departing turbulence had taken with it every wisp of breathable air.
Then Frank’s ears popped as if from a sudden altitude change; as he
rushed across the deserted street toward the cars parked along the far
curb, air poured in around him again.
He tried four cars before finding one unlocked, a Ford. Slipping behind
the wheel, he left the door open to provide some light.
He looked back the way he had come.
The apartment complex was dead-of-the-night and Wrapped in darkness. An
ordinary building yet inexplicably sinister.
No one was in sight.
Nevertheless, Frank knew someone was closing in on him. He reached
under the dashboard, pulled out a tangle of wires, and hastily
jump-started the engine before realizing such a larcenous skill
suggested a life outside of the law.
he didn’t feel like a thief. He had no sense of guilt and no apathy
for-or fear of-the police. In fact, at the moment, would have welcomed
a cop to help him deal with whoever or whatever was on his tail. He
felt not like a criminal, like a man who had been on the run for an
exhaustingly long time, from an implacable and relentless enemy.
As he reached for the handle of the open door, a brief pale blue light
washed over him, and the driver’s-side window of the Ford exploded.
Tempered glass showered into the rear seat, gummy and minutely
fragmented. Since the front door was not closed, that window didn’t
spray over him; instead, most of it fell out of the frame, onto the
pavement Yanking the door shut, he glanced through the gap where the
glass had been, toward the gloom-enfolded apartment and saw no one.
Frank threw the Ford in gear, popped the brake, tramped hard on the
accelerator. Swinging away from the curb, he clipped the rear bumper of
the car parked in front of him. A brief peal of tortured metal rang
sharply across the night.
But he was still under attack: A scintillant blue light, at one second
in duration, lit up the car; over its entire interior. The windshield
cracked with thousands of jagged lines, though it had been struck by
nothing he could see. Frank averted his face and squeezed his eyes shut
just in time to avoid being blinded by flying fragments. For a moment
he could not remember where he was going, but he didn’t let up on the
accelerator preferring the danger of collision to the greater risk of
breaking and giving his unseen enemy time to reach him. Glass rained
over him, spattered across the top of his bent head; luckily, it was
safety glass, and none of the fragments cut him.
He opened his eyes, squinting into the gale that rushed through the now
empty windshield frame. He saw that he’d gone half a block and had
reached the intersection. He whipped the wheel to the right, tapping
the brake pedal only lightly, and turned onto a more brightly lighted
thoroughfare.
Like Saint Elm’s fire, sapphire-blue light glimmered on the chrome, and
when the Ford was halfway around the corner, one of the rear tires blew.
He had heard no gunfire. A fraction of a second later, the other rear
tire blew.
The car rocked, slewed to the left, began to fishtail.
Frank fought the steering wheel.
Both front tires ruptured simultaneously.
The car rocked again, even as it glided sideways, and the sudden
collapse of the front tires compensated for the leftward slide of the
rear end, giving Frank a chance to grapple the spinning steering wheel
into submission.
Again, he had heard no gunfire. He didn’t know why all of,this was
happening-yet he did.
That was the truly frightening part: On some deep subconscious level he
did know what was happening, what strange force was swiftly destroying
the car around him, and he also knew that his chances of escaping were
poor.
A flicker of twilight blue…
The rear window imploded. Gummy yet prickly wads of safety glass flew
past him. Some smacked the back of his head, stuck in his hair.
Frank made the corner and kept going on four flats. The sound of
flapping rubber, already shredded, and the grinding of metal wheel rims