Joyride Read Free Page B

harmless off his shoulder. The guy fell back into the bushes and Carole made a choked-off screaming sound behind him. Some woman-scared little shriek.
    You bitch.
    You fuck me, and then you fuck with me and now you want to get rid of me. Is that it?
    What’s the matter?
    Am I too much trouble for you?
    He turned to her, to maybe quite fucking possibly throw her the hell off the mountain—he could do it, they were that close to the edge right here—and he was wondering if he would feel like doing it to her when he got over there because it was completely up to him, it had always been up to him whatever he wanted to do with her, stepping toward her thinking oh to hell with it, to hell with the running after her and the hassle and jerking her around, trying to make her life fucking miserable, it would be easier just to end her nasty little life right here and now, he was thinking this when the guy got up out of the bushes and let him have it again.
    He’d screwed up bad, turning toward her. Going after her.
    And the guy was good this time. Much better. His head split open really bleeding now so that he had to wipe the blood pouring down off his forehead out of his eyes in order to see, and he realized that he was on his knees. He didn’t remember falling.
    But something was queer. Something was wrong. What the hell was happening?
    The guy should have hit him again by now.
    Sure. That was it.
    What the hell was wrong with the guy?
    The guy had hesitated.
    Asshole.
    His vision cleared enough to see a pair of legs standing in front of him and he grabbed them, jerked them toward him and hugged tight and lifted and Lee fell, flailing at him with the bat, smashing down across the middle of his back to his hip, the bat coming down so hard that he could feel the hip bone crack. Not like the head wound. Hell the head wound hardly hurt at all. Pain like a bulldozer now.
    But by then he was up on top of him pounding at the blurry oval that he knew was Carole’s lover’s face, watching it turn red suddenly, red with the guy’s blood or his own he wasn’t sure which and didn’t care because he was connecting, he could feel teeth jab into his fist and then something soft that was probably his eye and he was howling, Howard was howling dousing his pain with the blind ecstatic glee of manslaughter when he sensed—not saw—her step up right beside them standing above them and sensed—not saw—her lift the rock.
    He smelled the new fresh dirt off the rock. It smelled like the blood-smell only richer. Thicker.
    And then for a moment he felt some kind of amorphous contact, some sudden enormous pressure from above snapping down his head and his neck, Lee sliding off to one side, the earth and grass looming.
    And then felt nothing at all.
    Wayne lay low over the rocks. No vertigo now.
    No.
    He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
    They fucking dared !
    He almost felt like shouting, like whooping up therein sheer delight. My god! At first he hadn’t been sure what he was seeing, it had looked like maybe nothing more than a fight down there, maybe over the woman. One of the men had a baseball bat but he’d seen worse in the parking lots of bars at night with jacks and tire irons so that it was only at the end of it when the woman picked up the rock and brought it down on the taller, bigger man that Wayne knew what he was seeing.
    Murder.
    He felt like calling down to them. Hey! Guys! Hey! Include me in! He felt like going down there. See this thing up close. Hell—maybe even help out a little. Who the hell were these people? Where the hell did they come from? He couldn’t remember being this excited. Not by anything! He was aware of his heart racing and a pounding in his ears.
    They dared !
    God damn ! he wanted to go down there.
    But instead he did the smart thing, he guessed it was the smart thing, he watched silently as the man wiped the blood off his face—he was bleeding from the mouth—and then bent down and lifted off the