He reached out to touch Buddy's elbow, and his hand was flung away with such force that his knuckles cracked on the glass of his window.
'You don't want to touch me,' Buddy whispered. The road rolled straight in front of him, not black tar now but white snow, packed and treacherous. The Camaro was rolling over this greasy surface at better than ninety miles an hour, only its roof and the orange Ping-Pong ball jammed on the top of its radio aerial visible between chest-high embankments. 'You don't want to touch me, Richie. Not going this fast.'
'Is it -' Richie's voice cracked and he couldn't go on.
Buddy spared him a glance, and at the sight of the fear in Buddy's small red eyes, Richie's own terror came up in his throat like hot, smooth oil.
'Yeah,' Buddy said. 'I think it is.'
No houses up here; they were already on state land. Nothing up here but the high snow embankments and the dark interlacing of trees.
'It's gonna bump us!' Bobby screeched from the back seat. His voice was as high as an old woman's. Between his feet the remaining bottles of Texas Driver chattered wildly in their carton. 'Buddy! It's gonna bump us!'
The car behind them had come to within five feet of the Camaro's back bumper; its high beams flooded the car with light bright enough to read fine print. It slipped forward even closer. A moment later there was a thud.
The Camaro shifted its stance on the road as the car behind them fell back a trifle; to Buddy it was as if they were suddenly floating, and he knew they were a hair's breadth from going into a wild, looping skid, the front end and the rear briskly swapping places until they hit something and rolled.
A droplet of sweat, as warm and stinging as a tear, ran into his eye.
Gradually, the Camaro straightened out again.
When he felt that he had control, Buddy let his right foot smoothly depress the accelerator all the way. If it was Cunningham in that old rustbucket '58 - ah, and hadn't that been part of the dreams he could barely remember - the Camaro would shut him down.
The engine was now screaming. The tach needle was again on the edge of the redline at 7,000 rpm. The speedometer had passed the one hundred post, and the snowbanks streamed past them on either side in ghastly silence. The road ahead looked like a point-of-view shot in a film that had been insanely speeded up.
'Oh dear God,' Bobby babbled, 'oh dear God please don't let me get killed oh dear God oh holy shit - '
He wasn't there the night we trashed Cuntface's car, Buddy thought. He doesn't know what's going on. Poor busted-luck sonofawhore. He did not really feel sorry for Bobby, but if he could have been sorry for anyone, it would have been for the little shit-for-brains freshman. On his right, Richie Trelawney sat bolt-upright and as pallid as a gravestone, his eyes eating up his face. Richie knew the score, all right.
The car whispered toward them, headlights swelling in the rearview mirror.
He can't be gaining! Buddy's mind screamed. He can't be! But the car behind them was indeed gaining, and Buddy sensed it was boring in for the kill. His mind ran like a rat in a cage, looking for a way out, and there was none. The slot in the left snowbank that marked the little side-road he usually used to bypass the gate and get into the state park had already flashed by. He was running out of time, room, and options.
There was another soft bump, and again the Camaro slewed - this, time at something over a hundred and ten miles an hour. No hope, man, Buddy thought fatalistically. He took his hands off the wheel altogether and grabbed his seatbelt. For the first time in his life, he snapped it shut across his waist.
At the same time, Bobby Stanton in the back seat screamed in a shrill ecstasy of fear: 'The gate, man! Oh Jesus Buddy it's the gaaaaayyyyy - '
The Camaro had breasted a final steep hill. The far side sloped down to a place where the road branched in two, becoming the entrance and exit from the state park. Between the two ways stood a small gatehouse on a concrete island - in the summertime, a lady sat in there on a camp chair and took a buck from each car that entered the park.