Christine

“Please,” he croaked. The headlights were blinding, turning the blood dripping down his cheek and from the sides of his mouth to an insectile black. “Please… I… I’ll tell him I’m sorry… I’ll crawl to him on my fucking hands and knees if that’s what you want… only please… pl—

The engine screamed. Christine leaped at him like old doom from a dark age. Buddy howled and lunged aside again, and this time the bumper struck his shin and broke his other leg and threw him toward the embankment at the side of the park road. He hit and sprawled like a loose bag of grain.

Christine wheeled back toward him, but Buddy bad seen a chance, one thin chance. He began to scramble wildly up the embankment, digging into the snow with bare hands from which the feeling had already departed, digging with his feet, ignoring the tremendous clouts of pain from his shattered legs. Now his breath came in little screams as the headlights grew brighter and the engine louder; every clod of snow threw its own jagged black shadow and he could feel it, he could feel it behind him like some horrible man-eating tiger—

There was a crunch and jangle of metal, and Buddy cried out as one of his feet was driven into the snow by Christine’s bumper. He yanked it out of the snow, leaving his shoe wedged deep.

Lying, gibbering, crying, Buddy gained the top of the bank thrown up by some National Guard Motor Pool plough days ago, tottered on the edge of balance there, pinwheeled his arms, and barely kept from rolling back down.

He turned to face Christine, The Plymouth had reversed across the road and now came forward again, rear tyres spinning, digging at the snow. It crashed into the bank a foot below where Buddy was perched, making him sway and sending down a further avalanche of snow. The hit crimped her hood in further, but Buddy was not touched. She reversed again through a mist of churned-up snow, engine now seeming to howl with frustrated anger.

Buddy screamed in triumph and shook his middle finger at her. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” A spray of mixed blood and spittle flew from his lips. With each gasping breath, the pain seemed to sink deeper into his left side, numbing and paralyzing.

Christine roared forward and slammed into the embankment again.

This time a large section of the bank, loosened in the car’s first charge, came sliding down, burying Christine’s wrinkled, snarling snout, and Buddy almost came down with it. He saved himself only by skittering backward rapidly, sliding on his butt and pulling himself with hands that were clawed into the snow like bloody grappling hooks. His legs were in agony now, and he flopped over on his side, gasping like a beached fish.

Christine came again.

“Get outta here!” Buddy cried. “Get outta here, you crazy WHORE!”

She slammed into the embankment again, and this time enough snow fell to douse her hood to the windscreen. The wipers came on and began to arc back and forth, flicking melting snow away.

She reversed again, and Buddy saw that one more hit would sent him cascading down onto Christine’s hood with the snow. He let himself fall over backward and went rolling down the far side of the embankment, screaming each time his broken ribs bumped the ground. He came to rest in loose powder, staring up at black sky, the cold stars. His teeth began to click helplessly together. Shudders raced through his body.

Christine didn’t come again, but he could hear the soft mutter of her engine. Not coming, but waiting.

He glanced at the snowbank bulking against the sky. Beyond it, the glow of the burning Camaro had begun to wane a bit. How long had it been since the crash? He didn’t know. Would anyone see the fire and come to rescue him? He didn’t know that either.

Buddy became aware of two things simultaneously: that blood was flowing from his mouth—flowing at a frightening rate—and that he was very cold. He would freeze to death if someone didn’t come.

Frightened all over again, he struggled and thrashed his way into a sitting position. He was trying to decide if he could worm his way back up and watch the car—it was worse, not being able to see it—when he glanced up at the embankment again. His breath snagged and stopped.

A man was standing there.

Only it wasn’t a man at all; it was a corpse. A rotting corpse in green pants. It was shirtless, but a back brace splotched with grey mould was cinched around its blackening torso. White bone gleamed through the skin stretched across its face.

“That’s it for you, you shitter,” this starlit apparition whispered.