She looked at her surroundings for some sign of life. The emptiness of interior Florida threatened her, endless acres of greasy-green palmetto broken by patches of saw grass. Here and there reared a lonely, twisted pine tree or desolate, heat-blasted cypress in funereal shrouds of gray Spanish moss. The narrow state road was a vacant needle point in the grimly darkening distance, not a light in sight.
Marilyn drew a breath, clinging to calm. Please, she thought, be a pair of harmless kooks getting bored with the game, ready to break it off...
A college junior, Marilyn had worked most of the summer in her father’s modest real estate and insurance company. Five days ago, his hearty, benign presence had loomed beside her desk.
“You’re fired,” he’d said, grinning. “Take that house guest invitation from your classmate in Sarasota. Go and get your water skis wet before you have to go back to school.”
It had been a dreamy time, with an assortment of healthy young males vying for the attention of a glowing, lovely raven-haired girl with large, dark eyes and a sense of fun and humor.
Marilyn had stretched out the final day with the gang on the beach, her packed bags stowed in her car. Shouted good-byes, an impromptu snake dance, promises of a reunion when the new semester opened in Gainesville had marked her departure.
She hadn’t noticed the disappearance of the two shaggy youths who had loitered some distance away and watched the beach party disdainfully. She’d seen them again briefly in the parking area, lean, tanned, tawny-maned as young lions, their bell-bottoms garish splashes of color below open-fronted shirts. They’d lounged beside the zebra-striped rod. The taller had tossed a blue pill in the air, like a peanut, and dropped his head back to catch it in his open mouth. The action had caused an uncomfortable squirm of distaste in Marilyn. She’d got in her car and quickly driven away. By taking the short-cut on the state road she could be in her small home town in north-central Florida and having dinner with Mom and Dad in less than two hours.
With a sudden whine of racing cams and squeal of rubber, the hot rod was a yellow-black blur swinging out and roaring past. It snarled its twin chrome exhausts at her, catapulting half a mile ahead in a matter of seconds.
Marilyn drew her first deep breath since the rod had revealed itself a few miles back. They’d been very clever and deceptive following her through city traffic and deciding which road she would take. Now they had lost interest, and her fears—
She broke the thought with a gasp. In a grayish cloud from smoking tires the rod had slammed to a stop, reversed. It was a returning projectile.
Drenched with icy feeling, Marilyn saw the driver looking back over his shoulder as he steered. His companion was on his knees in the seat, facing rearward, half crouched on the turtleback of the open-topped rod. He seemed to be yowling something in wild excitement.
“Crazy pillheads... goofballs...” Marilyn choked. She twisted the wheel, taking to the outside lane, giving the rod room. In the rearview mirror she saw it again screech to a stop, almost lifting the front wheels from the rough, graveled macadam.
She mashed the gas to the floor, gaining a bare quarter-mile lead while the rod was meshed into forward gear.
Spidery prickles swept over Marilyn as she heard it coming, a high keening in the turgid silence. Her thoughts tumbled desperately. Can’t outrun them... Narrow road... Tricky, sandy shoulders... Don’t give them room!
Her heart matched the laboring of the two-door’s engine as it hurtled along the very middle of the road. She watched the intermittent white lines come slashing at the center of the windshield.
The rod rocked from one side to the other, the driver not quite taking the chance of trying to pass with two wheels on the shoulder.
An image of coiled tension, Marilyn flicked a glance in the rearview as the rod beeped a horn that played a raucous how-dry-I-am.
The highway was surging at her with terrifying speed, but she kept those center-line marks streaking under the hood.
Then a hard thump and shattering of broken glass on the roof jarred the sedan. In the small mirror, Marilyn glimpsed the other car close on her rear bumper. The driver’s companion was standing crouched, holding the top edge of the windshield, drawing his arm back to throw another empty beer bottle.
A wave of fear left Marilyn feeling faint at the thought of mangled wreckage, bloody human forms.
She shivered, fighting the faintness. Ahead, the road made a long bend through a lovely area of banyan trees and vine-trellised cabbage palms, and fifty yards to the left of the highway in the shady clearing stood one of those out-of-the-way country stores. It was an ugly, unpainted, rambling wooden building with a long ramshackle porch and rusty tin roof, but a dim light glowed from one of the dusty windows, warmly beautiful to Marilyn.
She did nothing to telegraph her intention to the other driver. When she was almost abreast of the store, she slammed down the brake and pulled the steering wheel over hard.
The sedan pitched and slewed in a sickening half-spin. She fed gas, and the tires took hold. The building and lacy banyan trees swam at Marilyn. She mashed the brake pedal and the sedan slithered to a stop in a shower of sand, dust, and dead pine needles.
She was out of the car before it stopped rocking. From the highway came the sounds of screaming rubber, the rise and fall of an angry engine, the crash of changing gears.
Marilyn raced across the gritty planking of the gallery and threw herself against the front door. The latch was an old-fashioned metal lever which rattled as she depressed it. The door yielded perhaps half an inch. She shook it and banged on it with her fist.
“Please... whoever’s in there... open up!”
Her efforts created sepulchral echoes. She drew back a little. The iron hasp and heavy padlock securing the door loomed in her vision.
A soft whimper fell from Marilyn’s lips. She slipped a glance over her shoulder. The zebra-stripe had skidded to rest near her sedan. Both youths had got out, a little hesitantly at first.
Marilyn was chilled to inaction for a moment. Then she forced herself to move. A glance through the iron-barred window beside the stout door revealed a gloomy interior of shelves cluttered with a few canned goods, a plank counter bearing a small glass showcase, a table near the rear stacked with work clothing. There was no movement, no sign of life. A single small naked bulb dangled over the rear counter, a night light, Marilyn realized dimly, required by the county sheriffs department.
Her cheek pressed against the rough planking, her nails dug in as voices rose behind her.
“The babe has found an empty pad, Rajah.”
“How about that, Zeno?”
Footsteps softly crushed across the blanket of dry pine needles on the yard, voices in the dusk...
“She sure turns me on, Rajah.”
“From the sec I glom her on the beach, Zeno.”
Marilyn broke free of her paralysis, peeling away from the wall and dashing toward the end of the porch.
“We got a hunt, Rajah.”
“My bag, Zeno!”
Marilyn jumped from the open end of the porch, half stumbled, darted toward the rear corner of the building.
She heard them yelling instructions to each other. They were splitting up.
Beyond the store, the landscape was indistinct in the twilight pall but she had an impression of swampiness, tall grasses, and a tangle of trees in the distance. Her running feet were renewed with faint hope.
She angled away from the one who seemed nearer. She could hear his running feet directly behind her. Then she saw the shadow of the other one, flowing across the clearing to cut her off.