Boys Life

best to rip the tires off. I pulled myself up on the seat again, my head still ringing, and Dr. Lezander yelled, “You little shit!” and grabbed the back of my coat, but he had to use two hands on the wheel so he released me.
    I looked back at my father’s pickup, twenty feet of sleet and air between Dad’s front bumper and Dr. Lezander’s rear bumper. We hurtled out of the series of tight curves, and I held on to the seat as Dr. Lezander accelerated, widening the distance between vehicles. I heard a pop and twisted my head in time to see Dr. Lezander reaching into the glove compartment, which he’d knocked open with a blow of his fist. His hand emerged gripping a snub-nosed.38 pistol. He threw that arm back, almost cuffing me in the head with the gun’s barrel before I ducked, and he fired twice without aiming. The rear windshield exploded, the glass fragments flying toward Dad’s pickup like pieces of jagged ice. I saw the pickup swerve and almost go off the road, its rear end wildly fishtailing, but then Dad got it righted. As Dr. Lezander’s gun hand passed over my head again, I reached up and grabbed his wrist, pinning that gun against the seat with all my strength. The Buick began to slew from side to side as he grappled with the wheel and with me at the same time, but I hung on.
    The gun went off in front of my face, the bullet passing through the seat and out the door with a metallic clang. The sound and heat of it going off so close to me sent a shock and shiver through my bones, and I guess I let go but I don’t remember and then Dr. Lezander hit me a glancing blow on the right shoulder with that gun barrel. It was perhaps the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life; it filled me up and overspilled from my mouth in a cry. Without the padding of my coat in the way, my shoulder would’ve surely been broken. As it was, I grabbed at it and fell back against the passenger-side door, my face contorted with pain and my right arm all but dead. I saw, as if locked in a cyclic dream akin to that in Invaders from Mars, that we were about to pass the dark plain of Saxon’s Lake. And then Dr. Lezander jammed on the brake with his bare foot, and as the Buick slowed and Dad’s pickup gained ground, the doctor threw his arm back again and this time he looked over his shoulder to aim. His face was slickly wet in the wash of the lights, his teeth clenched, his eyes those of the savage, hunted animal. He fired, and the windshield of Dad’s truck suddenly had a fist-sized hole in it. I saw his finger tighten on the trigger, and I wanted to fight him with all the want in my body, but that pain in my shoulder had me whipped.
    Something huge and dark and fast burst out of the woods on the other side of the road, near where I’d seen Mrs. Lezander standing that morning in March.
    It was on us before Dr. Lezander even saw it, and it was headed straight for his door.
    At the same instant, the gun went off and the beast from the lost world collided with us.
    This, truly, was a noise like the end of the world.
    Over gunshot and Lezanderscream and crash of glass and folding metal, the Buick was knocked up onto the two tires on my side and they shrieked like constipated banshees as the entire car was shoved off the pavement. Dr. Lezander, his door buckled in as if kicked by God, came tumbling into me across the seat and my breath burst out, my ribs in danger of snapping. I heard a snort and grunt: the triceratops, protecting his territory, was pushing the rival dinosaur off Route Ten. Dr. Lezander’s face was pressed up against mine, his weight crushing me, and I smelled his fear like green onions. Then he screamed again and I think I screamed, too, because suddenly the car was falling.
    We hit with a bone-jarring jolt and splash.
    Dark water seethed up into the floorboard. We had just been received by Saxon’s Lake.
    The Buick’s steaming hood was rising. As it did, water began to surge over the slope of the trunk and pour through the shattered glass. The window on Dr. Lezander’s side was broken as well, but the water hadn’t yet reached it. He was lying on top of me, the gun lost. His eyes were glassy, blood oozing from his mouth where he must’ve bitten his lip or tongue. His left arm, the arm which had taken the brunt of the beast’s power, was lying at a weird crooked angle. I saw the wet glistening of white bone protruding from the wrist in the red silk sleeve.
    The lake was coming in faster now, air bubbles