The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

CRUISING by Donald Tyson

Donald Tyson was born on January 12, 1954 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he still resides. He developed an appetite for science fiction and fantasy at an early age through the works of such favorite writers as Bradbury, Bloch and Blackwood, and began to write during his university years, winning literary competitions for both prose and poetry. Tyson’s short stories have appeared in publications ranging from Black Belt to Black Cat Mystery, while he has written articles for such diverse magazines as The Woodworker’s Journal and Fate Magazine. In 1982 his original radio drama, “The Hitchhiker,” was presented on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program, Audio Stage. Its success resulted in the commission of an original television script, “The Far-Off Land,” due to be produced by CBC Television in the near future. Currently Tyson is working on a novel-length fantasy-adventure epic set at the dawn of the Iron Age. With “Cruising” Donald Tyson shows us he can pack a lot of power into just a thousand words.

Tires shrieked on sun-baked asphalt, and the music of a car radio emptied itself across the quiet city intersection. Inside the car Johnny Sheen tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and looked up at the red light. He was bored. Aching for something to happen. It was a summer Sunday afternoon, and the streets of the city were like lanes through a graveyard.

Sheen was young and tough—what they call street smart. He had never read a book, but he knew what he wanted from life. His hair was razored in a spiky punk look and he wore mirror shades to hide his eyes. Drove a ’78 Camaro with custom flame painted on the sides. Days he worked as a mechanic in a garage to earn enough for the upkeep on the car. Nights and weekends he cruised the streets. Cruising for action was his life.

An old Chevy sedan pulled up beside him in the fast lane. He gunned his engine and looked across with the faint mocking smile that never left his lips. Two teenage girls with long greasy hair and T-shirts sat in the front seat of the Chevy. His eyes measured the car professionally. Dented and covered with dust, it had come a long way. The windows were rolled down against the heat. He noticed a steel ring around the roof column, probably to keep the front door shut, and a line of ugly red decals on the front fender.

The brunette, who sat nearest him, looked over archly at the sound of his engine. Johnny smiled, knowing she could not read his eyes. She leaned over to the blonde driver and whispered into her ear, then glanced back at him. The blonde looked and laughed.

The light went green. He let them win and fell in behind, stalking them with animal patience. This was his game and he always came out on top in the end. They looked like sluts, but he was in no mood to be critical. Sunday afternoon was slow. He followed close and drafted them around a corner, the tires of both cars screaming. The brunette waved her hand at him through the dusty rear window, laughing, as the driver wove her way through the light traffic. Sheen stayed on her bumper, his interest growing. She might be a slut, but she drove like a bitch.

Another red. He swerved right and pulled close beside the Chevy, the music from his radio pacing his pulsebeat. The faces of the girls were flushed with excitement, the driver’s red mouth cruel as she raced her engine. Laughing wildly, her friend reached across through the open window of the Camaro and caressed Sheen’s cheek. He took her finger into his mouth and bit it lightly, then leaned out of the car and met her lips with his in a bruising kiss that was broken abruptly as the blonde raced through the changing light.

Cursing, Sheen opened his four-barrel and went after them. The Chevy was a sleeper with dual pipes and big inches under the beaten metal, but the Camaro pulled even as the girls got held up in traffic. Waiting for an open stretch, he swung in close beside and reached through the window of the Chevy with both cars moving fast. Tauntingly the brunette let him touch her breast, then pulled away across the seat. The blonde cut the Chevy left and Sheen followed, his nerves tingling as his eyes flicked between the road ahead and the wicked faces beside him.

Once again he reached through the window of the other car. Something hard closed on his seeking arm. He looked across and saw a shining steel ring around his wrist, a short chain trailing from it to a similar ring around the roof column. The brunette held a key up by her face and shook it in front of him like a little bell. Leaning forward to watch, the driver smiled and trailed the tip of her tongue wetly over her lips.

It was a second before he understood. Then he felt a tear so naked that his stomach churned and his throat constricted and his skin went cold in the summer heat. He began to stop his car and hesitated, foot over the brake, realizing that he could not. As the Camaro slowed, the steel chain of the handcuffs pulled tight and sent a stab of pain lancing down his left arm. He carefully pressed the gas and matched speed with the Chevy.

The cruel smile left the face of the blonde driver and was replaced by calculation. The other watched him breathlessly. With deliberate skill the blonde swung the Chevy in slow curves from side to side, careful to let the Camaro keep pace. Sheen shouted and begged, forced to use every fraction of his skill to control the distance between the cars. His eyes flicked to the speedometer. Forty-five. The Chevy began to accelerate.

Ahead in the right lane was a slow-moving car that grew rapidly as they overtook it. Desperately Sheen swung into the Chevy, trying to force it wide to the left. Metal shrieked on metal as the doors ground against each other, but the old sedan was like a rock on the road. Pulling away, he tried to climb out his open window, almost lost the Camaro, and fought frantically to regain control. The girl with the key to the handcuffs leaned over and playfully bit one of his fingers.

Sheen never felt it. As the Chevy swerved to pass the slow car, drawing him tight against his door, time jammed like a single frame of film in a projector. He saw the looming rear of the slow car ahead; the excited, soulless faces watching him. For the first time he noticed that the line of decals under the road dust on the fender of the Chevy were tiny red hands broken off at the wrists and dripping blood.

Then time started up again and Johnny Sheen screamed.