Pack Animals - By Peter Anghelides Page 0,45

contents barfed out over a startled Rhys.

Gwen gave an anguished cry of shock. She twisted the wheel in an effort to regain control.

‘What’s the matter?’ bellowed Rhys, panicking and looking desperately around to work out what was happening. It wasn’t only the movement of the car that shook him.

‘Sorry, love!’ Gwen gave a whooping gasp of relief as the car levelled again.

‘I really thought we were going to overturn, or something. You scared me half to death there, Gwen.’

‘That can of cola,’ explained Gwen. She casually brushed the empty container into Rhys’s footwell. ‘Dropped into my lap, and it’s soaked right through. Just look at the front of my jeans!’

‘That’s nothing,’ muttered Rhys, calming down a little.

‘You should see the back of mine.’

Traffic was thickening again as they came into the centre of town. Rhys began to recognise the roads that led into Cardiff Bay. Gareth wasn’t afraid to veer onto pavements if that meant getting past a stationary vehicle. At one point he smacked against the Perspex and metal of a bus stop, cracked the transparent shelter and scattered a yelling line of people.

Rhys watched their quarry career over a Keep Left sign. The wheels lifted clear from the pavement as it scooted over the corner of a junction. With a high-revved whine, the car raced off towards the embankment. The Millennium Stadium peered across the river as the car jigged and danced madly ahead of them. That’s where I want to be, Rhys told himself. Watching the international. Not chasing around Cardiff as a helpless passenger in my own bloody car.

Gwen roared up behind Gareth’s Mondeo until they were right on his bumper. Rhys could see why the driving was more unpredictable than ever. Gareth was tossing back his long hair and raising something with his left hand.

‘Look at him! He’s using a mobile phone! That’s…’ Rhys was going to say ‘dangerous’ until he acknowledged how stupid that would sound. ‘That’s illegal,’ he concluded lamely.

‘Oh sure, Rhys,’ laughed Gwen. ‘Three points on his licence is exactly what he’s worrying about.’ She veered right as the Mondeo slipped into a side road. ‘And I’m not convinced that is a mobile phone.’

The thing in Gareth’s hand was filling his car with bright light.

Coming down the narrow embankment carriageway towards them was a huge, growling pantechnicon. Its blank cab front stared them down, the impassive bulk defying them to continue. The square shape of its trailer loomed behind the cab, and the hiss of its air brakes made it even more like a bull about to charge.

‘Ha!’ crowed Gwen. ‘You are going nowhere now, Gareth!’

The Mondeo’s nose dipped and its brake lights flared. Gwen’s leg jerked forward as her foot sought the brake, but the Vectra screeched into a short skid and smacked the rear of the car in front. ‘Aww, no!’ yelled Rhys as the bonnet crunched up.

The light from the Mondeo increased. Gareth’s head and shoulders were a stark silhouette in the brilliance. Rhys blinked, thinking that the brightness was hurting his eyes. And shivered.

It had got very cold all of a sudden. He could see his own breath.

With impossible speed, a thick, freezing fog surged around the car. Frost patterns began to craze the front windscreen. Visibility had dropped to only a few dozen metres. Everything outside was rimed with ice – lampposts, parking meters, the road surface. A woman laden with plastic supermarket bags twisted, skidded, and fell headlong on the pavement. Her shopping spilled from the bags and over the slick surface.

Rhys heard the Mondeo’s engine revving again. Gareth swerved the car hard right, his wheels spinning furiously to get traction before he jolted up over the pavement and through a low barrier on the far side of the street.

Gwen flicked on the Vectra’s lights. And gasped at the sight through the windscreen.

The pantechnicon was slewing towards them. The driver grappled with the steering as he struggled to arrest the huge vehicle’s progress, and the cab slowly twisted from side to side like an enormous animal sadly shaking its head in resignation. It wasn’t going to stop, and the Vectra was right in its path.

Rhys grabbed for the door handle, but Gwen grasped his other arm. ‘I see where he’s gone!’ she hissed. Put the Vectra back into gear. And bumped the wheels onto the far pavement and through the gap that Gareth’s Mondeo had made in the fence.

Behind them, the pantechnicon slid on its unrelenting journey down the iced roadway, crunching against street lamps and