and aimed Hazel's car straight ahead through the largest gap in the encircling headlights. Gravel spurted from the car's rear wheels just as someone shot out the windshield. I ducked flying glass while I bumped over the lawn, through a flowerbed, around the swimming pool, and over a white picket fence. The car jounced down onto the highway, and I floored the accelerator. For the first live hundred yards, part of the fence I'd crashed through kept banging against the front wheels. Then it fell away.
Behind me there were lights and sirens. No shortage of cither. I roared through the square and set sail for the Dixie Pig. I had a chance of outrunning them in the souped-up Ford. Right now I could just about smell the overheated engines pursuing me.
I cut the lights a thousand yards from the Dixie Pig, got over on the shoulder, and drove in darkness. If there had been anything parked it would have been all over. I whirled the wheel hard when I saw the lighter outline of the crushed stone driveway, took a section of hedge with me, but I made the turn. Outside on the highway the cruisers screamed by.
I got Hazel's car stopped and lit running on the back parking lot. The door on the driver's side of my Ford stood open. I didn't remember leaving it open. I came to a sliding stop beside it, my hand on the butt of my .38. I saw a dark figure on the other side of the front seat. I came within a tick of pulling the trigger before I recognized Hazel. 'Get the hell out of there!' I ordered, trying at the same time to listen for sounds on the highway.
'Take me with you, Chet,' she pleaded. 'Give me a gun.'
'Don't make me do it, baby,' I warned her. 'Get out of the goddamned car.'
She climbed out. I could see she was crying. 'Chet, why won't you let me—'
'Stop making these losing bets, will you?' I crowded under the wheel. 'Get back inside and keep your mouth shut. They can't touch you.' I backed up, swung around, and belted the Ford down the driveway. The last I saw of Hazel was the glitter of her cowboy boots' silver conches in the big swing of the headlights.
I doubled back toward town. There were bound to be roadblocks north and south on 19. I'd head east on Main. The added power of the Ford felt good under my foot. I slowed down approaching the traffic light in the square. I'd just started to make the left turn when there was the snarl of a siren practically in my ear. Someone in the posse had had the brains to leave a trailer.
I le was headed the wrong way, but I saw the shine of his lights as he came after me. My forty-five-mile-an- hour turn carried me up onto the sidewalk before I got straightened out on Main. I really rolled it away from there.
The pursuing headlights grew smaller. I was doing eighty-five on a road built for forty, so the Ford was all over the highway. I watched the dark ribbon of macadam unroll in the headlights, the soft night breeze whistling through the open windows. The wailing shriek of the siren in the cruiser following me grew fainter. I was outrunning him comfortably. V
Then I burst out of a curve into a long straightaway, and far up ahead winked the red fights of trouble.
Roadblock.
I lifted my foot from the gas pedal instinctively, but I still rolled up on it fast. A spotlight came on when they saw me. A tiny figure stood out in the roadway, waving me down with flapping arms.
I sized it up.
Two cruisers across the road, their snouts extending out onto the shoulders. Three-quarters of a car's width between them in the center. A ditch on the light. An open field on the left. And in the rear-view mirror the lights of the trailing cruiser gaining rapidly.
A roadblock you do or you don't. I mashed down on the gas again and headed for the center opening. I just might rip my way through. The fool with the flapping arms stood in the center of the gap. The headlights picked him up clearly. The Ford's engine snarled with power as I suddenly recognized the white, strained face of Jed Raymond.
I hoped he'd jump, but if he didn't, he'd have to take his chances as I was taking mine. I couldn't have been twenty yards from him—and he hadn't made a move— when Kaiser pranced out in front of Jed, head cocked, tongue lolling, tail wagging.
My brain sent me straight through, over the dog, over the man, to try the odds with the blockading cruisers. But my hands spun the wheel, hard left. Somebody else will have to explain it to you. I missed them both, caromed broadside from the left-hand cruiser in a whining, ear-splitting shriek of tortured metal. The Ford hurtled a hundred fifty yards out into the field. The front wheels dropped into a ditch suddenly. There was a loud whump, and the Ford stood up on its nose. The doors flew open. I flew out. I landed hard, then rolled.
I didn't lose consciousness. I still had the gun and loose cartridges in my jacket pocket. The Ford was down on its knees in front, its ass-end up in the air. The wheels were still spinning. There was something the matter with my left hand. I started to crawl toward the Ford and realized that my right leg was broken.
Up on the highway the spotlight pivoted and crept down through the field. It caught me, passed on, hesitated, and came back. There was a sharp crack, and a bullet plowed up the ground beside me. A rifle. It sounded like a .30-.30. I dragged myself over the uneven ground to the Ford, underneath its back wheels where I could see up to the road.
I reloaded one-handed. A thousand hours of practicing reloading one-handed had come to this: a final time in a black earth Florida field. I looked up toward the road again, and I got the spotlight with my third shot.
They turned the other cruiser around, the one I hadn't hit, and its spotlight started down through the field. I popped it before its beam reached me. Not that it made any real difference. More red lights, sirens, and spotlights were whirling up to the roadblock every second now.
To get to me in a hurry they had to come through the field. By now they knew enough not to hurry. The .30 -.30 went off again, and a large charge of angry metal whanged through the body of the car over my head. The rifle would keep me pinned down while they circled around me.
Nothing for it now but the hard sell.
Nothing for it but to see that a few of them shook hands with the devil at the same time I did.
The spotlights crisscrossed each other eerily in the open field, but one of them kept the Ford bathed steadily in luminously glowing, eye-hurting brilliance. A hump in the ground kept me in shadow. I couldn't see anyone coming through the field.
I heard the ride's sharp crack again. Above my head (here was a loud
Whoom!!
I saw a bright flare, and then I didn't see anything.
The explosion knocked me backward under the Ford. I rolled out from beneath it. I didn't even feel the broken leg or the damaged hand. I couldn't see at all. I could hear the crackle of flames. Part was the Ford. Part was me. I was afire all over.
I tried to smother the flames by rolling on the ground. It didn't help. I still had the gun. I hoped they could see me and were coming at me. I knelt up on my good leg and faced the highway, bracing the .38 in both hands. I squeezed off what was left in it, waist-high in a semicircle, blind.
I threw the empty gun as far as I could in the direction of the road.
There was a dull roaring sound in my ears. I tried to put out the fire in my hair. I could smell my own burning flesh.
The last thing I heard was myself, screaming.
XI
I was blind for six months.
I may have gone a little crazy, too. I went the whole route: baths, wetpacks, elbow cuffs, straitjackets,
