It was almost more than she could handle.
Because maybe it was the truth. Maybe they'd never be able to go home again.
Charlie drove the LTD into the motel lot, parked in the slot in front of their unit-and saw movement at the small window in the kitchenette. It might have been his imagination, of course.
Or it might have been the maid. He didn't think it was either.
Instead of switching the engine off, he immediately threw the LTD into reverse and began backing out of the parking space.
Christine said, "What's wrong?"
"Company," he said.
"What? Where?"
In the rear seat, in a voice that was the essence of terror, Joey said,
"The witch."
In front of them, as they backed away from it, the door to their unit began to open.
How the hell did they find us so soon? Charlie wondered.
Not wanting to waste the time required to turn the car around, he kept it in reverse and backed rapidly toward the avenue in front of the motel.
Out in the street, a white van appeared and swung to the curb, blocking the exit from the Wile-Away Lodge.
Charlie saw it in the rearview mirror, jammed on the brakes to avoid hitting it.
He heard gunfire. Two men with automatic weapons had come out of the motel room.
"Get down!"
Christine looked back at Joey." Get on the floor!" she told him.
"You too," Charlie said, tramping on the accelerator again, pulling on the steering wheel, angling away from the van behind them.
She popped her seatbelt and crouched down, keeping her head below the windows.
If a bullet came through the door, she'd be killed anyway.
There wasn't anything Charlie could do about that. Except get the hell out of there.
Chewbacca barked, an ear-rupturing sound in the closed car.
Charlie reversed across the lot, nearly sideswiping a Toyota, clipping one corner of the wrought-iron fence that encircled the swimming pool.
There was no other exit to the street, but he didn't care. He'd make an exit of his own. He drove backwards, over the sidewalk and over the curb. The undercarriage scraped, and Charlie prayed the fuel tank hadn't been torn open, and the LTD slammed to the pavement with a jolt.
The engine didn't cut out. Thank God. His heart pounding as fast as the sedan's six cylinders, Charlie kept his foot on the accelerator, roaring backwards into State Street, tires screaming and smoking, nearly hitting a VW that was coming up the hill, causing half a dozen other vehicles to brake and wheel frantically out of his path.
The white Ford van pulled away from the motel exit, which it had been blocking, drove into the street again, and tried to ram them. The truck's grille looked like a big grinning mouth, a shark's maw, as it bore down on them. Two men were visible beyond the windshield. The van clipped the right front fender of the LTD, and there was a tortured cry of shredding metal, a shattering of glass as the car's right headlight was pulverized.
The LTD rocked from the blow, and Joey cried out, and the dog bleated, and Charlie almost bit his tongue.
Christine started to rise to see what was happening, and Charlie shouted at her to stay down as he shifted gears and drove forward, east on State, swinging wide around the back of the white van. It tried to ram him in reverse, but he got past it in time.
He expected the crumpled fender to obstruct the tire and eventually bring them to a stop, but it didn't. There were a few clanging-tinkling sounds as broken pieces of the car fell away, but there was no grinding noise of the sort that an impacted tire or an obstructed axle would make.
He heard more gunfire. Bullets thudded into the car, but none of them entered the passenger compartment. Then the LTD was moving fast, pulling out of range.
Charlie was grinding his teeth so hard that his jaws hurt, but he couldn't stop.
Ahead, at the corner, on the cross-street, another white Ford van appeared on their right, swiftly moving out from the shadows beneath a huge oak.
Jesus, they're everywhere!
The new van streaked toward the intersection, intent on blocking Charlie. To stay out of its way, he pulled recklessly into oncoming traffic. A Mustang swung wide of the LTD, and behind the Mustang a red Jaguar jumped the curb and bounced into the parking lot of a Burger King to avoid a collision.
The LTD had reached the intersection. The car was responding too sluggishly, though Charlie pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor.
From the right, the second van was still coming. It couldn't block him now; it was too late for that, so it was going to try to ram him instead.
Charlie was still in the wrong lane. The driver of an oncoming Pontiac braked too suddenly, and his car went into a slide. It turned sideways, came straight at them, a juggernaut.
Charlie eased up on the accelerator but didn't hit the brakes because he would lose his flexibility if he stopped completely and would only be delaying the moment of impact.
In a fraction of a second, he considered all his options. He couldn't swing left into the cross-street because it was crowded with traffic. He couldn't go right because the car was bearing down on him from that direction. He couldn't throw the van into reverse because there was lots of traffic behind him, and, besides, there was no time to shift gears and back up. He could only go forward as the Pontiac slid toward him, go forward and try to dodge the hurtling mass of steel that suddenly loomed as large as a mountain.
A strip of rubber peeled off one of the Pontiac's smoking tires, spun into the air, like a flying snake.
In another fraction of a second, the situation changed: The Pontiac was no longer coming at him broadside, but was continuing to turn, turn, turn, until it had swiveled one hundred and eighty degrees from its original position. Now its back end pointed at the LTD, and, though it was still sliding, it was a smaller target than it had been. Charlie wrenched the steering wheel to the right, then left again, arcing around the careening Pontiac, which shrieked past with no more than an inch to spare.
The van rammed them. Fortunately, it caught only the last couple inches of the LTD. The bumper was torn off with a horrendous sound, and the whole car shuddered and was puslied sideways a couple of feet. The steering wheel abruptly had a mind of its own; it tore itself out of Charlie's grasp, spun through his clutching hands, burning his palms, and he cried out in pain but got hold of it again. Cursing, blinking back the tears of pain that briefly blurred his vision, he got the car pointed eastward again, stood on the accelerator, and kept going. When they were through the intersection, he swung back into his own lane. He hammered the horn, encouraging the cars in front of him to get out of his way.
The second white van-the one that had ripped away their bumper-had gotten out of the mess at the intersection and had followed them. At first it was two cars back of them, then one; then it was right behind the LTD.
With the subsidence of gunfire, both Christine and Joey sat up again.
The boy looked out the rear window at the van and said, "It's the witch!
I can see her! I can see her!"
"Sit down and put your seatbelt on," Charlie told him." We might be making some sudden stops and turns."
The van was thirty feet back but closing.
Twenty feet.
Chewbacca was barking again.
Belted in, Joey held the dog close and quieted it.
Traffic in front of them was closing up, slowing down.
Charlie checked the rearview mirror.
The van was only fifteen feet back of them.
Ten feet.
"They're going to ram us while we're moving," Christine said.
Barely touching the brakes, Charlie whipped the car to the right, into a narrow cross-street, leaving the heavy traffic and commercial development of State Street behind. They were in an older residential neighborhood: mostly bungalows, a few two story houses, lots of mature trees, cars parked on one side.