt that it was all over, that they had somehow messed up the design once and for all. Their lives were new and clean.
"It makes sense," agreed Jill. "What if it really means that it's over? Our lives are no longer on Death's list." She looked at Mush, as Mush looked at her back. Frank looked at them in disgust, as Peach ran over the four with her finger, wondering what would be in store for them. But Frank was the only one to notice something odd with the number. He rubbed his hand next the dirt slowly, and something else appeared next to the imprinted four. It was a zero. The others looked at it.
40
"I was wrong," realized Peach, her eyes becoming disappointed and worried. "It's a sign for a death. It's not over yet." She looked around cautiously, as Frank stood up when he heard the sirens of the police, and he walked a distance away from the three others.
"Forty rhymes with Parakarry," said Frank randomly. "Is that the sign? Is it? Who's next?" Frank looked around him, and felt his first expierience of a sign. He knew that Parakarry would be related someway in his death.
Mush and Jill exchanged glances, and then at Frank.
The police car, driving at an illegal seventy miles per hour, suddenly stopped at a halt when they saw the edge of the dangerous cliff, and crashed right into a speed limit sign with the number 40 on it.
"Duck!" screamed Peach, just as Frank saw the speed limit sign soar into the air from the car hit force, and he narrowly avoided it from being sliced in half. Skipping him, he fell to the ground in surprise.
Mush wasn't able to turn around in time, as the speed limit sign smashed into the back of his head, cracking his skull. As Jill screamed in shock, Mush was killed on impact.
What will happen next? What would the next chapter have in store (now that Mush is dead)?
By the way, I have my ideas for the sequel already! Please please review, and thank you so much to my favorite reviewers. I will update my next chapter when I reach 5 reviews, hopefully!