before there would be any. She could still see the headlights behind them, staying right with them. The rain had stopped, but the ‘roads were still wet. I Then a loom of headlights in the opposite lane was visible over the next hill, and this time Karen had time to get ready. The car flashed by them, and Karen got a good took at the car behind them. It definitely looked like a cop car, with at least two aerials visible, a large chrome-plated spotlight on the driver’s side, a single driver in the front, and maybe another figure in the backseat.
She whipped her head around and described all this to Train, who was still having to concentrate on the road.
“See any blue lights? Bubble-gum machine on the roof Anything blue on his dashboard? In the grille?”
“No. No lights.”
“So maybe not a cop car. Maybe Somebody who wants look like a cop car.”
They were coming down out of the to patch of hills now, with the terrain leveling off.
“Should we call nine-one-one9” she asked.
“And tell them what? There’s a car behind us? Hang on-there’s a county road sign.’ “
Karen tightened her seat belt and gripped the Glock as Train slowed down imperceptibly. They drove down toward a bridge crossing a tree-lined creek, beyond which she could see a T intersection with what looked like a gravel road bisecting the two-lane one. Train tightened his own seat belt, flexed his hands, and then swung the Suburban in a noisy, gravel-spitting right turn. Karen could feel the vehicle lifting off its left wheels slightly before Train hit the gas and sent them hurtling down the county road, accelerating through the dense woods on either side. She looked back in time to see a flare of red brake lights and then a pair of high beams swinging over the trees and pointing toward them.
“Here he comes,” she said as Train punched it.
“Look for cop lights,” he ordered.
She almost hoped for flashing blue or red emergency lights, but there was only that steady stare of high beams coming up after them in the darkness. She turned back around as Train careened through an unbanked curve, once again throwing up gravel all over the place. The road was almost as wide as the state road.
“I was hoping for a paved road. Oh well,” he shouted over the road noise. Karen punched out 911 and transmitted a call for help. Nothing happened, and then she had to hang on as Train took them through another curve. She had a fleeting glance of an embankment whipping much too close past the windows, and then they passed some kind of tower.
She checked the phone and saw that there was next to no signal. She swore. Then the light behind them became much brighter.
“He’s using the spot,” Train yelled, squinting as a blaze of bright white light flooded into the Suburban. The car behind them was a lot closer. Train batted down the center mirror and then swore as he nearly lost control going around the next bend. The road was almost too wide, and, being unmarked, it was nearly impossible for Train to hold the center. There were also more potholes now, and the Suburban was banging noisily through some of them. Karen wondered if the road went on much farther. But it had to go somewhere, didn’t it?
“He’s trying to pass! Get down!” Train yelled as the enng over on white light moved up on them, from ‘ the leftrear side of the car. Karen ducked as Train swung in front of the pursuing car, trying to block it, and then careened back across the road as he overcompensated. -The Suburban was too big and heavy for this sort of high- speed maneuvering on gravel. Their pursuer was holding tight on their left rear, that big spotlight throwing back blinding glare from every reflective surface, including the front windshield.
Karen realized Train must be having trouble seeing anything at all.
He swung back to the left sharply, too sharply, and the Suburban began to fishtail. He instinctively hit the brakes for a second, which allowed their pursuer to surge up abreast on the left. She remembered the Glock and raised her hands to bring it to bear behind Train’s head as the other car’s nose drew abreast of their rear doors, the spotlight blasting white light at them Re some kind of ray gun. in the light reflecting off their own left side, she saw that the right-front window of the other car was sliding all the way down, and she screamed at Train to lean forward so she could get a shot as the other car crept forward.
But Train was still fighting to regain control. At that instant, the other car pulled up abreast of them, blanking out the spotlight, and she caught a glimpse of a solitary figure in the other car, one hand on the wheel, the other holding something in his hand. Not a gun. Something smaller. Shiny. For a split second, she had the ridiculous thought that it was a flashlight.
Flashlight.
Light. Light! She remembered that purple-red flash that had stunned her into insensibility in the barn.
“Close your eyes! Close your eyes!” she screamed at Train, clapping her left hand over her own eyes and squeezing them shut as tightly as she could. Even so, she felt the brain-stunning power of the retinal flash as it imprinted the cracks between her fingers on the underside of her eyelids.
Then the other car shot past and the Suburban was slowing down as Train, groaning, slumped into a semi- stupor behind the wheel, his eyes staring sightlessly. Karen dropped the gun and grabbed for the wheel, but her seat belt kept her from reaching the brakes. She punched at the belt latch just as the big vehicle swerved toward the edge of the road. She fought the wheel hard, her left foot punching desperately to find the brake pedal between Train’s feet. The flare of red brake lights flooding the windshield alerted her to the other car. She finally found the brake pedal and tried to stand on it. Train leaned against her, and she looked right, in time to see that the other car was close, right in front of them. Just beneath the Ford emblem on the trunk was what looked like a very large gun barrel, pointing right at her. Oh my God!
She groped for the Glock as her foot slipped off the brake pedal. But now the lights and her view ahead disappeared as something spattered all over the front windshield, something opaque, something that instantly blotted out all the light from their own headlights and the other car.
It sounded as if they had entered a sustained rainsquall of heavy, wet plaster as she found the brake pedal again and wrestled the Suburban away from the embankment closing in on the right-front window. The interior became cavelike as she stared uncomprehendingly at the now-blackened windshield, her right shoulder pressed up against the dashboard as the car decelerated. The drumming noise continued as whatever it was covered the front windows on both sides and then moved down the left side and back windows, the spray clattering down the side and over the back of the -car like the pressure nozzles of a car wash.
Then abruptly the Suburban tilted as it ran off into the ditch on the right side, banging its frame over the edge of the gravel road and screeching the right side against the embankment before finally stopping with a loud bang.
She was momentarily stunned as the right side of her head hit hard on the center mirror. The engine raced, the rear tire,, machine-gunning gravel out from under the chassis, until she realized she was stepping on the accelerator. She jerked her foot off the pedal, but it was too late. The big car swayed once and then settled all the way over onto its right side almost in slow motion, in a mighty crunch. Karen screame( but was able to jam the shift lever over into the park position as she slid across the front seat and banged up against the right-front door, pursued by a small landslide of all the little things that accumulate in a car. Train sagged down towarc her, thankfully still in his seat belt, although the top bel bolt was creaking ominously as she struggled to get herself upright. The engine stalled out. It had become almost pitch. black inside, with only the instrument lights providing illumination.
For a moment, she just sat there, trying to get her bearings. Train was out of it, hanging like a sack of potatoes it his seat belt. The side of her head stung, and she was disoriented. The smell of gasoline began to penetrate the Sub, urban’s interior. Then she heard something outside.
She froze.
Silence. Then another noise, behind the car, but muffled Whatever was on the windows was making it hard to hear Another noise. She felt around in the clutter piled up against the right-front door for the Glock but couldn’t find it. Train groaned softly. He started trying to unlatch his seat belt.
“Don’t undo your belt,” she whispered. “We’re over on side. Someone’s out there.”
The smell of gasoline was getting stronger-Then she thought she heard a car start up. Train groaned, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t see a thing,” he whispered. “Bastard got me.’ I
“My eyes are okay, I think,” she said.
She was pretty sure her eyes were working. She scrunched herself up against the dashboard and helped Train to release himself from the belt and slide his legs down to stand on the right-front door. He was rubbing his
