Shattered

cardboard carton.
        At ninety miles an hour, the car began to shake badly, making a noise like stones rolling in the bottom of a washtub. The steering wheel vibrated furiously in Doyle's hands. And then, worse, it started to spin uselessly back and forth.
        Doyle eased up on the accelerator, although that was the last thing he wanted to do.
        The needle fell. At eighty-five, the ride was smooth and the car was under control.
        “Something's broken!” Colin shouted over the roar of the wind and the two competing engines.
        “No. it must have been a section of bad road.”
        Though he knew that their luck was not running that way, Alex hoped to God that what he had told the boy was true. Let it be true. Let it be nothing more serious than a piece of bad road, a section of rain-tunneled pavement. Don't let anything happen to the Thunderbird. It must not break down. They must not be stranded out here in the sand and the salt flats, not alone, not so far from help, and not with the madman as their only company.
        He tried the accelerator.
        The car picked up, hit ninety…
        And the violent shudder returned, as if the frame and body were no longer firmly joined and were slamming into each other, parting, slamming together again. This time, as he lost control of the wheel, he felt the horrible quaking in the gas pedal as well. Their top speed was going to be eighty-five. Otherwise, the car would fall apart. Therefore, they were not going to outpace the Chevrolet.
        The driver of the van seemed to realize this the same moment that Doyle did. He tooted his horn, then pulled away from them, out in front where he had command of the highway.
        “What are we going to do?” Colin asked.
        “Wait and see what he does.”
        When the Automover was approximately a thousand yards out ahead of them, wrapped up in the deceptively undulating streams of hot air that were rising off the superheated pavement, it slowed down to a steady eighty-five and maintained a consistent half-mile lead.
        A mile passed.
        On both sides of the road, the land became even whiter, as if it had been bleached by the raw sun. It was punctuated only by rare, ugly clumps of struggling scrub and by occasional dark rock teeth that were all stained and rotted by the desert wind and heat.
        Two miles.
        The van was still out there, taunting them.
        The dashboard vents spewed crisp, cold air, and still the interior of the Thunderbird was too warm and close. Alex felt perspiration bead on his forehead. His shirt was sticking to him.
        Three miles.
        “Maybe we should stop,” Colin said.
        “And turn back?”
        “Maybe.”
        “He would see us,” Doyle said. “He would turn right around and follow - and before long, he'd be out in front of us again.”
        “Well…”
        “Let's wait and see what he does,” Doyle said again, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. He was aware that the boy needed an example of strength. “You want to get the map and see how far it is to the next town?
        Colin understood the significance of the question. He grabbed the map and opened it on his knees. It covered him like a quilt. Squinting through his Coke-bottle glasses, he found their last known position, estimated the distance they had come since then, and marked the spot with one finger. He located the nearest town, checked the key at the bottom of the map, then did some figuring in his head.
        “Well?” Doyle asked.
        “Sixty miles.”
        “You sure?
        “Positive.”
        “I see.”
        It was too damned far.
        Colin folded the map and put it away. He sat like a stone sculpture, staring at the back of the Chevrolet van.
        The highway crested a gentle slope, dropped away into a broad alkali basin. It looked like an ink line drawn across a clean sheet of typewriter paper. For miles and miles to the west, the road was empty. Nothing moved out there.
        This complete isolation was precisely what the driver of the van wanted. He braked hard, pulled the Chevrolet toward the right burm, then swung it around to the left in a broad loop. The van stopped, sideways in the road, blocking most of both lanes.
        Doyle tapped the brakes, then realized that there was no percentage in slowing down or stopping altogether. He put his foot on the accelerator again. “Here