Joe Hill: Throttle

“You’re fucked in the head,” Race said.

“I don’t think so. For all we know, he was going to see her when we crossed his path at the diner. It’s what a father might do for a kid he loved. Arrange things so he could look in, every now and then. See if she might even want a ride out. Take a chance on something besides the pipe and the rock.”

Lemmy rejoined them. “Dead,” he said.

Vince nodded.

“This was on the visor.” He handed it to Vince. Vince didn’t want to look at it, but he did. It was a snapshot of a smiling girl with her hair in a ponytail. She wore a Corman High Varsity sweatshirt, the same one she had died in. She was sitting on the front bumper of LAUGHLIN, her back resting against the silver grille. She was wearing her daddy’s camo cap turned around backward and mock-saluting and struggling not to grin. Saluting who? Laughlin himself, of course. Laughlin had been holding the camera.

“Her name was Jackie Laughlin,” Race said. “And she’s dead, too, so fuck her.”

Lemmy started forward, ready to pull Race off his bike and feed him his teeth, but Vince held him back with a look. Then he shifted his gaze back to his boy.

“Ride on, son,” he said. “Keep the shiny side up.”

Race looked at him, not understanding.

“But don’t stop in Show Low, because I intend to let the cops know a certain little whore might need protection. I’ll tell them some nut killed her brother, and she might be next.”

“And what are you going to tell them when they ask how you happened to come by that information?”

“Everything,” Vince said, his voice calm. Serene even. “Better get moving. Ride on. It’s what you do best. Keeping ahead of that truck on the Cumba road… that was something. I’ll give you that. You got a gift for hightailing it. Not much else, but you got that. So hightail your ass out of here.”

Race looked at him, unsure and suddenly frightened. But that wouldn’t last. He’d get his fuck-you back. It was all he had: some fuck-you attitude, a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and a fast bike.

“Dad—”

“Better go on, son,” Lemmy said. “Someone will have seen that smoke by now. There’ll be Staties here soon.”

Race smiled. When he did, a single tear spilled from his left eye and cut a track through the dust on his face. “Just a couple of old chickenshits,” he said.

He went back to his bike. The chains across the insteps of his snakeskin boots jingled… a little foolishly, Vince thought.

Race swung his leg over the seat, started his Harley, and drove away west, toward Show Low. Vince did not expect him to look back and was not disappointed.

They watched him. After a while, Lemmy said, “You want to go, Cap?”

“No place to go, man. I think I might just sit here for a bit, side of the road.”

“Well,” Lemmy said. “If you want. I guess I could sit some myself.”

They went to the side of the road and sat down cross-legged like old Indians with no blankets to sell and watched the tanker burn in the desert, piling black oil smoke into the blue, unforgiving sky. Some of it drifted back their way, reeking and greasy.

“We can move,” Vince said. “If you don’t like the smell.”

Lemmy tipped his head back and inhaled deeply, like a man considering the bouquet of a pricey wine.

“No, I don’t mind it. Smells like Vietnam.”

Vince nodded.

“Makes me think of them old days,” Lemmy said. “When we were almost as fast as we believed we were.”

Vince nodded again. “Live pretty—”

“Yep. Or die laughin’.”

They said nothing more after that, just sat there, waiting, Vince with the girl’s picture in his hand. Every once in a while, he glanced at it, turning it in the sun, considering how young she looked, and how happy.

But mostly he watched the fire.

Joe Hillis the New York Times bestselling author of Horns and Heart-Shaped Box and the prizewinning story collection 20th Century Ghosts . He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of an ongoing comic book series Locke & Key . You can learn more at www.joehillfiction.com and follow him on Twitter, where he goes by the inspired handle of @joe_hill.

Stephen Kingis the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are 11/22/63, Under the Dome , the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything’s Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon , and Bag of Bones . His acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing , was also a bestseller. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

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Cover design and illustration by Adam Johnson

Grateful acknowledgment is given to IDW chief creative officer Chris Ryall for his assistance with this e-book.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A version of “Throttle” previously appeared in He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson edited by Christopher Conlon. Published by Tor Books, 2010.

“THROTTLE.” Copyright © 2009 by Joe Hill and Stephen King. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Art by Nelson Daniel © 2012 IDW Publishing

EPub Edition © APRIL 2012 ISBN: 9780062215956

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