is that what's been bothering me, somehow knowing that this was creeping up on me?
The car behind pulled out, looked like it would overtake. And B.J. gasped, 'Is that what they are - all they are - roadhogs? What idiot issued a driving licence to this maniac!' She gave way and applied her brakes ... which probably saved their lives.
As the station-wagon rocketed forward and overtook them, it swerved violently to the left, cutting in on their vehicle. The collision between the rear end of the station-wagon and the front of Auld John's car threw the latter to the left. The road ran parallel to a grass- and weed-grown ditch on that side, but right at this point there was a rickety wooden bridge that went angling off over the ditch to a woodlands track. Just how B.J. managed to control the steering and turn onto the bridge, Harry couldn't say; it seemed more likely that the shock of the collision was responsible, that it had physically shifted the front of their car to the left.
In another moment the bridge's boards were rattling and shuddering under BJ.'s wheels, and then they were into the woods and slowing down.
'Bad driving?' she gasped. That wasn't bad driving. That was fucking deliberate!'
Harry was looking ahead. The track curves right, probably back onto the road. Don't stop but follow it through the trees. If it was deliberate they may be waiting for us.'
'So what good wil that do?'
He grited his teeth and said, 'At least we'l know it was deliberate. We'l know to protect ourselves - and maybe to hit back.'
'Hit back?' She stamped on the brakes, stopped and threw open her door. 'How? Harry, we're in the middle of nowhere and unarmed. Wel, with one exception.'
In the boot of the old car: her crossbow. She got it, came back to her driving seat, passed the weapon to Harry.
He looked at it, and almost had to shout, 'What?' Because the ancient engine had decided to start racing.
'You'l want to hit back, won't you?' she yeled. (For it had sunk in that they realy might have to. She'd been expecting something like this for as long as she could remember; had known it must come eventualy. But like this?)
'Bonnie Jean, what the hell's going on?' he said, grating the words out. (Did it have to do with him - Alec Kyle's talent - or with her? And if with her, why? She was an innocent, wasn't she? But again, innocent of what?)
'Oh, load the fucking thing!' she snapped.
And as he made to do so:
Honk! Hoooonk!
They looked back. And there it was: the long, black, low-slung, now sinister-looking station-wagon. It was maybe ten to fifteen paces behind them, half-hidden in dangling foliage, its front doors open. And leaning on the doors, the driver and his front-seat passenger. Even as Harry and B.J. stared, the driver reached inside the car and honked again, then cocked his head on one side and smiled.
Harry looked at their faces - eye-contact - and knew from that moment that whatever this was it was life-endangering serious. In the dappling of the trees, their eyes were feral, ful of yelow, shifting light. And their grins were almost vacuous, like the grins of crocodiles or hyenas ... filed with malice!
Almost unnoticed, B.J. had taken the crossbow from him. He saw the grins slip from the faces of the red-robes as they fel into crouches behind their doors, saw their slanted eyes narrow, heard the vibrating, electric thrummm of the crossbow's string. And in the next split-second B.J.'s bolt slammed home into the panel of the driver's door, burying itself deep.
The driver was inside the car now; straightening up behind the wheel, he caled out to his passenger. That one had reached inside the car, come back out with
... a machine-pistol? Almost of its own accord the Necroscope's Mobius math commenced evolving on the screen of his metaphysical mind. But before he could conjure a door -
- B.J. had the car in gear, fishtailing as the rear wheels threw up a screen of dirt. Then they were round a bend, bumping through birch and rowan, and onto a bridge in worse repair than the first one! And
finally back onto the road. Then as B.J. put her foot down, without saying a word Harry took up her crossbow and reloaded it.
But as he slowly, carefully put it down again, he said:
'I thought they might have something against me, but now I'm not sure.