'Hand me another Molotov cocktail, you fucking racist pig.'
Bobby handed up a fresh bottle of Driver, remaining prudently silent.
Buddy drank deeply, belched, and then handed the bottle across to Richie.
'No thanks, man.'
"You drink it, or you may find yourself getting an enema with it.'
'Sure, okay,' Richie said, wishing mightily that he had stayed home tonight. He drank.
The Camaro sped along, its headlights cutting the night. Buddy glanced into the rearview and saw the other car. It was now coming up fast. He glanced at his speedometer and saw he was doing sixty-five. The car behind them had to be doing close to seventy. Buddy felt something - a curious kind of doubling back to the dreams he could not quite remember. A cold finger seemed to press lightly against his heart.
Ahead, the road branched in two, Route 46 continuing east toward New Stanton, the other road bearing north toward Squantic Hills State Park. A large orange sign advised: CLOSED WINTER MONTHS.
Barely slowing, Buddy dragged left and shot up the hill. The approach road to the park was not so well-ploughed, and overarching trees had kept the warm afternoon sun from melting off the snowpack. The Camaro slid a little before grabbing the road again. In the back seat, Bobby Stanton made a low, uneasy sound.
Buddy looked up in the rearview, expecting to see the other car shoot by along 46 - after all, there was nothing up this road but a dead end as far as most drivers were concerned - but instead it took the turn eyen faster than Buddy had and pounded along after them, now less than a quarter of a mile behind. Its headlights were four glowing white circles that washed the Camaro's interior.
Bobby and Richie turned around to look.
'What the fuck?' Richie muttered.
But Buddy knew. Suddenly he knew. It was the car that had run down Moochie. Oh yes it was. The psycho who had greased Moochie was behind the wheel of that car, and now he was after Buddy.
He stepped down on the go, and the Camaro started to fly. The speedometer needle crept up to seventy and then gradually heeled over toward eighty. Trees blurred past, dark sketches in the night. The lights behind them did not fall back; the truth was that they were still gaining. The duals had merged into two great white eyes.
'Man I you want to slow down,' Richie said. He grabbed for his seatbelt, actively scared now. 'If we roll at this speed - '
Buddy didn't answer. He hunched over the wheel, alternating glances at the road ahead with glances shot into the rearview mirror, where those lights grew and grew.
'The road curves up ahead,' Bobby said hoarsely. And as the curve approached, guardrail reflectors flickering chrome in the Camaro's headlights, he screamed it: 'Buddy! It curves! It curves!'
Buddy changed down to second gear and the Camaro's engine bellowed its protest. The tachometer needle hit 6,000 rpm, danced briefly at redline-7,000, and then dropped back to a more normal range. Backfires blatted through the Camaro's exhaust pipes like machine-gun fire. Buddy pulled the wheel over, and the car floated into the sharp bend. The rear wheels skimmed over hard-packed snow. At the last possible instant he shifted back up, tramped on the accelerator pedal, and let his body sway freely as the Camaro's left rear end slammed into the snowbanks digging a coffin-sized divot and then bouncing off. The Camaro slewed the other way. He went with it, then goosed the accelerator again. For one moment he thought it would not respond, that the skid would continue and they would simply barrel sideways up the road at seventy-five until they hit a bare patch and flipped over.
But the Camaro straightened out.
'Holy Jesus Buddy slow down!' Richie wailed.
Buddy hung over the wheel, grinning through his beard, bloodshot eyes bulging. The bottle of Driver was clamped between his legs. There! There, you crazy murdering sonofabitch. Let's see you do that without rolling it over! . A moment later the headlights reappeared, closer than ever, Buddy's grin faltered and faded. For the first time he felt a sickish, unmanning tingle running up his legs toward his crotch, Fear - real fear - stole into him.
Bobby had been looking behind as the car chased them round the bedd, and now he turned around, his face slack and cheesy. 'It dint even skid,' he said. 'But that's impossible! That's - '