Mine

4: White Tide

Across the Mississippi River, where I-80 shot straight true toward Iowa City, Earl Van Diver was gaining on the woman who had savaged his life.

The van was going almost eighty, the BMW pushing past eighty-five. Van Diver gripped the wheel with his one good hand, the other hand cold and dead at the end of his torn-open shoulder. Blood was streaked over the seats, spattered across the instrument panel, soaked into the carpet beneath him. He was filling up with winter, his vision turning gray. It was getting more difficult to hold the wheel steady, the wind and his own weakness conspiring against him. Cars veered out of the paths of the two vehicles, a wake of horns echoing behind Van Diver. He glanced at the speedometer, saw the needle vibrating at eighty-seven. Mary had kept the van's speed up over eighty since they'd left the Geneseo exit, swinging back and forth from lane to lane to keep cars between them. Now, though, it was clear from the blue coughs of burning oil coming from the tailpipe that the van's engine was worn out, and she couldn't maintain that speed. Good, he thought as he felt the cold creeping through his cheeks. Good. He wasn't going to let her get away. Oh, no; not this time.

He felt no remorse for leaving Laura and Bedelia. The opportunity to take the car was there. Mary could not be allowed to roam free. She was an animal, and must be put to death like a rabid dog drooling foam. Put to death and death and death.

About the baby he had no emotion. The baby was there. Babies had died before; there were always babies. What was the death of a single baby if an animal like Mary Terror could be ground under? He knew he could never have made Laura Clayborne understand his life's purpose. How could she understand that every time he looked into a mirror he saw the face of Mary Terror? How could she understand the nightmare rages that had driven his wife and daughter away from him? How could she understand that the name Mary drove him crazy with hatred, and that his daughter's name had made him look at her with hatred, too. Laura Clayborne had lost a baby; he had lost himself, down into a dark hole of torment so horrible that it began to – dear God – make him dream of fucking Mary with the barrel of his gun, ah yes ah yes sweet sweet Mary you bitch you soul-sucking bitch, and in the mornings he would wake up wet and sated for a time.

But not for very long.

You're mine. Van Diver thought, his black eyes glazed and shiny.

Two more feet, and the BMW's front fender smashed into the van's rear with a jolt that cracked the stubs of his teeth together. He pushed the van toward the right, trying to force it off the highway, and tires shrieked in a burn of rubber as Mary fought the van back to the left again. A station wagon was in front of her, a Garfield stuck with suction cups to the rear windshield. Mary grazed the station wagon as it careened aside, scraping off a sheet of sparks. Then she was past it, veering around a tractor-trailer truck and back into the left lane. She looked up into the rearview mirror at the BMW's battered snout, and she saw the man's grinning, terrible face above the wheel. Little pig wants to play, she thought, and she stomped on the brake.

The BMW crashed into the back of the van, the hood crumpling and pieces of glass and metal flying up. Van Diver was lifted off his seat, his body thrown forward to strain the limits of his seat belt and his chin slamming against the steering wheel. His entire body tensed for the rest of the wreck, but Mary's foot was planted on the accelerator again and the van was pulling away with a backfire of burning oil, the BMW still traveling seventy miles an hour. Van Diver trembled, his muscles shocked from the impact and his trousers wet between his legs. He backed off from the van, swung into the right lane, and was looking at the back of a school bus about thirty yards away. A twist of the wheel and an inner scream, and he missed the school bus by a foot and a half. Then he powered the BMW forward again, red lights pulsing on the dashboard and a whip of smoke starting to flail back from the crumpled hood.

Mary saw him coming. Drummer was on the passenger-side floorboard on his stomach, his hands clasping and opening. Mary stomped the brake again and braced for the jolt. Once more the BMW collided into the back of the van, further smashing the hood and throwing its driver forward in the second before Mary hit the accelerator. The gap between them widened, Mary's backbone aching from the force of the collision, and her teeth clenched together. Her gnawed thigh was wet with blood, her right forearm ripped open, and red muscle tissue spasmed in the fissure. The wounds were numb and cold, but black motes spun before her eyes. Oily sweat had risen on her cheeks and forehead, and she could feel the clammy fingers of shock trying to drag her under. If she gave in to it, she was finished.

The BMW was coming up fast again. Mary started to hit the brake, but the car suddenly swerved around her into the right lane, on Drummer's side. The van shuddered and moaned as the BMW smashed into it, the impact rolling Drummer across the floorboard like a limp rag and almost knocking the wheel from Mary's white-knuckled grip. She fought back, slamming the van into the BMW. Like two enraged beasts, the car and the van crashed back and forth along the interstate at almost eighty miles an hour. Streamers of smoke were whirling from the BMW's wrecked hood, a shriek of scraping metal coming from the engine. Van Diver saw the temperature gauge's needle shoot up past the warning line, the car beginning to shimmy out of control. Blue light winked in the rearview mirror, and both Van Diver and Mary saw the trooper car roaring after them. Mary took the Compact Magnum from her bag, the pain waking up with a ferocious bite in her forearm.

Still Van Diver rammed the BMW against the van's side, Mary's left tires going onto the grassy median. She felt true fear clutch her throat; ahead of her in her lane was what looked like a tanker truck of some kind. Van Diver hit her again, keeping her from moving over. The trooper car was speeding up onto Van Diver's rear, lights flashing and siren awail. Ahead of Mary, the tanker truck – painted with brown and white blotches like a cow's hide and with the pink-painted udders of hose nozzles underneath – was trying to get over into the right lane. She saw the red sign stenciled on its side: SUNNYDALE FARMS DAIRY.

Mary let go of the wheel, the van beginning to slide over onto the median, and she strained toward the passenger door with her foot pressed on the accelerator. She put the gun against the glass, aimed downward at the BMW, and pulled the trigger, her face contorted with the strain.

The driver's window exploded in on Van Diver, glass blasting his face. He was blinded with blood, and as he opened his mouth to give a soundless scream he heard the ghost voices and static of a highway patrol radio sparking from the metal in his jaw. Something – another bullet, hot as a shock – tore into his right knee and seized up the muscles. He wrenched the wheel to the right, trying to get away from the van, and as he felt the car violently fishtail into a skid and the tanker loom in his windshield he heard a single, awful voice from the phantom radio say, "Oh Jesus."

At the same instant as Earl Van Diver skidded into the dairy tanker at seventy-eight miles per hour, Mary Terror was throwing her weight against the wheel, forcing the van onto the median. The back end of the tanker was right there in front of her. Going to hit! she screamed inwardly, bracing for the impact. Going to hit!

The van cleared a collision by less than half a foot, grass and clumps of dirt flying up behind the rear wheels. As the BMW hit the tanker broadside, it folded up like an accordion being squeezed. In the rending of metal and smashing of glass, red flames shot high, followed by an explosion of white, frothy milk as the tanker's storage compartment ripped open at the seams. The milk flooded forth, a white tide surging through the air, and it deluged the highway patrol car as the trooper tried to make the right shoulder. The tires lost their purchase, the patrol car turned sideways and flipped over as it left the interstate, crashing through the guardrail and turning over twice more before it came to rest, upside down and smoking, in the brown dirt of a bean field.

Mary Terror was already swerving into the left lane on the other side of the wreck, which had taken about four seconds from the BMW's impact to the overturning of the trooper's car. She glanced in the sideview mirror, the air behind her hazed with smoke and burning milk, the tanker on its side and the truck's driver struggling out from behind the wheel. Of the BMW, nothing could be seen but a scorched tire rolling westward for ten yards before it went off onto the median.

Both the lanes behind her were blocked by fire and tangled metal. Mary picked Drummer up by the back of his jump suit. He was crying, the tears streaming down his face. His nose and his left cheek had been scraped raw, little drops of blood trickling from his nostrils. Mary licked the blood away and held him against her as he cried. "Shhhhh," she said. "Shhhhhh. Mama's got her baby now. Everything's cool."

But it wasn't. A second highway patrol car, lights flashing, passed her going east toward the wreck. It was time to get off I-80 for a while, and find a place to rest. She was near exhaustion, her eyes heavy-lidded, the smell of her own blood making her sick. It was time to find a hole to hide in.

She took the next exit. A sign stood at a crossroads on the flat land, pointing one way to Plain View and another to Maysville. Farmhouses stood about, smoke rising from chimneys, acres of fields going on toward the far horizon. Mary kept driving, drowsy with loss of blood. On the other side of Plain View's two streets and meager gathering of buildings, she pulled off onto a dirt road that twisted into an orchard of denuded apple trees. She cut the engine, and there she sat with Drummer cradled against her.

Her vision was fading, the world closing in on her. She was afraid of falling asleep because she might not awaken. She felt a pressure on her index finger, Drummer had grasped it, was holding it tightly. Darkness pulled at her, a seductive current. She folded her arms around the baby in a coil of protection. Sleep for just a little while, she thought. Maybe an hour or two, and then get back onto the interstate west. Just an hour or two, and she'd be all right.

Mary's eyes closed. The baby's fingers played with her Smiley Face button. Mary dreamed of Lord Jack sitting in a sunlit room talking to God about why he drowned in a bathtub in Paris.

On the interstate twelve miles west, Didi joined the backup of cars and trucks stopped by the wreckage. Laura was unconscious in the backseat, but every so often she gave a muffled, gasping moan that tore at Didi's heart. The troopers and firemen were out in force, guiding the traffic onto the tire-scarred median around the wreck. A news-team van was there, minicams at work, and a helicopter buzzed overhead. "What happened?" Didi asked a fireman as she approached the wreckage at a crawl, and the man said, "Milk truck and car hit. Smokey went off the road, too."

"You're sure it was a car? It wasn't a van?"

"Car," he said. "Truck driver says some damn yuppie plowed right into him, must've been goin' eighty."

"A yuppie?"

"Yeah. One of them yuppie cars. Come on, I think you can get past now." He waved her on through.

Didi negotiated the median. A wrecker was in the midst of the scorched metal, trying to pull part of a car free. The firemen were hosing down the pavement, and the air smelled of hot iron and clabbered milk.

She passed a tire lying in the brown grass. On its dented wheel cover was a circle cut into blue and white triangles, and the scarred letters BMW.

Didi looked away from it as if the sight had stung her. Then the Cutlass picked up speed and left the dead behind.