version of Dr. Frankenstein.
The sky had undergone many changes by the time he left. The initial sunset blaze had given way to dusky purple, and then the stars had come out in their brilliant clarity. The heat rose straight up and away. As he returned to his truck, the work-sweat sheathing his body made his clothes stick to him with clammy coolness.
He slung his lunchbox into the passenger seat and cranked the engine. It took ages before the pickup responded. It burped and gnashed, and settled into an arrhythmic clonking that made him think of a pair of sneakers going around inside a dryer. One headlight came on evenly. The other stuttered and shed a wan yellow beam.
“Next week,” he promised. He did some mental math, comparing his paycheck to the parts he’d need, and frowned sourly. If only Bert didn’t make him pay rent …
Refusing to think about Bert, T.J. drove toward town. The strip, with its royal flush of Ace Quick Mart, Burger King, Dairy Queen, Jack in the Box, and Top Ten Motel, gleamed and twinkled like beacons luring him on. The orange and brown sign of the A&W was well removed from the chaotic line-up, out by the defunct movie theater.
The thought, not entirely unexpected, came back to him in temptation. He could forget going home for a shower and a sandwich and a few hours’ sleep. He could keep on driving. Not west, not toward the edge and the end, but east and north. Over the Tehachapis and just keep on going.
He wavered. Go now? With nothing but the clothes on his back and the fourteen bucks in his wallet?
The truck was poised at an intersection. A left turn would take him through the neon-lit, plastic, franchise heart of Joshua Flats. But if he turned right, he’d only see it in his rearview, receding into the distance, into the past.
Impulse seized him. He slapped on his right blinker, which didn’t work anyway, and turned. A wonderful, yet bewildering exhilaration made him want to laugh and cry at the same time. He was doing it, he was actually doing it, taking that first step.
The miles sped past as he coaxed the protesting pickup to just above sixty. The plastic in the back window flapped and snapped. His tools and assorted pieces of machinery clanked around in the bed. The crushed Dr. Pepper cans made clittering noises as they jostled together.
Joshua Flats was falling farther and farther behind. Soon it was a varicolored twinkling streak in the dark desert expanse.
He had the road to himself, but for twin specks of headlights coming the other way. Coming very slowly, he realized, or not even moving at all. As he got closer, he saw a car parked on the shoulder. One of the doors was standing open and people were moving around.
T.J. slowed. Part of him, that exhilarated part, cried out in dismay. That part saw this as a trap, fate’s way of getting him back to town. Because sure as anything, the people in the car would need assistance. A mechanic, maybe a tow. He’d be obliged to help them, and by the time that was done, this spontaneous impulse would have passed. Come tomorrow, he’d have all but forgotten it.
Still, he couldn’t leave anyone stranded by the side of the road. He was almost on them now, able to identify the car as a Porsche, and a new one at that. He couldn’t make out the color except that it was some dark hue. Two figures were beside it, a man and a woman, and by the way they were waving their arms around and gesticulating, not signaling for help but jabbing accusatory fingers at each other, he began to suspect that the car wasn’t the problem.
He took his foot off the break and put it back on the gas. It was one thing to be a Good Samaritan and help out with a breakdown, but he knew better than to stick his nose in a couple’s argument. Hadn’t he learned that lesson nice and quick when he was a kid?
The woman glanced at his approaching truck, briefly, but long enough to show T.J. a pretty face framed by honey-colored hair, a good figure in slacks and a silky blouse. Her eyes were very large, and … scared? Yes, scared. Seeking help.
The man threw a quick look over his shoulder. His features were contorted with anger, narrowing his eyes to slits. Even in that short glimpse, though, T.J. was struck by a sense of familiarity. He knew this guy. But who could he possibly know that drove a Porsche?
One arm, in what to T.J.’s astounded eyes looked like a suit jacket, thrust out and waved. This was no plea for help, but an irate move-along, a “what the hell are you looking at?” wave. The woman shook her head and stepped away from the man, and her lips moved in words he couldn’t make out.
She was the center of his attention again, T.J. forgotten. Over the clunk of his engine and the flap of the plastic, T.J. could hear the tones – anger, mostly – but not what they were saying. He sped up, wanting no part of this. He was almost even with them now.
He had the truck back up to thirty, when it happened.
Grabbing the woman by the upper arms, the familiar-looking stranger whirled her around and shoved. She flew backward, feet flailing, directly into the path of the pickup truck.
T.J. stomped on the brakes, stomped on them hard, and they made a queasy groaning sound. The wheels locked, skidded. The rear end began to slide sideways. His chest hit the steering wheel and knocked the breath from his lungs.
Time stretched out like taffy, letting him experience every awful moment as the front bumper hit the woman.
She was lifted up and out, momentarily airborne in the fan of his headlights. Then she landed and rolled, not on the blacktop but on the gritty dirt of the shoulder.
The truck stopped. T.J. was out the door in a flash. He ran to the downed woman, begging incoherently to any benevolent force that she was all right. He hadn’t been going that fast when he hit her, please God, he hadn’t been going that fast, and she was only stunned. Not hurt. Not hurt, and please God, not killed.
The woman lay sprawled on the shoulder, like a rag doll that some kid had dropped. She was face down but he could hear her breathing, see her trying to move.
Behind him, a car door opened. The man who’d pushed her was getting into his Porsche, keys a bunch of jingling silver in his hand.
T.J. was across the road before he knew he was going to move. Had another car been coming, he would have been flattened, because he didn’t so much as look. He reached the open door just as the man reached for the handle to close it.
“Hey!” T.J. barked.
The man spared him a look of sneering hate that abruptly turned to shock. T.J. was doused with it himself, an icy blast of shock.
Had he thought the man looked familiar? No wonder … the face looking up at him was a mirror of his own. His double’s hair was short and styled, while T.J.’s was long and shaggy and tied back with a strip of rawhide, but the red-gold color was the same. The eyes were the same shade of turquoise. The lines and angles of the face were almost identical.
They stared at each other for what seemed like forever, neither one speaking or moving. Crazy ideas raced through T.J.’s head, searching for an explanation. Long-lost twins, clones, duplicate selves from some Twilight Zone alternate dimension, all this and more went through his mind.
The double moved first. He pushed at T.J. and thrust his key at the ignition. In his panicky haste, he missed and it scraped along the steering column. It was plain, he still meant to take off and leave the woman where she’d fallen.
T.J. leaned in, smelling new Porsche and flavored, fancy coffee. He snatched the keys and backed up. “You’re not going anywhere, pal. I saw what you did.”
“I saw what you did too,” his double spat, and they even sounded alike, the voice beneath the different accents and inflections. This guy sounded as upscale as his car and his clothes and his fancy coffee, while T.J., well, T.J. knew what he sounded like. “Ran Audrey down and then pulled a gun on me, all you good old boys have guns in your pickups, it’s like a law.”
Astounded, T.J. gaped at him. Then he thought of the state patrol and which of them they’d be likely to believe. His future in Joshua Flats might not look like much, but it was paradise compared to prison.
“What do you think of that, you redneck
bastard? Now give me the keys!” He’d gotten out of the car and extended a hand, an unpleasant smirk turning that mirror image into a grinning troll’s mask.
T.J.’s reply was unconsidered but heartfelt – he socked his double in the mouth and drove him back against the side of his Porsche. The skin on T.J.’s knuckles split and bled. In the vindictive thrill of the moment, he didn’t care.
His double shook his head, looking more insulted than hurt despite the blood oozing from his mashed lip, and lunged. They were the same height, almost the same build. T.J. saw right away that while his double had health-club fitness, he had the wiry strength that came from years of hard work. And his double didn’t know how to fight.
It was over in a matter of seconds. The double slumped beside his car, moaning and holding his head. T.J. gave him a final kick for good measure, slammed the door, and locked it with the keys that he then stuffed into his own pocket. He crossed the road again to check on the woman.
Audrey. The other one had called her Audrey.
He knelt beside her and helped her as she tried to sit up. Nothing looked broken, all of her limbs seemed to be functioning. Her slacks and blouse were torn in places, the skin beneath scraped, but she was okay. Thank God, she was okay.
She shook her hair out of her face and looked at him. Her eyes, dark brown and wide as those of a doe, went even wider.
“Todd?”
T.J. jerked. “What?”
She cringed from him fearfully. “Don’t hurt me, Todd, don’t hurt me anymore.”
“Wait. Audrey. I’m not him. I’m the guy from the truck.” He pointed at it, saw that rather than do much damage, the little collision had shaken something in his headlight so that it was shining steadily. “He’s over there.”
Audrey regarded Todd, and then looked again at T.J. with increasing confusion. “You look …”
“I know. Never mind. Are you okay?”
“I think so. He … he pushed me. Didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” T.J. said. “Is his name really Todd?”
“Todd Jeffrey Brigham,” she said. “Who are you?”
He felt cold, colder than the brisk, crystalline desert night could account for. “T.J. Lawton.”
“T.J.,” she repeated wonderingly. “It doesn’t stand for …?”
He brought out his wallet and showed her his license. “Nobody’s called me anything but T.J. for as long as I can remember. Who is this guy? What’s going on?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you!” Audrey said.
“And why did he push you in front of my truck? Was he trying to kill you or something?”
“I don’t know.” Reaction set in, and she wrapped her arms around herself in an unsuccessful effort to quell her shivering. “We’d been going to Vegas for his birthday. We were going to stay for the whole weekend. But we had a fight, and decided to drive home instead. We just kept on arguing. Finally, he pulled over and was threatening to leave me here. I think he would have, too, but then your truck came along and he just … just lost it.”
“His birthday?” echoed T.J. through numb lips.
“His twenty-first,” said Audrey.
She was about to say more, but her gaze shifted past him and she paled. T.J. saw Todd, who had staggered to his feet. His fists were knotted, and the one eye that wasn’t puffing shut glared at him with hot white fury. But rather than rush him, Todd veered to his right and headed for T.J.’s truck. It was idling, the keys still in it, the door standing wide open from when he’d bailed hurriedly out.
T.J. sprang up. Audrey did too, with a little scream.
“He’s going to run us over!” she wailed as the truck blatted into renewed life.
“Come on!” T.J. caught her hand and yanked her out of the way as his own truck plunged at them like something out of a nightmare. He could see his own face behind the wheel, his and yet not his, twisted in rage and wounded madness.
The truck missed them by a foot. The ghastly breath of its exhaust and baleful red glow of its taillights bathed them. T.J. looked for an escape. The shoulder descended in a gentle slope, but at the bottom was a ramshackle fence made of rusted metal bars and barbwire.
He and Audrey fled across the road, the truck just missing them again as Todd backed over where they’d been. He pushed her behind the Porsche, wishing he did have a gun, a baseball bat, something. But the only things he could have used for weapons were his tools, and they were in the truck with Todd.
“He’s gone nuts,” gasped Audrey, crouching and peering over the side-view mirror. Todd was about twenty yards down, laboriously backing and filling to turn the truck around.
Muttering curses, T.J. dug in his pocket and found the keys to the Porsche. “We’ve got to get out of here. Quick. In the car.”
He opened her door and she scrambled in without having to be told twice. He dashed around the hood as she leaned over to unlock the driver’s side. T.J. slipped into the car, wishing he had a few minutes to enjoy the way the seat molded itself to him, the way the high-performance engine turned over almost at his touch, that lovely new-car smell.
But Todd was coming. T.J. wanted to think Todd wouldn’t be crazy enough to damage the Porsche even though he’d been crazy enough to try and kill his girlfriend.
No such luck. The shuddering, clunking pickup came dead at them, picking up speed.
“Hang on!” T.J. threw the Porsche in gear and it leapt forward like a striking snake. It was a hair-trigger responsive piece of machinery, so much so that he almost oversteered them right off the road and down into the barbwire after all. Tires screeched and smoked.
The front of the pickup struck a glancing blow to the Porsche’s back deck and then they were clear. Rocketing down the ribbon of black road with the headlights behind them as yellow and lambent as the eyes of a monster.
“Now what?” T.J. asked, more to himself than to Audrey. “This baby can outrun my truck easy, but where’m I going?”
“Police,” she said.
“No way. They’ll think I stole it, kidnapped you, who knows what.”
The varicolored twinkle of Joshua Flats was growing. He was headed back toward town, his escape attempt aborted in the most bizarre of all possible ways. Left in a pickup, returned in a sports car with a beautiful woman at his side, but who was going to believe his story? Especially once they got a look at him and Todd together. He didn’t believe it himself.
“He’s coming!” She had twisted around in the seat to peer back, straining against her seatbelt.
Incredibly, Todd had gotten the battered old Ford to such a speed that it should have shimmied itself to pieces. T.J. checked his speedometer, the long red needle hovering just past seventy, and Todd was gaining. He pressed down on the gas and the Porsche surged effortlessly into the realms above eighty miles per hour.
Escape velocity, he thought crazily. If we had wings, we’d be lifting off.
His eyes darted quickly to the rearview. The yellow headlights were falling behind, still struggling to catch up. Over the strains of what he guessed was jazz music issuing from the Porsche’s speakers, T.J. heard a flat bang followed by a flapping noise.
Audrey yipped a small scream and slid down in her seat. “Is he shooting at us?”
In the mirror, the truck slalomed wildly to the left.
“He blew a tire!” T.J. said.
The truck overcompensated, swinging in a loose, looping arc. It teetered on the edge of going over, almost landed back on all fours, and then tipped. The side hit with a hollow crumpling crash. Sparks erupted as the metal scraped along the roadway. The truck rolled and went down the slope.
T.J. braked, brought the Porsche around in a neat turn as tight as a miser’s fist. Audrey’s frantic hand clutched his arm.
“You’re not going back, are you?”
“What else am I supposed to do, leave him?”
She bit at her full lower lip. Tears turned her eyes to dark, rippling pools. “I don’t know!”
>
His truck, that tough old veteran, had become something that looked like the modern-art sculpture the town had paid too much to have some artist install in front of the two-room library on Saddleback Street. Steam hissed, fluids gurgled, glass was strewn in a jeweler’s display. Tools, cans, and assorted equipment made an irregular halo around the wreck.
“Where is he?” Audrey was still low, barely peeking her head over the dashboard. “I don’t see him. Where is he?”
T.J. started to speak and gagged instead as he saw. The truck had seatbelts, wedged down behind the cushions somewhere, but Todd hadn’t taken the time to go groping around for them, not when his quarry was getting away. He’d been thrown almost clear. Almost. Half of him had still been in the cab when the truck rolled.
Audrey saw too, and screamed through hands clamped firmly over her mouth. She moved the hands to cover her eyes.
Gulping, still trying hard not to throw up – his lunch had been hours ago so he doubted there was anything of substance in his stomach, but the heaves threatened vigorously – T.J. stopped at the edge of the blacktop and got out. Night wind riffled his hair and brought him the smell of gas. It chugged from the ruptured tank like beer from a tap.
“Is he dead?” asked Audrey, still with her hands over her eyes.
She’d seen him, or what was left of him. Why was she asking? The guy was nearly torn in two, his upper half crushed and barely recognizable as human.
“Oh, yeah,” T.J. said shakily. “He’s dead, all right.”
The strength ran from him like water. He leaned against the Porsche so he didn’t slither to the road. Fear swelled in him, a great blister of fear. When it popped, it would flood him with panic. He was going to get blamed for this, he just knew it. The truth was too insane, the truth made no sense. None of it made sense.
“Good,” Audrey said, and that short, sharp, cold word went into T.J.’s ears like an icepick.
He turned slowly to look in at her. She’d taken her hands from her face and was sitting up straight, gazing impassively at the wreck and the body hanging partway out of the shattered windshield.
“Huh?” The interrogative croak was the best T.J. could do.
“He tried to kill me!” Audrey said. “He tried to kill us both. I’m glad he’s dead. Glad!”
“We’ve got to call someone,” T.J. said. “The police. An ambulance.”
She got out of the car and came around to stand in front of him. “But if we do, they’ll find out. I couldn’t stand that. His parents, my parents, all our friends … they’d want to know why we were fighting. They’d blame me. Say I drove him to it, made him so mad that he went right out of his mind.”
“He did,” said T.J.
“Nobody has to find out,” she said, looking into his eyes with a budding, wild sort of hope. “No one ever has to know.”
“What, just leave him here? I know this seems like the middle of nowhere, but people will notice that truck in the ditch. My truck. How am I supposed