Meeting Evil by Thomas Berger Page B

wider road. Furthermore, the deafening sound of the horn had become constant.
    When he quickly changed lanes, so did the truck.
    “Okay,” Richie cried in elation. “We got him now!”
    What scared John about this sort of dueling was the irrationality of it. He put the accelerator to the floor. The car responded more vigorously than he had anticipated and sprang out to a substantial lead on the truck. But the driver of the larger vehicle was quick to answer what he took as a challenge. It was unfortunate that, as John could see only now that the highway began an ascent, the powerful tractor had no trailer in tow, which undoubtedly meant that Sharon’slittle car would be no match for its brute power even when going uphill.
    “Christ, why doesn’t a cop come along
now?
” He regretted the need to express fear in Richie’s presence. Though he was going flat out, the truck was overtaking him, its windshield reflecting the sun in an impenetrable glare. He still could not see the driver.
    “We’re in luck,” Richie shouted, over the noise of an engine at maximum power. “A cop would only take the bastard’s side. Don’t worry. We’ve got him now!”
    An empty boast if there ever was one! John had reached the crest of the rise and looked down a long slope of highway on which its weight would give the truck an even greater advantage in speed. Furthermore, several cars were in sight ahead, in each lane, so that he might be trapped behind them in either. To be sure, were they driven by good citizens, perhaps by some effort of them all in concert the truck would be the one so confined or captured. Then, too, car phones and emergency CB sets were commonplace. An observant and law-loving driver might well alert the state police to such conspicuous and illegal slipstreaming.
    Yet while entertaining such fantasies, John was aware that no help would be forthcoming. Though accompanied by, and in fact responsible for the well-being of, two other souls (both of them strangers, so that while providing little effective company, they denied him privacy), he stood alone.
    But Richie suddenly helped. “Let him get right up against you in the right lane, then suddenly switch to the left. You can maneuver a lot quicker than him. He can’t turn that fast at speed without being in danger of losing it. Soon as you get over, slow down some. He’ll have to go on by. Once we get behind him, we’ll own his ass.”
    But who wanted it? John looked forward only to seeingthe last of the menace. To him the driver was a potential homicide, without a motive: he yearned for no revenge on such a depraved human being. Naturally, if he saw a cop he would report the incident, but that was another thing entirely. As to “letting” the truck ride his back bumper, it had arrived there once more without his permission and would stay there. What Richie had suggested was better than that.
    He gave a warning to his passengers, and Richie heeded it, seizing the handhold above the upper left corner of his door, but Sharon apparently did not, and when he made his abrupt lane-switch, he heard the sound of her body being flung across the backseat by centrifugal force.
    Richie’s tactic worked! The truck thundered by in the right lane, its rushing bulk and giant brutal wheels even more frightening than its seemingly static and one-dimensional image had been in the mirror. By such a simple device, the thing that could have flattened them was now rendered harmless. Perhaps the madman behind its wheel would roar on to threaten other defenseless motorists. If so, who cared? Quite a natural feeling at this instant. In the next, he would continue to look for a policeman.
    Now he was able to ask Sharon, “Are you okay back there?”
    She mumbled an affirmative. At such a time there was surely an advantage in being tranquilized.
    “Okay,” Richie said eagerly. “Now let’s nail him.”
    The truck was already fifty yards ahead, John having diminished his speed so as