Then Trent, too, was gone, head bluntly staved in. Vic spun the gun around, pumped another round in. He grinned at Syd. Took aim.
"FUCK!" Syd roared, clambering up the ladder, teeth clenched in anticipation of the coming blast. When it came, he flinched—anticipating death—instead got chips blown in his face from the fresh buckshot crater in the wall to his left. He kept climbing, kept climbing. Vic fired again. This time it was wide. Vic was a terrible shot.
Syd hit the trapdoor and shoved his way through. There were more screams, from directly below: he looked down and saw other people behind him, frantically following his lead. Seconds later, something huge hit the ladder, rocking it loose from the wall. Vic tore the stragglers off, flung them wide, started to climb.
The trapdoor was small for Vic's bulk, but somehow Syd didn't think that would stop him. Syd's eyes cast around for a means of escape. There was one skinny little window at the far end of the attic, past the cobwebbed rafters and crates of debris. He bolted for it. Behind him, the trapdoor blew apart.
There was a two-by-four with some nails sticking out, jutting from a box to the window's right. He used it to smash out the window, clear the jagged glass teeth jutting out of the frame. Then he slid out feet-first and belly-up to the sill, just as Vic tore the first massive chunk from the floorboards.
Syd pulled himself out the rest of the way.
Vic stared at him, howled.
Syd let go of the sill.
And then he was falling, he was falling, plummeting fifteen feet straight down to land on unforgiving gravel. Syd hit and rolled, his feet and ankles spiking white with pain. He came up staggering: weaving through the sea of cars, endorphins masking the agony even as the adrenaline pulsed and pushed him forward.
As he ran, he smelled smoke, glanced back in time to see the first tongues of flame lick the windows. A chorus of screams rose up, piercing the cacophony. Syd hesitated a moment, torn between the impulse to smash down the door and the urge to flee. But there were no heroes now; all the heroes were hamburger, cut down in the terrible wake of the monster's onslaught. He forced himself forward, tried to keep his mind clear.
The screams were still ringing in his ears as he made it to the Jeep, leapt into the driver's seat, and jammed the key into the ignition. As he fired it up, he heard the wrenching crack of splintering wood that told him Vic was in the attic now, heading for the window. He looked up in time to see the too-huge shadow filling the tiny window frame.
Syd gunned the engine, threw the Jeep into reverse. You can't just LEAVE them, his conscience cried. He started to back out. A second later, the beast's snout appeared, snarling madly as it began to rip chunks from the window frame, enlarging the hole.
Syd pumped the gas, revving in place. To his left, the road beckoned, offering escape. Directly before him stood the front door. The attic window was widening by the second. His own survival margin could be measured in microseconds.
While inside, people were trapped and dying.
"Fuck!" Syd cursed, blinking back tears. "FUCK!"
He wrenched the gearshift from reverse to first and popped the clutch. The Renegade screeched and spun, lurching forward. The engine whined, picking up speed. The front door loomed in the headlights. Syd held his breath, leaned on the horn and at the last second hit the brakes.
There was a crash and a groan as the plow blade made contact, and the big door buckled and folded inward. The impact blew it clear off its frame; it crumpled and fell inside with a deafening clatter. Smoke began to pour out the top of the mangled transom.
"C'MON!" he screamed, revving the engine and grinding the gears. Inside, he could make out dozens of figures stumbling and staggering toward the fractured portal. Some, at least, would survive. Maybe most. It was the best he could do.
There was another crash, and Syd flinched as a piece of cinder block the size of his head slammed down onto the hood of the Jeep, missing him by inches. Syd looked up, horrified.
Vic was coming out of the hole.
Syd screamed, desperately gnashing the gears into reverse. The transmission ground and locked; the Renegade groaned, backed out of the wreckage. The plow blade hung crookedly from the mangled front bumper as Syd cleared the entrance, wrenched the wheel in the direction of the road.
By now, the survivors were pouring out the door. Syd looked back and saw Marc Pankowski fighting for the lead. A woman tripped before him; he stomped on her neck, kicked her out of his way. His face was filled with a strange elation.
Then the Vic-thing landed on his head.
Syd floored it, half a heartbeat before the massive beast rose. The tires smoked and spun, gripped and caught.
The Jeep took off, just as something flew through the air to slam against the back of the passenger seat. Syd glanced back, saw blond hair on the floor of the seat well.
Then Syd was gone gone gone, out of the parking lot and onto the highway. The Renegade took the turn badly, almost flipped altogether as he whipped it into the turn. The plow blade struck and sparked as Syd rocked the wheel back and forth, felt the high center of gravity tip perilously before leveling out, making solid contact with the road.
The Jeep sped toward the hospital and Jane and escape. The rescue attempt had done some damage: one of the headlights was gone, giving the road a skewed, lopsided quality; and there was a bad-sounding rattle coming from under the hood. A thought kept circling in his head, halfway between hope and prayer, going don't break down, don't break down, don't break down. . . .
Syd kept checking the rearview mirror as he drove, half-expecting Vic to appear magically behind him and snatch him by the neck. But the Chameleon's sign rapidly disappeared in the distance, and no light emerged from the lot behind him. It was a moment of victory.
It lasted for roughly another two seconds.
Then the truck's headlights appeared behind him. It was a white Chevy pickup, and it was all over the road: weaving wildly from lane to lane as it bore down hard, hauling ass and gaining fast. Its hide was white, glowing ghostly in the dark; its headlights glared like angry eyes.
Syd jammed on the gas as they reached the foothills, began snaking into the first turns of the upgrade. The rattle under the hood grew louder, howling out its damage as the engine cannibalized itself on the climb. There was a tractor-trailer directly in front of him, gnashing through its gears as it crawled up the hill. The lines on the road went from dotted-white to double-yellow. Syd cursed; he couldn't afford to get pinned here, but didn't know if he had the power to avoid it.
Downshifting and flooring it again, Syd crossed into the oncoming lane, began inching his way past the rig. The Jeep jerked and whined reluctantly. The speedometer fluttered sluggishly, read fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven . . .
He limped past and kept going, trying to keep up the speed. The Jeep was hurtin' bad now, a low, shuddering rumble joining with the ever-louder rattle beneath the hood. The tractor-trailer receded into the distance as he fought his way forward.
Two hundred yards back, the ghost truck swerved around the sluggish rig, then cut it off. The driver of the big rig blasted his horn and flipped his hi-beams in anger.
Then Syd was 'round the bend, heading into the highlands. The trees closed in as the road wrapped tight around the mountain; the shoulder to his right grew narrower, then disappeared entirely, leaving only the thin ribbon of guardrail between him and a very long drop. The Renegade's engine continued to falter as the upgrade grew steeper, the curves more demanding.
The Chevy suffered no such setback. With every new bend, it closed the distance between them. Syd straight-armed the wheel, trying to will the Jeep to move faster. As he did so, he pressed himself back in the seat, felt the gun dig into the small of his back. He cursed and yanked its useless bulk free, tossed it on the passenger seat.
The crest of the first rise was dead ahead. The pickup kept coming. One hundred yards and closing. He could hear it now, his pursuer's motor screaming death and power even as his own cr
ied out for mercy. A naked rage flooded him suddenly: fury at the cruel, insane injustice. Syd focused the feeling, trying to shake the terror, desperately assessing his strengths.
He knew the road; that much was true. He knew it like the back of his hand. And this time, he knew what he was up against, which diminished the shock, if not the trauma. He was hard-wired on adrenaline but otherwise straight, whereas Vic was clearly blasted out of his mind. And judging from the ghost truck's veering, being a werewolf was no great strategic advantage behind the wheel of a car.
Syd rounded the bend before the last rise that marked the beginning of the downgrade. The blackness beyond the edge of the road yawned to his right. Such a long way down.
And that was when it hit him.
He had a chance: a crazed and fatal one, with a snowball's odds in hell of succeeding. But a chance, nonetheless.
It was the only one he'd get.
The truck lurched around the curve, not more than sixty yards behind. Syd gripped the wheel and stomped on the gas. The Jeep surged forward, cresting the ridge. His speed instantly increased as he tipped into the downgrade, began the twisting, treacherous descent. The NO PASSING, DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD sign flashed by, was swallowed by the darkness. The needle arced up to sixty-five, climbing. It was a fleeting advantage, one that allowed him to gain some ground and ready himself. Syd grabbed the gun, flipped the safety, jacked a round in . . .
. . . and then the Chevy was there, roaring around the corner and over the rise, stealing back the ground it had briefly lost. Syd watched the rearview as it took the turn way too wide, clipping the NO PASSING sign and shearing it off at ground level. The sign slid up and smashed into the truck's windshield before sliding off into the slipstream. Vic just punched out the remaining glass and kept right on coming, unfazed by the impact—seeming, in fact, to enjoy it. He howled and pounded the dash, bloodlust singing through the battered cab of the truck.
The pickup accelerated, closed the remaining distance. It smacked into the back of the Jeep, just hard enough to send Syd a message. Marc Pankowski's head pinballed around in the back. The road ahead hooked to the left. Syd screeched through the turn, gravity conspiring to push him to seventy. The Jeep was not built for road-hugging antics: it oversteered horribly, Syd fighting to hold on. God help him if Vic got him broadside.
To the left, the concrete retaining wall whipped by, inviting catastrophe. To his right, the guardrail ribbon, then blackness. They were fast coming up on the point where Syd had spun out, so many moons ago. Now Vic was vying for a repeat performance. The Chevy kissed Syd's back bumper again, hard enough to crunch metal and play crack-the-whip with Syd's spine.
The Jeep skittered and fishtailed across the macadam. One more like that and he'd roll the damned thing. Syd swerved into the oncoming lane. As he did, Vic cut right and pulled alongside, then veered to crunch into Syd's passenger side. Syd turned his head, saw the hideous countenance hunched over the steering wheel, cackling, long tongue flapping in the breeze. Vic yanked the wheel, pushing Syd out of the lane, perilously close to the retaining wall.
Just up ahead the road hooked left, then doubled back and swooped to the right, forming a huge, sweeping S-curve that clung to the side of the mountain. The tree Syd had once wrapped his Mustang around was still there; the scar of the wreck still visible upon it. Vic was steering him straight for the spot, like a giant YOU ARE HERE sign beckoning him.
"Not again," Syd hissed. "Not this time."
Wheel gripped tight in his left hand, fighting the impossible physics of the situation, Syd brought the gun up and aimed with his right. Vic just looked at him and laughed.
Until he realized what Syd was aiming at . . .
. . . and then Vic was screaming, as eight nine-millimeter hollow-point slugs tore through the thin steel skin of the ghost truck's hood. They exploded inside the engine compartment, and then there was an ear-shattering bang: black oil spraying like heartblood as the Chevy's eight-cylinder seized up at sixty, instantly reducing itself to junk and smoking shrapnel. A stray chunk of cylinder head smashed through the firewall to pierce the left front tire, which promptly blew out and chewed itself to smoking bits.
Syd dropped the gun and jammed on the brakes.
Vic snarled and whipsawed the steering wheel, trying to control his now-careening vehicle. The Chevy lurched and screamed like a dying animal as the denuded rim ground and gouged the road. As the back end of the pickup rocketed past him, Syd jacked the wheel to the right, gave it a neat little boot in the ass.
And that was all it took.
The Jeep's bumper whacked the rear wheel well, as the dangling plow blade made contact with the pickup's right rear tire. The spinning wheel ripped the blade right off the bumper; on its way out, the blade caught the sidewall of the tire, violently peeling it apart and sending long corkscrew loops of steel-belted radial flapping in its wake.
Syd braked and veered left as the truck skidded, flipped and rolled: over and over and over, a somersaulting symphony of destruction, building to a deafening crescendo as it headed for the edge of the road. Beyond the guardrail was a rocky ravine, jagged with boulders and thick with trees. The truck hit the rail at close to fifty miles an hour, shearing through it like a worn rubber band. Vic, the truck, and a ten-foot section of rail went sailing into space.
And gravity did the rest.
Syd never saw the impact, busy as he was trying not to crash and die himself. But there was a beat of free-fall silence as he regained control, followed by the tumultuous crash of wood and stone and metal and glass, all colliding and compacting at once. A mute but thunderous whump sounded: the death knell of the ghost truck, forever and ever. Syd peered into the rearview mirror in time to see the brilliant red-orange fireball mushroom behind him, cindering the trees as it billowed skyward into the night.
But did that mean that Vic was dead? Syd had no way of knowing. He'd be good and goddamned if he was going to check; he'd seen enough monster movies to know how that went. Might as well strip to his underwear and say who's out there . . . ? The Evil Dead, lady. Who the fuck do you think?
He couldn't afford to find out. The Jeep's engine was laboring hard; there were no guarantees that he'd even make it.
He had to get to Jane. He had to do it now. He just prayed that it wasn't too late.
45
IT WAS TWENTY minutes later when the big Peterbilt steered into the downgrade, heading for home.
Rusty Myers sighed as he flipped on the Jake brake and leaned back in his seat; it had been a long damn day. The Jake brake hissed and killed the engine, releasing compression to the cylinders and letting inertia do the job of walking the rig down the mountain. The hulking 450 CAT under the hood groaned as the gears wound down, immediately began to slow. It was a fail-safe system, designed to safeguard against brake burnout, and it beat the shit out of double-clutching it all the way home.
Rusty wasn't about to argue. His legs and butt and shoulders ached to the point of numbness from eleven hours on the road, and he was bone-tired from lugging a total of seventy-two tons of Budweiser from Morgantown to McKeesport to Pittsburgh and back again. Three round-trips in this one shift, some six thousand pallets in all. He wondered where people put it all.
Rusty stretched his long legs, pushed his Steelers cap back on his head, and thought about the wife and daughter he had not gotten more than a fleeting glimpse of in the last three weeks. At any rate, he was over the hump and into the homestretch now. Another hour, he figured, till he got back to the yard; another three till he could kick back with his family. If he was lucky.
Then he rounded the curve, saw the sheared-off signpost lying in the middle of the road.
"God damn!' Rusty yelled, as the truck thundered over it, mashing sheet metal to macadam. "What the fuck . . . "
The sign had still been standing when he came over the mountain, not three hours ago. Someone had knocked it off in the meantime, and violently, by the looks of it. The dickheads who had passe
d him on the way up came screaming to mind. It wouldn't surprise him a bit. Rusty dealt with automotive idiots all day long: cutting him off on the highway, trusting him to somehow defy physics and magically stop short of ramming eighty thousand pounds of jackknifing freight up their butts.
The guys that passed him on the upgrade were no exception. They were either drunk or stupid or both, and Rusty wouldn't have minded slapping the shit out of either one of them, if only to teach them some manners.
But he didn't want them to die for it.
So when he came upon the skid marks and saw the yawning gap in the guardrail, his heart sank like a stone. There was no question of what had happened. Rusty couldn't see the wreck, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that somebody'd played bump-cars and lost, big-time. There was debris all over both lanes and deep gouges heading all the way up to the gaping hole. The fire glowing at the base of the ravine filled in the rest of the picture, and as he rolled down his window he caught a noxious whiff of burning gasoline, plastic, rubber, and hair.
"Jesus." He slowed to a stop some thirty yards short of the breach, reached over to the rocker panel, and flipped on the four-ways. There was a cellular phone in the cab, in addition to the CB. He picked it up, dialed 911, waited for the operator to come on. Interference was formidable in the highlands, but he managed to get enough of the message through to count.
He reached under the seat and grabbed the box of emergency marker flares, then climbed down out of the cab. The Staters would be there soon enough; in the meantime, he did what any good trucker would do: shut down the lane, laid out the flares, and waited for help. Taking care of endangered motorists—no matter how stupid or deserving of their fate—was an ongoing responsibility, and sometimes inconvenient as hell. But he couldn't forget that it might be him one day, or his mom, or his wife and child. It was more than the right thing to do.
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