The Suicide Motor Club (26 page)

LUTHER COULD SEE SOMETHING MOVING OVER THE ROCKY HUMP OF RAISED EARTH,
and he jogged his wheel to the left just enough to miss the thing, and as he shot by he perceived that it was a big ugly van with a smiling sun holding a paintbrush, Spanish writing, a pale figure at its wheel. He hit the gas to clear it and rapidly shot his speedometer over 110.

Neck Brace had half turned in his seat but still couldn't see. Luther heard the sound of the first impact and peeked in the rearview to see the second. The COPO had spun out—Cole had nearly eluded the boxy missile as well but ran out of asphalt and got clipped hard on the right rear wheel, tearing off the rear bumper and bending his axle.

“Jee-ZUS,” Luther said, still peering at the tiny drama receding in his mirror. Neck Brace hit the back of his seat twice, his eyes wide as an ape's, his lips drawn back to show his fangs and the small stream of biting-drool washing out. Neck Brace was always eager to fight.

“I know, I know,” Luther said, slowing the Mustang down to eighty, seventy, fifty. “I just want to get a little space to see what it is we're goin' back there to kill.”

He executed a J-turn and came to a stop facing back east, his tires pouring acrid, nose-wrinkling smoke into the night air. He saw a small
fire in the distance, made out the destroyed truck and the shower of clothes and paper still falling. Now he saw movement far away, very hard to make out. Another car coming with its headlights off, but then they flicked on as it encountered debris from the wreck. Cole's old car. Not the '69 COPO Camaro. The '67 SS. The fucking Boston vampire's fucking whore nun.

Coming at him.

“I want this bitch to see me,” he said. He flipped his headlights on bright.

The '67 Chevy kept coming, straight on at him.

He grinned.

“Guess she sees me,” he said. “Let's see how bad she wants to play.”

He screeched his tires, burning Goodyear redwall rubber off the line, throwing Neck Brace back against his seat.

The cars drove at each other.

Luther had never hit anybody head-on at these speeds.

He wasn't so sure his head would stay on.

Neck Brace looked at him from the side of his eye as if he knew what Luther was thinking.

The black Camaro came on.

Neck Brace grinned a savage, illuminated grin, as if something he had been waiting his whole life for were finally about to happen.

Luther kept the pedal down.

Back in North Carolina during the Depression, he had known a tobacco farmer who had tried to teach him what a rebel yell sounded like, though the old-timer hadn't had much left in the lungs department.

Back then, when young Luther gave it a go, the old reb told Luther he got it just about right.

Now Luther's lungs were dead, but they could still hold a lot of air.

He still had loud cords on him.

Luther sucked in.

Luther yelled.

—

HALF A MILE EAST, CLAYTON STRUGGLED TO GET HIS NEARLY FUNCTIONING EYE
opened. When he pinched the lids open with the two fingers of his hand that worked, he could see in a sort of yellowish tunnel. The step van had been opened up in the middle like a lobster, he remembered that, but the truck had hit him so hard both vehicles had caught air and he had landed upside-down. Gasoline from the truck had spilled and a small puddle of it burned, but far enough away it might not catch either of the catastrophically wrecked vehicles.

“Here's hoping,” he tried to say, but his mouth only bubbled and fizzed, showering an almost-clear liquid. He tried to laugh, but that sounded even worse. His hand was better now. He felt the wrist join back up more smoothly, it had felt badly impinged, and now his eye stayed open on its own, its fellow twitching and offering him glimpses of stereo vision. With effort, he was able to crunch the bones of his foot together and hug his tibia and fibula close enough to extricate his right leg from under the hot, hissing steel of the cracked engine block. He looked up and saw Chuy's shotgun sticking absurdly through the passenger door of the van, which was much closer than it should have been. He heard an engine, thought it was the car he had clipped, couldn't see it from its angle but heard the grinding of its hobbled wheel, the shrieking of wrecked metal. He heard car doors open and chunk shut.

He grabbed the gun.

It didn't want to come out.

He heard another car coming, squealing all the way, fishtailing, clipping something.

He pulled the shotgun harder.

It came out.

Cole yelled, “Holy fuck!”

Calcutta screamed as the car went squealing by.

He heard a vicious, rolling wreck in the distance, the screech of a car grinding to a stop on its roof or side, a moan of pain.

Cole said, “Let's get this one first.”

—

JUDITH PULLED OUT FROM HER HIDING SPOT BEHIND THE BUS, THE TIRES SPITTING
gravel behind her as the powerful car jerked forward, scratching up against a creosote bush, running over yellow grass and clumps of ephedra. She careened onto Interstate 40 dark, knowing they could probably see her anyway, but knowing even a split second of surprise could make a difference. Not long after she pulled out, she saw motion up ahead, heard the sound of a devastating wreck, yelped and jerked the wheel as a piece of camper shell hit her windshield, chipping it and spinning away. She flicked on her headlights just in time to avoid a huge piece of bumper flipping at her as clothes, paint cans, and other flotsam showered down. The pickup truck Rob had been driving had all but exploded on impact, and the van hadn't fared better. She swerved to avoid the two hulks even as they rocked or spun to their final positions, a small pool of fire flaring to her right. Cole's lamed '69 had gone into the scrub and was now fighting its way back onto the road. Judith was already too far past it to hit it on this pass, and anyway it wasn't the Beta driver she wanted.

Luther I'm coming Luther

She got clear and launched herself forward, scanning the road for him. A pair of lights came on several hundred yards ahead, floated to straddle the center line and accelerated. She punched the gas as well, shifting jerkily all the way up, biting her lower lip in concentration. Time slowed down. Her vision tunneled. Everything was the road and the enemy's headlamps.

Thou preparest a table

I surrender my body

I surrender

The road between the cars flashed away to almost nothing.

The headlights speeding at her were hot, lethal moons.

She imagined she could feel the sway of all that gasoline in the Camaro's hips.

The other car came on.

Close.

Closer.

She could hear its motor roaring in a suicidal duet with hers.

A Mustang

I'm going to be killed by a Mustang

Judith closed her eyes at the end.

—

LUTHER'S YELL BOUNCED AROUND IN THE SPEEDING MUSTANG.

Neck Brace had his mouth open in excitement or fear or both, looking for all the world like a mandrill yawning.

Luther was ready to hit but at the last second anticipated massive pain and maybe even death and suddenly hoped she'd turn.

Turn witch-bitch turn,
he thought, and still she came on.

Then Luther saw her.

Her mouth open in a keening wail, her eyes wet with tears, her hands white on the wheel.

He understood in a flash.

This witch-bitch
wasn't going to turn
.

Not for him.

Not for the devil on an ICBM.

Shes ready to die goddamn if she aint turn TURN

“TURN! TURN!”
Luther yelled, and rocked at the wheel.

But she didn't.

So he did.

He jogged right.

If she had been watching she could have turned into him and caught him, but her eyes were closed now and the Mach 1's bumper shot past the wedgelike nose of the '67 SS without a playing card's breadth to spare. Luther corrected left, but his car was already eating dirt, bucking in grama grass and rocks. He fishtailed, caught the road again, but bucked on a rock so hard it brought him up to bounce his head on the ceiling and when he came down, in his confusion and unfamiliarity with the new car he hit the gas instead of the brake. Luther and Neck Brace rocketed at the wrecked truck and van, sparks flying behind his trailing muffler. To his credit, he threaded that wreck brilliantly—a lesser driver would have caught the truck where it lay twisted and smoking on its side or wiped out on the torn skin of the step van, crushing Cole and Calcutta where they crouched down looking for the inverted van's driver, but he missed them all, though closely enough for Cole to yell “Holy fuck!” as Luther screamed by him.

But as Luther dodged the back of the van, he knew he had too much swing and now he fishtailed again. His rear tire hit a length of the van's rear axle and he rolled. Hard. The last thing he saw before he flipped was a yellowish piece of the moon where it rose in the east, and then everything spun and he was bounced and broken and cut in more places than he knew.

The Mustang came to rest on its roof, a cloud of dust pluming around it.

—

“LET'S GET THIS ONE FIRST,” COLE HAD JUST SAID, TAKING HIS REVOLVER IN HAND
and crouching as he cleared the inverted van's blind spot. He peeked under its nose just in time to see Clayton Birch aiming Chuy's gun at
him. He pulled back fast, but not fast enough. The shot tore the top of his head clean off, but only the top. He fell backward, dropped his gun, blinked rapidly, and made a gagging noise as his brain tried to re-form itself.

Calcutta stumbled backward, shocked. So shocked she didn't register the sound of the '67's engine picking up steam as Judith negotiated it through the debris field. The black Camaro accelerated hard when it had Calcutta in its sights. It smacked into her at about forty miles an hour, shunting her up the hood and through the windshield.

—

CLAYTON, NOW STRONG ENOUGH TO STAND, SLID OUT OF THE POOL OF BLOOD AND
motor oil he had been wallowing in and limped through gunsmoke toward the prone form of Cole. Judith's car had just swept Calcutta away. He leveled the shotgun at Cole's neck, meaning to give him the second barrel, but Rob shambled into sight, trying to yank the truck's shifter out of the tangle of his ribs with one hand, aiming his own gun at Clayton with the other. He fired, clipping Clay's chin, the bullet making a funny zipping noise as it spun away. Clayton wheeled and shot now, taking off half of Rob's face, spinning him so he landed in a heap around the truck's shifter impaling him.

—

CALCUTTA CAME THROUGH JUDITH'S WINDSHIELD IN A HEAP, STUNNING HER WITH
one flailing arm, but equally stunned herself. Judith managed to stomp the brake and stop the car on the highway's shoulder, braking so hard that the cross and two of the bottles joined the gun on the passenger-side floor. A headlight was coming from the east, but she had no time to concern herself with that—the car was full of broken glass and the cold, stinking muscular thing she had just collided with. She reached under the momentarily bewildered monster half in her
lap and grabbed one of the vials of Lourdes holy water from beneath her haunch. But now Calcutta turned. She lunged at Judith, meaning to bite her face, but Judith got her left arm up. A fang punctured her forearm, made it blaze with pain. She struggled to get that arm across her body, awkwardly protecting her face from Calcutta's teeth by hunching her shoulder and writhing her face away. At last she got her left hand to where her right one held the bottle, pulled the cap off. At that moment Calcutta pulled Jude's veil and coif half off and yanked her head back by her hair. She managed to get her face past Jude's shoulder and bit her savagely on the jaw. Jude made a gagging yell but, despite her bad angle, managed to splash a drop of the water on Calcutta's back. The effect was astonishing.

Calcutta bowed her back and reared her head up, shuddering. A drop of Jude's blood fell from one fang onto Jude's white scapular. Something hissed and smoked; the roof of the car was briefly illuminated as if by a sparkler. Jude tried to empty the rest of the bottle on her, but now the thing knew what was happening. She turned cat-quick and grabbed the wrist that held the bottle, forced it up the seat and away, cranked Jude's wrist back toward her so the contents of the bottle spilled into Jude's eyes and all over her white veil and wimple. She flung Jude's wrist so the bottle flew out the window and broke on the street. Now she punched Jude's face, knocking her back. The angle had been too awkward for her to break Jude's jaw or stave in her skull, as she had intended, so she instinctively reached for Jude's chest to push herself up and get good striking distance. When the palm of her hand touched the wet veil, however, she screamed. Upon contact with the holy water, Calcutta's hand burned blue-white as though it were some flammable metal ignited by a welder's torch. She scrambled away from Jude and out the passenger door, shaking her now-smoking hand to try to put it out, but Jude was up and grabbing the gun and a fresh bottle of holy water. She followed Calcutta out the open door. She
wanted to shoot her, but that was animal fury and she needed something else for this. She tossed the gun down on the shoulder of the highway. She crossed herself, opened the bottle, and splashed it on Calcutta. The vampire burned as before, though now on her face and breast, and on a patch of her scalp, screaming, “Stop! It hurts! It hurts so much!” Judith splashed her again in three cruciform gouts, shouting,
“In nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritu Sancti!”
even as the vampire flared and shrieked and shook, at last crumpling into a heap at Judith's feet and smoldering like a pile of burning leaves.

Moved by something that felt outside herself, she knelt and made the sign of the cross on Calcutta's dry, smoking forehead, saying,
“Sublata est maledictio. Memoret Deus misericordiam tuam.”