Transfixed on the accident, imagining poor Sam behind the wheel, Rebecca flinched in surprise when Paul slammed on the brakes and swerved toward the shoulder.
Then she registered the grating noise of a second collision.
Ahead of them, the truck had swerved to ram Frank Atkins’ Blazer. The big rig’s front bumper clipped the Chevy’s rear end as Frank tried to veer around it. The SUV leapt away from the crash like a cat with a broken tail, its rear bumper torn askew. Its wheels skipped off the asphalt, and the whole vehicle almost rolled before skidding onto the grassy divider.
Now nothing stood between Paul’s sport utility and the massive truck except a scant portion of open road that all but vanished in a second. Rebecca’s cry finally escaped her when Paul swung around the truck’s mangled front bumper, aware they were still too close to escape from danger. Less than halfway past the rig’s cab, the two vehicles scraped together with a squawk of colliding metal. The unmovable mechanical monster edged into them on the left, forcing the Expedition to rise up on its two right tires, off the highway’s shoulder.
The SUV toppled and rolled into the ditch.
The airbags activated.
Rebecca screamed and the night spun around them, the sky once again afire with bolts of lightning.
Then all went silent, vanishing into the darkness of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 50
Tim didn’t even possess a driver’s license, let alone have the skill to manage a car in an out-of-control, high-speed slide. He had no idea how much brake pressure to apply, or which way he should turn the wheel in order to stop them from going into a spin. Adding to his predicament, the car had lost all power: no lights, no power steering, no anti-lock brakes. But against all odds, the Mercedes stayed on the road and slid to a halt about two hundred feet from where its unwavering route had first began to falter, its front end now facing the way they had come.
At first, no one spoke. Everybody seemed too focused on the fact that they’d survived, or on the pileup of vehicles they’d left in their wake. Cars in the eastbound lane screeched to a stop adjacent the accident scene, their taillights burning red. Tim gaped at the sight, finding the semi truck they’d passed only a moment earlier now angled diagonally across the road.
Thunder trembled in the air.
The sound brought to Tim’s mind the image of multiple lightning bolts that had striped the sky just seconds ago. And that memory sparked the recollection of intense light that had flown from the Mercedes at the exact moment it lost control.
It’s gone. The creature’s gone; that’s why we spun out. Just like it jumped into my jacket, it must have jumped out of the car.
He began fumbling for the door locks, about to voice his suggestion that they all flee the vehicle while they had the chance, when he noticed Mallory. She’d doubled over in her seat, hunched like a limp rag doll. She clutched her chest, moaning. Enraptured with the prospect of escape, he hadn’t stopped to think of how the car’s careening movements must have affected her chest wound.
“Mallory, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I didn’t know what else to do.”
She issued a pathetic weeping noise that made Tim tremble with worry. He reached out to her, his hand hovering for a moment before touching down on her back. “I’m going to get you to safety,” he whispered. “I—”
“Don’t touch her,” a demonic voice boomed from the car’s stereo speakers. Each word crackled and popped, laced by sharp electronic squeals and hissing static.
With the crack of a whip, the shoulder belt shot out from behind him, arced across his chest, and locked into place. The strap drew taut and yanked him backward.
Tim howled in pain.
Ensnared, with both arms restrained, he had no other option but to watch while Mallory’s safety belt lunged around her, pulling her upright. From behind, he could hear Becky, Adam, and Lisa also being seized.
The car came back to life.
Once again running in submission to their invisible captor, the Mercedes made a quick U-turn and resumed their terrifying journey westward.
Flickering blasts of lightning mimicked the barrage of thoughts that flashed through Frank’s mind.
Behind him, the rampaging eighteen-wheeler had come to a noisy standstill. The harsh keen of its air brakes still rang in his ears. But the damage had already been done. Seconds before, Frank and Melissa had swiveled in their seats and watched Paul Wiesses’ veering Ford vanish from sight behind the semi’s towering cab, its outcome still uncertain. The truck’s massive trailer continued to block their view. Worse yet, roughly thirty yards to the west, Officer Hale’s ravaged patrol car had settled into a deathlike repose halfway off the road. Its back end lay in the ditch while its crumpled front end pointed skyward—an optical illusion created by the monstrous amount of damage the vehicle had sustained. Indeed, from what Frank could tell so far, he and Melissa appeared to have been the most fortunate of the three. Though the Blazer had taken some damage and stalled out from their encounter, the two of them had come through the ordeal unharmed.
He looked to the Mercedes.
Removed from the inexplicable episode, it had skidded to a turbulent halt several hundred feet away and now faced them with darkened headlights.
No one got out. Nobody ran.
What was he to do? Should he stay and help—surely injuries had been dealt—or try to get to the teenagers trapped within the possessed auto?
Melissa had already made up her mind; she prompted him to check on the patrol officer while she went to find Paul Wiess’s Ford.
“There no time for that,” Frank said. “We have to get the kids before—”
The Mercedes’s headlights blazed white, and the car swung around.
“We can’t leave the others,” Melissa said, looking to the crash.
Frank seized her arm when she went for her door. “We can’t let it get to Kane’s body,” he said, restarting the Blazer. “If it reaches the cemetery, there’s no telling what we’ll be up against. We have to follow them.”
He didn’t wait for Melissa to protest and immediately gunned the engine.
They lurched in place, then sank to the right. The whole vehicle shuddered with the roaring motor, but the Chevy refused to move.
Melissa opened her door and checked left and right, her sights settling on something behind them. “It’s no use, Frank, your rear axle’s broken. We’re not going anywhere.”
Frank let off the gas, watching the gleaming black Mercedes speed away, fading into the tempestuous night.
The nightmare ride continued.
Tim closed his eyes and forced himself to block out the hysterical screams of the others, focusing all his concentration on how to escape their traveling mechanical prison.
He exhaled a long slow breath, relaxing his muscles. In his mind, he saw his body narrow and pull inward, felt the excruciating grip of the Nylon strap around him loosen.
Maintaining his calm control, Tim wedged his right hand between his hip and the seatbelt, striving to reach the lock release. He didn’t know if the stunt would work, but he had to try something, had to keep fighting. There was no telling where they were being taken, but he had the feeling once they got there the situation would only worsen.
At the intersection of Highway 55 and County Road 19, the speeding Mercedes jarred Tim’s eyes open when it sideswiped an old pickup truck and cornered right to race northward.
The car hadn’t traveled far before a curving line of bright red lights became visible farther ahead, on the street’s left-hand shoulder—a series of road flares glowing in the darkness, outlining the parameter of a stopped vehicle.