The gray Cadillac floated down the hill toward the flat stretch, doing fifty or maybe a little more. The brake lights never went on. Not even at the end. They never saw it; never had so much as the slightest idea.
What happened was this: all at once the Cadillac seemed to be driving through the road instead of on it. This illusion was so persuasive that I felt a moment of confused vertigo even though I had created the illusion myself. Dolan’s Cadillac was hubcap-deep in Route 71, and then it was up to the door-panels. A bizarre thought occurred to me: if the GM company made luxury submarines, this is what they would look like going down.
I could hear thin snapping sounds as the struts supporting the canvas broke under the car. I could hear the sound of canvas rippling and ripping.
All of it happened in only three seconds, but they are three seconds I will remember my whole life.
I had an impression of the Cadillac now running with only its roof and the top two or three inches of the polarized windows visible, and then there was a big toneless thud and the sound of breaking glass and crimping metal. A large puff of dust rose in the air and the wind pulled it apart.
I wanted to go down there – wanted to go down right away – but first I had to put the detour to rights. I didn’t want us to be interrupted.
I got out of the van, went around to the back, and pulled the tire back out. I put it on the wheel and tightened the six lug-nuts as fast as I could, using only my fingers. I could do a more thorough job later; in the meantime I only needed to back the van down to the place where the detour diverged from Highway 71. I jacked the bumper down and hurried back to the cab of the van at a limping run. I paused there for a moment, listening, head cocked.
I could hear the wind.
And from the long, rectangular hole in the road, the sound of someone shouting… or maybe screaming.
Grinning, I got back in the van.
I backed rapidly down the road, the van swinging drunkenly back and forth. I got out, opened the back doors, and put out the traffic cones again. I kept my ear cocked for approaching traffic, but the wind had gotten too strong to make that very worthwhile. By the time I heard an approaching vehicle, it would be practically on top of me.
I started down into the ditch, tripped, landed on my prat, and slid to the bottom. I pushed away the sand-colored piece of canvas and dragged the big detour sign up to the top. I set it up again, then went back to the van and slammed the rear doors closed. I had no intention of trying to set the arrow sign up again.
I drove back over the next rise, stopped in my old place just out of sight of the detour, got out, and tightened the lug-nuts on the van’s back wheel, using the tire-iron this time. The shouting had stopped, but there was no longer any question about the screaming; it was much louder.
I took my time tightening the nuts. I wasn’t worried that they were going to get out and either attack me or run away into the desert, because they couldn’t get out. The trap had worked perfectly. The Cadillac was now sitting squarely on its wheels at the far end of the excavation, with less than four inches of clearance on either side. The three men inside couldn’t open their doors wide enough to do more than stick out a foot, if that. They couldn’t open their windows because they were power-drive and the battery would be so much squashed plastic and metal and acid somewhere in the wreck of the engine.
The driver and the man in the shotgun seat might also be squashed in the wreckage, but this did not concern me; I knew that someone was still alive in there, just as I knew that Dolan always rode in back and wore his seatbelt as good citizens are supposed to do.