Brett Halliday - Win Some, Lose Some

Shayne followed her across. Their speed had dropped to thirty and was still dropping. Perhaps the driver had realized finally that something unusual was taking place behind him.

Shayne crouched to disengage the hitch. He unhooked the chains and snapped the latch. The ball still rode snugly in its socket. Getting a good grip, he jumped hard on the bumper, and the burning trailer pulled free.

They would be changing vehicles in another ten miles. When Downey saw the headlights closing with him-an ordinary black Ford or Chevy, nothing to worry about, except that, being in charge, he was the one who had to worry about everything-be picked the dark glasses off his knee. He had killed the dashboard lights earlier. Pam was about to start a cigarette. He told her to wait till the car was past.

“In fact,” he said, watching the mirror, “get down on the floor. A pickup and trailer, two men and a girl. You never know, they might just remember.”

Pam slid to the floor and tugged at Werner’s pants until he followed, with a sigh of protest. The headlights came closer, much too slowly. Downey decided to brake as soon as they were alongside, timing it so they wouldn’t notice his brake lights, and let them scoot past. But it was the other car that braked and fell back.

Pam, on the floor, could tell something was wrong. “Jack?”

“Somebody wants to play games.”

The overhead mirror was blocked by the camper body. He was driving with the two big side mirrors. Their lights stayed in his eyes.

“Creeping paranoia,” Werner remarked. “Poor Jack, everybody’s chasing him.”

“If they want to pass, why don’t they pass? We’re only doing forty-five. Here that’s crawling.”

The lights came at him again even more slowly. Downey had an impulse to hog the center line until the next exit, and if they followed him off, he would know they were hostile. But with that enormous trailer behind him, he had to play it conservative. He wasn’t used to driving this much vehicle. He felt slow and unwieldy, like a pro basketball center in a room with ordinary people.

He glanced at the speedometer, wanting to see what they did if he dropped his road speed again. He felt a distinct jar, and his eyes jumped to the mirror.

“He cut in on me!”

The trailer was swinging. It swung away, back, away again.

“They’re on fire!”

The car behind them drifted out on the shoulder, definitely burning. Flames showed through the windshield. The others scrambled back on the seat, and Werner put his head out the window.

“What happened?” Pam said in the middle. “Tell me what happened.”

The burning car pulled over, and two figures jumped out, one of them ablaze. Downey came down on the gas. He wasn’t about to back up and help. Let the fuckers burn. Some kind of freak accident that couldn’t happen again in a hundred years. Brakes probably. They were driving with their emergency on, which was why the car had seemed slow to respond. When flames came up through the floorboards, the driver had been so startled that he jerked over and rammed Downey’s trailer. Drunk? Undoubtedly.

Werner said, “Man, they’re burning.”

“That’s their problem. How about our back lights? Are they on?”

Werner craned all the way out. “No,” he reported. “So if we pass a cop, we can expect to hear sirens.”

“Not for the first time tonight,” Pam put in.

“Nobody cruises this late,” Downey told them. “We’re going to do the last stretch on a side road, if I can get that son of a bitch to start tracking.”

He maintained a hard foot on the gas, but the trailer continued to wander. He was getting a bumping, an irregular oscillation. Perhaps the jolt had broken something loose, and it was rolling around in there. He could still see the glow from the burning car, and he decided against stopping until they had left the four-lane. The next exit was a quarter of a mile ahead, then presently an eighth of a mile. He shifted down for the ramp.

Suddenly his front wheels bucked, as though they had struck a speed bump like those in the trailer camp. But on the Interstate? He continued the turn, and the feel of everything changed. They were no longer pulling a load. The ramp curved away. Without quite believing it, he saw their unattached trailer, still on the main highway, continuing south. And it, too, was on fire!

That was the worst thing yet on a bad night. Some supernatural force must be working against them. Downey straightened the wheel in time to keep from leaving the ramp. The pickup was enjoying its freedom.

“There goes our million bucks,” Werner observed.

What was he talking about? The only million-dollar object around here-and then it came to him. A vise seemed to close on his head. Canada was inside that trailer, tied to a bed.

The trailer continued to pick up speed, coming down from the overpass. It was beginning to drift. Soon its outside wheels were off on the shoulder. It ran down a slight embankment, hit the fence, and kept going into a cultivated field. A million dollars. No chance of getting anybody out of that fire. It was out of control.

Pam clawed at his shoulder and pointed. He saw it, a big irrigation wagon standing all by itself well out in the field. He understood what she was shouting. But the way their luck seemed to be running, the wagon had to be empty. If there was water in it, there was no way to bring it to bear on the fire.

The trailer changed direction, moving less rapidly on the uneven ground, and headed straight for the water wagon like a camel smelling a well.

Downey cut so hard that he jumped the ramp at the bottom. The fence protected only the ramps and the big highway itself. He went straight in across country, dropping into the pickup’s bottom range. The field was in snap beans, nearly ready for the pickers. His rear wheels kicked out torn plants and soft dirt.

The trailer stayed upright, stopping only fifty feet from the wagon. He dropped Werner, who ran ahead. Downey came swerving in and stopped with the trailer in his lights. Inside, the fire was crackling nicely, but it was giving off little heat. He was able to get almost to the bedroom window, through which earlier he had seen the kidnapped man on the bed. This was the one room not ablaze. There still might be time.

He heard a yell from Werner. Turning, he saw a plume of water erupt from the tank and start a long sweep to the right and the left. Downey felt mist blow in his face. The main arc, however, was missing the trailer by twenty feet. Werner struggled with the short hose on the turret’s fixed arm. He managed to free it. It lashed around madly, spraying everything at random. He worked his hands toward the nozzle, brought it under control, and aimed the powerful stream at the fire. Perhaps by accident, he caught Downey in the chest and knocked him to the ground. Correcting his aim, he sent a cascade of water through the bedroom window.

The van Greco had appropriated proved to be unexpectedly agile. The brakes were so good that when he touched them lightly to get the feel the sudden check nearly sent him into the glass.

“This baby has power.”

The needle hit seventy in no time at all. Nick was worrying about what they would do when they overtook the trailer. They couldn’t attempt the same trick a second time because the gas can was empty.

“Bottle gas,” Greco said. “These things carry stoves. Look in back.”

“Bottle gas! That stuff can blow your ass off. I’ll drive this time. You throw.”

“No, it worked, it worked! Burning like a son of a bitch.”

In the fields to the right, they saw the burning trailer. So, after all, some of the improvised cocktail had taken effect. Greco stopped so they could watch the finish.

There was a noise in back, and somebody groaned. They looked at each other.