along a street but across the river Styx, into the land of the dead.
A black wave of despair washed over Marty, but his heart began to pound
even more fiercely than before, and he found a strength he had not
imagined he possessed. He ran harder than ever, splashing through
puddles, feet hammering the blacktop with what seemed like jackhammer
force, pumping his arms, head tucked down, eyes always on the prize.
At the end of the block the Buick slowed. It came to a full stop at the
intersection.
Gasping, Marty caught up with it. Back bumper. Rear fender.
Rear door.
Emily’s face was at the window.
She was looking up at him now.
His senses were as heightened by terror as if he’d taken mind altering
drugs. He was hallucinogenically aware of every detail of the scores of
raindrops on the glass between himself and his daughter their curved and
pendulous shapes, the bleak whorls and shards of light from the street
lamps reflected in their quivering surfaces–as if each of those
droplets was equal in importance to anything else in the world.
Likewise, he saw the interior of the car not just as a dark blur but as
an elaborate dimensional tapestry of shadows in countless hues of gray,
blue, black. Beyond Emily’s pale face, in that intricate needlework of
dusk and gloom, was another figure, a second child, Charlotte.
Just as he drew even with the driver’s door and reached for the handle,
the car began to move again. It swung right, through the intersection.
Marty slipped and almost fell on the wet pavement. He regained his
balance, held on to the gun, and scrambled after the Buick as it turned
into the cross street.
The driver was looking to the right, unaware of Marty on his left.
He was wearing a black coat. Only the back of his head was visible
through the rain-streaked side window. His hair was darker than Vic
Delorio’s.
Because the car was still moving slowly as it completed the turn, MR.
Marty caught up with it again, breathing strenuously, ears filled with
the hard drumming of his heart. He didn’t reach for the door this time
because maybe it was locked. He would squander the element of surprise
by trying it. Raising the Beretta, he aimed at the back of the man’s
head.
The kids could be hit by a ricochet, flying glass. He had to risk it.
Otherwise, they were lost forever.
Though there was little chance the driver was Vic Delorio or another
innocent person, Marty couldn’t squeeze the trigger without knowing for
sure at whom he was shooting. Still moving, paralleling the car, he
shouted, “Hey, hey, hey!”
The driver snapped his head around to look out the side window.
Along the barrel of the pistol, Marty stared at his own face.
The Other. The glass before him seemed like a cursed mirror in which
his reflection was not confined to precise mimicry but was free to
reveal more vicious emotions than anyone would ever want the world to
see, as it confronted him, that looking-glass face clenched with hatred
and fury.
Startled, the driver had let his foot slip off the accelerator.
For the briefest moment the Buick slowed.
No more than four feet from the window, Marty squeezed off two rounds.
In the instant before the resonant thunder of the first gunshot echoed
off an infinitude of wet surfaces across the rainswept night, he thought
he saw the driver drop to the side and down, still holding the steering
wheel with at least one hand but trying to get his head out of the line
of fire. The muzzle flashed, and shattering glass obscured the
bastard’s fate.
Even as the second shot boomed close after the first, the car tires
shrieked. The Buick bolted forward, as a mean horse might explode out
of a rodeo gate.
He ran after the car, but it blew away from him with a backwash of
turbulent air and exhaust fumes. The look-alike was still alive,
perhaps injured but still alive and determined to escape.
Rocketing eastward, the Buick began to angle onto the wrong side of the
two-lane street. On that trajectory, it was going to jump the curb and