.......................READ STORY.......................... .......................................................... .......................................................... .......................................................... .......................................................... Behind them, distant, perhaps, as much as three miles back, headlights twinkled like insignificant yellow sparks in the night. They passed the huge green sign which read Valley View Park 3 mi. The park was a popular area in the summertime, but it was closed from November to April. John had discovered a side entrance which went around the main gate and then joined the park road. He liked to go into the silent, deserted park and cruise and …drink. Behind them, the distant twin sparks had turned to circles - dual headlights about a mile back. “Hand me the forty, dawg†Homee passed it forward fast, spilling some on John's hand. “Watch it, man, shit, are you drunk or what?†“Sorry, bro.†John drank strongly, belched and set the bottle between his legs. “Hey, what time… is it? I’m fucking… tired.†Smokey said looking strangely at the yellow-white full moon. It appeared to be staring down on them like a ninth-grader’s face with horrible acne. “Shut the fuck up and pass that shit, man, I wanna get fucked up...†Smokey handed it carefully, remaining prudently silent. John again dragged deeply, belched, and then passed it across to Smokey. “No thanks, man†“Take that shit, or you may find yourself getting an enema with it†“Alright fool, shit!†Smokey said, wishing mightily that he had stayed home tonight. He hit it; hit it hard. The Camry sped along, its headlights cutting the night.John glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the other car. It was now coming up fast. He glanced at his speedometer and saw he was doing 65. The car behind them had to be doing close to seventy. John felt something - a curious kind of doubling back to the dreams he could not quite remember. A cold finger seemed to press lightly against his heart. Ahead, the freeway branched in two, 405 continuing toward San Diego and the other road bearing east toward Valley View Park. A large orange sign advised: closed from 10 pm to 6am. Barely slowing, John dragged right and shot up the hill. The approach road was not so well-plowed, and the afternoon rain had left the road slippery. The Camry slid a little before grabbing the road again. In the back seat, Homee, made a low, uneasy sound. John looked up in the rearview, expecting to see the other car shoot by along the 405 - after all, there was nothing up this road but a dead end as far as most drivers were concerned - but instead it took the turn even faster than John had and pounded along after them, now less than a quarter of a mile behind. Its headlights were four glowing white circles that washed the Camry's interior. John and homee turned around to look. "What the fuck?" Homee muttered. But John knew. Suddenly he knew. It was the car that had run down that fool on Harbor. Oh yes it was. The psycho who had greased that fool was behind the wheel of that car, and now he was after John. He stepped down on the go, and the Camry started to fly. The speedometer needle crept up to eighty and then gradually heeled over toward ninety. Trees blurred past, dark sketches in the night. The lights behind them did not fall back; the truth was that they were still gaining. The duals had emerged into two great white eyes. "Man, you wanna slow down" Homee said. He grabbed for his seatbelt, actively scared now. "Shit, man, if we roll at this speed…" John didn't answer. He hunched over the wheel, alternating glances at the road ahead with glances shot into the rearview mirror, where those lights grew and grew. “The road curves up ahead†Homee said hoarsely. And as the curve approached, guardrail reflectors flickering chrome in the Camry’s headlights, he screamed it. “John! It curves! It curves!†John changed down to second gear and the Camry’s engine bellowed in protest. The tachometer needle hit 6,000 rpm, danced briefly at redline-7,000, and then dropped back into a more normal range. Backfires blatted through the Camry’s straight-pipes like machine-gun fire. John pulled the wheel over, and the car floated into the sharped bend. The rear wheels skimmed over hard-packed dirt. At the last possible instant he shifted back up, tramped on the accelerator pedal, and let his body sway freely as the Camry’s left rear end slammed into the embankment, digging a coffin-sized divot and then bouncing off. The Camry slewed the other way. He went with it, then goosed the accelerator again. For one moment he thought it would not respond, that the skid would continue and they would simply barrel sideways up the road at seventy-five until they hit a bare patch and flipped over. But the Camry straightened out. “Holy shit, John slow the fuck down!†Homee wailed. John hung over the wheel, grinning through his lips, bloodshot eyes bulging. The forty was clamped between his legs. There! There, you crazy motherfucker. Let’s see you do that without rolling it over! A moment later the headlights reappeared, closer than ever. John’s grin faltered and faded. For the first time he felt a sickish, unmanning tingle running up his legs toward his crotch. Fear – real fear – stole into him. Homee had been looking behind as the car chasing them rounded the bend, and now he turned around, his face slack and cheesy. “What the fuck…it didn’t even skid†he said. “But that’s impossible! That’s…†“John, who is it?†Homee asked. He reached out to touch John’s elbow, and his hand was flung away with such force that his knuckles cracked on the glass of his window. “You don’t want to touch me†John whispered. The road unrolled straight in front of him, not black tar but brown dirt, packed and treacherous. The Camry was rolling over this unstable surface at better than ninety miles an hour, only its white roof and the Jack in the Box head ball jammed on top of its radio antenna visible between chest-high embankments. “You don’t want to touch me, Homee. Not going this fast†“Is it…†Homee’s voice cracked and he couldn’t go on. John spared him a glance, and at the sight of the fear in John’s small red eyes, Homee’s own terror came up in his throat like hot, smooth oil. No houses up here; they were already on state land. Nothing up here but the high embankments and the dark interlacing of trees. “It’s gonna fucking bump us!†Homee screeched from the back seat. His voice was as high as an old woman’s. Between his feet the remaining bottles of Mickey’s rolled around and chattered wildly. “John! It’s gonna bump us!†The car behind them had come to within five feet of the Camry’s back bumper; its high beams flooded the car with light bright enough to read fine print. It slipped forward even closer. A moment later there was thud. The Camry shifted its stance on the road as the car behind them fell back a trifle; to John it was as if they were suddenly floating, and he knew they were a hair’s breadth from going into a wild, looping skid, the front end and the rear briskly swapping places until they hit something and rolled. A droplet of sweat, warm and stinging as a tear, ran into his left eye. Gradually, the Camry straightened out again. When he felt that he had control, John let his right foot smoothly depress the accelerator all the way. The engine was now screaming. The tach needle was again on the edge of the redline at 7,000 rpm. The speedometer had past the one hundred post, and the embankments streamed past them on either side in ghastly silence. The road ahead looked like a point-of-view shot in a film that had been insanely speeded up. “OH SHIT†Homee babbled, “oh dear God please don’t let me killed oh dear God oh FUCKKK…†He wasn’t there the night we trashed that motherfucker’s car, John thought. He doesn’t know what’s going on. Poor sonaofabitch. He didn’t really feel sorry for Homee, but if he could have been sorry for anyone, it would have been for the pussy-ass little freshman. On his right, Smokey sat bolt upright and as pallid as a gravestone, his eyes eating up his face. Smokey knew, he… knew! The car whispered toward them, headlights swelling in the rearview mirror, bright as hell. He can’t be gaining! John’s mind screamed. He can’t be! But the car behind them was indeed gaining, and John sensed it was boring in for the kill. His mind ran like a rat in cage, searching for a way out, and there was none. The slot in the left embankment that marked the little side road he usually used to bypass the gate and get into the park had already flashed by. He was running out of time, room, and options. There was another soft bump, and again the Camry slewed – this time at something over a hundred miles an hour. No hope, man. John thought fatalistically. He took his hands off the wheel altogether and grabbed his seatbelt. For the first time in his life, he snapped it shut across his waist. At the same time, Homee in the back seat screamed in a shrill ecstasy of fear: “The gate, man! Oh Jesus Roger it’s the gaaaaayyyy The Camry had breasted a final steep hill. The far side sloped down to place where the road branched in two, becoming the ingress and egress from the park. Between the two ways stood a small gatehouse on a concrete – in the summertime, a lady sat in there on a camp chair and took a buck from each park that entered the park. Now the gatehouse was flooded with ghastly light as the two cars raced toward it, the Camry heeling steadily to port as the skid worsened. “Fuck you, Biiitch!†John screamed. He yanked the wheel all the way round, twirling it with the death-knob that held one bobbing red die in alcohol. Homee screamed again. Smokey clapped his hands over his face, his last thought on earth a constant repetition of Watch out for broken glass watch out for broken glass watch out for broken glass… The Camry swapped ends, and now the headlights of the car following blared directly into them, and John began to scream because it was that fucker'r car, all right, that grille was impossible to mistake, it seemed at least a mile wide, only there was no one behind the wheel. The car was totally empty. In the last 2 seconds before impact, that fucker car's headlights shifted away to what was now John’s left. The car shot into the ingress road way as neatly and exactly as a bullet shoots down a rifle barrel. It snapped off then wooden barrier and sent it flying end over into the black night, round yellow reflectors flashing. John’s Camry rammed ass-backwards into the concrete island where the gatehouse stood. The 8-inch concrete lip peeled off everything bolted to the lower deck, leaving the twisted wreckage of the straight-pipes and the mufflers sitting on the dirt like some weird sculpture. The Camry’s rear end was first accordioned and then demolished. Homee was demolished along with it. John was dimly aware of something hitting his back like a bucket of warm water. It was Homme’s thick dark-red blood. The Camry flipped into the air end for end, a mangled projectile in a squall of flying splinters and shattered boards, one headlight still glaring maniacally. It did a complete 360 and came down with a glass-jangling thud and rolled over. The firewall ruptured and the engine slid backward at an angle, crushing Smokey from the waist down. There was a coughing explosion of fire from the ruptured gas tank as the Camry came to rest. John was alive. He had been cut in several places by flying glass, one ear had been clipped off with surgical neatness, leaving a red hole on the left side of his head, and his leg had been broken, but he was alive. His seatbelt had saved him. He thumbed the catch and let it go. The crackle of fire was like someone crumpling paper. He could feel the baking heat. He tried to open the door, but the door crimped shut. Panting hoarsely, he threw himself through the empty space where the windshield had been… …And there was the other Car… It stood forty yards away, facing him at the end of a long, slewing skidmark. The rumble of its engine was like the slow panting of some gigantic animal. John licked his lips. Something in his left side pulled and jabbed with every breath. Something busted in there too. Ribs. The car’s engine gunned and fell off; gunned and fell off. Faintly, like something from a lunatic’s nightmare, he could hear Jimi Hendrix singing “Purple Haze†Orange-pink points of light on the dirt. The rumbling whoosh of fire. It was going to blow. It was… It did blow. The Camry’s gas tank went with a hard thudding noise Roger felt a rude hand shoving him in the back, and he flew through the air and landed in the dirt on his hurt side. His jacket was flaming. He grunted and rolled in the snow, putting himself out. Then he tried to get to his knees. Behind him, the Camry was a blazing pyre in the night. The Car’s engine, revving and falling off, revving and falling off, now more quickly, more urgently. John finally managed to get to his hands and knees. He peered at that fool’s car through the sweaty tangles of hair hanging in his eyes. The hood had been crimped up when the car blasted through the barrier arm, and the radiator was dripping a mixture of water and antifreeze that steamed on the dirt like fresh animal spoor. John licked his lips again. They felt as dry as lizard skin. His back felt warm, as if he had gotten a moderately bad sunburn; he could smell smoking cloth, but in the extremity of his shock he was unaware that both his jacket and his shirt had been burned away. “Listen†he said, hardly aware he was speaking. “Listen, hey…†The car’s engine screamed and it came at him, rear end flirting back and forth as the tires spun through the muddy dirt. The crimped hood was like a mouth in frozen snarl. John waited on his hands and knees, resisting the overpowering urge to leap and scramble away at once, resisting – as much as he could – the wild panic that was ripping away his self-control. No one in the car. At the last possible second he rolled to the left, screaming as the splintered ends of the broken bone in his leg ground together. He felt something like a bat hit him full force on his left arm, causing him to spin maniacally on the dirt. The pain on his shoulder was so awful, his heart skipped a couple of beats and came back like a powerful sledge hammer. The car wheeled, skidding, and came back at him. “NNNOOO†Roger shrieked, bloodshot eyes bulging. “No! No! N…†He leaped, blind reflexes taking over, but this time it was too late. And it was over just like that, cluck, in a finger snap, just like you reading right now… Want more? Read The King, Stephen. funny weight lifting accident Compilation
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