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Authors: Robert T. Jeschonek

Road Rage (2 page)

BOOK: Road Rage
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*****

 

As the tractor trailer hurtled toward him, Walter kept the accelerator glued to the floor and socked the joystick hard to the left.

It was a near miss. The Dodge angled away just as the cab of the truck burst through. Though he didn't feel any contact or hear the screeching of metal against metal, Walter wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the Dodge and the tractor trailer cab had traded paint.

Walter skimmed the sliding trailer and bolted around its tail, cutting right when he'd cleared the rear fender. The SUV seemed to tip a little into the turn, but he straightened her out and she didn't go over.

Neither, to his surprise, did the tractor trailer. Watching in the rearview, he saw it swoop over the berm and through weeds off the side of the road...then flow back onto the blacktop, all wheels still grounded. Slowing in the aftermath of the close shave, Walter watched the tractor trailer roll right and come to a stop, half in the lane, half on the berm.

Then, relieved that an innocent driver hadn't been killed, he turned his gaze down the highway, searching for the kid.

At first, he saw no sign of him. Then, in the distance, he spotted the dim red glow of tail lights. They were far off, maybe two miles out on the straightaway.

For just an instant, he hesitated. The kid had a significant jump on him, and he wasn't sure he could catch him. Not only that, but he was still traveling the wrong way, and who knew what oncoming traffic he might encounter. It was two in the morning, so there might even be drunks hitting the road.

But the kid kept moving, in cocky defiance of danger to himself or anyone else...and that in itself was enough to make Walter want a piece of him. He was infuriated that the little asshole had just about set off a major accident that could have killed both Walter and the trucker and then had just kept going on his merry way.

It was just the kind of outrageous, depraved recklessness that had killed Walter's wife...times a million. It could not go unanswered.

So Walter took a deep breath and hammered the accelerator, zooming off in pursuit of exactly the kind of monster he had sworn to eradicate from state route 115.

*****

 

A few minutes later, as Walter flew along the straightaway toward the distant red tail lights, he noticed that the road was getting bumpy. The problem was, from what he could see in the flare of his brights, the pavement looked perfectly even.

He couldn't remember there being bumpy patches along that particular stretch, and he'd certainly driven it often enough to know. It had always been smooth and straight, free of potholes or buckling or any sort of damage.

Frowning, he wondered if he was getting a flat...but the ride suddenly smoothed out again. He kept the gas pedal hard against the floor, dismissing the possibility that something was wrong with the SUV.

A little further on, though, the bumps started again, worse than before. Again, Walter could see no disruption in the blacktop as he raced over it, not a trace of unevenness…though the Dodge was hopping around like it was traveling over a gravel road.

Walter eased up on the accelerator to compensate, and just like before, the ride evened out again. Shaking his head, he floored it, irritated that the kid was stretching his lead, seemingly unaffected by any adverse road conditions.

The Dodge punched eighty, eighty-five, ninety. Walter was seriously starting to doubt that he could ever get in range of the kid again, but he wasn't ready to give up just yet. Maybe, if he gave it everything he could, and the road didn't turn to shit again, he might stay close enough at least to keep his eyes on the kid. If he kept a bead on him, Walter might be able to follow him off the highway and catch him off an exit somewhere, run him down in a town and drive him into a street light or shopping center.

Ninety, ninety-five, one hundred. Walter barreled onward, straining the Dodge to reduce the gap. Despite his best efforts, the tail lights continued to recede.

“You son of a bitch,” he said, scowling at his escaping quarry. “Enjoy it while it lasts, because I'll get you sooner or later.”

The speedometer pegged one-oh-five...which was exactly when he saw the first word on the road.

It jumped up suddenly, picked out on the dark pavement by his brights. It was laid down in reflective white paint, the letters stretched out long on the blacktop so he couldn't miss them while moving fast.

SLOW, they said.

At first, the most important thing about the letters didn't occur to Walter, and he just kept rocketing along. Since he had no intention of slowing down, the warning barely registered.

But a moment later, the significance of the word finally chipped through the hard shell of his rage. He glanced in his rearview for another look, but the word was long gone behind him.

SLOW, it had said.

SLOW, painted on the road so he could read it even though he was headed the wrong way.

It should have looked backwards and upside down to him. For drivers moving in the correct direction in those lanes to read the lettering, it should have been turned around 180 degrees.

Not only that, but it had been painted in the middle of a flat straightaway where there was no need for a warning to slow down. It didn't make sense.

Unless someone had been out to have a little fun. That must have been it, he thought, smirking as the Dodge blew ahead at one-ten, aiming for the distant red pips of the Honda's tail lights. Someone with a bucket of white paint looking to mess with people's heads.

Convinced that the letters on the pavement had been nothing but a joke, he breezed over the next set with a smirk. In spite of the single-minded fury that possessed him, he allowed himself to be grimly amused at the sight.

SLOW

DOWN

ASSHOLE, they read, one word after another flicking under the racing SUV.

“Good one,” said Walter, not letting up on the accelerator for an instant. “That cracks me up.”

A little further, another message appeared. This time, he couldn't help but laugh.

I'M

WARNING

YOU, it said.

And then, a minute later, in letters that were even more hyperextended:

YOU'RE

PISSING

ME

OFF

Walter chuckled and shook his head. At least the crazy messages were taking his mind off the fact that he couldn't seem to catch up to the kid.

Another message appeared in his brights, then:

YOU

ASKED

FOR

IT

And his reaction was the same as before...but he changed his tune a minute later. He forgot all about the kid, in fact.

It started when the bumps came back.

*****

Just like before, the road ahead looked perfectly smooth...but the SUV hopped and shook like it was rolling over big-grain gravel. Walter had to let up on the accelerator, cutting speed from one-ten to ninety to seventy.

Then, the road started to ripple. The flat surface became a series of crests and troughs, gradual and shallow at first, then compressing and deepening. The Dodge rose and fell, rose and fell, like it was rolling over a slalom course...and then it ROSE and FELL, climbing and dropping over humps of increasing height.

Walter cut his speed back to fifty, then forty, as the SUV bounced over the ripples. Even thirty-five was too fast for what felt like a continuous line of speed bumps; the slopes and dips deepened so much that the Dodge, as high off the ground as its undercarriage sat, began to bottom out on the wave crests.

Walter slowed to thirty. His right hand sweated on the joystick.

He was starting to get the idea that something funny was going on. When he'd driven out on the very same road just a half-hour earlier, going in the other direction, he hadn't passed over a run of high humps. While chasing the kid, he hadn't seen the Honda's tail lights rising and dropping; the kid had jetted off down the straightaway with no sign of disruption from a rippled road surface.

So why was Walter driving over a roller coaster all of a sudden?

The road flowed up and down, up and down, each crest scraping the bottom of the Dodge as it trundled over them. Gradually, the ripples stretched out, but the troughs deepened, and the angle of each rise grew sharper. The humps became hills, and soon, Walter couldn't see over each oncoming crest until he'd topped it and started down the other side.

As he descended into a long dip, he looked right, thinking about pulling off the road onto the berm. What he saw made his heart race fast with fear.

Right before his eyes, as the Dodge rolled through the dip, the edge of the road sprouted spikes.

They looked like jagged teeth cut from pavement, popping up from the shoulder in rapid succession like dominos falling in reverse. He had no doubt that the close-set triple rows of spikes would chew up the SUV's tires like tissue paper if he drove over them.

Looking left, Walter saw the same thing there. If he pulled off on either side, he would end up stuck with four flat tires, going nowhere.

The way things were shaping up, he didn't think it would be so great to end up stranded along state route 115 just then.

So he kept driving. The Dodge climbed and dropped, climbed and dropped, each rise higher than the one before, each trough deeper.

And then, the road flattened out again. Walter topped a final crest and saw the straightaway laid out below, stretching off into the distance. Grateful, he gunned the Dodge down the final slope and took off, glancing in the rearview for a last look at the buckled pavement.

Only there was no trace in the rearview of the hills he'd just travelled.

“What the hell?” said Walter, looking over his shoulder as the Dodge shot forward. The backward glance revealed the same view he'd seen in the mirror: nothing but flat, smooth blacktop pouring behind him in the darkness.

Frowning, Walter turned back around...and saw that he was hurtling up on a sharp bend. He was about to run right through it and off the road.

A sharp bend in the middle of a straightaway he knew by heart. A sharp bend that absolutely hadn't been there a moment before.

And all along the bend, the shoulder of the road was lined with spikes.

Grappling the joystick hard to the right, he managed to swing the Dodge around the bend. The tires squealed but held the road.

As soon as he got around the sudden turn, though, another bend appeared, snaking left. Gasping, Walter wrenched the stick left; the tires squealed again as he whipped around the second curve...and then the road wrapped back to the right.

The Dodge made it around the latest twist, but the next one was even tighter, and the next tighter still. Walter had to slow to a crawl to negotiate the
ever-tightening hairpins, one after another curling right and left like a scrawl of cursive handwriting.

Every twist was edged with the same rows of spikes. If he overshot a single curve by even a few inches, he would blow out a tire.

Sweat ran into his eyes, and his hand cramped around the stick. After inching through what seemed like an endless series of hairpins, he finally let the Dodge roll to a stop in the middle of the road.

Walter let go of the stick and fluttered his hand around, trying to work out the cramp. Raising his arm, he wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

When he dropped the arm and looked out through the windshield, he saw that the road was perfectly straight before him. No more twists and turns.

His only thought was to escape whatever was going on out there. He jerked his foot off the brake and jammed the gas pedal down hard.

The Dodge bolted forward. For all of thirty seconds, it looked like the rest of the ride would be smooth sailing.

Then, state route 115 really let loose on him.

*****

 

The SUV was shooting along, sixty-seventy-eighty, when gravel started pelting it from all directions. Showers of stones clattered against the hood, the roof, the doors, the windows, pocking metal and fracturing glass.

As the gravel flew into his line of sight, Walter veered right and left across the road...but he couldn't evade the bombardment. The storm of rock followed him like a swarm of bees clouding around a running bear, a million tiny missiles tearing the hell out of the Dodge.

Squinting against the rocky torrent, he kept racing along, hoping that if he could just get a little further, he'd emerge safe from whatever bizarre phenomenon he'd crossed into. Clenching his teeth, he straightened out the Dodge and crushed the accelerator.

Then, directly ahead of him, he saw the road open up.

In a heartbeat, the pavement split apart, disgorging a geyser of flame from a gaping crater. Walter swerved around it, riding the upthrust lip to the other side of the crater and charging away from it.

Another maw ripped open ahead of him, rimmed with jagged shards of pavement like teeth and cored with fire. Walter dodged it, barely missing the rows of spikes along the shoulder of the road.

The gravel bombardment intensified, and chunks of blacktop crashed against the Dodge. Walter veered in time to miss a flying slab about the size of a watermelon...but he couldn't avoid the hunk that blasted through his windshield and took out the passenger seat headrest.

More craters blew open ahead, belching jets of crimson flame. As he skirted them, he was sure the road was tilting, trying to funnel him into the fiery pits.

A chunk of pavement took out both back side windows on its way through the cabin. The surface of the road corrugated like rumble strips; it bucked and bubbled as if straining to erupt right under him.

In the midst of the chaos, lettering appeared on the pavement, stretched out bright white between craters:

TAKE

THAT

YOU

SON

OF

A

BITCH

As he struggled through the terrible obstacle course, Walter barely managed to take in the words. He had no time to consider them...but he instantly grasped one fact.

Whoever put
them there was the same one
who was trying to kill him.

HOW

DOES

IT

FEEL

ASSHOLE

Walter whipped the Dodge around a geyser of pavement shrapnel and careened through a jet of flame. He launched the SUV over a crater just as it splintered open, going airborne for an instant and crashing down on the other side.

HERE'S

SOME

REAL

ROAD

RAGE

FOR

YOU

Pavement spikes shot through the shattered windshield. One pierced his right shoulder, impaling it on the seat.

NOW

GET

THE

HELL

OFF

ME

The road lurched and churned. A flaming mass of rubble catapulted into the nose of the SUV.

AND

STAY

OFF

The biggest crater yet exploded in front of Walter, cracking wide across both lanes, leaving him nowhere to swerve but the spiked berm. He heard all four tires blow as the Dodge shot over it.

He fought the stick with his good right arm – which wasn't so good anymore – but the SUV was out of control. It hurtled through a tangle of weeds and overturned, rolling down a slope on its side, roof over tires over roof over tires over roof.

BOOK: Road Rage
13.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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