By the light of the moon

gaps in traffic as expertly as
an eagle-eyed tailor speed-threading a long series of needles.
    As the speedometer indicated 92, his fear of crashing into
another vehicle influenced him less than did the pure animal need
to move . When it eased past 93, he grew concerned about the
waves of vibrations that rattled the chassis, but not concerned
enough to be able to cut their speed.
    This urgent necessity, this sense that he must drive hard or
die, exceeded mere compulsion, possessed him so fully as to be no
less than an obsession, until with every rushing breath he heard
within his mind the dire admonition You're running out of
time , and heard with every racing heartbeat the exhortation Faster!
    Encountering chuckholes, cracks, and patches in the pavement,
the tires stuttered as hard as rapping hammers, and Dylan worried
about the consequences of a blowout at this lightning pace, but he
pressed the Expedition to 96, taxing the shock absorbers, torturing
the springs, onward to 97, with engine screaming and wind of their
own manufacture shrieking at the windows, to 98, between bracketing
big rigs, around a sleek Jaguar with a cruise-missile whoosh that elicited a disapproving blast of the sports car's horn, to
99.
    He remained aware of Jilly beside him, still braced for disaster
with her sneakered feet against the dashboard, frantically
struggling to shrug into her safety harness and to buckle herself
to the seat. Peripheral vision suggested and a glance confirmed
that she'd fallen into a state of unadulterated terror. He supposed
she was saying something to him, shouting objections to his
heedless, headlong westward rush. In fact he could hear her voice,
which had grown hollow and low and distorted, as though hers was a
taped recitation being replayed at the wrong speed; he couldn't
understand a word.
    Before the speedometer registered 100, to an even greater degree
when it read 101, each irregularity in the pavement translated with
magnified effect to the steering wheel, which tried to spin out of
his grip. Fortunately, the sudden sweat that earlier slathered his
face and moistened his palms had already dried in the steady blast
of air conditioning. He maintained control at 102, at 103, but
though he held the wheel, he couldn't lift his foot from the
accelerator.
    Greater velocity didn't at all diminish his overwhelming need
for speed, and indeed, the faster the Expedition went, the greater
Dylan's sense of urgency grew, and the more compelled he became to
push the vehicle still harder, more relentlessly. He felt drawn by
black-hole gravity, across the event horizon, beyond which neither
matter nor radiation could escape the power of a crushing vortex. Move, move, MOVE became his mantra, movement with no
deducible purpose, movement for movement's sake, westward,
westward, on the trail of the long-lost sun and the still visible
but receding moon.
    Perhaps this frenzied plunge toward an unknown yet desperately
needed object was how Frankenstein's unluckiest injected subjects
felt in the frantic moments before their plummeting IQs dropped
them through a trapdoor to the land of imbecility, idiocy.
    If it doesn't obliterate your personality or totally disrupt
your capacity for linear thinking, or reduce your IQ by sixty
points...
    Ahead loomed the town that they had departed with such haste a
short while ago, when they'd feared nothing more than the
appearance of a train of black Suburbans in the rearview mirror,
gleaming like Death's gondolas given wheels.
    Dylan expected to experience an irresistible pull toward the
freeway exit near the motel where Jilly's Coupe DeVille had served
as their tormentor's flaming casket. A glance at the instrument
panel – 104 miles per hour – caused his briskly
trotting heart to break into a gallop. He couldn't navigate that
curving ramp at half their current velocity. He prayed that if
compelled to leave the interstate, he would overcome this rage for
speed in time to avoid crashing through the guardrail and tumbling
to the bottom of an embankment in a test-to-destruction of Ford
Motor Company's safety engineering.
    As they approached the dreaded exit, he tensed, but he felt no
strange attraction for it. They shot past the off-ramp as though
they were a stunt team gearing up toward a jump over sixteen parked
buses.
    South of the interstate, among the bright clutter of
road-service enterprises, the motel sign glowed with an ominous
quality. The red neon inspired thoughts of blood, fire;