They weren’t real people, and even though it made me squeamish, I was willing to run over them. But that would slow me down and maybe wreck the car. So I told myself my M16 was on the seat beside me, and when I glanced over, it was. Then I willed myself to split like the lion man’s axe had split me.
I felt a stab of pain inside my head, maybe because Timon was trying to stop me. But then Shadow appeared beside me, just like I wanted, and my other three souls popped into existence jammed into the backseat. I didn’t really have a use for them, but I didn’t know how to split off one and not the others.
I expected Shadow to hang out the window and shoot while I drove. Instead, he slid out of it, hauled himself onto the roof, and car surfed. I assumed he was kneeling, not standing, but I still couldn’t imagine how he was going to keep himself perched up there. But I couldn’t afford to worry about it, either. I had to concentrate on the driving and let him handle the shooting.
Which was what we did. I swerved back and forth, trying to keep away from trouble and find a path to the gate. Shadow did his best to shoot anybody who got too close, and when someone darted into hitting and grabbing distance anyway, he lashed the rifle barrel into the puppet’s face.
After a while, guns started banging from the backseat, too. Startled, I glanced around. Silver had created two more rifles, and Red and Ren were firing out the windows at the onrushing puppets.
It helped. But I still couldn’t find a clear path through the mob. There were just too many of them, and no matter how many we dropped, they kept on charging like maniacs. Silver made a wall to hold some of them back, but they punched through like it was made of paper, either because Timon helped them or because they weren’t really alive.
Finally they swarmed the car like waves sweeping in from all directions at once. Fists hammered my window, and it shattered. The puppets reached in, clutched at me, and pulled, trying to break my grip on the steering wheel and drag me out.
I had puppets climbing on the hood, too, to get at Shadow. Behind them, I could just make out the robot, in position at last and reaching for the T-bird with both sets of claws.
I couldn’t do shit about it, either. Twisted around with the puppets yanking on me, I couldn’t even reach the gas pedal.
But then something boomed. It sounded almost like the fake cannons that had been blasting all along. But I knew the difference because I’d heard the noise not long ago in Showmen’s Rest.
One of the steel dinosaur’s eye windows exploded inward. Lorenzo’s aim was perfect.
And all the puppets either dropped into slow motion or froze completely. The zombie human cannonball had slammed into Timon hard enough to stun him or at least break his concentration.
I thrashed, broke the grips of the hands that were holding onto me, and dropped back onto my seat. I hit the gas, and puppets tumbled off the hood. Then, bumping over bodies, I finally spotted what might be a way out. A narrow one. I sideswiped Timon’s creatures as I weaved along.
Then the mob stopped being paralyzed. But I floored it and smashed puppets out of the way, my other selves fired bursts, and then we were clear. We raced down the tunnel and out into the parking lot.
“Everybody all right?” I panted.
“I think so,” Ren replied.
Shadow tossed his M16 into the car, then swung himself back onto the seat beside me.
As I sped toward Dale Mabry Highway, I hoped Lorenzo was okay. I didn’t think crashing into the robot had hurt him. That was his gift. But Timon could punish him.
He probably wouldn’t spend the time, though. Not while he still had a race to win.
As I turned onto the crowded eight-lane road, I spotted the Pharaoh standing on the corner. He blew a smoke ring.
For maybe a minute after that, everything seemed normal. Well, normal except for my driving, as I kept it above ninety and cut back and forth through the congestion. A traffic cop could have made his quota for the month just by pulling me over and writing all the tickets I deserved.
Then, as I headed into an intersection, other cars surged forward from both sides of the cross street, even though I had the green light. I jerked the wheel and swerved through without anybody hitting me, but the situation ahead was no better. Suddenly, like someone had pushed a button-which I guessed Timon more or less had-nobody was braking or yielding anymore. Cars crashed together in what amounted to a demolition derby.
Still, I had to keep trying to weave my way through, and the only way was to drive even crazier. I jolted over a concrete divider, rocketed along left of center for a moment, then jerked the T-bird back an instant before a semi would have hit it head on. I slammed Shadow’s side of the car into the back corner of a Sentra that was sitting across three lanes with steam fuming up from under the crumpled hood. The impact slammed me into the steering wheel, but the Nissan spun out of my way, and the T-bird survived the collision and kept rolling. I swerved into the parking lot of the Mons Venus strip club when the pavement there looked clearer than the next little patch of highway. The Pharaoh and three identical blondes watched as I knocked over a newspaper box and cut back onto the road.
“Timon’s coming,” said Ren.
I glanced back. Sure enough, Timon was closing fast. He’d switched from the dinosaur to something that wasn’t quite an M1025 Humvee but mostly looked like one, including the machine gun on the roof. And naturally, traffic did its best to get out of his way, like he was an ambulance or something. The only thing slowing him down was the obstacle course of wrecks that couldn’t move.
I looked for a way through the mess ahead. Shadow, Red, and Ren hung out the windows and shot backward. The almost-Humvee’s machine gun returned fire. Nobody hit anything. There was too much in the way, and the vehicles were veering around too much.
“He’s gaining!” yelled Ren.
And the tangle of careening, crashing cars and wrecks ahead of me looked thicker than ever. Muttering “Screw it,” I reversed, hit the gas until I got to a relatively clear spot, cut the wheel a quarter turn, and dropped the shifter into Drive. The T-bird swung around to face the oncoming Humvee. It sideswiped a disabled SUV doing it, and bounced my other selves and me around, but it was still drivable afterward.
“Shit!” said Ren. He’d just figured out what I meant to do. Shadow grinned like a wild animal showing its fangs.
“Yeah,” I said, “shit.” I hit the gas.
Since the puppets behind me had been trying to clear a path, there was almost a straight line from Timon to me. We could play chicken if we wanted to, and we did. We raced toward one another.
Meanwhile, the guns blazed. At first, trying to shoot and drive at the same time, Timon couldn’t hit anything. Then the T-bird’s windshield shattered, showering me with bits of glass, and a bullet hole popped open in the hood, before the machine gun wandered off target again.
My team was shooting straighter, but the Humvee was up-armored. Sparks danced on the front of it as rounds hit and glanced away.
If the guns didn’t matter, then it really was a game of chicken, and his ride was bigger and heavier than mine. On top of that, he was a supernatural being, and I was just a guy.
But I’d played this scary game before. If I was lucky, he hadn’t, and according to Murk, he could die here in dreamland, even if it wasn’t likely. Put it all together, and I was betting it meant he’d flinch.
I’d just about decided I was going to lose that bet when he finally jerked the steering wheel. He hurtled past the T-bird close enough to shear the rearview mirror off. And do the same to Red’s head if he hadn’t jerked himself back inside.
I braked and checked the other rearview mirror. The Humvee was spinning. “Flip over, you son of a bitch!” I said.