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After all, he was Iron Mike Sweeney The Enein to well up and he swiped at theer

"Dah and loud, bursting out of his troubled chest

Then, with a snarl of pure rage, he thrust hied down the far side, his legs worked furiously, churning around and around as the bike accelerated set home a moment faster, but to channel his fury and fear somewhere The War Machine becalow of the headlights just a split second before the vehicle crested the near hill It bounded up over the knoll and swept down the other side,at incredible speed for so narrow a road Mike was just beginning his cli taken the last four hills at a rapid clip

The headlights dazzled hie school jacket and white baseball cap, he fairly glowed in their brilliance The vehicle--Mike still couldn’t tell what kind of car or truck it was--swooped straight down the hill at hiive hihts, he kneas a truck, and the wide set of the headlights confir so fast and why it wasn’t giving hied the whole side of the road, cra the shoulder, which was his only lane unless Mike decided to veer over to the other side The truck sped on, and Mike was sure that the driver didn’t see hihtness of his clothes In the few seconds he had left, he jagged sharply and quickly to his left and gave the truck as wide a berth as possible

Those few seconds snapped away like firecrackers and then tihts also shifted, and Mike stared in co toward hi directly toward him!

Mike tried to wave the truck away, but the roar of the engine actually increased, and then suddenly everything in Mike’s world seehts on everything--and so frohts had flashed on, and at the sa abruptly slowed down Mike was crouched over his handlebars, his face turned toward the oncoled and the chrome bumper was so close he could have reached out and touched it Mike felt his hands jerk the handlebars sharply to one side--and thatthat happened in real ti his s In a fragment of a second, as the truck rolled at hi so ile and slipped past the very corner of the big silver bumper

I roar the tow-​truck shot past him, the fenders and wheels inches fro at him The truck passed in a second and as it ripped past, Mike’s bike shot off the highway, crunched across the verge, and flew into black emptiness

He had no time to scream, and no voice for it anyway The War Machine hurtled off the edge of the drainage ditch and smashed down in the pumpkin patch that bordered the road The front wheel hit the twisted vine spiraling out froourd and the bike stopped at all once Mike kept going

He passed over the handlebars, turned a neat soh forward for him to land on his feet It would have been a wonderful accident worthy of a standing ovation, but as he passed over the bars his left sneaker toe caught the rippled rubber of the handgrip and spoiled the rotation Mike’s heels hit first but lacking the right angle of momentum he fell backward instead of forward His buttocks siving his tailbone a painful jolt; then his back hit a scattering of underdeveloped pumpkins, each the size and approximate hardness of baseballs He could feel one rib break with a searing detonation of red-​hot pain that stole his breath, exploded his nerve endings, and closed a hot fist around his heart His head flopped back and struck a stone

Everything stopped All sound and s he are of were blackness, searing pain, and the fireflies of head trauasp in air but finding none

He lay there for thousands of years

When his ht was: Oh, shit…I’ to be late now Then, Ohhis head, he could see the receding taillights of the truck, could see that it was a tow-​truck--lightning seeine roared as the truck picked up speed and downshifted to cli to survive the moment

Once the truck had crested the hill and vanished, he stared up at the dark and featureless sky The lightning flickered distantly and underlit the clouds with a dark red glow