Cold Fire

Sick, stricken by an almost disabling sense of responsibility for the stranger's death, Jim stepped back from the open door of the station wagon and stood for a moment on the black pavement under the searing white sun. If he had driven faster, harder, he might have been there a few minutes sooner, might have stopped what had happened.

A sound of anguish, low and primitive, rose from him. It was almost a whisper at first, swelling into a soft moan. But when he turned away from the dead man and looked down the highway toward the dwindling motor home, his cry quickly became a shout of rage because suddenly he knew what had happened.

And he knew what he must do.

In the Camaro again, he filled the roomy pockets of his blue slacks with shotgun shells. Already loaded, the short-barreled pump-action 12-gauge was within easy reach.

He checked the rearview mirror. On this Monday morning, the highway was empty. No help in sight. It was all up to him.

Far ahead, the motor home vanished through shimmering thermal rents like undulant curtains of glass beads.

He threw the Camaro in gear. The tires spun in place for an instant then skidded on the clutching sun-softened blacktop, issuing a scream echoed eerily across the desert vastness. Jim wondered how the stranger and his family had screamed when he'd been shot point-blank in the car Abruptly the Camaro overcame all resistance and rocketed forward.

Tramping the accelerator to the floor, he squinted ahead to catch a glimpse of his quarry. In seconds the curtains of heat parted, and the vehicle hove into view as if it were a sailing ship somehow making way through that dry sea.

The motor home couldn't compete with the Camaro, and Jim was riding its bumper. It was an old thirty-foot Road king that had seen a lot of miles. Its white aluminum siding was caked with dirt, dented, and spotted. The windows were covered with yellow curtains that had no doubt once been white. It looked like nothing more than the home of a couple of travel-loving retirees living on dwindling Social Security and unable to maintain it with the pride they had when it had been new Except for the motorcycle. A Harley was chained to a roof rack to the left of the roof service ladder on the back of the motor home. It wasn't the biggest bike made, but it was powerful-and not something a pair of retirees typically tooled around on.

In spite of the cycle, nothing about the Road king was suspicious.

In its wake Jim Ironheart was overcome by a sense of evil so strong there might as well have been a black tide washing over him with all the power of the sea behind it. He gagged as if he could smell the corruption of them to whom the motor home belonged.

At first he hesitated, afraid that any action he took might jeopardize woman and child who were evidently being held captive. But the worse thing he could do was delay. The longer the mother and daughter were in the hands of the people in the Road king, the less chance they had of coming out of it alive.

He swung into the passing lane. He intended to get a couple of miles ahead of them and block the road with his car.

In the Road king's rearview mirror, the driver must have seen Jim stop at the station wagon and get out to inspect it. Now he let the Camaro pull almost even before swinging the motor home sharply left, bashing it against the side of the car.

Metal shrieked against metal, and the car shuddered.

The steering wheel spun in Jim's hands. He fought for control and kept The Road king pulled away, then swerved back and bashed him again, ÿ driving him off the blacktop and onto the unpaved shoulder.

For a few hundred yards they rattled forward at high speed in those positions: the Road king in the wrong lane, risking a head-on collision with any oncoming traffic that might be masked by the curtains of heat and sun glare; the Camaro casting up huge clouds of dust behind it, speeding precariously along the brink of the two-foot drop-off that separated the raised roadbed from the desert floor beyond.

Even a light touch of the brakes might pull the car a few inches to the left, causing it to drop and roll. He only dared to ease up on the accelerator and let his speed fall gradually.

The driver of the Road king reacted, reducing his speed, too, hanging at Jim's side. Then the motor home moved inexorably to the left, inch by inch, edging relentlessly onto the dirt shoulder.

Being much the smaller and less powerful of the two vehicles, the Camaro could not resist the pressure. It was pushed leftward in spite of Jim's efforts to hold it steady. The front tire found the brink first, and that corner of the car dropped. He hit the brakes; it didn't matter any more.

Even as he jammed his foot down on the pedal, the rear wheel followed the front end into empty space. The Camaro tipped and rolled to the left.