aching muscles, and then did a slow turn, orienting himself. He sketched a little salute to Boyd, told him to be good, and strolled off, ignoring Boyd’s pleas to hurry. Within a few seconds he vanished around a bend and was gone.
Boyd stared after him, eyes awash with tears of pain. Above him the scarecrow’s loose clothing rustled quietly in the light, cold breeze. Boyd did not see the long scrambling line of beetles and roaches and worms and spiders that swarmed out of the fields, scurried up the fence posts, and scuttled up the pants-legs of the scarecrow. Not all of the rippling of the dummy’s clothing was caused by the breeze blowing past, yet all of it was caused by the night itself.
Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, looked at his chronometer. Nearly 1930 hours. He had half an hour to get home.
“Oh man,” he said in a low, terse whisper, “don’t let me be late.”
He was all the way out past the Guthrie farm, far down on A-32. Miles to go, and it would be hard enough on flat ground. He kicked the War Machine into action and pedaled like crazy.
“Crap,” he said aloud. He hadn’t meant to be late, but the papers that should have been dropped off before school was even out had come in an hour after Mike usually picked them up. He’d kicked ass dropping them off, saving the last ones for the long haul down A-32. Home was on the other side of town, and the miles between were mostly hills. No way to get there until sometime after eight.
Yeah, a belting for sure.
He zoomed down one hill and tried to use the momentum to get himself up the next one, but gravity began pulling at him and he had to pump his legs so that sweat popped out on his face and under his clothes. He kept his head down and pumped the pedals, thinking of home that lay one thousand and seven miles away. One million and seven. Where Mom and Vic were waiting for him. Mom sitting by the door with her hand clamped around a collins glass, looking out, waiting for him to come creeping into the yard, steeling herself to try and run some kind of interference for him; and Vic, sitting on the left-hand side of the couch, a Winston burning in one corner of his mouth, the remote-control dwarfed by his hand, clicking through channel after channel. Vic, with his hard mechanic’s hands and that little smile of his that he wore only when Mike did something wrong. Which, by Vic’s tally, was pretty often. Vic, who demanded to be called “sir” and had enforced his decree with his belt. Vic, who liked how hard his hands were, and how fast. Vic, who liked to use his hands, to hurt with his hands.
Mike looked down the long road and swore to himself that he would not cry. Not this time. Not now, and not after it was all over. No matter how bad it was, he wouldn’t let that prick see him cry. Even if it meant that Vic would try all the harder to wring the tears out of him.
After all, he was Iron Mike Sweeney. The Enemy of…
He felt the tears begin to well up and he swiped at them with pure anger.
“Damn you!” he suddenly yelled, his voice rising high and loud, bursting out of his troubled chest.
Then, with a snarl of pure rage, he thrust himself over the crest of the hill and plunged down the far side, his legs worked furiously, churning around and around as the bike accelerated smoothly; not to get home a moment faster, but to channel his fury and fear somewhere. The War Machine became a blur as it shot down the hill.
He saw the glow of the headlights just a split second before the vehicle crested the near hill. It bounded up over the knoll and swept down the other side, moving at incredible speed for so narrow a road. Mike was just beginning his climb up the hill, having taken the last four hills at a rapid clip.
The headlights dazzled him, and with his bright yellow and orange school jacket and white baseball cap, he fairly glowed in their brilliance. The vehicle — Mike still couldn’t tell what kind of car or truck it was — swooped straight down the hill at him, never veering to give him space. When he saw the red running lights, he knew it was a truck, and the wide set of the headlights confirmed this, but he couldn’t understand why it was driving so fast and why it wasn’t giving him any room. Didn’t it see him? It hogged the whole side of the road, cramming the shoulder, which was his only lane unless Mike decided to veer over to the other side. The truck sped on, and Mike was sure that the driver didn’t see him, despite the brightness of his clothes. In the few seconds he had left, he jagged sharply and quickly to his left and gave the truck as wide a berth as possible.
Those few seconds snapped away like firecrackers and then time seemed to accelerate as the headlights also shifted, and Mike stared in complete horror as he realized the truck was angling toward him. Crossing the yellow line and angling directly toward him!
Mike tried to wave the truck away, but the roar of the engine actually increased, and then suddenly everything in Mike’s world seemed to change, to become brighter as if there were spotlights on everything — and somehow he knew that this illumination was not coming from the headlights. It was as if some inner lights had flashed on, and at the same time everything abruptly slowed down. Mike was crouched over his handlebars, his face turned toward the oncoming truck. There was no sound. The truck’s wheels were angled and the chrome bumper was so close he could have reached out and touched it. Mike felt his hands jerk the handlebars sharply to one side — and that motion seemed the only thing that happened in real time — and then he threw his weight farther forward, adding his mass to the impetus from the fierce pumping of his legs. In a fragment of a second, as the truck rolled at him — murderously close and yet moving so impossibly slowly — Mike veered his bike at a crazy angle and slipped past the very corner of the big silver bumper.
Immediately he shot back into real time and with a deafening roar the tow-truck shot past him, the fenders and wheels inches from him, the slipstream ripping at him. The truck passed in a second and as it ripped past, Mike’s bike shot off the highway, crunched across the verge, and flew into black emptiness.
He had no time to scream, and no voice for it anyway. The War Machine hurtled off the edge of the drainage ditch and smashed down in the pumpkin patch that bordered the road. The front wheel hit the twisted vine spiraling out from the top of one large gourd and the bike stopped at all once. Mike kept going.
He passed over the handlebars, turned a neat somersault in the air, and almost — almost — rotated far enough forward for him to land on his feet. It would have been a wonderful accident worthy of a standing ovation, but as he passed over the bars his left sneaker toe caught the rippled rubber of the handgrip and spoiled the rotation. Mike’s heels hit first but lacking the right angle of momentum he fell backward instead of forward. His buttocks smashed down on a pumpkin and it burst under him, the stem giving his tailbone a painful jolt; then his back hit a scattering of underdeveloped pumpkins, each the size and approximate hardness of baseballs. He could feel one rib break with a searing detonation of red-hot pain that stole his breath, exploded his nerve endings, and closed a hot fist around his heart. His head flopped back and struck a stone.
Everything stopped. All sound and movement stopped and the only things he was aware of were blackness, searing pain, and the fireflies of head trauma.
Mike’s mouth worked like a fish, trying to gasp in air but finding none.
He lay there for thousands of years.
When his mind could function on a rudimentary level his first thought was:
Turning his head, he could see the receding taillights of the truck, could see that it was a tow-truck — lightning seemed to strike sparks from the massive gleaming hook. The engine roared as the truck picked up speed and downshifted to climb the hill.
Mike lay there, dazed, hurting, trying to survive the moment.
Once the truck had crested the hill and vanished, he stared up at the dark and featureless sky. The lightning flickered distantly and underlit the clouds with a dark red glow.
As the engine growl of the tow-truck dwindled into silence, Mike tried to make sense of things. He felt smashed and stupid and afraid. Amazed, too. That idiot in the tow-truck had actually tried to run him off the road! He had
He tried to move, couldn’t, and lay there, focusing on thought rather than feeling.
Sure, he’d seen some people play chicken with cyclists, shifting a little closer just to spook them, but never like this. Never at night on a deserted road and at such high speeds, and with such a clear-cut intention of actually forcing him off the road. Or, he thought, maybe
His lungs started working better, taking in more air.
“Any minute now I’ll get up,” he said aloud, but he didn’t believe it.
