Christine (74 page)

Christine came roaring straight up the empty floor, gaining speed.

And the hood was uncrimping, straightening out and down to cover the motor cavity again. Two of the headlights flickered, then came back strong. The mudguard and the right-hand side of her body—I only caught a glimpse, but I swear it's true—they were…
reknitting
themselves, red metal appearing from nowhere and slipping down in smooth automotive curves to cover the right front tire and the right side of the engine compartment again. The cracks in the windscreen were running inward and disappearing. And the tire that had been pulled off its rim looked as good as new.

It
all
looks as good as new
, I thought.
God help us.

She was going directly for the wall between the garage and the office. I let the mop-handle off the clutch fast, hoping to interpose the tanker's body, but Christine got past me. Petunia backed into nothing but thin air. Oh, I was doing great. I backed all the way across the floor and crashed into the dented tool-lockers ranged there. They crashed to the floor with dull metallic janglings. Through the windscreen I saw Christine hit the wall between the garage and Will's office. She never slowed; she went full speed ahead.

I'll never forget those next few moments—they remain hypnotically clear in my memory, as if seen through a magnifying crystal. Leigh saw Christine coming and stumbled backward. Her bloody hair was matted to her head. She fell over Will's swivel chair. She hit the floor, out of sight behind his desk. An instant later—and I mean the barest
instant
—Christine slammed into the wall. The big window Will had used to keep track of the comings and goings out in his garage exploded inward. Glass flew like a cluster of deadly spears. Christine's front end bulged with the impact. The hood popped up and then tore off, flying back over the roof to land on the concrete with a metallic sound that was much like the sound the falling tool-lockers had made.

Her windscreen shattered. Michael Cunningham's body flew through the jagged opening, legs trailing, his head a grotesque flattened football. He was catapulted through Will's window; he struck Will's desk with a heavy grainsack thud and skidded over onto the floor. His shoes stuck up.

Leigh began to scream.

Her fall had probably saved her from being badly lacerated or killed by the flying glass, but when she rose from behind the desk her face was contorted with horror, and utter hysteria had its hold on her. Michael had skidded from the desk and his arms had looped themselves over her shoulders and as Leigh struggled to her feet she appeared to be waltzing with the corpse. Her screams were like fireballs. Her blood, still flowing, sparkled deadly bright. She dumped Michael and ran for the door.

"Leigh, no!"
I screamed, and slammed down the clutch with the mop again. The handle snapped cleanly in two, leaving me with a stump five inches long.
"Ohhhh-SHIT!"

Christine reversed away from the broken window, leaving water, antifreeze, and oil puddled on the floor.

I stamped down on the clutch with my left foot, barely feeling the pain now, bracing my left knee with my left hand as I worked the gearshift.

Leigh tore the office door open and ran out.

Christine turned toward her, its smashed, snarling snout sighting down on her.

I revved Petunia's engine and roared at her, and as that damned car from hell grew in the windscreen, I saw the purple, swollen face of a child pressed to the rear window, watching me, seeming to beg me to stop.

I struck her hard. The boot lid popped up and gaped like a mouth. The rear end heeled around and Christine went skidding sideways past Leigh, who fled with her eyes seeming to swallow her face. I remember the spray of blood along the fur fringe of her parka's hood, tiny droplets like an evil fall of dew.

I was in it now. I was in the peak seat. Even if they had to take my leg off at the groin when this was done, I was going to drive.

Christine hit the wall and bounced back. I stamped the clutch, rammed the gearshift into reverse, backed up ten feet, stamped the clutch again, rammed it back into first. Engine revving, Christine tried to pull away along the wall. I cut to the left and hit her again, crushing her almost wasp-waisted in the middle. The doors popped out of their frames at the top and the bottom. LeBay was behind the wheel, now a skull, now a decayed and stinking cameo of humanity, now a hale and hearty man in his fifties with a crew-cut turning white. He stared out at me with his devil's grin, one hand on the wheel, one balled into a fist that he shook at me.

And still her engine would not die.

I got into reverse again, and now my leg was white iron and the pain was all the way up to my left armpit. The hell it was. The pain was
everywhere
. I could feel it

(Michael, Jesus why didn't you stay in the house)

in my neck, in my jaw in my

(Arnie? Man, I am so sorry I wish I wish)

temples. The Plymouth—what remained of her—lunged drunkenly down the side of the garage, spraying tools and junk metal, pulling out struts and dumping the overhead shelves. The shelves hit the concrete with flat, clapping sounds that echoed like demon applause.

I stamped the clutch again and floored the gas. Petunia's engine bellowed, and I hung onto the wheel like a man trying to stay aboard a bucking mustang. I hit her on the right side and smashed the body clear off the rear axle, driving it into the door, which shivered and rattled. I went up over the wheel, which slammed into my belly and drove the breath out of me and dumped me back into my seat, gasping.

Now I saw Leigh, cowering in the far corner, her hands clapped to her face, dragging it down into a witch's mask.

Christine's engine was still running.

She dragged herself slowly down toward Leigh, like an animal whose rear legs have been broken in a trap. And even as she went I could see her regenerating, coming back: a tire that suddenly popped up full and plump, the radio aerial that unjointed itself with a silvery
twinggg!
sound, the accretion of metal around the ruined rear end.

"
Stay dead!
" I screamed at it. I was crying, my chest heaving. My leg wouldn't work anymore. I braced it with both hands and
jammed
it onto the clutch. My vision went hazy and gray with the white-metal agony. I could almost feel the bones grating.

I raced the engine, got first gear again, and charged it; and as I did I heard LeBay's voice for the first and only time, high and cheated and full of a terrible, unquenchable fury:

"You SHITTER! Fuck off, you miserable SHITTER! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"You should have left my friend alone," I tried to yell—but all that would come out was a tearing, wounded gasp.

I hit it squarely in the rear end, and the gas tank ruptured as the back of the car accordioned inward and upward in a kind of metal mushroom. There was a yellow lick of fire. I shielded my face with my hands—but then it was gone. Christine sat there, a refugee from a demolition derby. Her engine ran choppily, missed, fired again, and then died.

The place was silent except for the bass rumble of Petunia's engine.

Then Leigh was running across the floor, screaming my name over and over, crying. I was suddenly, stupidly aware that I was wearing her pink nylon scarf around the arm of my jacket.

I looked down at it, and then the world grayed out again.

I could feel her hands on me, and then there was nothing but darkness as I fainted.

I came to about fifteen minutes later, my face wet and blessedly cool. Leigh was standing on Petunia's driver's side running board, mopping my face with a wet rag. I caught it in one hand, tried to suck it, and then spat. The rag tasted strongly of oil.

"Dennis, don't worry," she said. "I ran out into the street… stopped a snowplow… scared the poor man out of ten years of his life, I think… all this blood… he said an ambulance… he said he'd, you know… Dennis, are you all right?"

"Do I
look
all right? I whispered.

"
No
," she said, and burst into tears.

"Then don't"—I swallowed past a pain dry lump in my throat—"don't ask stupid questions. I love you."

She hugged me clumsily.

"He said he'd call the police, too," she said.

I barely heard her. My eyes had found the twisted, silent hulk that was Christine's remains. And hulk was the right word; she hardly looked like a car at all anymore. But why hadn't she burned? A hubcap lay off to one side like a dented silver tiddlywink.

"How long since you stopped the plough?" I asked hoarsely.

"Maybe five minutes. Then I got the rag and dipped it in that bucket over there. Dennis… thank God it's over."

Punk! Punk! Punk!

I was still looking at the hubcap.

The dents were popping out of it.

Abruptly it flicked up on its rim and rolled towards the car like a huge coin.

Leigh saw it too. Her face froze. Her eyes widened and began to bulge. Her lips mouthed the word
No
but no sound came out.

"Get in here with me," I said in a low voice, as if it could hear us. How do I know?—perhaps it could. "Get in on the passenger side. You're going to run the gas while I run the clutch with my right foot."

"No…." This time it was a hissing whisper. Her breath came in whining little gasps. "No… no..."

The wreckage was quivering all over. It was the most eerie, most terrible thing I have ever seen in my life. It was quivering all over, quivering like an animal that is not quite dead. Metal tapped nervously against metal. Tie rods clicked jittery jazz rhythms against their connectors. As I watched, a bent cotter-pin lying on the floor straightened itself and did half a dozen cartwheels to land in the wreckage.

"Get in," I said.

"Dennis, I can't." Her lips quivered helplessly. "I can't… no more… that body… that was Arnie's
father
. I can't, no more, please—"

"You have to," I said.

She looked at me, glanced affrightedly back at the obscenely quivering remains of that old whore LeBay and Arnie had shared, and then came around Petunia's front end. A piece of chrome tumbled and scratched her leg deeply. She screamed and ran. She clambered up into the cab and pushed over beside me. "Wh-what do I do?"

I hung halfway out of the cab, holding onto the roof, and pushed the clutch down with my right foot. Petunia's engine was still running. "Just gun the gas and keep it gunned," I said. "No matter what."

Steering with my right hand, holding on with my left, I let the clutch out and we rolled forward and smashed into the wreckage, smashing it, scattering it. And in my head I seemed to hear another scream of fury.

Leigh clapped her hands to her head. "I can't, Dennis! I can't do it! It—it's
screaming
!"

"You've got to do it," I said. Her foot had come off the gas and now I could hear the sirens in the night, rising and falling. I grabbed her shoulder and a sickening blast of pain ripped up my leg. "Leigh, nothing has changed. You've got to."

"It
screamed
at me!"

"We're running out of time and it still isn't done. Just a little more."

"I'll try," she whispered, and stepped on the gas again.

I changed into reverse. Petunia rolled back twenty feet. I clutched again, got first… and Leigh suddenly cried out. "Dennis, no! Don't! Look!"

The mother and the little girl, Veronica and Rita, were standing in front of the smashed and dented hulk of Christine, hand in hand, their faces solemn and sorrowing.

"They're not there," I said. "And if they are, it's time they went back"—more pain in my leg and the world went gray—"back to where they belong. Keep your foot on it."

I let out the clutch and Petunia rolled forward again, gaining speed. The two figures did not disappear as TV and movie ghosts do; they seemed to stream out in every direction, bright colors fading to wash pinks and blues… and then they were totally gone.

We slammed into Christine again, spinning what was left of her around. Metal shrieked and tore.

"Not there," Leigh whispered. Not really there Okay. Okay, Dennis."

Her voice was coming from far down a dark hallway. I fetched up reverse and back we went. Then forward. We hit it; we hit it again. How many times? I don't know. We just kept slamming into it, and every time we did, another jolt of pain would go up from my leg and things would get a little bit darker.

At last I looked up blearily, and saw that the air outside the door seemed full of blood. But it wasn't blood; it was a pulsing red light reflecting off the falling snow. People were rattling at the door out there.

"Is it good enough?" Leigh asked me.

I looked at Christine—only it wasn't Christine anymore. It was a spread-out pile of twisted, gored metal, puffs of upholstery, and glittering broken glass.

"Have to be," I said. "Let them in, Leigh."

And while she went, I fainted again.

Then there were a series of confused images; things that came into focus for a while and then faded or disappeared completely. I can remember a stretcher being rolled out of the back of an ambulance; I can remember its sides being folded up, and how the overhead fluorescents put cold highlights on its chrome; I can remember someone saying, "Cut it, you have to cut it off so we can at least
look
at it"; I can remember someone else—Leigh, I think—saying "Don't hurt him, please, don't hurt him if you can help it"; I can remember the roof of an ambulance… it had to be an ambulance because at the periphery of my vision were two suspended IV bottles; I can remember a cool swab of antiseptic and then the sting of a needle.

After that, things became exceedingly weird. I knew, somewhere deep inside, that I was not dreaming—the pain proved that, if it proved nothing else—but all of it
seemed
like a dream. I was pretty well doped, and that was part of it… but shock was part of it too. No fake, Jake. My mother was there, crying, in a room that looked sickeningly like the hospital room in which I had spent the entire autumn. Then my father was there, and Leigh's dad was with him, and their faces were both so tight and grim they looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee as Franz Kafka might have written them. My father bent over me and said in a voice like thunder reverberating through cotton batting: "How did Michael get there, Dennis?" That's what they really wanted to know: how Michael got there.
Oh
, I thought,
oh my friends, I could tell you stories…