Shattered

laughed.
        “It could happen,” Colin said.
        “Sure. And we could have four flats.”
        “And what would we do?”
        As Doyle started to tell him that they would get out of the car and walk, a horn blared behind them. It was loud and close and uncomfortably familiar. It was the van.
        

    Sixteen
        
        Before Alex could react properly, before the fear could well up and he could tramp down on the accelerator and rocket away from the Automover, the van swung into the left-hand lane and started to go around him, its strident horn still wailing. Far out ahead on the gray, heat-twisted road - clear to the high, rocky, multi-layered Capitol Reefs which stood miles away-there was not any eastbound traffic to get in the van's path.
        “You can't let him go around us!” Colin said.
        “I know.”
        If the bastard got out in front of them, he would be able to blockade the entire roadway. The cracked stone shoulders on both sides were too narrow and the sand beyond them too dry and soft and loose for the Thunderbird to leave the pavement and regain the lead once that was lost.
        Doyle put his foot down.
        The big car surged ahead.
        But the stranger in the van, though mad, was not stupid. He had been expecting that maneuver. He put speed on too, and at least for the moment, he was able to stay even with Doyle.
        Wind roared between the two parallel vehicles as they hurtled westward.
        “We'll outpace him,” Alex said.
        Colin did not respond.
        The slim speedometer needle climbed smoothly to eighty and then on up to eighty-five. Doyle glanced at it once. Tense and frightened, Colin watched it with real dread.
        The flat land whipped past them in a shimmering white blur of sand and heat and free-lying salt.
        And the Automover hung in beside them.
        “He can't keep up,” Alex said.
        Ninety. Ninety-five…
        Then, as they were rushing toward a hundred-miles-an-hour, with the wind whooping between them, the madman pulled his wheel to the right. Not much. Just a little bit. And only for an instant. The whole side of the Automover made light, brief contact with the full length of the Thunderbird.
        Sparks showered up and skittered like a fall of bright stars across the windshield in front of Doyle. Tortured sheet metal screamed and coughed and crumpled up on itself.
        The steering wheel was nearly torn out of Doyle's hand. He grappled with it, held on as the car lurched onto the stone shoulder, kicking up gravel that rattled noisily in the undercarriage. Their speed fell, and they began a slow sideways turn. Alex was certain that they were going to plow into the van, which was still alongside of them. But then the car began to right itself… He took them back onto the highway, touching the gas pedal when he would have preferred to go with the brakes.
        “You all right?” he asked Colin.
        The boy swallowed hard. “Yes.”
        “Better hold on, then. We're going to get the hell out of here,” he said as the Thunderbird gradually picked up the speed which it had lost, casting its pale shadow on the side of the Chevrolet.
        Doyle risked one quick glance away from the road, looked up at the van's side window, which was no more than three or four feet away. Despite the short distance between them, he could not see the other driver, not even his silhouette. The man was sitting up higher than Doyle, on the far side of the cab, and he was very well hidden by the yellow-white desert sunlight that played upon the window glass.
        Eighty miles an hour again, making up for lost time and for lost ground. And now on up to eighty-five, with the speedometer needle quivering slightly. it hesitated on the eighty-five, in fact; for a moment it looked as if it would stick there, and then it jerked and rose slowly.
        Alex watched the Chevrolet out of the corner of his eyes. When he first sensed it moving in to brush against them a second time, he would take the car into the stony burm and try to avoid another collision. They could not tolerate much more of that banging around. Though it was half again as expensive as the Automover van, the big luxury car would come apart much sooner and more completely than the Chevrolet. It would dissolve around them like a flimsy paper construction, roll over and over like a weightless model, and burn faster than a