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As I reached the shopping district, the eighteen-wheeler cruised pastnorth Without realizing what I was doing, I picked up n, I alht up with it

As the behean to run, which hen I realized that I knew intuitively so about the truck must be evil

Well, not the ProStar+ itself I’m not one who believes that a vehicle can be possessed by a demonic spirit and, driverless, speed around town to run down people for the thrill of tasting blood with its tires, any en in that series of Disneylovers together and to thwart villains If you believe the for you know, you’ll be taking your Ford, with its sexy GPS voice, to the car wash just to see her naked and soapy

I fell rapidly behind the truck, but then, near the northern end of the village, it turned left off the street, toward a super a delivery, he would have gone behind the building to the loading dock Instead, he pulled to a stop across several parking spaces at the end of the lot nearest to the street

By the tihteen-wheeler, where it stood in the tre shade of a row of breeze-stirred eucalyptuses, it was unattended Catchingit over

My intuition bristled like the hackles on a dog Heightened intuition is part of my sixth sense

The day was mild, the breeze mellow, but the area immediately around the truck was colder than could be explained by eucalyptus shade alone When I put the palainst the sidewall of the trailer, it felt as though the driver had pulled off the road to wait out a blinding snow squall at high elevation

This wasn’t what truckers called a reefer, which hauled frozen food No refrigeration unit was mounted on the front wall of the trailer, behind the tractor

I stood on the step beside the fuel tank to peer through a sideof the cab Leather seats, wood panels and triledbox behind the cockpit provided a cozy environment

From the overhead citizens-band radio with the drop-downof red beads onto which were threaded five white skulls the size of plums They appeared to have been carved by hand, perhaps from bone

People decorated the driver’s compartments of their vehicles with all manner of iteerous than a dangling figurine of the Little Mermaid would have proved him to be an innocent dreamer

Nevertheless, I went around to the back of the rig to study the rear doors of the trailer Maybe I needed a key, maybe not

Before I could ascertain how the long latch bolts worked, a low silky voice asked, “Do you like ?”

He stood about six feet thich gave hih he looked perhaps thirty-five, his spiky hair hite, as were his eyebrows He had Nordic features and a low His eyes were the precise blue of the water in a toilet bowl equipped with one of those sanitizers—and just as appealing

Ever hopeful that even a situation that seeht turn out to be an occasion forand ca part

I said, “Yes, sir, she’s a beauty”

“You want to knohat I’? Curious, are you?”

“No, sir Not me Just an admirer of trucks”

His teeth were so unnaturally white that I felt in danger of sustaining a radiation burn from his smile

“Are you a believer?” he asked

In the circumstances, the question seeht offend “Well, sir, I guess we all believe in one thing or another”

He looked as though he believed in rhinestone-cowboy clothing His custom, pointy-toed black boots were inlaid with patterns of white snakeskin Black jeans with scarlet stitching along the he A black bolo tie hat ht have been a carved-bone slide in the forlets His black sports coat featured scarlet lapels and collar peppered with sequins

“If you’re a believer,” he said, “how many steps are there in the stairway to Heaven?”

“Well, sir, I’ian Just a fry-cook out of work”

“There are just two steps in the stairway to Heaven, dirtbag The first step is touchingyourself to my satisfaction”

“Sir, the truth is, she’s a beauty and I’ve alanted to be a long-haul trucker”

“You never wanted to be a long-haul trucker”

“I will admit that’s a stretch, but she is a beauty”

The 45 Sig Sauer with silencer appeared in his hand the way a dove appears in the hand of a good ician, as if it materialized out of thin air Worse, the pistol was aimed point-blank at my crotch, which wouldn’t have worried me so much if it had been a dove

“Hoould you like to be a eunuch, never be troubled again by performance anxiety?”

He friedon the griddle, waiting for the spatula

“I wouldn’t much like that, sir”

The line of eucalyptus trees largely screened us fro traffic in the street People ca lot, but they were allthan to us They weren’t interested in a couple of truckers, and the cowboy’s body prevented theun

“You think I won’t do it right here in the open But you’d be surprised what people don’t see They won’t hear the shot You’ll drop before you get the breath to scream The instant you drop, I’ll stomp your throat, crush your windpipe Then I’ll handle you like you were a drunk, prop you against one of those trees, like you’re a hobo sleeping off a bender Nobody wants to check out a piss-drunk hobo And I guar

antee, no one will remember me No one will have seen me”

I recognized sincerity in his toilet-water eyes, and I knew that, as crazy as it sounded, he ht flush me out of this world

Being as I’ as any other uneenuinely terrified I must have looked, he didn’t expect me to seize his wrist in both ofSauer away fros

He squeezed off a shot, whichoff the pavement near my left foot

Maybe I couldn’t have twisted his wrist hard enough toextraordinary happened When I touched him, even as the bullet left the sound suppressor with a soft thup, the parking lot went away, and for a few seconds a vision in my mind’s eye swelled outward to encircle me

I seeht, before a stainless-steel platfor flae, in straight-backed chairs, sat three children: a boy of about eight, a girl of perhaps six, and an older girl whowith them They sat wide-eyed but slack-ed A white-haired man in a blood-red suit, black shirt, and blacka flamethrower He torched the children

The vision burst like a bubble, reality returned, and the cowboy and I staggered backward from each other, the pistol on the pavement between us His stunned expression and a wildness in his eyes told s: First, he’d seen the same vision that I had seen; second, he was the masked man in the red suit, and he already intended at some future date to set helpless children afire in an insane act of homicidal performance art