gatehouse was flooded with ghastly light as the two cars raced down toward it, the Camaro heeling steadily to port as the skid worsened.
'Fuck you, Cuntface!' Buddy screamed. 'Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!' He yanked the wheel all the way around, twirling it with the death-knob that held one bobbing red die in alcohol.
Bobby screamed again. Richie Trelawney clapped his hands over his face, his last thought on earth a constant repetition of Watch out for broken glass watch out for broken glass watch out for broken glass -
The Camaro swapped ends, and now the headlights of the car following blared directly into them, and Buddy began to scream because it was Cuntface's car, all right, that grille was impossible to mistake, it seemed at least a mile wide, only there was no one behind the wheel. The car was totally empty.
In the last two seconds before impact, Christine's headlights shifted away to what was now Buddy's left. The Fury shot into the entrance roadway as neatly and exactly as a bullet shoots down a rifle barrel. It snapped off the wooden barrier and sent it flying end over end into the black night, round yellow reflectors flashing.
Buddy Repperton's Camaro rammed ass-backwards into the concrete island where the gatehouse stood. The eight-inch concrete lip peeled off everything bolted to the lower deck, leaving the twisted wreckage of the exhaust pipes and the silencer sitting on the snow like some weird sculpture. The Camaro's rear end was first accordioned and then demolished. Bobby Stanton was demolished along with it. Buddy was dimly aware of something hitting his back like a bucket of warm water. It was Bobby Stanton's blood.
The Camaro flipped into the air end for end, a mangled projectile in a squall of flying splinters and shattered boards, one headlight still glaring maniacally. It did a complete three-sixty and came down with a glass-jangling thud and rolled over. The firewall ruptured and the engine slid backward, at an angle crushing Richie Trelawney from the waist down. There was a coughing explosion of fire from the ruptured gas tank as the Camaro came to rest.
Buddy Repperton was alive. He had been cut in several places by flying glass - one ear had been clipped off with surgical neatness, leaving a red hole on the left side of his head - and his leg had been broken, but he was alive. His seatbelt had saved him. He thumbed the catch and it let go. The crackle of fire was like someone crumpling paper. He could feel the baking heat.
He tried to open the door, but the door was crimped shut.
Panting hoarsely, he threw himself through the empty space where the windscreen had been -
- and there was Christine.
She stood forty yards away, facing him at the end of a long, slewing skidmark. The rumble of her engine was like the slow panting of some gigantic animal.
Buddy licked his lips. Something in his left side pulled and jabbed with every breath. Something busted in there, too. Ribs.
Christine's engine gunned and fell off; gunned and fell off. Faintly, like something from a lunatic's nightmare, he could hear Elvis Presley singing 'Jailhouse Rock'.
Orange-pink points of light on the snow. The rumbling whoosh of fire. It was going to blow. It was -
It did blow. The Camaro's gas tank went with a hard thudding noise. Buddy felt a rude hand shove him in the back, and he flew through the air and landed in the snow on his hurt slide. His jacket was flaming. He grunted and rolled in the snow, putting himself out. Then he tried to get to his knees. Behind him, the Camaro was a blazing pyre in the night.
Christine's engine, revving and falling off, revving and falling off, now more quickly, more urgently.
Buddy finally managed to get to his hands and knees. He peered at Cunningham's Plymouth through the sweaty tangles of hair hanging in his eyes. The hood had been crimped up when the Plymouth blasted through the barrier arm, and the radiator was dripping a mixture of water and antifreeze that steamed on the snow like fresh animal spoor.
Buddy licked his lips again. They felt as dry as lizard skin. His back felt warm, as if he had gotten a moderately bad sunburn; he could smell smoking cloth, but in the extremity of his shock he was unaware that both his parka and the two shirts beneath had been burned away.