10
Twenty miles down the road, Dan pulled into a Shop 'n' Gas, up to a pump, and shut off the car's engine. A light snow fell, swirling on the cracked asphalt and dotting the windshield with pinpoints of water.
He sat behind the wheel like a kid who'd just completed his first roller coaster and hated every second of it, swearing he'd never get on one again. But somehow he knew this ride wasn't over yet. He could feel itâsomething was creeping up on him, stalking him, something relentless and unyielding. And it was gaining ground quickly.
His hands still trembled and the gash above his eye had taken to aching. His head throbbed like it had a heartbeat of its own. As he stepped out of the car, a gust of arctic air swept the breath from his lungs. The temperature had dropped dramatically in the past half hour. A storm was brewing, inching closer with each beat of his heart.
Dan pushed his card into the reader and punched the right numbers. He half expected the digital display to taunt him by revealing his remaining time but it did nothing. Shivering against the cold, he turned and searched the grimy window of the convenience store for the cashier. The inside switch needed to be flipped to reset the numbers. A young man came into view, hurried behind the counter, and gave him a thumbs-up. The display showed a line of zeroes.
Dan unscrewed the fuel cap and placed the nozzle into the receptacle. Small flakes of snow descended from their birthplace above and whipped around him, stinging his face and hands.
The station was on a mostly uninhabited stretch of local highway that saw little traffic during working hours. No homes stood nearby, no schools, no shopping centers. A salvage yard sat about two hundred yards away; a high, piecemeal fence lined its perimeter. Farther down the road, a half mile or so, a couple other deteriorating buildings lined the road: a machine shop and a warehouse outlet that sold freight damaged in transit.
The nozzle clicked off and he replaced it on the pump. He'd filled the tank out of habit, but if Constant was correct, Dan wouldn't be driving the vehicle home again and would only need half as much gas as he'd purchased.
Inside, the store was filled with warm, humid air and smelled of mildew and cheap plastic.
The cashier, a twentysomething with shoulder-length hair and a spotty goatee, nodded at Dan. “Sorry 'bout that, man. I was stocking the shelves when you pulled up.”
Waving him off, Dan headed for the wall of refrigerators in the back of the store. He needed something to drink and some food. After getting a soda and two packets of snack cakes, he grabbed a bottle of aspirin and a box of bandages and headed to the front counter.
The cashier scanned the items, then eyed Dan suspiciously. “Dude, you okay?”
Dan nodded and reached for his wallet. “Yeah, I'm fine. How much?”
“How much?”
“For the stuff.”
“Oh, uh, $12.52.”
He handed his card to the cashier, who studied the front, turned it over, and checked the back.
“'Cause that cut over your eye, man, that don't look too good.” He ran the card through the machine and flipped hair out of his face while he waited.
Dan didn't respond. He wanted to leave as little an impression on the kid as possible, be forgettable, uninteresting. At the end of the day he wanted to be just another customer in a long line of them, a faceless man purchasing gas and a few items.
The cashier handed him his card and receipt. “You get in some kind of accident or something?”
“Some kind. Where's the restroom?”
“Somebody else do that?” He glanced out the window and scanned the station's lot. “'Cause I got a phone here if you need to call the cops or something. Got a gun too. The manager keeps it behind the counter. You know, just in case.”
Dan forced a polite smile. “I'm fine. Where's the restroom?”
The kid paused. Clearly Dan's behavior had aroused suspicion. So much for remaining forgettable. After sighing loudly as if disappointed that he would not be a part of any perilous chase or heroic rescue, the cashier reached for a key and handed it to Dan. “Around the side of the building. Just remember to bring it back. It's the only one we got right now. The other got lost when . . .”
But Dan had already grabbed his bag from the counter and was heading for the bathroom. Outside, the snow had picked up some and blanketed the parking lot and road with a thin layer of white that moved in an almost-hypnotic fashion as it swirled to the rhythm of the wind.
The bathroom was nothing more than Dan expected: a tiny room with an unflushed toilet, a stained sink, faded mirror, and an old fluorescent bulb that cast a cold, dirty light. He pulled a paper towel from the dispenser, wet it, and wiped the dirt from the mirror. His face looked bad. Dark, dried blood crusted the cut above his eye. Some of it smeared across his forehead. A deep abrasion discolored his swollen cheekbone. His left ear was boxed and thick; his cheeks appeared hollowed, and his jawline more pronounced. This was not the same Dan Blakely who had looked back at him from the mirror in the bathroom off his bedroom just a short while ago. This was a man running from Death but apparently not running fast enough.
He had the strange feeling again that he was being followed, pursued. That some gruesome thing was hot on his tail and gaining quickly. Above the sink was a vent blowing warm air into the small room. An easy entrance point for any airborne instrument of Death. Dan tore several long sections from the roll of toilet paper and quickly stuffed them between the wide slats of the vent.
When he finished, he stood back and studied his work, then quickly removed all the paper and tossed it into the toilet. That was something a crazy person would do, and he wasn't crazy. He began to shake and quiver and felt the urge to scream. Panic clutched at his chest and throat and made breathing a chore. Gripping the edge of the sink, Dan said aloud, “Pull yourself together.”
Tearing off another paper towel, he ran it under the cold water, then dabbed at his eye. The clot softened and wiped away. He then cleaned the dried blood from his forehead and the abrasion on his cheek. The water stung and made him wince. But his head hurt worst, as though someone had forced it into a vise and tightened until his skull cracked. Fishing two aspirin from the bottle, he popped them into his mouth, cupped his hands under the water, and washed the pills down. Lastly, he applied two bandages to the cut above his eye.
Dan stared at himself again in the mirror. His education had taught him the difference between possibility and probability. Just because something was possible didn't mean it was probable. He concluded that it was entirely possible that all of this was a dream, that he was still pinned beneath the Volvo on the side of Bender's Mountain, unconscious, his life slowly draining from him, almost gone now. That everything he'd experienced since thenâThomas Constant, the clocks, the confrontation with Erin and Justin, even the cashier and this bathroomâwere all part of a coma-induced dream, the final synaptic firings of a brain about to shut down for good.
It was possible but not probable.
He'd been beaten and cut, felt the snow on his hands and face, the wind in his lungs. It was all too detailed, too vivid, to be a dream.
But none of that mattered anyway. What mattered was that he'd been given another chance to see Sue and the boys, to hug them and tell them he loved them, to say good-bye. He didn't care if was a dream or not. He didn't give a hoot about probability versus possibility.
After relieving himself and washing his hands, he left the bathroom.
The snow fell steadily now and blew sideways. Sticking close to the building for protection from the storm, Dan made his way back to the front door and inside the small store. He slid the keys across the counter to the cashier.
The kid caught them easily. “Hey, thanks, man,” he said. “Hey, listen, I didn't mean to get all personal in your business before. I just couldn't help but seeâ”
As the kid talked, Dan glanced outside at the Volvo and thought he saw someone crouched on the other side of it, near the front tire.
“âand thought maybe you neededâ”
“Thanks,” Dan said as he left the counter.
Pushing through the door and into the cold, he saw a man move from the front tire to the rear of the vehicle. There was no mistaking the black suit.
“Hey!” He stepped off the curb and onto the parking lot, slipped on some loose snow, and almost went down. Regaining his balance, Dan hurried to the car and rounded the rear bumper. But no one was there. He checked both tires but found no sign of tampering.
“Everything okay?” It was the kid, standing at the door, wind whipping his hair across his face.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Dan checked the area again and rubbed his head. He knew he saw someone. He wasn't going crazy.
After inspecting the tires one more time, he climbed into the car and started the engine. At once, the hair on the back of his neck bristled; he had the sudden feeling that something had followed him into the vehicle. He checked the rearview mirror, but there was no one, only the empty backseats and the snow-covered windows.
11
Dan had the Volvo back on the road and pointed northwest in a matter of seconds. Gusts of wind sliced across the roadway but did not find a chink in the vehicle's exterior. The clock on the dash read 4:56. It, too, was counting down, like a time bomb clicking off the minutes until the final explosion, that fireworks display that would signal the end of Dan Blakely's life.
If he wanted any kind of quality time with his family before the big finale, Dan needed to make good time getting to New York. And as if the forces of nature knew that and were determined to deter him, to slow his progress, to thwart his plans, the snow increased both in the size of the flakes and the intensity with which they fell. Visibility was cut in half. Drifts started to form. Fortunately the car was equipped with four-wheel drive and brand-new tires that found traction in spite of the deteriorating conditions.
A few miles up the road, though, visibility worsened further and Dan had to slow to thirty miles an hour.
He hit the steering wheel and grunted. At this speed it would take him three hours to get to New York. He cursed himself again for telling Constant to take him back to the morning. He'd been a fool and chosen the wrong time, and now he was bogged down in the middle of a snowstorm a hundred miles from Sue and the boys.
Outside, the snow continued to fall, whiting out the roadway and anything beyond the windshield. The world had been whitewashed and blown clean. Dan tuned the radio to the local AM channel. A meteorologist went on about the misplaced snowstorm. Apparently, it was supposed to track farther north into upstate New York, across into Vermont and New Hampshire, then on into Maine. Northern Pennsylvania was only to get a dusting from the fast-moving front. In two to three hours it would all be over.
But Dan didn't have two or three hours. He needed to make time now. He should be traveling at twice his current speed.
Slowly he pressed the accelerator. The car handled the increase in speed easily, taking turns without even the slightest slippage. Dan continued to accelerate, testing the responsiveness of the vehicle and traction of the tires. Thirty-five. Forty. Wind blew snowflakes directly at the windshield as if it were under heavy fire from an army of snow devils. A sharp right turn approached. Dan eased on the brake and turned the wheel hard. The tires slipped but quickly regained traction and pushed forward.
Again, he eased the accelerator toward the floor. The engine responded; tires turned faster. Forty-five. Fifty. The radio went back to its regular programming, some morning call-in jock going on about the president's new border defense bill. Dan turned it off. He hated that stuff and couldn't have cared less about whether or not to build a fence between Texas and Mexico. Anyone with murder in their belly would find a way to fulfill its hunger; no fence would stop them.
Another turn, this one to the left, took Dan by surprise. He braked hard and jerked the wheel. The car hit a snowdrift, the rear wheels lost traction, and it spun counterclockwise a complete 180-degree rotation. Wind swept by on the other side of the glass and threw snow at the window in cloudy gusts. The tires lost all traction and the vehicle slipped off the road and down an embankment. Dan stood on the brake, but thirty-seven hundred pounds wouldn't stop without friction. Newton's observation of bodies in motion was flawless. The weight of the vehicle pulled it nose-first down the hill until it slammed into a tree. With a burst, the air bag deployed, then deflated. The car had come to a stop, tipped at a sharp angle, nose down, front fender bent around the trunk of a young pine.
Dan's heart beat like a rabbit running for its life, and he'd broken out in a cold sweat. He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, frozen to his seat. The engine now hummed with a rhythmic chirp every other beat, but all the readouts on the dash were normal. Whatever damage the Volvo had suffered was minor and mostly external, which meant it was still drivable and could possibly get Dan out of this mess.
He shifted into reverse and stepped on the gas. The wheels spun with a high-pitched whine and rocked the vehicle side to side, but it got nowhere. Dan unhooked his seat belt and stepped out into the cold and snow and wind. The swirling flakes nearly blinded him. Holding on to the vehicle's panels, he climbed through the two-inch deep snow to the back of the car and saw that the roadway was only another five feet beyond it. And the embankment wasn't as steep as he'd thought. He still had a chance.
Entering the vehicle again, he shifted into reverse and stepped on the gas pedal, pumping it to give the tires a chance to either grab fresh snow or work their way down to the grass beneath it. The tires whined and the car pistoned back and forth as if it were tethered to a spring.
Eventually the tires gained some traction and the vehicle climbed the bank, swerving as the tread dug into the wet grass beneath the snow. But just before the rear tires crested the hill, the tail end slipped sideways, pushing the tires into fresh snow. They lost their grip and drifted to the right. Dan hit the brake but it did no good. Gravity had taken over. The corner of the front bumper bounced off the pine, pushing the car farther to the right.
Clutching the steering wheel like it was a serpent that would unwind itself and bite him, Dan leaned on the brake pedal and grunted. But the momentum of the vehicle pulled it more to the right and down the hill. Arms rigid, Dan braced himself against the back of the seat. Snow beat at the vehicle's windows like a white angel of death demanding entrance. But his time wasn't up yet. He'd been promised seven hours.
The car accelerated down the hill and Dan continued mashing the brake pedal to the floorboard, hoping in a fit of panic that somehow, someway, the tires would find purchase in the loose snow.
The world came to a jarring stop with a terrible crunch of metal and breaking glass. Dan's arms buckled at the elbows, and he hit the steering wheel with enough force that for an instant everything went bright whiteâthe black dash and control panel, the clock and radio and disc player, the interior cloth and molded plastic all disappeared. Then an inky blackness surrounded and finally overcame him.