Part 21 (2/2)

”Hey, Jules,” he started as he entered the dance floor, ”did you see what some a.s.shole wrote-”

He stopped, looked around. The bar was empty.

Strange, he thought. He could make out the faint subsonic rumble of a motor running outside, wondered why Jules hadn't come back in to shut things down. Syd crossed the room, heading for the front door. As he did he realized that the place felt suddenly ominous around him, as if he were somehow attuned to the residual vibe of everyone who had ever been there. It felt like everything else in his life: weirdly alien, suddenly soured. As Syd laid his hands on the door handle he wondered what was happening to him, and if he would ever feel the same about any of it again.

Syd pushed the door open.

And stepped outside.

The door shut behind him, locking him out. Syd squinted, scanned the lot. It was desolate, devoid of life. Two cars were left, demarcating an area that could hold two hundred. Syd's Mustang was off to the right, some three rows back. The departure of the other vehicles had left it alone, giving it a strangely abandoned quality. Jules's big boat was to the left, toward the far end of the building. As Syd veered toward it he could see wisps of exhaust curling from the tailpipe. But no Jules.

So where the h.e.l.l did he go?

Syd cursed himself for not thinking about the door, propping it ajar. There was nothing else to do now.

”Jules?” he half-whispered, immediately thought why are you keeping your voice down, stupid?

”YO, JULES!”.

No answer. His cry was swallowed up by the empty lot.

As he moved closer to Jules's car he saw that there was a patch of gravel steaming by the driver's door. It looked like Jules had spilled some coffee, or taken a leak. Neither theory made any sense. Another smear graced the door panel, thick as paint. Syd reached out, touched a finger to it.

And his heart froze.

”Oh, f.u.c.k,” he gasped. ”Oh, f.u.c.k.” The world went fun-house wobbly around him. From the darkness there came a moist cracking noise. Syd looked up with eyes wide as pie plates.

Something was moving in the shadows on the other side of the car. His head spun, consciousness pinwheeling across the inside of his skull, and for one brief disorienting moment he thought it was a very large dog hunkered over a ripped-open garbage bag. Then the thing in the shadows reared up and he saw that it wasn't a dog at all.

And the garbage bag had legs. . . .

Oh G.o.d. Syd doubled over, puked right there on the spot: hacking and retching up a vile spew of bile. It splattered on the ground, mixed with the blood pooling there. When he opened his eyes again he saw that the creature had risen, was standing crookedly. It was a huge malformed silhouette, easily seven feet tall. Its eyes burned like molten slag. It looked at him and made a very bad animal sound: low and menacing, strangely pleased. Its lips curled back, flashes of light glinting off its teeth.

And suddenly everything Syd knew about keeping cool and not showing fear was bulls.h.i.+t, rendered worse than useless as his legs started moving all by themselves. Running. Running.

Behind him, a fearsome howl rose up.

Syd ran, the beast hot behind him, its loping stride overtaking his own desperate retreat. His car was thirty million miles away, his car was parked in a distant galaxy. And the thing behind him was gaining. Syd's survival instinct kicked in, hurtling him forward . . .

. . . and then he was there, slamming into the pa.s.senger side of his car a heartbeat before the shadow-thing caught up to him. Somehow his keys found the lock, his hands pried open the door. He dove across the interior and pulled the door shut a split second before the beast smacked into the side. The pa.s.senger side window cracked and starred. Syd jammed his key into the ignition. The engine shuddered and groaned.

”MOTHERf.u.c.kER!!” he shouted. ”GO GO GO!!”

A great shadow loomed outside the shattered gla.s.s. The engine caught, rumbled to life. Syd jammed his foot to the gas, felt it roar in response. The door clattered, started to open. Syd threw the s.h.i.+fter into gear, popped the clutch.

The Mustang's rear wheels spun, sent up a roaring granite spray. Syd wrenched the steering wheel to the left, sent the car into a hard three-sixty across the barren s.p.a.ce. The door clicked shut. The thing held on. Syd seesawed the wheel back, whipping the car so hard to the right that he thought he would roll it as he did a vicious figure eight.

Somewhere coming out of the second turn the creature lost its grip, went sailing off into s.p.a.ce. Syd didn't see it land. He didn't need to. The road was directly before him. He had his shot.

He wouldn't get another.

Gunning it for all it was worth, Syd aimed for the entrance. The Mustang slalomed and slid, picking up speed. By the time he cleared the entrance he was doing fifty, and he went screaming onto the road without letting up or looking back. If anyone had been coming in either direction he'd have been hamburger.

But luck was with him. It was late. The road was empty. The Mustang made the turn, missing the guardrail with inches to spare. Syd straightened out and floored it, the speedometer arcing past sixty, seventy. The Chameleon's sign disappeared in a cloud of dust and smoking rubber.

Syd drove and drove: going nowhere but away, his body shaking, his thoughts slam-dancing between shock and shrieking terror. The straight road gave way to twisting mountain curves. Syd's hands white-knuckled the wheel as his mind rebelled, tried to strike deals with the unreal. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be denied. The details were too clear: burned into his gray matter, stark and garish in his mind's eye. The steaming blood. The lifeless form strewn across the cold ground.

The thing that hovered above it . . .

From behind, the glare of hi-beams and flickering light. It was Jules's sedan, jerking and weaving as it hurtled forward, eating up the distance between them. Syd screamed, punched it again. The speedometer climbed, leveled off at eighty. The road snaked out treacherously before him. The sedan's headlights disappeared momentarily as he hooked around the next bend.

But by the time he went over the last rise that marked the beginning of the downgrade the Chrysler had caught up, its big angular b.u.mper riding up his a.s.s as they roared down the road. It nudged him, a two-ton kiss that crunched metal to metal and crumpled his flimsy rear end. The Mustang screeched and skidded; Syd jerked and screamed again, almost lost control. He was drunk and scared s.h.i.+tless. He was losing his mind.

A sign flashed yellow, illuminated by the headlights as it whipped by. NO Pa.s.sING. DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD. The Chrysler crossed out and into the oncoming lane. As it did Syd heard the stereo, maxxed and blasting, some wild-a.s.s Stevie Ray sonic a.s.sault so loud it penetrated the slipstream, the roar of the dueling engines. The sedan pulled abreast of him.

Syd glanced over, blood thudding madly in his head.

The dome light was flickering, so he couldn't clearly see the interior. But something very large was behind the wheel, and a very dead Jules was riding shotgun: his face pulped and mangled, his head puppeteered by the monster beside him. His throat was completely gone, from Adam's apple to spinal column. Syd watched in horror as Jules's face twisted around, smacked and slid against the gla.s.s. His dead friend stared blindly at him, his features smushed and distorted.

Then the monster flicked its wrist.

And Syd lost it completely.

Jules's face was still stuck to the gla.s.s: skin sloughing off his skull like a cheap Halloween mask as his body slumped. The flesh hovered on the window for a moment before sliding away, leaving a gore-streaked smear in its wake.

The road hooked to the left. The thing behind the wheel accelerated, veering back across the double yellow line.

It smacked into him, crus.h.i.+ng the left front quarter panel as it tried to force him off the road. Syd felt the Mustang pitch to the right, saw sparks fly as the guardrail connected like a can opener, peeling sheet metal into jagged, razored ribbons. The blackness beyond the edge of the road yawned beside him.

Syd countersteered, throwing his weight into it. The Mustang groaned and pushed off the rail, tires screeching as it bit back into the lane. The Chrysler lurched and surged, swerving away as Syd cursed and downs.h.i.+fted, dropping back one car length back as the Chrysler rocketed ahead.

He was behind it now, the big black sedan weaving back and forth as they slid through the next set of turns. The Chrysler cut to the right; Syd hit the gas and steered left, trying to go around it. The road hooked and swooped. The Mustang's engine screamed as he took to the outside lane, roared past his tormentor . . .

. . . and that was when the big sedan came careening back, swatting into him at seventy miles an hour. Syd felt his right rear end buckle as the tire disintegrated, throwing smoke and chunks of rubber all over the highway. The wheel jerked out of his hands and he lost control completely: the Mustang fishtailing, g-force and momentum carrying him clear across the road and into the concrete retaining wall on the other side.

There was a grinding trash-compactor roar, a white-hot blast of pain as the driver's side door buckled and caved in on him and a lacerating shower of gla.s.s swanned like hornets in the air. Syd's mind dislocated, felt reality go molten, elastic. The car was still moving, wholly of its own volition. The sound was deafening. The car was still moving.

The last thing he saw was an enormous tree, rus.h.i.+ng madly toward him.

Then, impact.

<script>