by Mark West
"Not really, if we want to keep to main roads. It's a couple of junctions along the A14."
"Okay, direct me there."
"Stay on this road," she said and turned in her chair, squinting against the glare of the headlights, "it'll lead us out."
Nat was facing the road and David glanced at her. In the darkness, her face looked calm and attentive but in the quick washes of orange he could see more - fear, yes, but also something else, a sense of dislocation, as if this couldn't be happening to her. "I'm scared," she said, finally, "more than I think I've ever been. This happens in films, not to real people."
He smiled wanly, trying to reassure her but unable to think of how to express it. He gently patted her arm.
"What happened at the house was scary but this..." She made an expansive gesture with her hands. "Hopefully they're just coming after us to scare us and they'll get fed up soon and bugger off, but what if they don't?"
"Then we keep moving until we get to the police station."
"But what if they do something stupid before that?"
Her words struck a chord - was that the basis of his fear, that they might try something? Trying to block the lane just now could have been stupidity rather than design and maybe they knew the police station was shut, but what if that wasn't the case? What if they went further, tried to ram him off the road or blocked the way somehow? Could he stand and fight?
"They won't," he said, more to reassure himself than Nat.
"No," she said, as if buying into the charade, "of course not. I'm getting carried away, I've read too many ASBO horror stories in the papers."
With a quick glance in the rear-view mirror, he pasted on his best smile. "You and me both."
"Turn right up here," said Nat. They drove up a slight incline and then over what David assumed was the A14, a stretch of deserted dual carriageway. He followed the slip road down and onto the brightly lit road.
"Thank you," said Nat, as he nudged the speed up.
"Why?"
"For this. For coming back and standing up for me."
David shook his head. "No problem."
"But it must be. We only met a couple of hours ago. You could have come back, seen what was happening, dropped the keys and taken off." She looked at her fingernails. "I wouldn't have blamed you."
"No," he said, "I couldn't do that."
"You're a regular good Samaritan, eh?"
"No, I just couldn't live with myself if anything had happened, that's all. And I wasn't stupid, I had my keys in my fist and if they tried anything, I'd have hit them."
She nodded, a faint smile not quite able to turn the edges of her lips up. "For whatever reason, I really do appreciate your doing it."
"You're welcome," he said and looked in the rear-view mirror. There was a car behind them, its headlights dipped, just far enough back that he couldn't quite see it clearly enough.
There was a flash of headlights ahead and then the staccato blur as a lorry passed them on the other carriageway, the uprights of the safety barriers panning the light like a zoetrope.
Seeing someone else on the road - and having them blast past - made him realise how alone he was. Out here, in the artificial orange glow and with nothing to see beyond the hard shoulders, David felt as if he was driving through an alien landscape. He was glad Nat was with him, to reassure him that he hadn't stepped into a different dimension.
They drove through a small patch of mist that barely reached above the bonnet and was quickly gone. The radio hitched and crackled and before it automatically retuned, for that briefest of moments, David heard the dull thud of a bassline. Nat heard it too, because she turned around quickly.
"Oh no, here they come."
David watched the Audi get closer, the headlights on full beam. It weaved across the road, first in wide arcs and then in smaller, tighter ones. His body reacted instantly, his pulse racing, the skin of his arms bursting into gooseflesh, his neck suddenly and painfully stiff. There was nowhere to go - the next junction wasn't in sight, there appeared to be some kind of gully beyond the hard shoulder and the safety barriers in the central reservation contained enough debris to attest to their resilience. Whatever Mal decided to do now, David would have to deal with it straight away.
He gripped the steering wheel with his left hand and tried to rub the tightness and tension out of his neck with his right.
"Oh my God," said Nat, "oh my God."
"Where's the next junction?"
"A mile or so."
David checked his speed. "Less than a minute, if we can keep ahead of him for that long, we can come off there."
"But it's not the right junction."
"That doesn't matter."
The Audi pulled alongside them in the fast lane and, for the briefest of moments, David imagined pulling the wheel hard to the right, slamming his car into theirs and driving them into the safety barriers. A blink, a quick mental image and then it was gone - a stupid idea.
"Look at him," hissed Nat, "he's gone mental."
He glanced over. Clarkey was screaming something in his direction, his face dark and contorted, his eyes bulging, spittle spraying across the window. At that moment, he knew that if the thugs stopped them, he and Nat were in very serious trouble.
The road curved slightly and David could see the next junction. A faint layer of mist hugged the road, but the lights on the bridge and roundabout were clearly visible, as were the marker boards on the hard shoulder.
"Nearly there," he said.
The Audi twitched and David reacted without thinking, pulling his wheel sharply to the left. Nat screamed as the cars momentum seemed to stutter and he pulled the wheel straight. Thankfully, none of the tyres lost their grip and he quickly regained control. The shock of the move made him gasp and when he tried to take a deep breath, he found he couldn't. Suddenly, his head felt both light and heavy at the same time and the streetlights on the bridge ahead of him seemed to sway and bow.
He wanted to shake his head to clear it, but couldn't. The car drifted to the left and he knew it was going, was fully aware that if he didn't pull it back then he would drive off the carriageway, over the gully and down the bank.
The tyres danced over the rumble strip on the hard shoulder and the vibration through his hands and the noise in his ears seemed to snap him fully awake. He rubbed his eyes quickly and pulled back into the lane.
"Sorry," he said.
Nat didn't say anything. She was gripping firmly on the edges of her seat, her knuckles white.
The Audi braked suddenly and David craned around, desperately trying to keep them in view. They crossed into the hard shoulder and accelerated, pulling level. Mal looked at Nat, made a V with his fingers and flicked his tongue between them.
"Fuck off and leave us alone," David yelled.
Mal smiled and kept pace with them.
They passed the three hundred yard marker, side by side, then the two hundred. David was concentrating so hard on the Audi that his head began to ache. As they reached the last marker, the Audi twitched towards them but David moved with them, braking and pulling sharply to the right, sliding the car easily into the overtaking lane.
They were passed the mouth of the junction in seconds and David watched, with a mixture of fear and elation, as the Audi roared up the sliproad.
"They've gone," said Nat, excitedly.
"We'll see," said David, keeping an eye on them until the Audi was out of sight and they went under the bridge. He looked ahead for the sliproad and braced himself for the sudden reappearance of the car. He imagined it careering onto the carriageway and smashing into them, forcing them through the central reservation. The thought of it made him feel sick.
"Do you think they'll come back?"
He didn't reply, just watched the sliproad. He took a deep breath, hissed it out. The sliproad started to come down, the angle cutting away as they drove alongside it. He looked back, but couldn't see the Audi at all.
Within moments, th
ey were past the mouth of the sliproad. David kept a watch on his rear-view mirror, his eyes flicking between it and the road ahead and it wasn't until the sliproad disappeared into the mist and darkness behind them that he allowed himself to relax. The bones in his fingers creaked as he eased his grip on the steering wheel.
"So that's it?" asked Nat.
"Looks like it," said David and it suddenly hit him, an accumulation of emotion that filled his eyes and made his arms and legs ache and tremble. He roughly palmed the tears away, sniffed and took a deep breath.
"Are you okay?" said Nat and then her voice betrayed her by cracking.
"Hey," he said, trying to laugh but failing. He rubbed her leg, just above her knee. "They're gone, it's done."
"Yes," she said, rubbing gently at her eyes, "but it could have been so much worse. I thought we were going to die when they tried to hit us the first time."
"So did I."
He wanted to stop, to get out and collapse - to allow his body to get rid of all the pent-up fear and anxiety that it had piled up since the house. He tilted his head back, rocking it from side to side, trying to ease out some of the kinks he could feel forming in his neck.
Nat hitched in a breath. "Thank you again, my hero," she said, "if I'd have been driving, we'd been stuck in a field now, with those wankers coming for us."
"Don't be so silly," he said. "Now come on, we'll get back into Gaffney and get this sorted out."
Nat licked her lips and took a deep breath. "We want the next junction, it's a couple of miles away."
He looked in the rear view mirror and his heart seemed to change rhythm when he saw headlights in the distance. Surely they couldn't be coming again? He looked at Nat, who was pressing her fingers underneath her eyes and trying to calm her breathing. Should he tell her?
"Do you suppose they had a good time?" she said.
He shrugged, trying to stay calm, as he kept an eye on the car. It seemed to be gaining on them. Gently, so as not to raise suspicion, he put his foot down and the speedometer needle crept past 95.
"I don't get it. I mean, everything they did, scaring us both shitless and attacking me and then what, they drive off?" She bit at the corner of her thumbnail. "Do you think the police'll do anything?"
The car was getting ever closer and David watched as it moved into the overtaking lane.
"David?"
Her questioning tone pulled him back to reality and he glanced at her. "Yes?"
"I said, do you think the police'll do anything?"
"You'd hope so, but it'll probably depend if any of those women make a complaint, or if the twats do anything else."
"Do you think?"
He didn't want her to talk any more, to ask any more questions that - with the car coming for them again - were purely academic. "I don't know, Nat, honestly."
"I got a good look at the two who attacked me, but I didn't pay much attention to the third one."
"I did, I could identify him."
"We're alright then, aren't we?"
The car seemed to be only a couple of hundred yards behind them now. Nat kept talking and David tried to concentrate on what she was saying but none of it made any sense, it was just a barrage of jumble. The car got closer and he pressed the accelerator down further, the needle creeping past 100.
Now what? At this speed, if they were forced to swerve sharply, there would be no way he could control the car. But what did that leave, getting clouted and skidding out of control anyway?
He gripped the wheel until the tips of his fingers throbbed. His breath caught in his dry throat.
Nat's voice cut through his thoughts. "David? Are you okay?"
Closer still, he could make out the shape behind the lights. "Uh huh," he muttered.
She looked at him and then behind, through the rear side window and he heard the breath catch in her throat. A silver BMW went past them, so fast and close that it actually rocked the Vectra with its slipstream.
"Fuck," said Nat, "he was moving."
David felt himself slump in the seat and loosed his fingers from their painful grip on the wheel. "He certainly was."
"Good job I didn't look back and see him before, I'd have thoughts the twats were back after us."
"I know what you mean," he said.
Nat nodded, emphatically and they drove along in silence for a few moments, until they passed a sign that said the Gaffney central junction was ahead. "That's ours," she said.
David, more out of habit, looked in the rear view mirror. Something moved across the carriageway, a black shape that he could only barely discern in the gloom - whatever it was, it was far enough back that the darkness almost swallowed it. He blinked a couple of times and looked again, but couldn't see anything.
"My eyes are so tired," he said, "they're prickling like mad and I think I'm seeing things."
As if he'd reminded her, Nat rubbed her own eyes. "What do you think you're seeing?"
How could he explain it to her - a movement in the darkness that he couldn't see properly. "Nothing, I think I'm just going a bit mad."
"I wouldn't be surprised, the night we've had."
David looked in the mirror again and saw the same kind of movement as before, except that this time, the thing was bigger. "No," he said, slowly.
"What?"
"There is something there."
"Where?" Nat said, craning around in her seat. The seatbelt pulled tight against her neck, so she unclipped it. "What can you see?"
"Way back, a shape in the dark."
"I can't see…" She squinted. "Yes, there. What is it?"
The shape caught one of the street lights and Nat gasped. "It's them," she said, "isn't it?"
"Yes," said David, realising that if the Audi was behind them, driving without lights, that only meant one thing - whatever the three men intended to do, they would do it unless David could get back to the police station.
He pushed the Vectra beyond 110 but the Audi still gained on them. Another sign flashed past, indicating the Gaffney junction ahead. David tried to clear his mind of everything other than that slip-road he couldn't see, the white cat's eyes that would beckon him in, the slope up to the roundabout, the harsh white light flooding across the tarmac. The sheer, ugly beauty of a dual carriageway junction that ordinarily he wouldn't remember the minute he'd driven off it.
"How far's the junction?"
"I don't know, I can't remember."
"But we're fairly close, right?"
"Yes."
David bit his lip. If he straddled the lanes, he could try and keep the Audi behind them and pull off on the sliproad at the last available moment. If he timed it properly, Mal wouldn't be able to make the turn and even if he decided to reverse back, it would give David a valuable window of time. If he could get up the sliproad and off the roundabout before the Audi caught sight of him, he could either try to make it straight to the police station or park up and hide somewhere.
The Audi's headlights lit up and it started to weave from lane to lane. Nat turned in her seat, biting at her thumbnail. "Do you think he'll try and knock us aside again?"
David shook his head, words building and dying in his throat.
The Audi closed the distance between the two cars easily. It came so close that David couldn't see the lights any more, only a glow of white at the bottom of his rear window. He touched the brake pedal and saw Mal and Clarkey in the wash of red light, but the Audi didn't slow down.
"He's not scared," said David slowly, as they passed the three hundred yard marker.
"What do you mean?"
"I just touched the brakes and he didn't react at all."
"What does that mean?" asked Nat.
The Audi cut to the left, taking David by surprise.
"David, what did you mean?"
He looked out of the passenger window. In theory, if he moved now, there was enough of a gap that he could get in front of the Audi and still make his escape, as he'd planned. All he had to do
was accelerate and turn the wheel. That was all.
He daren't do it. Everything told him he should, if he could he would have screamed at himself to do it, but he knew it would have been suicide. Mal and Clarkey and the twat in the back wanted them, for whatever reason and nothing seemed to scare them. If David pulled in front of them now, he was certain that Mal would have no problem shunting him off the carriageway.
"They'll stop us going up the sliproad," said Nat, her voice rising.
"I know."
"But we need to get back to Gaffney."
The Audi drew level and Mal glared at them.
"Why are you doing this?" Nat screamed, "leave us alone."
Mal smiled and waved his finger at her, as if he was scolding a naughty child. Clarkey leaned over, his face creased and reddened with laughter.
"Don't," said David, "they're enjoying this."
The sliproad passed and, once it had, Nat turned to him, her eyes wild, her lips tight. "I know they're enjoying it, but what else do you want me to do? They're keeping us on the road, you know."
"Where's the next junction?"
"Way off, a couple of miles at least."
He tried to keep his voice level. "Is there anything else, a lay-by or a petrol station or something?"
She frowned. "Yeah, there's a petrol station a little way ahead."
"Okay. This is a stupid question but does it have a long slip-road?"
Nat bit the inside of her cheek. "I don't think so. There's a station on the other side and I can't remember which is which, but one of them has a really short entry road and when it first opened, a couple of cars overshot it."
"Excellent."
"What? What's that mean?"
"I might have a plan. Put your seatbelt on."
She looked at him, as if considering his request and then did as he'd asked. "What are we going to do?"
"We're going to call into the garage."
Six
The Audi dropped back into the overtaking lane, running tight to the crash barriers. David kept his eyes on the road, aware in the periphery of his vision of the Audi's location, but trying to concentrate.
A footbridge spanned the road a couple of hundred yards ahead and there was a large sign in front of it, behind the crash barrier, fluorescent yellow lettering proclaiming that to enjoy the new Gaffney golf centre, the driver should leave at the next exit.
