“I’m trying to!” Chet snapped. “But the brakes are heating, and I’ve got to let up on them for a second.” He eased off on the brakes, and the car surged ahead, the engine roaring as it was freed of the drag provided by the brakes.
As Chet stared at it in sudden fear, the speedometer rose past sixty, then seventy.
“Chet, slow down!” Jeanette cried, sitting up straight in the seat and staring out the windshield at the sharp curve to the left that was only a few hundred yards ahead now.
Chet slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and the car once more began slowing, but within a few seconds the brakes had overheated once more, and he felt them starting to fade away.
The speedometer needle dipped below seventy for a second, then once more began creeping upward.
Frantically, Chet jerked on the transmission lever, and when it failed to respond, tried to switch off the ignition.
The key refused to turn. The car seemed to be operating under its own volition.
They hit the first curve at seventy-five, Chet’s knuckles white as he clutched the steering wheel. The tires screamed in protest as they went into the turn, but the road was banked here, and the wheels held. Fifty yards farther on, the road twisted back to the right, and then, if Chet remembered right, went into the first of the hairpins, turning a full 180 degrees to head out on the northern wall of a deep cleft in the coastline.
The car survived the second curve, too, but both the Aldriches heard a violent grinding sound as they slued to the left, the rear fenders scraping against the low rock guard wall, the only thing protecting them from shooting off into the sea.
“Stop!” Jeanette screamed. “For God’s sake, do something!”
Chet got the car back into the right lane, but it was fully out of control now, still accelerating as it shot down a grade toward the hairpin turn and the narrow bridge that spanned the gap of the cleft at its tightest point.
“We’re not going to make it!” he shouted. “Get your head down!”
The car was doing nearly ninety when they hit the turn. Though Chet turned the wheel all the way to the lock, it wasn’t enough.
The front of the car nosed onto the bridge, but at almost the same instant, the rear wheels lost their traction and the big sedan spun out of control.
Jeanette’s side of the car slammed into the end of the concrete railing on the right side of the bridge, the door buckling in, the seat belt mounted in the doorpost giving way instantly.
Jeanette was hurled across the front seat almost into Chet’s lap as the car continued to spin, the rear end whipping off the road while the sedan pivoted on the edge of the bridge. A second later it tumbled over the edge, flipping in midair before slamming into the rock face of the cliff.
By the time it came to rest on the floor of the gorge and burst into flames, Chet and Jeanette Aldrich, mercifully, were already dead.
As the sun rose higher and the autumn morning brightened, a billow of smoke rose from the burning wreckage lying a hundred feet below the bridge.
No more than a minute later a large truck, creeping down the steep, narrow road in its lowest gear, rounded the curve from the north, and the driver saw the plume of smoke drifting up from far below.
“Jesus,” he breathed. As he switched on his flashers and ground the truck to a stop to check the wreckage for survivors, he reached for the microphone of his C.B. radio. “Got someone who missed the bridge above Barrington,” he reported. “Looks like it just happened. Car’s at the bottom, burnin’ like crazy.”
The telephone rang in Hildie Kramer’s apartment just as the morning news was beginning, and Hildie muted the television as she picked up the phone.
“Mrs. Kramer?” a male voice asked.
“Yes.” Hildie’s nerves tingled. The heaviness of the voice told her that whatever her caller had to say this early in the morning wasn’t going to be good news.
“This is Sergeant Dover, of the Barrington Police Department.”
Hildie’s heart skipped a beat. “Have you found Steven Conners?” she asked, already preparing herself for a carefully tempered expression of grief over the teacher’s death.
“I wish we had,” Dover told her. “It’s about the boy who found his car.”
Hildie’s mind worked quickly. Josh had been acting strangely last night. Had he slipped out of the house during the night? But why? He knew nothing of what was happening in the hidden laboratory. “Josh MacCallum?” she asked.
“The other one. Jeff Aldrich.”
“I see,” Hildie said guardedly, keeping her voice steady, although her sense of apprehension instantly rose. What had happened? Had Jeff told his parents the truth?
“I’m at the boy’s home right now,” Dover went on. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident, and the boy’s here by himself. He asked me to call you.”
“An accident?” Hildie echoed. “What sort of accident?”
“I’m afraid it’s his folks. Their car went off the bridge north of town. Happened about forty-five minutes ago.”
“Dear Lord,” Hildie breathed. “Chet and Jeanette? Are they all right?”
“No, ma’am,” Sergeant Dover replied. “I’m afraid they’re not. That’s why I’m calling you. Neither of them survived.”
Hildie steadied herself against a table as the words sank in, and when she spoke, her voice was trembling. “Ill be there right away,” she said. “Tell Jeff I’m coming.” Without waiting for a reply from the police officer, she hung up the phone, ran a comb through her hair, then left through the door that opened onto the parking lot.
Josh MacCallum was still in bed, but he was wide awake. He’d barely slept at all last night, for he’d kept waking up, thinking about the strange file he’d seen on his computer last night and what it might mean. He’d even dreamed about computers, dreams in which he was back in the strange world he’d seen on the virtual reality screen.
Except that in the dream he wasn’t using the virtual reality program at all. He was actually inside the computer.
But it wasn’t at all like Adam had told him it was. There was no wonderful world waiting for him to explore.
Instead, there was only an infinite labyrinth, a maze that twisted around him, unending corridors that led nowhere. Panic had overwhelmed him, and he’d run through the maze, turning first in one direction, then another, but always ending up exactly back where he’d begun.
It was a trap, a trap from which there was no escape.
He’d tried to scream out, but found no voice, and each time, it was the violent effort of trying to break through that soundless scream that woke him up, sweating and shaking.
Each time he fell back into a restless slumber the dream returned, and each time it was more frightening than the time before.
The last time he’d awakened, the early morning sunlight had brightened his open window, and he’d decided not to go back to sleep at all. Instead he’d reached for the book on his nightstand and begun reading.
Now, though, he heard the sound of a car on the gravel drive outside. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was only a few minutes after six. Curious, he slid out of bed and went to the window.
He was just in time to see Hildie Kramer’s car disappear through the Academy’s gates.
Where had she gone? And for how long?
Josh glanced at the clock again. None of the other kids would be up for at least half an hour. And if Hildie wasn’t in the house …
He made up his mind. If he was really going to go back down into the basement and try to figure out exactly where the second elevator actually was, now was the time to do it
But what if someone caught him? What about the people who worked in the kitchen? He didn’t even know what time they came to work.