head loll back the other way.
Christine held still for a moment, her nose pointed toward Leigh, her engine revving. Perhaps LeBay was savouring the instant before the kill. If so, I’m glad, because if Christine had gone for her right away, she would have been killed then. But as it was, I had an instant of time, I turned the key again, babbling something aloud—a prayer, I guess—and this time Petunia’s engine coughed into life. I let the clutch out and stepped down on the accelerator as Christine leaped forward again. This time I struck her right side. There was a shrill scream of tearing metal as Petunia’s bumper punched through her mudguard. Christine heeled over and smashed against the wall. Glass broke. Her engine raced and raved. Behind the wheel, LeBay turned toward me, grinning with hate.
Petunia stalled again.
I rattled off a string of every curse I knew as I grabbed for the key again. If not for my goddam leg, if not for the fall I’d taken in the snow, this would be over now; it would just be a matter of cornering her and smashing her to pieces against the cinderblock.
But even as I cranked Petunia’s engine, keeping my foot off the gas to keep from stalling her again, Christine began to reverse with an ear-splitting squeal of metal. She backed out from between Petunia’s grille and the wall, leaving a twisted chunk of her red body behind, baring her right front tyre.
I got Petunia going and found reverse. Christine had backed all the way down to the far end of the garage. All her headlights were out. Her windscreen was smashed into a galaxy of cracks. The bent hood seemed to sneer.
Her radio was blasting. I could hear Ricky Nelson singing “Waitin in School”.
I stared around for Leigh and saw her in Will’s office, looking out into the garage. Her blond hair was matted with blood. More blood ran down the left side of her face and soaked into her jacket. Bleeding too damn much, I thought incoherently. Bleeding too damn much, even for a head wound.
Her eyes widened and she pointed past me, her lips moving soundlessly behind the glass.
Christine came roaring straight up the empty floor, gaining speed.
And the hood was uncrimping, straightening out and down to cover the motor cavity again. Two of the headlights flickered, then came back strong. The mudguard and the right-hand side of her body—I only caught a glimpse, but I swear it’s true—they were… reknitting themselves, red metal appearing from nowhere and slipping down in smooth automotive curves to cover the right front tyre and the right side of the engine compartment again. The cracks in the windscreen were running inward and disappearing. And the tyre that had been pulled off its rim looked as good as new.
It all looks as good as new, I thought. God help us.
She was going directly for the wall between the garage and the office. I let the mop-handle off the clutch fast, hoping to interpose the tanker’s body, but Christine got past me. Petunia backed into nothing but thin air. Oh, I was doing great. I backed all the way across the floor and crashed into the dented tool-lockers ranged there. They crashed to the floor with dull metallic janglings. Through the windscreen I saw Christine hit the wall between the garage and Will’s office. She never slowed; she went full speed ahead.
I’ll never forget those next few moments—they remain hypnotically clear in my memory, as if seen through a magnifying crystal. Leigh saw Christine coming and stumbled backward. Her bloody hair was matted to her head. She fell over Will’s swivel chair. She hit the floor, out of sight behind his desk. An instant later—and I mean the barest instant—Christine slammed into the wall. The big window Will had used to keep track of the comings and goings out in his garage exploded inward. Glass flew like a cluster of deadly spears. Christine’s front end bulged with the impact. The hood popped up and then tore off, flying back over the roof to land on the concrete with a metallic sound that was much like the sound the falling tool-lockers had made.
Her windscreen shattered. Michael Cunningham’s body flew through the jagged opening, legs trailing, his head a grotesque flattened football. He was catapulted through Will’s window; he struck Will’s desk with a heavy grainsack thud and skidded over onto the floor. His shoes stuck up.
Leigh began to scream.
Her fall had probably saved her from being badly lacerated or killed by the flying glass, but when she rose from behind the desk her face was contorted with horror, and utter hysteria had its hold on her. Michael had skidded from the desk and his arms had looped themselves over her shoulders and as Leigh struggled to her feet she appeared to be waltzing with the corpse. Her screams were like fireballs. Her blood, still flowing, sparkled deadly bright. She dumped Michael and ran for the door.
“Leigh, no!” I screamed, and slammed down the clutch with the mop again. The handle snapped cleanly in two, leaving me with a stump five inches long. “Ohhhh—SHIT!” Christine reversed away from the broken window, leaving water, antifreeze, and oil puddled on the floor.
I stamped down on the clutch with my left foot, barely feeling the pain now, bracing my left knee with my left hand as I worked the gearstick.
Leigh tore the office door open and ran out.
Christine turned toward her, its smashed, snarling snout sighting down on her.
I revved Petunia’s engine and roared at her, and as that damned car from hell grew in the windscreen, I saw the purple, swollen face of a child pressed to the rear window, watching me, seeming to beg me to stop.
I struck her hard. The boot lid popped up and gaped like a mouth. The rear end heeled around and Christine went skidding sideways past Leigh, who fled with her eyes seeming to swallow her face. I remember the spray of blood along the fur fringe of her parka’s hood, tiny droplets like an evil fall of dew.
I was in it now. I was in the peak seat. Even if they had to take my leg off at the groin when this was done, I was going to drive.
Christine hit the wall and bounced back. I stamped the clutch, rammed the gearstick into reverse, backed up ten feet, stamped the clutch again, rammed it back into first. Engine revving, Christine tried to pull away along the wall. I cut to the left and hit her again, crushing her almost wasp-waisted in the middle. The doors popped out of their frames at the top and the bottom. LeBay was behind the wheel, now a skull, now a decayed and stinking cameo of humanity, now a hale and hearty man in his fifties with a crew-cut turning white. He stared out at me with his devil’s grin, one hand on the wheel, one balled into a fist that he shook at me.
And still her engine would not die.
I got into reverse again, and now my leg was white iron and the pain was all the way up to my left armpit. The hell it was. The pain was everywhere. I could feel it
(Michael, Jesus why didn’t you stay in the house) in my neck, in my jaw in my
(Arnie? Man, I am so sorry I wish I wish) temples. The Plymouth—what remained of her—lunged drunkenly down the side of the garage, spraying tools and junk metal, pulling out struts and dumping the overhead shelves. The shelves hit the concrete with flat, clapping sounds that echoed like demon applause.
I stamped the clutch again and floored the gas. Petunia’s engine bellowed, and I hung onto the wheel like a man trying to stay aboard a bucking mustang. I hit her on the right side and smashed the body clear off the rear axle, driving it into the door, which shivered and rattled. I went up over the wheel, which slammed into my belly and drove the breath out of me and dumped me back into my seat, gasping.
Now I saw Leigh, cowering in the far corner, her hands clapped to her face, dragging it down into a witch’s mask.
Christine’s engine was still running.
She dragged herself slowly down toward Leigh, like an animal whose rear legs have been broken in a trap. And even as she went I could see her regenerating, coming back: a tyre that suddenly popped up full and plump, the radio aerial that unjointed itself with a silvery twinggg! sound, the accretion of metal around the ruined rear end.
“Stay dead!” I screamed at it. I was crying, my chest heaving. My leg wouldn’t work anymore. I braced it with both hands and jammed it onto the clutch. My vision went hazy and grey with the white-metal agony. I could almost feel the bones grating.
I raced the engine, got first gear again, and charged it; and as I did I heard LeBay’s voice for the first and
