Speed

by D C Grant

reach down toward the ignition for the key but there is nothing there. When I look closer, bending over to rest my heavy head on the steering wheel, I see that the key has been broken off inside the lock. I can’t turn the engine off.

  My head throbs, dizziness makes my head spin and I fight the rising nausea. I have to get out of the car, or stop the pipe from pumping the lethal gas into it. I raise heavy trembling fingers to the end of the hosepipe and try to push it out, but either my fingers have no strength or the pipe is firmly wedged, because it doesn’t move.

  I lean back in the seat, trying not to breathe too deeply, but even the effort of moving around has caused my heart to thud and my breathing to quicken. I have to slow it down to give me time to think before the gas finally takes all thought from me.

  I look in the rearview mirror. Of course the garage door behind the car is closed. No use trying to kill me by carbon monoxide poisoning if they leave the door open. I could open the door and let some of the gasses out, I suppose, and then it may not kill me as quickly. I reach for the bunch of keys, but of course they are gone, along with the remote; there is just the broken key in the ignition. How did I forget?

  I lean back, exhausted, my vision wavering and my breathing labored. I can just give in – what’s the use of fighting? But it’s not only me I have to think about. If I die, then Ben and my dad will die. Only I know that Sandman is planning to kill them too. I have to get out. How? I slam my hands against the steering wheel. I’m going to die. I feel tears in my eyes. They’ve won, the bastards have won. They started by killing my mother and now they’re going to kill us all.

  As I close my eyes, a thought is tugging at me – something I should know, something I have to remember. What is it?

  I open my eyes again and look over to the glove box. Mum used to keep a spare remote in there in case the one on the key ring didn’t work. Is it still in there? Sandman and Chan wouldn’t know about it.

  I lean over and click the button on the glove box, and the lid flips open. It would be so easy to lie there with my head on the passenger seat and go to sleep, but the fumes are thinner here and my head clears a little. I reach over to rummage around inside the glove box. There’s everything in there from lipstick to tissues, but I finally close my hands over the small black remote. I draw it out and press the button, praying that the garage door opens. I cry out as, with a hesitant shudder, the garage door rolls up.

  I waste no time. I soon as it is up high enough, I push the gearstick into reverse and hit the accelerator, shooting out of the garage faster than I anticipated. In the nick of time I slam my foot on the brake to avoid crashing into the opposite neighbor’s fence. I’m out! What’s more, the force of the car reversing has pulled the hosepipe out of the window and it’s no longer pushing gas into the interior. Fresh air flows into the gap instead.

  With a sigh of relief, I rest my head back and draw in great mouthfuls of oxygen. The relief is short-lived, however, as car headlights suddenly spotlight me and I am blinded. I hear an engine rev and I lean away from the side as a car hurtles toward me. The impact throws me sideways as the window on my left side shatters into fragments that shower me. The car is shunted across the road.

  Shaking, I sit up, trying to assess if I have been injured, but my mind is still stunned by the alcohol, the exhaust fumes and the impact. I look up as the driver gets out of the other car and walks toward me. Even though he is silhouetted by the car headlights, I recognize him – Chan! Has he been sitting outside the house all the time waiting for me to die?

  He has some sort of weapon in his hand and I know that he is coming to finish what the gas and impact have failed to do. The car engine is still running in spite of the shunt, so I reach down and throw it into drive, slamming my foot down hard on the accelerator as I turn the steering wheel. With a screech, the car turns, bumping up the curb in front of my house before I straighten up in time to avoid the sidewalk on the other side and race off down the road, only barely in control as I hit the brakes to take the corner. I’ve never driven a car like this before, not in the street, not on my own and not with some maniac behind me determined to kill me. Somehow I make the corner, glancing back to see Chan get back into Mike’s 4x4 to chase me.

  I floor it, my arms struggling to hold the car on the road as it gathers speed. I’ve been holding out for the day that I can drive on the road, but I never imagined that it would be like this. I’m lucky that there is no traffic as I careen all over the road, the houses whizzing past me as the needle on the speedometer climbs. Headlights flash at me in the rearview mirror. Chan is gaining on me. Well, he has the advantage of having driven for a number of years, while I am still new to it; not only new, but addled by exhaust fumes and alcohol and still shaken from the earlier collision. It’s a wonder I can do anything at all.

  I hit the brakes as a corner comes up. I coerce the car around the bend, the wheels screaming as I drift sideways. I make it, but I have lost ground; Chan’s close behind me. I push the accelerator down, my legs and arms trembling, knowing that there is no way I can continue to control the car at this speed. I can only hope that the high-speed chase has attracted enough attention for someone to call the cops and for them to come after us both.

  The road I am on is long, but I can see that it ends at a T-junction. I glance behind me; Chan’s gaining in spite of the fact that I am pumping the gas. It isn’t my fault Mum has an old car and Chan has the grunt of Mike’s four-wheel drive.

  I barely touch the brakes as I approach the junction. This is do or die. More likely die at the speed I am going, but then I reason it’s better to die while attempting a getaway, than at their hands.

  I slam the brakes at the last minute, fighting with the steering wheel as I scream around the corner, turning to the right, the car tires sending up clouds of fumes as they slide along the tarmac, the brakes locked up, the screech deafening to my ears. Surely it will wake half the neighborhood?

  I lose my grip on the steering wheel; it whirls out of my hands and I have no control. My foot’s still on the brakes but they are useless; the wheels have lost their traction on the icy road and the car slides sideways, the right-hand side closing the distance rapidly between me and an approaching tree. I regain the steering wheel and grip it tightly as I tense for the impact.

  The air’s knocked from my lungs as the side of the car hits the tree with a crunch, the window on the right shattering into fragments as the left-hand window had done earlier. My head whips around, my temple hitting the side post sending shards of pain through my brain. My hands are ripped from the steering wheel while the airbag pops open and sends white fabric into my face. I feel the car bounce away and then settle on its springs, the engine coughs and dies and the only sound is the glass tinkling as it falls onto the pavement.

  I draw in a breath. I’m still alive, I’m still breathing. My head feels like it’s been snapped off my shoulders and everything aches while I struggle to focus, unable to distinguish the fuzzy shapes in front of me. Beams of light pierce my eyeballs and I swing my head toward them. I can’t see past the fractured light as someone moves toward me, in silhouette, and I can't recognize him – friend or foe? Either way, I have no way to escape.

  A rough hand grabs my shirt through the shattered window, pulling me toward the space where the window used to be.

  “This time you will die,” Chan says.

  I can do little but watch as he raises a black stick in his hand. I know that he’s going to crush my skull with it, but I can do nothing as I follow it with my eyes as it descends toward my temple.

  “Not this time,” says another voice, and the arm holding the cudgel is wrenched back, the weapon falling to the ground. I’m aware of a struggle as bodies thud against the outside of the car, but I am unable to turn my head because it hurts too much. I remain where I am, listening to the tick-tick of the cooling engine and the buzzing noise in my ears, knowing that my life depends on the outcome of the fight.

  There is a sharp muff
led thud and then nothing, until the driver’s door is wrenched open and I am pulled out.

  “Jason, are you all right?” I look into Mike’s face.

  “Umphh,” I manage to say, my mouth refusing to work as it should.

  “Just sit there,” Mike says as he lets me drop onto the tarmac next to the car. He lifts up Chan’s body from the road and pushes it into the driver’s seat of Mum’s smashed-up car. He leaves the door as it is, as though the impact had forced it open. Then he hauls me to my feet.

  “Come on, there’s not much time. The neighbors will be out any minute to see what the noise was. I don’t have time to explain to a bunch of cops what’s going on so let’s get away while we can.”

  He shoves me into the passenger side of his car and then climbs into the driver’s side before reversing away from the wrecked car and taking off down the road.

  No Escape

  It’s warm inside the car and I close my eyes as Mike accelerates away. I can feel some strength returning, my brain reconnecting with the rest of my body and my limbs beginning to feel that that do belong to me after all.

  “Did you kill him?” I ask.

  “Chan? I’m not sure. I hit him hard enough, but who knows? He won’t be going anywhere for a while which is the