Free Fireshaper's Doom by Tom Deitz Page A

quickly, almost, for him to notice.
    He braked hard—too hard. The brakes locked; unlocked; locked again. The steering wheel tore from his grip, spinning wildly. He grabbed at it, felt it bucking against his fingers.
    Beside him he glimpsed Alec bracing one arm against the dash, his legs pressing hard on the floorboards.
    The car lurched sideways.
    David grabbed the wheel—twisted—
    And spun.
    Rocks—too close. Too close.
    The galvanized steel guardrail swept by in that strangely attenuated time that accompanies the sudden onslaught of panic. Someone had pasted a smiley face there.
    And then it was the road again. A dotted white line atop a long gray surface that had narrowed to a flat plane of fear.
    He was sliding now:
    The tires screamed a counterpoint to the howling of Jim Dunning’s piping.
    Sliding—straight for the rocks.
    “Oh, shit!” Alec cried.
    Impact.
    Metal shrieked.
    David’s head jerked back and forth. From somewhere a pain came into his wrist.
    The car listed to the right…stopped.
    The engine coughed and quit.
    “I just wrecked my car,” David whispered into the suddenly heavy quiet. “I just wrecked my goddamn, friggin’ car!”
    Alec was twisting his head from side to side, fingering it gingerly. David noticed his movements. “You okay?” he asked.
    Alec nodded, wincing as he did. “Think so. Did you see the rack on that thing?”
    David rolled his eyes. “Not really. Just the guardrail. Just the cliffs. Hard things to bounce off of. No time to play boy naturalist.”
    “Well, we’d better bounce out of here, if we don’t want to get rear-ended. One wreck a day’s enough for me, thank you.”
    David ignored him. He bowed his head onto the steering wheel, pounded his hands on his thighs. Tears burned in his eyes.
    “I wrecked my goddamn, friggin’ car,” he repeated. “And all because of some goddamn, friggin’ deer.” He looked up, snarled through the windshield—unbroken, he was relieved to note. “If I get my hands on that goddamn deer, Alec, season or no season, there’s gonna be venison on the Sullivan supper table!”
    Alec poked him forcefully on the shoulder. “You don’t get out of this car, there’s gonna be Sullivan on the coroner’s table, with a side order of squashed McLean. We could get snagged from behind any minute just sitting here. All we need’s a semi to come charging round that corner and knock us all to Kingdom Come.”
    Still David hesitated.
    Alec raised an inquiring eyebrow. “I mean I appreciate you waiting for me to go first and all, Davy, but I’d kinda have to move a mountain—either that or cut a hole in your roof, and I know you wouldn’t like that.”
    David sighed and reached back to unlock the door. “You sure you’re okay?”
    “I’m fine. Now get your ass out.”
    “Shit,” David grunted as he pushed at the door. The Mustang had come to rest hard against the rock face with its right side wheels in the ditch. David thus had to fight gravity to open the door. Finally he wormed his way through. “Window’d probably have been easier,” he observed as Alec joined him a moment later, after first tangling himself in the shift lever and then pausing to turn off the tape player, which had, perhaps appropriately, begun the first heartrending bars of “Flowers of the Forest.”
    “Whew!” Alec breathed, casting furtive glances up and down the mountainside.
    The deer was nowhere in sight.
    David stomped around to the front of the car and stepped purposefully into the shallow ditch, oblivious to the stagnant water slopping into his new white Reeboks. He squatted to examine the damage.
    “Well, it could be worse, I guess,” he muttered. “Lost the headlight. Fender’s pushed into the tire, but it doesn’t look like any suspension damage. Side’s probably scraped all to hell, though. Definitely have to be repainted.”
    “Reckon Gary can fix it?”
    “Oh sure, if I’m willing to pay him enough.”
    “He is a friend, after