Panic(79)

“I love you, Heather.” Nat leaned over and put her arms around Heather’s neck. She smelled familiar and Nat-like, and it made Heather want to cry, as though they were saying good-bye for the last time. Then Nat pulled away. “Look, if Ray doesn’t swerve—I mean, if you’re close and it doesn’t look like he’s going to turn . . . You have to promise me you will. You can’t risk a collision, okay? Promise me.”

“I promise,” Heather said.

“Good luck.” Then Nat was gone. Heather saw her jog to the side of the road.

And Heather was alone in the car, in the dark, facing a long, narrow stretch of road, pointing like a finger toward the glow of distant headlights.

She thought of Lily.

She thought of Anne.

She thought of Bishop.

She thought of the tigers, and of everything she’d ever screwed up in her life.

She swore to herself that she wouldn’t be the first to swerve.



While in a dark basement, with the smell of mothballs and old furniture in his nose, Dodge realized, too late, why Nat had taken his keys—and, crying out, fought against his restraints, thinking of a little time-bomb heart, ticking slowly away. . . .



Something in the engine was smoking. Heather saw little trails of smoke unfurling from the hood of the car, like narrow black snakes. But just then Diggin stepped into the center of the road, shirtless, waving his T-shirt above his head like a flag.

Then it was already too late. She heard the high-pitched squeal of tires on asphalt. Ray had started to move. She slammed her foot onto the accelerator and the car jumped forward, skidding a little. The smoke redoubled almost instantly; for a second her vision was completely obscured.

Panic.

Then it broke apart and she could see. Headlights growing bigger. The slick sheen of the moon. And smoke, pouring like liquid from the hood. Everything was fast, too fast—she was hurtling down the road, there was nothing but two moons, growing larger . . . closer . . .

The stink of burning rubber and the scream of tires . . .

Closer, closer . . . She was hurtling forward. The speedometer ticked up to sixty miles per hour. It was too late to swerve now, and he wasn’t swerving either. It was too late to do anything but crash.

Flames leaped suddenly out of the engine, a huge roar of fire. Heather screamed. She couldn’t see anything. The wheel jerked in her hand, and she struggled to keep her car on the road. The air stank like burning plastic, and her lungs were tight with smoke.

She slammed on the brakes, suddenly overwhelmed with certainty: she would die. She saw movement from somewhere on her left—someone running into the road?—and realized, a second later, that Ray had swerved to avoid it, had jerked his wheel to the left and was plunging straight into the woods.

There was a shuddering crash as she sailed past him, flames licking her windshield. She was screaming. She knew she had to get out of the car now, before she hit anything.

Skidding, shuddering, spinning in circles; the car was slowing, it was drifting toward the woods. Heather fought to open the door. The handle caught and she thought she would be trapped there as the fire consumed her. Then she shoved with her shoulder and the door popped open and she jumped, rolled, felt the bite of pavement on her arm and shoulder, tasted dirt and grit, heard a distant roar of sound as if people were yelling her name. Sparks showered from the wheels of the car as it flipped off the road and into the woods.

There was an explosion so loud, she felt it through her whole body. She covered her head. Now she could hear that people were calling her name—and Ray’s, too. A siren wailed in the distance. For a second, she thought she must be dead. But she could taste blood in her mouth. If she were dead, she wouldn’t be able to taste any blood.

She looked up. The car was in ruins; a column of flame was eating it, turning it to rubber and metal. Amazingly, she managed to sit up, and then to stand. She felt no pain, as if she were watching a movie about her own life. And now she couldn’t hear anything. Not the voices calling to her, urging her out of the road, away from the car—not the sirens, either. She was in a watery, deep place of silence.

She turned and saw Ray struggling to get out of his car. There was blood trickling down his face; three people were trying to pull him from the wreck. When he’d swerved, he’d gone straight into a tree; the hood was crumpled, compressed nearly in half.

And now she saw why.

Standing in the middle of the road, perfectly still, not twenty feet away, was the tiger.

It was watching Heather with those deep black eyes, eyes that were old and sorrowful, eyes that had watched centuries go to dust. And in that moment, she felt a jolt go through her, and she knew that the tiger was afraid—of the noise and the fire and the people shouting, crowding the road on both sides.

But she, Heather, wasn’t afraid anymore.

She was compelled forward by a force she couldn’t explain. She felt nothing but pity and understanding. She was alone with the tiger on the road.

And in the final moment of the game, as smoke billowed in swollen plumes into the air and fire licked the sky, Heather Nill walked without hesitation to the tiger, and placed her hand gently on its head, and won.





SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8





heather

IN EARLY OCTOBER, CARP ENJOYED A WEEK OF FALSE summer. It was warm and bright and, if it weren’t for the trees that had already changed—deep reds and oranges interspersed with the deep green of the pines—it might have been the beginning of summer.