Part 25 (1/2)

Gretchen raised an eyebrow. ”What you mean 'we,' paleface?”

”She's kidding,” Pete a.s.sured me.

”Bulls.h.i.+t,”Gretchen said.

”Any ideas?” I asked. Pete looked around at the mob. ”Nothing on the pavement is moving, so let's go off-road until we get around the jam.”

”And give those holy rollers the chance to mob our car and cannibalize us?” Gretchen asked.

”I guess it could work out that way,” Pete said. ”But if Oliver goes first, and fast, they'll jump out of the way. Then we can come along after, and they'll jump farther. Keep in mind that this is only a theory.”

”Hey, you!” a voice bellowed.

I turned and saw that it was the ruddy man in the Jeep. His dull gaze had become a malevolent glare.

”Yeah, you!” he roared. ”Ain't that bike an Ariel?”

I rapped out Peggy Sue's engine, skidded around the Kamikaze's front end, and plunged into the crowded ditch.

Pete's plan worked until I had gained about fifty feet, and then I was yanked off my motorcycle and hoisted into the air. I struggled, but could not break free.

”We have him!” someone screamed. ”We have Vale the Antichrist! Find a Corps minister!”

”Let him be! He's a prophet!” someone else screamed.

”Satanist!”

”Communist tool!”

”Kill him!”

”But don't let him bleed! You'll get AIDS!”

They pounded on my helmet, ripped the Moonsuit with their fingernails, and flung me into the air over and over again. Peggy Sue disappeared under a sea of flesh.

”Leave my Ariel alone!” I cried.

The Kamikaze was mobbed. A man swung a tire iron against the pa.s.senger window, knocking a hole in the center and cracking the rest into greenish rectangles. Before he could swing again, Gretchen reached through the hole, grabbed his hair, and smacked his head against the roof. As he fell away, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the tire iron from him and pushed her head and shoulders out through the rectangles, yelling, ”Don't any of you people havejobs?”

Pete pulled her inside, and the Barracuda's 426 roared. Its rear tires spun, flinging chunks of mud, and it charged the maniacs who were tossing me like pizza dough. They dropped me, and I landed headfirst on the Kamikaze's hood as the car stopped. Dazed, I rose to my hands and knees and found myself gazing through the winds.h.i.+eld at Gretchen, who screamed, ”Duck!”

The Barracuda lurched, I fell flat, and a metal fence post swept through the s.p.a.ce where my head had been. It hit the winds.h.i.+eld, which became a brilliant white spiderweb, and I rolled off the fender to lie onmy back in the mud.

Above me stood the ruddy man who had been in the Jeep. He spat tobacco juice onto the Moonsuit, then raised his fence post over my faceplate. At that moment Gretchen's tire iron thunked him across the bridge of his nose. He stumbled backward, and I scrambled to my feet and tried to dive into the car through the now-gla.s.sless pa.s.senger window. I made it halfway, ending up with my head in Gretchen's lap.

Pete hit the gas, and the Kamikaze slogged forward. Outside, hands grabbed my right foot, and I kicked something soft with my left. The hands let go.

”Dorkhead jerkface!” Gretchen yelled, prodding me with the tire iron. ”Get off!”

I floundered into the back seat, and when I faced forward, I saw that the starred winds.h.i.+eld was completely opaque. Pete had rolled down his side window and was driving with his head outside. A few of the maniacs were throwing things at him, but most were either diving out of our way or fighting each other. From what I could hear, it seemed that a large number of Bill w.i.l.l.yites were busy beating the h.e.l.l out of a group of fringe cultists who thought I was G.o.d's personal representative on Earth. That battle, I was sure, was all that kept the mob from rus.h.i.+ng the Barracuda and stomping it flat. We began to pick up speed, sliding and fishtailing on the mud and flattened gra.s.s, and I saw that other vehicles were now opting for the ditch as well, increasing the chaos and helping to distract the maniacs.

Several hundred yards farther on, we discovered that the traffic jam was the result of three overturned church buses and a number of smaller vehicles (including an Oklahoma Highway Patrol cruiser) that were crammed against them. As soon as we were past that mess, Pete took the Kamikaze up to the pavement and continued north. The car accelerated to almost eighty, but after only a few miles, the right rear tire collapsed. The Barracuda almost flipped, but Pete struggled with the wheel and was able to bring the car to a stop on the shoulder. The three of us clambered out.

Pete had a gash on his forehead, but other than wiping it with the back of his hand, he ignored it. ”Break out the winds.h.i.+eld so we can see to drive,” he said. Gretchen went to work on the gla.s.s with her tire iron while Pete sprinted to open the trunk.

I followed, intending to help, but as he pulled out the spare tire and jack, I looked to the south and saw smoke rising from near the spot where I had lost my bike.

The w.i.l.l.yites were burning Buddy Holly's motorcycle.

Pete tackled me from behind as I ran, and I fell into the ditch. He threw me onto my back, put a knee on my chest, and held a tire cross against the sky as if about to brain me.

”Every religious movement has its martyrs,” he said.

Then he dragged me back to the Kamikaze and had Gretchen hold me while he jacked up the car and began removing the flat. I looked away and stared at the smoke.

”If your mother's aliens are going to rescue their prophet,” Pete said, kicking the flat away, ”they might want to show up now.”

I heard the whine of approaching engines, looked down from the smoke, and saw cars and pickup trucks speeding toward us. Wild-eyed men and women leaned out of the windows waving ax handles,shovels, baseball bats, Bibles, and shotguns.

The first three cars were moving so fast that they were a quarter mile past us before they came to a stop.

The fourth one, though, was approaching more slowly. It was a four-wheel-drive pickup that had men in camouflage fatigues hanging all over it. They aimed rifles at us and, although they were still two hundred yards away, started firing. Gretchen yelled a garbled obscenity, released me, and ran for the Barracuda's driver's seat.

Pete was spinning the fourth of five lug nuts onto the new wheel. It was enough. I leaned down and grabbed the tire cross from him, then whirled like a discus thrower and flung it at the approaching truck.

It spun toward the winds.h.i.+eld like a giant shurakin, and the truck swerved into the gra.s.sy median, dropping paramilitary goons like dead leaves. The cross bounced off the pavement with a triumphant clang and buried itself in the grill of the next car, which also headed for the median, causing more problems for the goons.

I hoped that none of them were hurt, but if any were, better them than me. That wasn't an appropriate att.i.tude for a prophet and potential martyr, I suppose, but screw that. I'm a consumer electronics salesman, and consumer electronics salesmen don't make good martyrs. We've seen too many replays of The Terminator on the big-screen Mitsubis.h.i.+s in the showroom.

As the second vehicle hit the median, Pete grasped my wrist and pulled me toward the Barracuda's pa.s.senger door, leaving the jack up and the trunk open. Gretchen was already in the driver's seat, so I dove into the back while Pete jumped in beside her. The left rear tire squealed, and we whanged off the jack, heading toward the three cars that had overshot us. They had turned around and were coming at us head-on in a V formation.

”You're going south in the northbound lane!” Gretchen yelled at them. ”Peabrains!” She put the Kamikaze on the dotted line, closed her eyes, and punched it.

I closed my eyes as well and experienced a stomach-knotting sensation of deja vu. I felt as I had when I'd pa.s.sed the SkyVue Drive-In Theater and Satellite Dish Emporium in El Dorado-as if there were something important going on, something that I should know about. That struck me as weird, because what I should have been feeling was abject fear at my impending death.

Several seconds past the moment when I should have been crushed by compacting metal, I opened my eyes. The highway ahead was clear, and when I looked back past the bobbing trunk lid, I saw the three cars far behind us. They were blocking the road in front of the rest of our pursuers.

I pulled off my helmet. ”How'd you do that?” I asked Gretchen, shouting to be heard over the blast of air that was the result of no longer having a winds.h.i.+eld.

”I don't know,” she answered. ”I wasn't looking.”

”I was,” Pete said, blotting his forehead with a handkerchief, ”but I've had a nasty blow to the head, so what I saw didn't make sense.”

I would have been surprised if it had. ”What did you see?”

He put the bloodstained handkerchief into his jacket pocket. ”A silver blob of light appeared between us and them,” he said. ”Sort of like a fluorescent spoon the size of a boxcar. When it disappeared, they were behind us.” He grinned at me. ”Guess those aliens showed up in the nick of time after all. Just likeJohn Wayne and the cavalry.”

Maybe not just like. But close enough.