with the mop and keyed the engine again. It turned over, coughed, stalled. I could smell gasoline in the air, heavy and rich. I had flooded the engine.
Christine reappeared in the rearview mirror. She came at Leigh, who managed to stumble backward just out of reach. Christine slammed nose-on into the wall with crunching force. The passenger door popped open and the horror was complete; the hand not clutching the mop-handle went to my mouth and I screamed through it.
Sitting on the passenger side like a grotesque life-sized doll was Michael Cunningham. His head, lolling limply on the stalk of his neck, snapped over to one side as Christine reversed to make another try at Leigh, and I saw his face had the high, rosy colour of carbon monoxide poisoning. He hadn't taken my advice. Christine had gone to the Cunninghams' house first, as I had vaguely suspected she might. Michael came home from school and there she was, standing in the driveway, his son's restored 1958 Plymouth. He had gone to it, and somehow Christine had . . . had gotten him. Had he maybe gotten in just to sit behind the wheel for a moment, as I had that day in LeBay's garage? He might have. Just to see what vibrations he could pick up. If so, he must have picked up some terrible vibes indeed during his last few minutes on earth. Had Christine started herself up? Driven herself into the garage? Maybe. Maybe. And had Michael discovered that he could neither turn off the madly revving engine or get out of the car? Had he maybe turned his head and perhaps seen the true guiding spirit of Arnie's '58 Fury, lounging in the shotgun seat, and fainted in terror?
It didn't matter now. Leigh was all that mattered.
She had seen, too. Her screams, high, despairing, and shrill, floated in the exhaust-stinking air like hysterically bright balloons. But it had, at least, cut through her daze.
She turned and ran for Will Darnell's office, blood splattering behind her in dime-sized drops as she went. Blood was soaking into the collar of her parka - too much blood.
Christine backed up, laying rubber and leaving a scatter of glass behind. As she pulled around in a tight circle to go after Leigh, centrifugal force pulled the passenger door shut again - but not before I saw Michael's head loll back the other way.
Christine held still for a moment, her nose pointed toward Leigh, her engine revving. Perhaps LeBay was savouring the instant before the kill. If so, I'm glad, because if Christine had gone for her right away, she would have been killed then. But as it was, I had an instant of time, I turned the key again, babbling something aloud - a prayer, I guess - and this time Petunia's engine coughed into life. I let the clutch out and stepped down on the accelerator as Christine leaped forward again. This time I struck her right side. There was a shrill scream of tearing metal as Petunia's bumper punched through her mudguard. Christine heeled over and smashed against the wall. Glass broke. Her engine raced and raved. Behind the wheel, LeBay turned toward me, grinning with hate.
Petunia stalled again.
I rattled off a string of every curse I knew as I grabbed for the key again. If not for my goddam leg, if not for the fall I'd taken in the snow, this would be over now; it would just be a matter of cornering her and smashing her to pieces against the cinderblock.
But even as I cranked Petunia's engine, keeping my foot off the gas to keep from stalling her again, Christine began to reverse with an ear-splitting squeal of metal. She backed out from between Petunia's grille and the wall, leaving a twisted chunk of her red body behind, baring her right front tyre.
I got Petunia going and found reverse. Christine had backed all the way down to the far end of the garage. All her headlights were out. Her windscreen was smashed into a galaxy of cracks. The bent hood seemed to sneer.
Her radio was blasting. I could hear Ricky Nelson singing 'Waitin in School'.
I stared around for Leigh and saw her in Will's office, looking out into the garage. Her blond hair was matted with blood. More blood ran down the left side of her face and soaked into her jacket. Bleeding too damn much, I thought incoherently. Bleeding too damn much, even for a head