Crow gave Newton a reassuring slap on the back. It was going to be a total bitch of a climb, and Crow didn’t think he had enough left to manage it. He was certain Newton didn’t. He turned and looked back, scanning the forest, listening for the sound of skittering insect feet. Their absence should have been reassuring, but strangely it wasn’t.
“We’ll have to try and rest along the way up,” he said, knowing it sounded lame. Newton just nodded, his eyes glistening in the darkness and he turned away. Crow was sure he was crying. He pulled tension on his rope and raised his leg to brace it on a snarl of root a foot above the forest floor, then with a sigh that spoke of his sadness, his fear, and his exhaustion, he began to climb. Sniffing back his tears, Newton followed.
Dark Hollow had defeated them.
Chapter 27
The sun was almost down and the first stars were igniting overhead as Mike sped on through the darkness, going away from town, riding with no specific purpose along the highway, seeking the loneliness of the farmlands. As he rode, the aches of his body and the aches of his soul seemed to fade as the War Machine devoured the miles. A rare few cars hummed along A-32 but the heaviest congestion, he knew, would have turned off onto College Road, which cut west between the Dead End Drive-In and the Haunted Hayride and then emptied onto the campus of Pinelands College. Overhead a single dark bird flapped lazily, easily keeping pace with him, and he and the bird soared along for nearly two miles, keeping perfect station with the other until they crested the hill that led to the sharpness of Shandy’s Curve. Mike slowed, not wanting to race around Shandy’s Curve again, not since his close encounter with Crow’s old Chevy two weeks ago. He reached the curve and coasted around it, the bird now circling overhead. Mike felt a strange chill as if the air around the curve was colder than along the rest of A-32. It was a moderately cool night anyway for the middle of October, but on the curve it felt like March.
Mike pedaled a little harder, wanting to be past the spot. He heard the night bird screech and he looked up to see it thrashing erratically, trying to change direction, fighting for control as if caught in a whirlwind. It squawked and dove down toward the forest leaving the road and the boy and the…
…
Mike grabbed the hand brakes and squeezed with all his strength, brake pads squealing. His tires stuttered for purchase along the pebbled surface of the road. The War Machine skidded to a smoking stop, stripes of black rubber burned onto the hardtop, and the momentum slewed him around so that Mike was sideways to the huge wrecker.
He froze there, turned to ice by the shock of it, at the impossibility of it, feeling his heart hammer in his chest, staring in total disbelief as the wrecker sat there, huge, incredibly massive, totally black, dominating the road. It was as if time itself had become frozen with shock. The world was totally still. Nothing moved, nothing dared make a sound. Mike lungs clutched tight, holding in his breath.
Though he knew that he had actually encountered this same wrecker two weeks ago, seeing it again was totally unreal. One encounter—okay, a drunk behind the wheel or an asshole playing chicken with some random kid—but this…this was a trap. Deliberate, calculated. It was here
Very slowly he began to walk the bike backward around the curve, hoping that in the darkness the driver hadn’t seen him, that maybe the trap was still poised, not yet sprung.
Then the lights of the wrecker flared on. Headlights, running lights, fog lights—all came on in a blinding luminous assault, driving white needles of pain into Mike’s eyes. He cried out, throwing his arm across his face; then there was a unspeakable roar as the wrecker’s powerful engine howled to life, rending the air with teeth of sound, clawing at the stillness with talons of pure noise. The driver gunned the engine once, twice…
Mike knew for sure that he was going to die.
