Highway 109
Ted Spelling was in a hurry. He toed the accelerator a little more and the midnight blue Hundai hummed in response, jumping forward slightly as it automatically switched gears. The sedan raced along the curvy two lane highway, it's headlights slicing through the deep curtains of black that only a moonless night such as this could produce.
Not a bad little rental, Ted mused to himself as he ran his hand lightly across the leather steering wheel. He was lucky to have gotten one this nice on such short notice, especially given his bad credit history. His normal ride, a Ford Explorer with quite a few miles under it's belt, could not have picked a worse time to break down. Not when he needed to drive three hours to meet with several important representatives of an overseas firm. His company was counting on him to make this business deal. His boss was counting on him. He knew he could not afford to **** up, not after last time; his boss had made that amply clear to him. So it was not a good start to his morning when he had walked into his garage and his trusty Explorer wouldn't crank. It was the first time in the eight years he had owned the vehicle that he had ever had trouble with it.
Pissed, he had gone back into the house, only to get sucked into a heated argument with his teenage son. What had it been about? Ted shook his head, he couldn't even remember. It had ended unresolved, as these battles usually did, and with his son storming out of the house. Ted had assumed he was heading off to school, but he couldn't even be sure of that these days, not with the phone calls that had been coming in recently concerning the boy's repeated absences. The school was threatening to fail him and, possibly, kick him out altogether. Attempts to talk to him about it only resulted in more fights. Ted had long ago given up on discipline. Counseling had been a failure. Everything had steadily gotten worse over the past two years since he had come home early to find Janet....
Ted cranked up the radio to drown out those thoughts. Thoughts like that would only bring back the depression, and today's meeting had gone too well to risk that happening again. Two headlights rounded a curve in the oncoming lane, and Ted fumbled to find the switch for the high beams. The other car honked as it passed and a second later his groping fingers found the lever.
"Oh well", Ted muttered under his breath, settling back into the seat and turning the volume dial up a few more notches.
"So you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking,
Racing around to come up behind you again"
The words poured through the speakers. Ted tapped his fingers on the wheel, the music effectively banishing all thoughts of his wife. The speedometer's needle flirted with eighty.
------
Brian twisted in his seat and kept his middle finger pointed at the car as it slowly vanished behind them. The black clothed young man in the driver's seat let up off the horn.
" ******" he said under his breath and then, turning his head towards Brian, "That's the one, *****. You ready?"
Brian looked down and nodded, then seeming to steel himself, looked back at the driver. The black hood he wore shadowed his entire face. Only his piercing eyes were visible, somehow reflecting the ambient light from the dashboard displays.
"Let's get this over with" he said, pulling an identical hood up over his own head.
The car braked to a halt in the middle of Highway 109, pulled a three-point turn, and flew back down the road in the direction it had come from.
------
Ted glanced at the glowing dashboard clock. The bright numbers cast a greenish glow on the surrounding wood-grain inlay. 1:16. After some quick math, Ted guessed he would be arriving home shortly after two o'clock. He was hoping to get a chance to talk to his son before he went to bed. The only time he ever saw the boy these days was for a few seconds every morning when they both hopped in their separate cars to go their separate directions. That's the reason he was in a hurry. What was today, Friday? Oh yea, his son would definitely still be up, pumping his brain full of whatever crap they showed on late night television. Probably hopped up on some sort of drug as well. This was a new discovery. Ted had found some small white pills in the pocket of a pair of his jeans two days ago, and last week the remnants of some white powder and a rolled up twenty dollar bill had been left out on the coffee table in the basement. Ted was at his wits end. As a father, he knew he had to intervene somehow, but at the same time, he knew exactly how it would play out. The boy was eighteen now, and the second he felt the urge he could simply move out and Ted would never see him again. That was why Ted hadn't yet confronted him about the drugs. He couldn't bear for the only person he loved to leave.
His little boy hadn't always been like this. Over the past two years though, his attitude had steadily gotten worse and worse. Ted blamed the new kids he'd been hanging out with. Most were just your average punks; the kind of kids you labeled "bad influence" just by looking at them. They all wore black, dyed their hair black, blackened their lungs with cigarettes that they held between black-painted fingernails. The tall one was different though. The tall one actually creeped him out. That seemed such a childish thing for a forty year old man, being creeped out, but Ted couldn't put it any other way. Ted had only met him once, but there was something about the way he fixed you with that piercing glare that made you want to lock all your doors at night. And that tattoo, why the hell would anyone get such a tattoo on their throat?
Ted shivered just thinking about it. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. Maybe his son would answer this time. He pushed the resend button and held it up to his ear. Good, it was ringing. Half the time he didn't even get service out on this lonesome road.
"Yo, you've reached..." Ted snapped the phone shut. Voicemail.
"Dammit", he said as he dropped the phone in the cup holder at his side. A flash caught his eye and he glanced up in his rear view mirror. There was a car about fifty feet behind him, it's headlights shining like twin suns. He hadn't seen it coming up, but on these mountain roads that wasn't unusual. Ted returned his attention to the road in front of him, his thoughts again drifting back to the best way to confront his son. Maybe he could try counseling again. It hadn't worked before but it couldn't hurt to give it another shot. Dammit, Janet had always known how to talk to him. Janet could've...
Ted snapped back to reality as the car behind him crashed into his rear bumper. He fishtailed wildly, fighting for control at eighty miles an hour. After a few hair raising seconds he got the Hundai straightened out again. Furious, he hit the brakes and looked back again at the car. It's high beams were on, leaving two translucent black spots in his vision. Suddenly the car swerved out into the other lane. Inch by inch it pulled up beside his. Ted craned his neck to get a glimpse of the nut that rear ended him. He sucked his breath in sharply. On the other side of the window a hooded skull was staring back at him. A gloved hand slowly raised a large serrated hunting knife and pressed it against the window.
The hair on the back of Ted's neck stood on end. He looked back at the road, blinked a few times, and then turned his eyes back towards the car beside him. The empty black sockets were still staring straight back. The figure slowly raised the knife and slid it across its own throat. Blood dripped and slid down the blade. Fear gripped Ted. He sped up and fumbled madly in his pockets for his cell phone. Where the hell was that thing? He risked another look. The skull seemed to be grinning as the other car slowed down and pulled back into the lane behind him.
------
Brian pulled the mask off and looked down in disgust at the fake blood covering both the knife and his hand.
"It's too bad those fuckin' windows are tinted so much." Brian looked up when he heard the words. "I wanted to see the look on that poor bastard's face."
"So that's it then? I'm in?" asked Brian quietly. He hated being alone in the car with this guy and he hated this damn initiation.
The driver pulled his hood down and smiled. He had a jet black goatee and his head was completely shaven. Black flames crawled up his neck and over his throat, the tips dancing just over his jaw line, interweaving with his goatee. His ebony sideburns came down to a sharp point that just touched the tip of the tallest flame. His smile looked more like the snarl of a wolf than any human expression. Brian felt a chill run through him when he saw it. In the few months he had known this man, he had never seen him smile before.
He fixed Brian with a stare that was impossible to turn away from, although every nerve in his body screamed for him to do so.
"Not quite yet"
His eyes still on Brian, he punched the accelerator and the car lunged forward like an animal.
"What the **** are you doing!" Brian yelled, gripping the dashboard and bracing himself. "You said we were just trying to scare him!"
He was still smiling. "Well this'll scare the hell out of him."
------
Ted waved his phone around above his head frantically, hoping for a signal. Praying for a signal. He had one eye glued to his mirror as he whipped around mountain curves. The car was still back there, keeping pace, stalking. Why the hell was there no signal? The night squeezed in on both sides, infinitely more menacing than it had been earlier.
Beep.
That single metallic tone sounded like the sweetest music to Ted's ears. He held his phone in front of him. One bar. His thumb flew over the touchpad, keying in three numbers. He brought it up to his ear.
"Hello? 911? I'm being followed by a psycho! I'm near exit thirteen on Highw...****!"
The phone flew from his hand as he was slammed again from behind. The force of the blow knocked the rear bumper loose and it threw sparks everywhere as it bounced along the pavement. The car was fishtailing again. Ted spun the wheel in a pitiful attempt to straighten, but it was no use. The car was completely out of control.
------
"What the hell is wrong with you ,you crazy ****!" Brian was screaming at the man driving. "You're ******* insane!"
The car slammed into the blue one ahead. The bumper came loose at one end, dragged for a second, then snapped free, barely missing their windshield as it bounced past. The car started to go into a slow spin in front of them. This was going way farther than anything Brian had imagined. He didn't want to kill anyone. Brian shut his eyes and started whispering. "I just wanna go home. I just wanna see my dad."
"Quit bein' a little *****", the tattooed man snarled. He slapped Brian in the face with a gloved hand. "You agreed to this. You're the one that wanted in. You can't be afraid to spill a little blood." At the word "blood" he smiled that sickening grin again.
The gas pedal punched into the floor once again. The old Buick t-boned Ted's car mid spin. Metal crunched on metal. Both driver side windows shattered. Brian opened his eyes for a split second. His jaw dropped. He was staring straight at the blood covered face of his father. Their eyes connected.
"Damn we're stuck to the car. I cant get us loose."
Brian heard this as if it was coming from far away, or in a dream. Tears were streaming down his face. He was shouting at his dad, or maybe just whispering, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Over and over again, the same words. "Dad I'm so sorry. I never meant to do this."
The two cars spun in tandem, a metallic ballet of flying sparks and screeching tires. They crashed through the guard rails like so many toothpicks. The aluminum peeled back with barely a dent on the vehicles' momentum. As they plunged over the edge and into the black void below, Ted fixed his eyes onto his son's and mouthed the three words that he had been wanting to say for the past two years. "I love you."
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