To Make Death Love Us (2 page)

Marco stumbled
clumsily alongside Will in the dark. He decided then to wake up, to open his eyes and abolish
this dream, but in this Marco failed. He found with a shock that his eyes had been open all along
and that this was no dream.

It was
real.

It had all
happened.

At Will Carney's
frantic urging, Marco steadied himself and ran with Will toward the cab of the truck. A shot rang
out and something fierce and hot and heavy stung Marco in the shoulder. Marco did not hear it,
only felt it tearing through him. Will screamed and practically heaved Marco bodily up into the
cab. Marco reached back with one hand and gathered up Will Carney, heaving him across his lap as
if Will were no heavier than spun cotton, plunking Will down behind the steering
wheel.

To Marco it was all
still like a dream but his head was clear and his huge body was quick to respond.

The starter ground
and the diesel engines jumped re­luctantly into life. Marco turned his head, looking down at his
shoulder. A bullet had entered it from the back and gone completely through. Blood dripped down
his mas­sive arm, staining his pants.

Will slammed the
truck into gear and they jumped for­ward to the accompaniment of screams from the freaks inside
the van of the truck. A dark figure leaped up on the running board and a rifle barrel smashed
through the window. Marco reacted with a quickness that belied his size. He seized the gun barrel
with both hands and twisted it into a U shape. The gun went off, exploding into
fragments. Pieces of metal shattered the
lower-right-hand corner of the windshield. Several pieces of gun metal struck Marco in the chest
and legs. The man who had fired the gun was thrown off the running board by the blast. Will
Carney pushed the accelerator to the floor and the truck careened down the midway, tires
squealing in pro­test. They weaved dangerously from side to side, down the narrow concourse. The
rear end of the truck snagged an edge of canvas and a half-erected shooting gallery col­lapsed
into the basketball-throw concession.

Marco shook his
head. It had all happened so fast. He stared at the ragged hole in his shoulder. The gunshot
wound was real enough. The girl, too. He'd killed her. Quite by accident but true all the same.
His great strength had betrayed him. Funny he should have thought it all a dream. Marco almost
never dreamed. Dreams took more imagination than Marco had.

Will Carney had no
time to think, to plot his course. Flight had been his instinctive reaction to trouble. Had he
been thinking, he would have abandoned Marco, left him to face the trouble by himself, but Will
had been caught unprepared. Even now, Will's mind considered the possi­bility of stopping the
truck, of shoving Marco out to face the music. Will Carney's mind was not one that put great
store in loyalty.

Will's eyes were on
the rearview mirror when the head­lights came into view. He expected it, of course. They came up
very fast behind him. He had the accelerator to the floor but the big truck was not exactly a
racing car. In the back of the truck, the freaks tumbled about like feathers in a
storm.

The white pickup
gained on them. Will cursed and swerved to the middle of the narrow road, preventing them from
passing. There was a spurt of flame from the pursuing truck and Will's outside mirror
disintegrated.

"Oh sweet Jesus!"
he said. The road angled, dipping into a deep curve. Will took the curve too high and in the
middle realized that he would not make it. He had no time to even cry out.

Will's eyes caught
something brown and flat in the glare of the headlights, something dividing the heavy brush at
the top of the curve. Instinctively, Will ducked down be­hind the wheel, bracing himself for the
inevitable crash.

Marco's huge hand
came out and seized the wheel. With a mighty yank, he hurled the truck to the right, toward the
narrow dirt road branching off from the top of the curve. It was an impossible turn for a truck
that size and at that speed but, somehow, the truck lurched sick-enly, bucked, sawfished as it
went off the road, and then tailed out and—guided by the strong hand of Marco— found the bed of
the rutted lane and plunged down it. The road seemed to go straight down.

It was a logging
road, rutted and gutted and not used since the turn of the century. The truck thundered down the
mountain road like a storm-maddened bronco.

The pickup truck
went past the turnoff, brakes locked, tires squealing. It stopped, spun around completely in the
road, stalled out. It started up again immediately, roared back toward the cutoff, turned, and
plunged down the old logging route after them.

Will rose back up,
knocking aside Marco's huge hand from the steering wheel, taking control of the truck again. He
couldn't understand what had kept them on the road. Marco slumped back against the seat. The
demand on his strength coupled with the loss of blood was beginning to tell on him. The horror of
what had happened was just beginning to sink in.

It washed over
Marco in a tidal wave, draining him of all strength. Without meaning to, his huge body had
be­trayed him, had taken the life of a girl—mad perhaps, but
still a human being for all that. His huge body and slow mind
clotted with sorrow and shame.

Will had no time
for such thoughts, the road down which they plunged twisted and dove and bottomed out in
hideously complicated S turns. He had all he could do to keep the truck on the road. The ruts and
washouts threat­ened to rip out the bottom of the truck. His head, time and time again, smashed
into the ceiling of the cab as the truck bottomed out. The freaks in back of the truck were
screaming in terror but Will Carney had no thoughts for them, only for survival, for Will Carney,
for piloting this mad rush down the mountain.

The pickup truck
slammed down the mountain after them, rapidly gaining on them as they plunged headlong down the
dark North Carolina mountain. Its headlights picked out the huge truck clearly. It rushed down on
them. Around one hairpin curve, it came down so fast on them the front bumper caught a piece of
the tailgate, almost ramming them on past the turn to crash into the side of a cliff. Somehow,
Will Carney kept the truck aligned with the curve.

As if to add to
their troubles, a raindrop smashed against the windshield, poking a hole in the dust. Then
another and another, huge droplets. Will Carney gripped the wheel as if it were life itself. "My
Lord!" he said, as though it were a blasphemy. He was terrified.

The first drops
became a host. The driver turned on the wipers. They sang and squeaked across the window with
every swipe. The rain tumbled in sheets across the glass. The road, ruined as it was, almost
disappeared from sight.

"My Lord!" gasped
Will, finding no comfort.

The truck plunged
madly down the mountain, on the one side the rock cliffs and, on the driver's side, a sheer drop
into nothingness and certain death.

Inside the body of
the van, the human attractions
rocked
back and forth, thrown violently from their seats, cursing and crying by turns. All the gear and
housekeep­ing goods were with them in that space, lashed down but not so secure that anyone in
the back would feel cheerful about it.

Paulette, the Fat
Lady, kept her eyes closed, even in the almost dark, because it stilled her fears a bit. Serena's
eyes were wide open, seeing absolutely nothing and wishing to God she could so that she wouldn't
be so afraid. She could taste death on her tongue, could even smell it in the very
air.

The death of the
mad girl was not unknown to Serena, nor was silent Marco's part in it. Her mind held a window
open to the world her eyes could not see.

Pepino had his arms
and legs braced here and there. He looked like a big spider clinging to the center of its web. He
was afraid for himself in all the lurching and bumping. A double jointed man is fragile to
injury. The Midget, John Thumb, was the curser among them. His swearing did little to chase away
his own fears.

The rain came down
unmercifully. What dirt there was on the granite face of the mountain ran out from beneath
pebbles and rocks, down the fissures of great age, and made the road even more slick and
treacherous. Up above the roadway, some distance ahead, the mountain shud­dered in the wet and a
fall of dirt and small boulders rattled down to the old road.

Some of it spilled
cross the road like swallows skating across the sky, and plunged over the edge. The echoes of the
rocks falling, were there anyone to hear, would have been a terribly long time coming.

Will Carney rode
the brakes with all his strength. They felt spongy and unresponsive. They were beginning to wear
thin. Ahead of him, the mountain gave up a piece of
itself. A massive slide swept down the face, ripping up a half dozen stunted sugar
pines, crashed down on the ruined road and gouged a huge section out of it, tumbling it down to
the bottom of the gorge.

Will Carney
double-clutched, slammed the stick shift into low gear with his one good hand. His right foot was
set halfway from gas to brake. The pickup in back of them smashed into their tailgate again.
Will's foot hit the gas pedal, slamming the truck forward, pulling away from the truck ramming
them. The lightning flashed and in that brief moment Will saw an emptiness in the dark ahead that
wasn't right. His belly told him before his eyes. The yellow wash of the headlights caught the
raindrops falling free in space, falling in that way that says there's no ground
underneath.

Boulders still
spilled down the mountain, careening down past the headlights, plunging into the gorge far
below.

Will's foot slammed
on the brake pedal. Too hard. The truck's wheels locked. It skidded toward the pit. Will jerked
the wheel hard right, toward the huge rock face of the mountain. The big, all-weather tires on
the truck fought the rain soaked surface of the road . . . and lost.

Marco's huge body
slid across the seat, slamming into Will, pinning him against the driver's door, tearing the
steering wheel out of his hands.

The truck hit the
mountainside, half tipped, ran a wheel up a slope of earth and rock newly deposited by the slide.
The front went out into space. It's weight threw it a good distance as it started to fall over
the edge, into the dark­ness below. A projection of rock slammed into the top of the van, ripping
the metal. Somehow, miraculously, the truck caught there, as neatly as an insect pinned to a
board.

The cab and two
thirds of the body were suspended
over
emptiness. The right wheel had purchase on doubt­ful ground. A delicate balance was keeping her
cradled on the breast of the mountain.

Marco's door was
jammed right up against the belly of the slide with no way to get out.

The pickup truck
roared down on them, headlights im­paling them. Will screamed, awaiting the impact that would
send them over the edge and to certain death.

Serena smiled in
the darkness; her mind searched the night. It found those who pursued and silently, secretly it
dealt with them. Her mind went into their minds and, like a bright fire, it sent sparks hurtling
down the synapse chains, impulses down into unresisting muscles.

The pickup came
screaming down the grade, straight for them. At the last moment, muscles responded, surged, and
the wheel was wrenched to the left, toward the open sky and the pickup soared past them off into
space.

Will Carney heard
them scream as they went over. Marco, slumped on his shoulder, saw them go down, too, saw the
truck bounce once, like a toy kicked down a long flight of stairs. Then the truck burst into
flame, pinwheel-ing like a fiery comet down toward the bottom of the gorge.

Serena, in the
darkness of the van, could not see the two men die but she felt it, none the less. Their screams
seemed to echo within every part of her. Their terror was a huge lake within her. The flames
reached her inside the truck, a burning; searing pain burned inside her but it was soon ended.
She fainted.

Marco raised
himself off of Will, moving back toward his side of the truck.

The truck
shuddered, tilted, seemed to be going over the edge.

"Jesus Christ!
Don't do that!" Will Carney screamed.

There was no need
for the warning. Marco sensed the
skittish movements that accompanied his eflForts and he slumped into
motionlessness.

Inside the dark van
there was screaming.

"Don't move back
there! Don't you move a quarter of an inch!" Will Carney bellowed as loud as his lungs could
make.

There was some
silence, a cessation of movement but Paulette's whimpering did not stop.

Marco moved one
hand. His movements were slow, exaggerated by the loss of blood, beginning to tell, even on his
mighty body. He touched Will's hand and indicated the ignition key. The motor was stalled but the
key was still in the "on" position.

"So what?" Will
said more in fear than anger. He was in a state of near shock.

Marco pointed to
the floor, at the starter pedal. He was clearly telling Will that he might, just accidentally,
stomp on it and turn the motor over just enough to kill them all.