Free Scorpion by Ken Douglas Page B

We saw some this afternoon,” Broxton said, remembering the tall masts he’d seen earlier that seemed to be reaching up from the sea, trying to grab the plane and pull it down.
    There was a short bridge up ahead where the road changed from four to two lanes. Cars were putting on the gas. Everybody wanted to pass the slow moving taxi before the bridge. Broxton turned and looked out the back window. Not everybody was trying to pass. The BMW was three cars back, still following. Broxton continued watching as a battered, left-hand-drive American Chevy flew past the car immediately behind them and kept on coming.
    “ I think he’s going to try and pass us, too,” Broxton said, his voice rising. He was more than a little surprised that the car wouldn’t slow down.
    “ Can’t make it,” the driver said, but it made no difference, the car kept coming.
    “ He’s not passing, he’s coming in on the left!” Broxton shouted as the car plowed into the left quarter of the taxi, then slammed on its brakes as the taxi lost control. He threw an arm in front of Maria, keeping her pinned to her seat as the taxi spun onto the other side of the road. A pickup truck, coming in the opposite direction, clipped the taxi’s rear bumper, tearing it off.
    Then they were off the road and spinning through a park toward a soccer game. Children screamed and fled the oncoming taxi and for an instant Broxton thought they were going to roll, but Ted let out a whoop, like an American Indian’s war cry, and spun the wheel into the slide, managing to turn the car away from the fleeing children, pumping the brakes all the while, trying to slow the car as they scraped along a huge tree.
    Ted screamed again as the car slid by the tree with a soul wrenching sound that shrilled through the evening. The tree slowed the car, but it didn’t stop it, and Dependable Ted never stopped working the wheel.
     
    * * *
    “ Hold on,” he yelled from the front seat. Maria looked up and saw what he saw. Another tree, this one, thicker than the last, and it seemed to be charging straight for them as it loomed larger and larger in the front window, a giant, green grizzly, with raking claws on the end of the branches. Claws and jaws, reaching for her, reaching to tear her apart, but at the last instant the roaring rear wheels found purchase in the wet grass. The old Toyota shot forward like a race horse. Ted yelled again, because even though he was heading for the tree, he was back in control.
    He spun the wheel to the right, missing the tree, but the branches scraped the side of the car as it headed, like a wild mustang, into a huge mass of green, the very edge of the rain forest. Ted jerked the wheel one last time and stomped on the brakes. The engine died, but the car continued its slide through the lush green vegetation, twice missing trees that would have brought it to a crashing stop, coming softly to rest in an almost anticlimactic absence of sound.
    “ Sheeit,” Dependable Ted said under his breath, but Maria heard.
    “ Is anybody hurt?” Broxton asked.
    “ Don’t think so,” Ted said.
    “ I’m okay,” Maria said, looking out of the car. Seconds ago she’d been on a highway, with cars, houses, stores and people. Now she was surrounded by green—leaves, grass, weeds, bushes and trees. She was in an ancient world, a primitive place, and something deep in her heart told her that man wasn’t welcome.
    “ That car hit us on purpose,” Ted said, turning toward them. His smile was gone and there was a glazed look in his dark brown eyes.
    “ Looked like it,” Broxton said, and even as he said it the glaze faded from Dependable Ted’s eyes and as they cleared Maria saw anger, bubbling and boiling, raging and ready to burst forth.
    “ It was an accident,” Maria said.
    “ Wasn’t,” Ted said, “and somebody is going to pay.”
    Broxton put his hand to the latch, pulled it and pushed against the door. It creaked and groaned, but it opened. He