by Sam Cameron
“Hey,” a voice said, and Danny turned to see Laura.
“Hey,” he replied.
She was wearing a backstage pass like his. It flapped around her neck as she sat beside him. Out in the front part of the tent, Moon and his band began a slow ballad that had been a hit during the summer.
“My parents aren’t happy about last night.” Laura pulled on the pink sleeves of her sweater. “I told them it wasn’t your fault, but they don’t want me to hang out with you anymore.”
Danny nodded, keeping his gaze elsewhere.
Mom, standing by the stage, looked over to check on him again.
Laura said, “I told them Rachel lied about the deer. Junior made you run off the road. Of all of us, you were the only one being responsible last night.”
Danny looked over at her. Her pretty eyes were dark with regret. He knew that feeling all too well.
“I’m not always responsible,” he said. “Two years ago in California, I was joyriding in a stolen car with a friend of mine, and we got into an accident. It was my fault. The judge dropped most of the charges as long as I agreed not to drive until I was twenty-one.”
“Oh,” she said.
“No one’s supposed to be perfect,” Danny said. “It’s okay to mess up. But my mess-ups put people in danger.”
“I don’t think that’s always true,” Laura said. Her phone vibrated and she looked down at it. “That’s my dad. I better go.”
Danny stood up with her. “I lied last night,” he said. “About the jock itch thing. I don’t have it.”
She tilted her head. “Why did you say it, then?”
“Because I wasn’t ready,” he said.
“Oh.” Laura considered that for a moment. “Maybe I wasn’t ready, either, which is why I had to drink all those beers to fortify myself. We can always, you know, later.”
He took a deep breath. “I might not ever be ready. I mean, I know I won’t. You’re only the second person I’ve ever told this too, okay? But I think…you know.”
Laura tilted her head. “Know what?”
“I like boys,” Danny said.
Her reaction was a lot more extreme than Mom’s.
“Are you kidding me?” she yelled, just as Moon’s song ended, and the entire tent heard her. “You like boys?”
*
“Well,” Mom said tightly. “That was unexpected.”
The crowd was leaving the tent, and the crew setting up for the next act. Moon had come off the stage drenched with sweat and surrounded by security. Roger was there too, of course, and he looked as unhappy as Mom did.
“I’ll take care of things,” he said to Mom. “I’ll meet you at the Opry.”
“Hurry,” she said. To Danny she added, “And please don’t make anyone else scream.”
Danny, who figured he’d be grounded for years, only nodded. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected his face was bright scarlet red and had been ever since Laura’s indignant yelp. So much for small family secrets. By Monday, every single person at Piedmont would know the story.
Dazed, he followed Roger through the backstage maze to the VIP parking lot where Roger’s Mercedes S350 was parked. Roger looked at him for a few moments, obviously trying to say something and not getting it out. When they were in the car, Roger turned on the ignition and turned it off again.
“Your mother says you think you’re gay,” Roger said.
Danny said nothing.
“She’s worried about you,” Roger said. “I’m worried too. If there’s something you want to tell us, I want you know it’s okay. If you got mixed up with the wrong people, if maybe there’s drugs involved—”
“No!” Danny said. “There’s no drugs.”
Roger grimaced. “Well, of course you’ll say that. But you know, when I was a kid, I maybe experimented a little—”
Danny wished he could sink through the car’s floor and into the ground. He watched Moon Conway’s forty-foot long tour bus start up. Moon’s name and logo were painted in a glittery logo on the side. The bus itself was an unusual color.
“When did they paint the bus purple?” Danny asked.
Roger said, “It’s not purple. It’s silver.”
Danny knew that. Because now that he was looking, he could see the purple was shifting and vibrating—almost like a thing alive.
The King.
Danny shouldered open the car door and started running.
Chapter Thirty-six
The parking lot was jammed with rows of cars, trucks, and fans. Danny had to dodge around a cluster of autograph-seekers and sprint alongside the bus, which was picking up speed. He pounded on the door.
“Open up!” he shouted. “Hey! Open the door!”
The bus slowed. The pneumatic door hissed open, and Danny jumped in the stairwell. Buck Hamilton, the driver, peered at Danny in surprise from his leather bucket seat.
“What’s wrong, kid?” he asked.
Danny liked Buck. They’d met at one of Roger’s barbeques. Buck was at least sixty years old and wore a big old Stetson. Each year, he drove enough miles to go ten times around the world, or so he claimed.
“You have to stop the bus!” Danny said.
Buck didn’t stop. Mom appeared in the aisle and said, “What the—Danny, what are you doing?”
“I’ve got to talk to you,” he said.
“No! I’m busy.”
“Everyone’s got to get off the bus,” Danny said. “It’s not safe.”
Buck steered out of the parking lot and on to the main road. “There’s nothing wrong with my baby. I guarantee it.”
Mom gave Danny a deadly glare, took him by the arm, and pulled him down the aisle. “Come back here.”
The tour bus was opulent—sofas and flat-screen TVs, a galley kitchen stocked with refreshments, and additional compartments for the bathrooms and sleeping areas. Journalists with cameras and other recording devices were interviewing Moon in one area, and Junior and Rachel were sitting in bucket seats by the galley, arguing with each other.
“Because it’s not right!” she was saying.
Junior broke off the fight to glare at Danny. “What’s he doing here?”
Danny focused on Rachel. “All the trouble he caused and you go back to him?”
Mom yanked him into a small cabin that doubled as a bunkroom and office.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Mom said. “Why are you acting so crazy?”
“You won’t believe me. But you have to trust me. There’s something wrong with the bus. If we don’t get it to stop, everyone could die.” Danny opened his cell phone and hit the button for Kevin. When Kevin answered, he yelled, “It’s here! On the bus!”
Kevin asked, “What? What bus?”
“Moon’s tour bus!”
Mom demanded, “Who are you talking to?”
“You’ve got to make them stop,” Kevin said.
“I’m trying,” Danny said frantically. “Here, tell my mom.”
He gave the phone to Mom and then hurried back to the cockpit. Traffic had momentarily slowed the bus, but a traffic officer motioned the bus toward an open lane.
“Buck, I’m not kidding. You’ve got to stop the bus and get everyone off,” Danny said.
Buck looked irritated. “Kid, go back and sit down, will you? Get yourself some soda.”
Junior came swaggering up the aisle. “Is he bothering you, Buck?”
“Shut up,” Danny said.
“You shut up.”
Rachel was close on Junior’s heels. “What’s going on here? Danny, are you going crazy?”
“All of you go sit down, will you?” Buck said. “You’re distracting me.”
Just then, the engine gave off a loud growling sound audible even over the sounds of Moon’s interview with the journalists. The bus lurched so hard that Rachel bounced into Junior and Junior nearly slammed up against Danny.
Junior demanded, “What was that?”
“Nothing!” Buck said. “Sit down!�
�
The steering wheel wrenched around in Buck’s hands. This time the sharp swerve of the bus threw Danny, Junior, Rachel, and almost everyone else off balance. Moon Conway yelled, “What’s going on up there?”
Buck had gone pale and sweaty in his seat. “I don’t know! She’s just—she’s got a mind of her own!”
Danny grabbed one of the poles and pulled himself upright. He stared outside the windshield. For a moment, his eyes and his brain couldn’t connect. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. Cars, traffic lights, blue sky, the off ramp from I-65.
Off ramp. Off. And here they were, driving right up it.
*
Back in the Pit, Kevin said, “The King is in Moon Conway’s tour bus.”
Ford asked, “What?”
Kevin gave the phone to his father and switched on the overhead monitors. The sensors tracked and focused on a long luxury coach just past the parking gates.
“Look at that zoron score,” Mrs. Morris said. “Off the charts!”
Gear headed for the driver’s seat. Kevin knew they didn’t have much time. Neither Moon’s tour bus nor the Pit were built for racing, and with the heavy Country Harvest traffic, it was going to be hard to catch up.
“Dad,” Kevin said. “I’ve got to go help.”
“No,” Ford said. “It’s too dangerous!”
Too late. Already, he was out the door. He circled around to the Pit’s trailer and rolled the Kawasaki off the metal grating. As he slid on his helmet, he saw Ford reach for the handlebars of his Harley.
“We do it together,” he said.
Kevin nodded. Father and son roared their motorcycles to life.
*
“Wrong ramp,” Danny said. “Buck, wrong ramp!”
“I can’t stop her!” Buck yelled.
They had reached the highway and were plunging forward into the nearest lane of oncoming traffic. A Honda Civic swerved out of their way, blaring the horn. Danny had only a brief glimpse of the panicked driver before the Civic sideswiped a Toyota Corolla and both slammed into the median.
“Stop!” Junior and Rachel both yelled, as if that would help things.
Not only couldn’t Buck stop the King, but it was obvious to Danny that Buck was having heart problems. His face had gone ash-gray and sweaty, and his right arm was hitched up as if filled with shooting pains. A moment later, Buck slumped over, unconscious.
“Help me!” Danny said to Junior.
Together, they got him out of the bucket seat and into the aisle. Rachel and Junior started pulling him back to one of the sofas.
Left alone, Danny tried everything he knew—the brakes, the emergency brakes, turning off the ignition—but nothing slowed the bus’s wild ride. The speedometer needle swept upward. More horns blasted through the air as a gasoline tanker bore down on them. He’d read about a tanker somewhere that had flipped and exploded with such force that it melted the highway decks below and above it. Tankers carried sixty to eighty thousand gallons of gasoline, all ready to ignite at the slightest scrape of metal on asphalt.
“Stop this bus!” Moon yelled from the back.
“I’m trying!” Danny yelled back.
The gasoline tanker blasted its air horn and swerved so sharply it started skidding. Danny didn’t see what happened next. He was too busy facing the next horror in the lanes in front of them: a big yellow bus full of Sunday school kids.
Mom staggered her way up the aisle with Kevin’s phone pressed to her ear. She stood in the stairwell, next to Danny. “It’s some woman named Mrs. Morris. She says try to keep the bus in one lane! They’re clearing traffic up ahead.”
“I’m trying,” Danny said through gritted teeth. “Mom, help me!”
Together, they tried to turn the wheel. The Ruin King wasn’t giving them any purchase at all. The school bus managed to swerve away, but behind it were more cars and trucks. Danny couldn’t bear to think about the innocent drivers who were about to get killed. Moms and dads, babies, grandparents. He’d always hated the driver who’d killed his dad and Mickey, but here he was, about to be just like him.
Two motorcycles roared up alongside the bus: a Harley low rider and a Kawasaki. Ford and Kevin.
“Tell them to zap us!” Danny said. “Otherwise, we’re going to kill a lot of people.”
Mom relayed the instructions, and said, “She says they can’t do it with so many people onboard.”
“They have to!” Danny said.
The tour bus veered across another lane, right into the path of a tractor-trailer carrying a dozen brand new cars. The reporters screamed. At the same time, the pneumatic controls on the door hissed and the door started to open.
The engine gunned. The speedometer swung past eighty miles an hour and made a fast approach to ninety.
Crouched over Buck’s body, Rachel said, “We’re going to die!”
The bus swerved again.
And Mom, trapped in the stairwell, started falling toward the highway.
*
Danny shouted, “No!” but it was too late. Mom was falling and she was going to land hard on the asphalt at ninety miles an hour, her body broken beyond repair.
She was only inches from death when a hand reached out and saved her. Junior hooked his hand on the back of her slacks and hauled her back inside.
“Are you okay?” Danny demanded.
“I’m fine,” Mom gasped.
In the lanes up ahead, police cruisers with spinning lights were stopping traffic. Kevin’s team must have alerted the highway patrol. Motorcycle cops were throwing long black strips across the asphalt.
Rachel staggered forward. “What are they doing?”
“Spike strips,” Junior said.
Danny didn’t think blowing out the tires would help. The Ruin would just keep going on the rims. That’s what happened with all the car chases he’d seen in California. Or the Ruin would swerve into a lane of stopped traffic, resulting in devastating carnage.
Outside the bus door, Kevin and Ford were arguing over their radios. Ford apparently had reached the same conclusion as Danny and was lifting his FRED.
The King in the engine roared and the speedometer swung upward again.
Danny saw everything very clearly now. He saw that the situation was helpless. They were all going to die, one way or another. The King was going to win. He also saw a glimpse of blue just off the highway.
They don’t like water, Mr. Beaudreau had said.
“Help me,” he said to Mom and Junior and Rachel. “Pull the wheel. Aim for that lake!”
“Are you crazy?” Junior demanded.
Mom, however, didn’t hesitate. “Do it!”
The four of them tugged and pulled. Danny felt the muscles in his arm burn under the strain and his broken wrist, under the cast, made a noise that didn’t sound good at all. If they didn’t get over to the number one lane in the next fifteen seconds, they were going to smash right into a—
“Turn it!” he shouted.
They heaved the wheel clockwise. Moon Conway’s very expensive bus swerved violently, smashed into the guardrail, and went sailing into the air.
Danny heard shouts and yelling and saw his mother standing white-knuckled with her arms wrapped around the stairwell pole. Junior tried to hold Mom and Rachel both. The reporters screamed, and Moon yelled, and the bus sailed through the air in no particular hurry.
Then they hit the lake and the steering wheel came up to slam against Danny’s face.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Kevin had no idea what Danny was doing. One moment, Moon Conway’s bus was barreling toward a collision course with the spike strips. The next, it was punching through the guardrail and sailing across the sky toward a very large body of water.
He heard the rest of the team swearing over his headset.
“Is he crazy?” Mrs. Morris asked.
“I’m going to kill him myself,” Ford said.
The bus came down hard in the lake. Kevin braked to a screechi
ng stop and tore off his helmet. He expected the bus to sink immediately, but the water only came up to the top of its tire rims.
The shallow end. That’s what Danny had steered into.
He whooped for joy and slip-slid-ran down the slope into the cold, murky water. Behind him, cops and highway troopers began their own descent. A fire engine screeched to a stop, followed shortly by the Pit.
The rear exit of the tour bus popped open as Kevin and Ford reached the bus. Moon, Rachel, and the reporters jumped down into the water with shouts of dismay. The front door would open only a little bit against the mud, and Kevin wished he’d brought a crowbar. He dug his gloved hands into the opening and pulled. Ford leaned both of his hands and strength to the effort. On the other side, Junior pushed and used his shoulder to push some more.
They got the door open enough for Junior to say, “She’s hurt. Danny, too.”
The bus’s engine revved. The Ruin, with its vast power, was trying to unstick itself from the mud. Any minute now, it might surrender the machine instead and jump its way back to the highway, maybe into a fire engine or another bus.
Ford helped Danny’s mom out. She was saying, “No, I want to stay—” but it was clear that she had broken her arm, and there was a bleeding gash on her forehead.
Junior squeezed out behind her and said, “Danny’s stuck.”
Ford said, “Take them to the highway—” but Kevin was already wedging himself through the opening.
“I’ll get Danny,” he said. “You get them to safety, Dad.”
“Kevin!” Ford yelled.
“It’ll be okay,” Kevin said. “We’ll be right out.”
Kevin hurried up the stairwell. Danny was leaning back in the driver’s seat, blood coming from his nose. The airbag in the steering wheel had deployed and then deflated. It sagged over the steering wheel like a sad, punctured balloon.