Dead Man's Song

Chapter 27

The sun was almost down and the first stars were igniting overhead as Mike sped on through the darkness, going away from town, riding with no specific purpose along the highway, seeking the loneliness of the farmlands. As he rode, the aches of his body and the aches of his soul seemed to fade as the War Machine devoured the miles. A rare few cars hummed along A-32 but the heaviest congestion, he knew, would have turned off onto College Road, which cut west between the Dead End Drive-In and the Haunted Hayride and then emptied onto the campus of Pinelands College. Overhead a single dark bird flapped lazily, easily keeping pace with him, and he and the bird soared along for nearly two miles, keeping perfect station with the other until they crested the hill that led to the sharpness of Shandy’s Curve. Mike slowed, not wanting to race around Shandy’s Curve again, not since his close encounter with Crow’s old Chevy two weeks ago. He reached the curve and coasted around it, the bird now circling overhead. Mike felt a strange chill as if the air around the curve was colder than along the rest of A-32. It was a moderately cool night anyway for the middle of October, but on the curve it felt like March.

Mike pedaled a little harder, wanting to be past the spot. He heard the night bird screech and he looked up to see it thrashing erratically, trying to change direction, fighting for control as if caught in a whirlwind. It squawked and dove down toward the forest leaving the road and the boy and the…

…gleaming wrecker that squatted in the middle of the road just around the last part of Shandy’s Curve.

Mike grabbed the hand brakes and squeezed with all his strength, brake pads squealing. His tires stuttered for purchase along the pebbled surface of the road. The War Machine skidded to a smoking stop, stripes of black rubber burned onto the hardtop, and the momentum slewed him around so that Mike was sideways to the huge wrecker.

He froze there, turned to ice by the shock of it, at the impossibility of it, feeling his heart hammer in his chest, staring in total disbelief as the wrecker sat there, huge, incredibly massive, totally black, dominating the road. It was as if time itself had become frozen with shock. The world was totally still. Nothing moved, nothing dared make a sound. Mike lungs clutched tight, holding in his breath.

This can’t be happening.

Though he knew that he had actually encountered this same wrecker two weeks ago, seeing it again was totally unreal. One encounter—okay, a drunk behind the wheel or an asshole playing chicken with some random kid—but this…this was a trap. Deliberate, calculated. It was here waiting for him. Waiting. For him. Specifically him. This thing was here to kill him. All of this processed through his brain in a furious second as his logic circuits accepted the impossible and made this reality the only reality. Crazy as it was, the wrecker was right here, and right here was where he was going to die.

Very slowly he began to walk the bike backward around the curve, hoping that in the darkness the driver hadn’t seen him, that maybe the trap was still poised, not yet sprung.

Then the lights of the wrecker flared on. Headlights, running lights, fog lights—all came on in a blinding luminous assault, driving white needles of pain into Mike’s eyes. He cried out, throwing his arm across his face; then there was a unspeakable roar as the wrecker’s powerful engine howled to life, rending the air with teeth of sound, clawing at the stillness with talons of pure noise. The driver gunned the engine once, twice…

Mike knew for sure that he was going to die.

Using strength he did not possess, he wrenched his bike around and stomped down on the pedal, propelling himself and the War Machine back onto Shandy’s Curve, away from the huge, gleaming monster, away from the thunder of its engine. Behind him, it seemed as if the engine howled with rage at his flight, but Mike knew that was just the driver shifting gears, shifting from park to drive, from waiting into full-bore attack. Mike tore along the highway, using the dips in the road to give him speed, steering small and smart, pumping his legs like pistons. Behind him the wrecker followed; slowly at first, rolling at a strange creeping pace around the Curve, seeming not to pursue, just to follow. But Mike wasn’t fooled. He knew that the wrecker driver was just giving him a head start, making the hunt more interesting. Mike took the chance for what it was worth and pedaled the bike with every ounce of his desperate strength, fighting his bike back up the hill. At first he didn’t look back, knowing that to do so would be to lose maybe a precious second. Instead he switched into a lower gear and his knees pumped up and down and he willed the bike to climb the tall hill. He widened the gap—a quarter-mile, a half-mile, almost three-quarters of a mile, the space of two medium hills. Then the wrecker’s engine howled with a furious delight and the chase was on.

Mike crested a hill and finally dared to look back, knowing what he would see. And he did see it. The wrecker was flying down the farthest hill, its massive bulk soaring into the pull of gravity. Mike could hear the driver giving it gas as it came up the other side, pressing the pedal down to keep the speed it had won from the freefall, devouring all of the precious lead Mike had earned.

“No!” Mike pedaled so hard that his legs blurred and his muscles caught fire; it felt like he was breathing flame. There were still two small hills between him and the wrecker, but he could hear it now, coming closer, closer. Where the hell were all those news vans and tourist cars when he needed them? He was halfway up the next hill when the lights of the wrecker pinned him to the macadam. Mike gasped. In the time it had taken him to go down and halfway up the next hill, the wrecker had taken both hills. It was going to catch him. Soon.

Which is when Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, came up with a plan. It was simple, it was obvious, and it was right there in his mind, fully formed. He almost smiled, but the terror was still too big for that. Still as he reached the top of the mount and vanished over it, he did smirk. Just a little.

Tow-Truck Eddie grinned as he saw the demon on the bike disappear over the nearest hill. Got you, he thought. Did you really think you could get away from me? Know you so little of God’s power and glory? He stamped down on the accelerator and rocketed down the hill, feeling the jolts as he bounced over patched sections of highway, feeling his own excitement build and dance in his mind. I am the Sword of God! The very thought made him feel wonderful, made him so proud, so purely joyous to be a part of his Father’s plans. This second chance to do his Father’s will. It would be a starting place, a cornerstone on which he could build his church.

He had it all worked out. He would run him down but not kill him immediately, take him to a quiet place, and with his own hands wrest the truth from his flesh, discarding the polluted skin of evil that was simply shaped like a boy. He would reveal the demon within, then he would cast it out, banishing it into the darkness where it belonged. This was the first truly great mission of his ministry.

In his mind the voice of his Father hissed, Yes! Slay the Evil one!

Tow-Truck Eddie grinned as he raced down the slope, gunning the engine as he clawed up the other side. The boy was close, just out of sight on the other side. He reached the top of the crest and peered forward, hungry for sight of his prey. Suddenly something shot by him from the side of the road, something small and dark and fast, heading in the other direction.

The demon!

Tow-Truck Eddie saw it flash past, heading back down the slope. He slammed on the brakes and tried to stop the turn, jerking the wheel hard over. There was a horrific squeal of tires, plumes of smoke puffed up from the road; the whole chassis of the wrecker snarled in protest as too many forces fought to control it at once: thrust and gravity and angle, all working for that moment in the service of the Beast. Tow-Truck Eddie screamed aloud as he manhandled the wheel, his mind black with fury, and he could feel almost at once that he wasn’t going to make it.

The wrecker slewed around and actually slid sideways, burning smears on the hardtop. Immediately the angle of the turn became warped and the back wheels skidded all the way around and then swung completely clear of the road as they spun out over the deep drainage ditch. With neither weight nor traction the wheels raced at insane speeds, sending up a banshee cry, and then Eddie let loose his own howl as the whole back end of the wrecker canted into the ditch and he was bounced around in the cab like a rag doll in a clothes dryer. The front wheel jumped high off the ground and the massive machine slid down five feet into the drainage ditch, front wheels spinning madly in the air now and dirt spraying up in huge clouds as the back wheels touched down again, but the rear tires only dug themselves a trench. The wrecker continued to slide backward until the towing bar thudded with finality into the mud wall on the far side of the ditch.

Eddie was slammed back against the seat but he was at an angle and his head missed the headrest and smacked against the rear window with a sound like a fist hitting a door. At the same time his right knee jerked upward and he hit the under-side of the steering wheel hard enough to send hot lightning through the joint. The engine continued to roar, but now there was a frustrated, almost petulant gripe to the motor.

Squinting through pain, teeth clenched and bared, Tow-Truck Eddie stared in stupefaction at the improbable angle of the wrecker. He was looking almost straight up at the darkening sky over the cornfields. He could not believe it. It had all happened so fast. He was in the ditch! The engine whined on, and Tow-Truck Eddie reached out, jerked the stick into park, and wrenched the key over to kill the noise. The engine died along with his confidence. He gripped the knobbed arc of the steering wheel and let out a howl of pure frustrated rage.

Mike skidded down the hill for thirty yards, wobbling and swaying and almost going off the blacktop into the ditch himself. When he heard the crash of the wrecker, he squeezed the brakes and slid to a long, slow stop and then crouched there listening, ready to flee, panting, feeling sweat running in cold rivulets down his face. He heard the whine of the engine, and then the silence as the engine was abruptly turned off.

Got you, you son of a bitch! he thought, smiling fiercely, and a dark wave of malicious glee soared up through him. Got you!

He wondered what to do next. Later he would have to try and sort out what was going on with this nutcase in the wrecker, but for right now he needed to decide what to do next. Go! his instinct told him. Get the hell out of here. The wrecker was now between him and home. He needed to go get the cops. He needed to tell Crow. Would Crow be back from the hike he was taking in the woods with that reporter? Maybe Val would be home. He turned and looked into the darkness that stretched away from the wrecker. Val’s farm was pretty close, a couple miles. He could go there. All of these thoughts banged around in his head with all the noise and distraction of a silver pinball. Getting the hell out of there, no matter where he went, was the only smart thing to do, he knew that much.

But first…he had to go back up and look over the top of that hill. He had to find out what had happened to the wrecker. He had to.

This is stupid, he thought, and then said it aloud. “This is really stupid.”

Sweating icy rivers, his body aching, he nonetheless turned his War Machine around and pedaled slowly, carefully up the hill, all the time listening for the engine to start again. Nothing. Just silence.

Twenty yards to go, and he wondered if maybe the guy had really cracked up the wrecker. Maybe the guy was hurt. Screw him if he is. Maybe he was dead, that was something to think about. Mike didn’t want to be responsible for killing anyone, even if the guy was some kind of nutcase who liked to try and run down kids on bikes.

Get the hell out of here. Go. Now.

Ten yards to go, and he wondered—not for the first time—if maybe it was Vic himself in that wrecker after all. Jesus, is he really that crazy? Is it him up there? He felt terror grab at him, but he fought for control. No, he told himself, no. Vic is probably at home. Vic is home getting drunk and probably slapping Mom around. Or maybe doing whatever it was he did to her in their bedroom that made her scream like that. Mike knew that Vic did things—bad things—that made his mother scream and cry out at night, sex things that Vic wanted Mike to hear because he knew it would hurt to hear that stuff. But…was this him?

Five yards to go and he could see the glow of the wrecker’s headlights, pointing upward at a weird angle. Pointing crookedly at the sky. Mike frowned. No, Mike thought. Vic may be crazy, but this isn’t Vic. This is someone else.

Three yards to go and then someone leapt out of the shadows at him. Mike screamed as the huge bulk, a mass of shadows silhouetted by the wrecker’s headlights, sprang at him, huge hands reaching, his mouth shrieking with a sound that tore the night to rags. Mike jerked the handlebars hard to one side and leaned over them, throwing his weight to the left and down, kicking down on the pedals, mixing all his weight and muscle as he veered desperately away from the monstrous form. The hulking shape had only a few yards to cross and he’d have him, but Mike had a deep slope, the constancy of gravity, and the iron in his legs put there by total terror. Mike shot past him, down the slope that pointed back to town. It was way too close, though.

It was so close that as the demon fled down the hill Tow-Truck Eddie felt cloth and hair teasing the tips of his fingers; then there was nothing but cold dark air at the ends of his fingers and the demon shot away down the hill, picking up speed so fast that he seemed to shrink instead of go farther away. If it had been on flat land, Tow-Truck Eddie might have had him, but as he tried to run down the steep slope his bruised right knee buckled with each step.

Mike belted down the hill and up the next. He didn’t stop until he was nearly a mile away, and at that distant, lofty perch he finally stopped. He literally fell sideways off the bike and lay there, gasping, barely able to breathe. His chest was a howling red-hot mass of pain, his lungs were burned raw, and lights danced all around him in a mad fireworks display. Even at that distance, Mike could see the figure of the man. He appeared to be jumping up and down in place, tearing at himself in a fit of such awful rage that it scared Mike. He stared in shock and confusion, in growing horror at the realities of the situation. Who was this madman? He was too big to be Vic.

Then it hit him, and he could not believe that he hadn’t seen it before. A big man, a wrecker—both with ties to Vic. The man who had just tried to kill him had to be Tow-Truck Eddie.

Knowing it still didn’t help him make sense of it. Why would Tow-Truck Eddie be trying to kill him? It made no sense, none. Everyone knew Eddie as being super religious. And, besides he was a…cop. Mike lay there, unable to move, shocked to a vigilant stillness, watching the man dance with rage, watching as he sank slowly down to one knee, burying his head in his hands, becoming part of the shadows of the hill for a moment; and then saw the man throw back his head and let out a howl of such pure bloody rage that the whole night was torn by it. It rose above the hills and the trees and into the starfield above; it was a terrible thing to hear, and it struck some primal chord of fear in Mike that came near to choking him. The howl rolled over the hills at him, a cry of frustration as much as it was an awful promise.