inhuman device, under his large hands.
He squinted at the wet pavement as he drove, tried to push back the rain
and the ghostly tendrils of fog.
A low, sleek car approached from the opposite direction, flashed past in
a violent spray of water. its four headlights were much too bright;
they sliced into Leland’s eyes like a quartet of knives and drew a
painful wound across his forehead.
Unconsciously he pulled the wheel hard to the right, away from the light
which so offended him. The van crunched onto the shoulder of the road,
nosed down, bounced in a rut, came up again with a prolonged shudder. in
the cargo hold, furniture shifted noisily. Suddenly, immediately ahead,
a waisthigh brown-brick wall loomed out of the night, stark and deadly,
Leland cried out and wheeled hard to the left.
The right front fender nicked the bricks. Then the Chevrolet jumped
back onto the pavement, sliding in the rainwater for a long, dangerous
moment before it finally, reluctantly came back under his control.
He reached the motel only because he encountered no other traffic. If
even one other car had passed him, he would have demolished the
Chevrolet and killed himself.
At the door of his room, rain beating against his back, he had trouble
inserting the key in the lock, and he cursed nearly loudly enough to
wake the other guests.
Inside, as he closed the door, the pain abruptly worsened, driving him
to his knees on the stained carpet. He was sure that he was dying.
But the new pain passed, and the agony became merely unbearable pain.
He went to the bed and almost lay down before he realized that he had to
get out of his clothes first. They were wet clear through. If he
passed the rest of the night in them, he would be ill in the morning . .
.
Slowly, with exaggerated movements, he undressed and dried himself on
the tufted bedspread. Even then, he was chilled to the bone.
Trembling, he got into bed and pulled the cover up to his chin. He gave
himself over to the unrelenting pain and tried to ride with it.
it lasted more than twice as long as usual. And when, well after dawn,
it was finally gone, the nightmares which always followed it were also
worse than they had ever been. The only lovely thing in that parade of
grisly images was Courtney. She kept popping up. Nude and beautiful.
Her full, round breasts and delightfully long legs were welcome relief
from the other visions . .
. Yet, each time that she did appear in the dreams, an imaginary
dream-Leland killed her with an imaginary knife. And the murder was,
without exception, curiously satisfying.
THURSDAY Fifteen Interstate 25 ran north from Denver and connected with
interstate 80 just inside the Wyoming border. That was all well-paved,
four-lane, controlled-access highway that would carry them straight into
San Francisco without a single intersection to get in the way.
But they did not take it, because it seemed like too obvious an
alternative to the route which they had originally planned to use. If
the madman in the Chevrolet van had become obsessed with them-and with
killing them-then he might make the effort to think one step ahead of
them. And if he realized that they would now leave their pre-planned
route, he would see, with one quick glance at a map, that I-25 and
I-80 was their next best bet.
“So we’ll take Route 24,” Doyle said.
“What kind of road is it?” Colin asked, leaning across the seat to look
at the map which Doyle had propped against the steering wheel.
“Pieces of it are four-lane. Most of it isn’t.”
Colin reached out and traced it with one finger. Then he pointed to the
gray-shaded areas. “Mountains?”
“Some. High plateaus. But there are a good many deserts, alkali and
salt flats . . .”
I’m glad we’ve got air conditioning.”
Doyle folded the map and handed it to the boy. “Belt yourself in.”
Colin put the map in the glove compartment, then did as he had been
told. As Doyle drove out of the Rockies Motor Hotel parking lot, the