by Dean Koontz
The lizard skittered back toward the step, froze again, this time facing away from them.
Roy moved fast. The lizard’s eyes looked backward as well as sideways and forward, so it saw him coming. Nevertheless, he caught it by the tail, held it, and brought his foot down hard on its head.
Colin turned away in disgust. “Why the hell did you have to do that?”
“Did you hear it crunch?”
“What was the point?”
“It was a popper.”
“Jeez.”
Roy wiped his shoe in the grass.
Colin cleared his throat and said, “Where’s Hermit Hobson now?”
“Dead.”
Colin looked suspiciously at Roy. “I guess you’re going to try to make me believe you killed him, too.”
“Nope. Natural causes. Four months ago.”
“Then why’re we here?”
“For the train wreck.”
“Huh?”
“Come see what I’ve done.”
Roy walked toward the rusting automobiles.
After a moment, Colin followed him. “It’ll be dark before long.”
“That’s good. It’ll cover our escape.”
“Escape from what?”
“The scene of the crime.”
“What crime?”
“I told you. The train wreck.”
“What’re you talking about?”
Roy didn’t answer.
They walked through knee-high grass. Close to the abandoned junkers, where a mower couldn’t reach and where Hermit Hobson had never trimmed, the grass was much higher and thicker than it was elsewhere.
The hilltop ended in a rounded point somewhat like the prow of a ship.
Roy stood on the edge of the slope and looked down. “That’s where it’ll happen.”
Eighty feet below, railroad tracks curved around the prow of the hill.
“We’ll derail it on the curve,” Roy said. He pointed to two parallel ribbons of heavy corrugated sheet metal that led from the tracks, up the slope, and over the brow of the hill. “Hobson was a real packrat. I found fifty of those six-foot long sheets in big piles of junk behind his shack. That was a hell of a piece of luck. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to set this up.”
“What’re they for?” Colin asked.
“The truck.”
“What truck?”
“Over there.”
A four-year-old, battered Ford pickup stood about thirty feet back from the slope. The corrugated strips led to it, then under it. The Ford had no tires; its rust-filmed wheels rested on the sheet metal.
Colin hunkered down beside the truck. “How’d you get the corrugated panels under there?”
“I lifted one wheel at a time with a jack I found in one of these wrecks.”
“Why go to all that trouble?”
“Because we can’t just push the truck across bare ground,” Roy said. “The wheels would dig into the earth and stop it.”
Colin looked from the truck to the brow of the hill. “Let me get this straight. Let me see if I understand. You want to push the truck along this track you’ve made, let it roll down the slope, into the side of the train.”
“Yeah.”
Colin sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Roy asked.
“Another damned game.”
“No game.”
“I guess I’m supposed to do what I did with the Sarah Callahan scheme. You want me to show you the holes in it so you’ll have an excuse to chicken out.”
“What holes?” Roy challenged.
“For one thing, a train is too damned big and heavy to be derailed by a little truck like this.”
“Not if we do it right,” Roy said. “If it’s perfectly timed, if the truck’s coming down the slope just as the train’s rounding the bend, the engineer will hit the brakes. When he tries to stop the train on a sharp curve like that, it’ll start rocking like crazy. And then when the truck hits it, it’ll roll right off the tracks.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re wrong,” Roy said. “There’s a pretty good chance it’ll happen just like I say.”
“No.”
“It’s worth a try. Even if it doesn’t derail the train, it’ll scare the hell out of them. Either way, it’ll be a popper.”
“There’s something else you haven’t thought of. This truck’s been sitting out here for a couple of years. The wheels are rusted. No matter how hard we push, they aren’t going to turn.”
“You’re wrong again,” Roy said happily. “I thought of that. There hasn’t been that much rain the past few years. They weren’t rusted really bad. I had to spend a few days working on the truck, but now the wheels will turn for us.”
For the first time, Colin noticed dark, oily stains on the wheel beside him. He reached behind it and found that it had been freshly, excessively lubricated. His hand came away with gobs of grease on it.
Roy grinned. “You see any other flaws in the plan?”
Colin wiped his hand in the grass and stood up.
Roy stood, too. “Well?”
The sun had just set. The western sky was golden.
“When do you figure to do it?” Colin asked.
Roy looked at his wristwatch. “About six or seven minutes from now.”
“There’ll be a train then?”
“Six nights a week at this time, a passenger train comes through here. I’ve done some checking. It starts in San Diego, stops in L.A., goes on to San Francisco and then Seattle before starting back: I’ve sat on the hill and watched it a lot of nights. It really moves. It’s an express.”
“You said the timing has to be perfect.”
“It will be. Or near enough.”
“But no matter how carefully you’ve planned it, you can’t expect the railroad to co-operate. I mean, trains don’t always run on time.”
“This one usually does,” Roy said confidently. “Besides, that’s not too important. All we have to do is push the truck closer to the edge, then wait until the train is almost here. When we see the locomotive coming, we’ll give the truck a little shove, tip it over the brink, and away it’ll go:”
Colin bit his lip, frowned. “I know you set this up so it can’t be done.”
“Wrong. I want to do it.”
“It’s a game. There’s a big hole in the plan, and you expect me to find it.”
“No holes.”
“I must be missing something.”
“You haven’t missed anything.”
Each of the ruined pickup’s front wheels was jammed against a wooden chock. Roy removed these braces and threw them aside.
“What’s the joke?” Colin asked.
“We’ve got to get moving.”
“There must be a joke.”
“We don’t have much time.”
Both of the truck’s doors had been removed, either by the collision or by Hermit Hobson. Roy went to the open driver’s side, reached in, and put his right hand on the steering wheel. He put his left hand on the door frame, ready to push.
“Roy, why don’t you give up? I know there’s got to be a catch.”
“Get around on the other side and help.”
Still trying to find the hole, still wondering what he had overlooked, still certain that Roy was playing an elaborate trick on him, Colin walked around the truck and stationed himself at the open passenger side.
Roy looked through the truck at him. “Put both hands on the front of the door frame and push.”
Colin did as he was told, and Roy pushed from the other side.
The truck didn’t move.
What’s the joke?
“It’s been sitting here awhile,” Roy said. “It’s made a sort of depression for itself.”
“Ahhh,” Colin said. “And of course we’re not strong enough to push it out.”
“Sure we are,” Roy said. “Put your back into it.”
Colin strained.
“Harder!” Roy said.
It won’t come up out of its little depression, Colin thought. He knows it. That’s the way he planned it.
“Push!”
The land was not flat. It graded down toward the edge of the hill.
“Harder!”
The firm, sun-baked earth helped them, and the corrugated metal tracks helped them.
“Harder!”
The recent grease job helped them.
“Harder!”
But most of all, the gently sloping land and gravity helped them.
The truck moved.
22
When he felt the pickup moving, Colin jumped back, astonished.
The truck stopped with a sharp squeak. “What’d you do that for?” Roy demanded. “We had it going, for Christ’s sake! Why’d you stop?”
Colin looked at him through the open cab of the truck. “Okay. Tell me. What’s the joke?”
Roy was angry. His voice was hard and cold, and he emphasized each word. “Get ... it ... through... your... head. There... is... no... joke!”
They stared at each other in the fast-fading, smoky light of dusk.
“Are you my blood brother?” Roy asked.
“Sure.”
“Isn’t it you and me against the world?”
“Yeah.”
“Won’t blood brothers do anything for each other?”
“Almost anything.”
“Anything! It has to be anything! No ifs, ands, or buts. Not with blood brothers. Are you my blood brother?”
“I said I was, didn’t I?”
“Then push, damnit!”
“Roy, this has gone far enough.”
“It won’t have gone far enough until it’s gone over the edge of the hill.”
“Fooling around like this could be dangerous.”
“Have you got concrete for brains?”
“We might accidentally wreck the train.”
“It won’t be an accident. Push!”
“You win. I give up. I won’t push the truck or you any further. You win the game, Roy.”
“What the hell are you doing to me?”
“I just want to get out of here.”
Roy’s voice was strained now, almost hysterical. His eyes were wild. He glared at Colin through the truck. “Are you turning your back on me?”
“Of course not.”
“Betraying me?”
“Look, I—”
“Are you a phony, too? Are you just like all the other goddamned cheats and back-stabbers and liars?”
“Roy—”
“Didn’t you mean one word you said to me?”
In the distance a train whistle pierced the twilight. “That’s it!” Roy said frantically. “The engineer always blows the whistle when he crosses Ranch Road. We’ve only got three minutes. Help me.”
Even in the dimming, orange-purple light, Colin could clearly see the rage in Roy’s face, the madness in his blue, blue eyes. Colin was shocked. He took another step back, away from the truck.
“Bastard!” Roy said.
He tried to push the Ford by himself.
Colin remembered how Roy acted in the garage when they played with Mr. Borden’s trains. How he wrecked them with such fierce glee. How he peered through the windows of the derailed toy cars. How he imagined that he was seeing real bodies, real blood, real tragedy—and somehow found pleasure in those sick fantasies.
This was not a game.
It had never been a game.
Pushing, then relaxing, pushing, then relaxing, keeping a hard, fast rhythm, Roy rocked the truck until suddenly he overcame inertia. The pickup moved.
“No!” Colin said.
Gravity helped again. The truck’s wheels turned slowly, reluctantly. They squealed and squeaked. The metal rims ground harshly against the heavy corrugated tracks. But they turned.
Colin raced around the pickup, grabbed Roy, and pulled him away from the truck.
“You little creep!”
“Roy, you can‘t!”
“Let me alone!”
Roy wrenched loose, shoved Colin backward, and returned to the truck.
The pickup had ceased all movement the instant Roy had been dragged from it. The slope was not steep enough to encourage the Ford to run away.
Roy rocked it again.
“You can’t kill all those people.”
“Just watch me.”
The truck needed considerably less coaxing this time than it had the last. Or perhaps Roy had found even greater strength in his madness. In a few seconds the Ford began to roll.
Colin leaped at him and wrestled him away from the truck.
Furious, cursing, Roy turned and punched him twice in the stomach.
Colin collapsed around the blows. He let go of Roy, gagged, bent forward, caved in, staggered back, and fell. The pain was terrible. He felt as if Roy’s fists had gone all the way through him leaving two big holes. He couldn’t get his breath.
His glasses had been knocked off. He could see only blurry outlines of the junkyard. Coughing, gagging, still struggling to breathe, he felt the grass around him, anxious to regain his sight.
Roy grunted and mumbled to himself as he tried to move the pickup.
Suddenly Colin was aware of another sound: a steady chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka.
The train.
In the distance. But not too far.
Coming closer.
Colin found his glasses and put them on. Through tears, he saw that the truck was still more than twenty feet from the brink, and that Roy had only just begun to get it moving again.
Colin attempted to stand. He got as far as his knees when a wave of excruciating pain washed through his guts, immobilizing him.
The truck was no more than twenty feet from the edge of the hill, gaining inches slowly, slowly but relentlessly.
By the sound of it, the train had reached the curve in the glen below.
The truck was eighteen feet from the brink.
Sixteen.
Fourteen.
Twelve.
Then it ran off the corrugated track; its wheels bit into the dry earth; and it would not move. If they had been pushing from both sides, if the force had been applied evenly, the truck would not have deviated from the twin ribbons of metal. But because all the effort was being exerted on the left side, the Ford turned inexorably to the right, and Roy didn’t use the steering wheel fast enough to correct the truck’s course.
Colin clutched the door handle of a dilapidated Dodge beside him and drew himself to his feet. His legs were shaky.
The thunderous clatter of the rails filled the night: a cacophonous roar like an orchestra of machinery tuning itself.
Roy ran to the edge of the hill. He looked down at the train that Colin couldn’t see.
In less than a minute, the sound of the passenger express diminished. The last car was around the curve; it was speeding away, toward San Francisco.
The small noises of the oncoming night crept back across the hilltop. For a while, Colin was too stunned to hear anything at all. Gradually, he began once more to perceive the crickets, the toads, the breeze in the trees, and the pounding of his own heart.
Roy screamed. He looked down at the tracks that were now empty, and he raised his fists toward the sky, and he cried out like an animal in agony. He turned and started toward Colin.
Only thirty feet of open ground separated them.
“Roy, I had to do it.”
“I hate you.”
“You don’t really.”
“You’re like all the rest.”
“Roy, you’d have gone to jail.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“But Roy—”
“You fucking traitor!”
Colin ran.
23
As Colin ran for his life, he was acutely aware that he had never won a race. His legs were thin; Roy’s legs were muscular. His reserves of strength were pathetically shallow; Roy’s energy and power were awesome. Colin
did not dare look back.
The automobile graveyard was an elaborate maze. He ran in a crouch through the twisting, crisscrossing passages, taking full advantage of the cover provided by the junkers. He turned right, between the gutted shells of two Buicks. He ran past huge stacks of tires, past bent and rusted Plymouths, past smashed and corroded Fords, Dodges, Toyotas, Olds-mobiles, and Volkswagens. He jumped over a disconnected transmission, did broken-field running through scattered tires, darted east toward Hermit Hobson’s shack, which lay impossibly far away, at least six hundred feet, and then he swung sharply south through a narrow alley dotted with mufflers and headlamp assemblies that were like land mines in the tall grass. Ten yards farther along, he turned west, expecting to be tackled from behind at any second, but nevertheless determined to put walls of wreckage between himself and Roy.
After what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than two minutes, Colin realized that he could not keep running forever, and that he might quickly become confused about directions and dash headlong into Roy at a turn or an intersection. In fact, Colin was no longer certain whether he was rushing toward or away from the point at which the chase had begun. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that he was miraculously alone. He stopped at a crumpled Cadillac and huddled in the darkness along its ruined flank.
The last few minutes of murky copper-colored sunlight did little to illuminate the open spaces between the cars. Purple-black velvet shadows lay everywhere; and as he watched they grew with incredible speed, like a nightmare fungus intent upon blanketing the entire planet. Colin was terrified of being trapped in the dark with Roy. But he was equally frightened of the threatening creatures that might lurk in the junkyard at night: strange beasts; monsters; blood-sucking things; perhaps even the ghosts of people who had died in those broken cars.
Stop it! he thought angrily. That’s stupid. It’s childish.
He had to concentrate on the danger he knew was out there. Roy. He had to save himself from Roy. Then he could worry about the other things.
Think, damnit!
He became aware of his noisy breathing. His panting would carry quite a distance in the crisp night air, and Roy would be able to home in on it. In view of his precarious position, Colin could not be calm, but with a bit of effort he managed to breathe quietly.
He listened for Roy.
Nothing.
