He braked hard going into the curve, feeling the rear end threatening to break loose. Midway in, he downshifted and punched it, hearing the squalling of the fat tires as they argued physics with the blacktop of the roadway. Trees filled the windshield, and the seatbelt struggled to hold him behind the wheel against the centrifugal force. Any second now.

The tires chirped as the Chevelle rose up on her stiff springs, sending her pilot nearly weightless. Then the squalling returned as gravity smacked the two tons of hippy era Detroit muscle back down onto the cracked road.

The rears were slipping, but they were supposed to through here. He rode the drift, slinging streamers of muddy slush across the landscape as he upshifted, using the entire road to set up for the next turn.

He was outrunning the headlights, but he knew this road. This time of night, there wouldn’t be anybody out. Past midnight you could march an army of dancing bears the length of the county and nobody’d ever know you’d done it.

Two taps on the brake and he dropped back into second, gunning the engine into the second half of the long ‘S’. There was gonna be a— the rut was still there, and the front end slammed hard down on the coils, but they were rated for a much heavier car than they were living in, so nothing broke. There came a momentary lapse of control and the higher pitch of the engine running without resistence as the deep blue coupe went momentarily airborne, but it was quickly followed by the tortured bark of the tires biting pavement again.

He got it up into fourth on this next straight, not letting up a bit. The Chevelle’s nose dove hard at the end as he rode the brake down through two rapid gear changes at the last possible instant. The speedometer read thirty when he banged his foot against the floor, pulling the wheel around to the left, looking out the driver’s side window rather than the windshield for the sharpness of the curve.

He saw the deer the instant before he would have hit it, jinking the steering wheel just enough to miss as it panicked and took off. Had he had a hand free, he’d have probably been able to grab a few tail hairs as he went past. His heart was banging like a kettle drum, but he’d made it, right?

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But he’d already been pushing the limits of the road and the car. The extra six inches were all it took for fate to point her bony finger down from the heavens and bullseye him. “You,” she seemed to say with the sound of one fat rear tire chewing frozen gravel.

And then the isolated sound of the racing engine for the briefest moment, and the force of the seat pushing up into his ass. The first tree broke the Chevelle’s back as the old coupe hit it flat on where the trunk lid met the rear window, snapping it in half. He heard the bang, like a gunshot, as shattering glass and shards of lumber filled the interior. Felt the momentum throw him in another direction, down and into the steering wheel as the front of the car tried to wrap itself around the first obstruction.

The hood smacked into the tree beside the Chevelle’s first target, changing the wreck’s direction one final time, so that, when it hit the third tree with its roof centered on the tree’s base, it just augered in.

He smelled gasoline and burnt wires and burning oil. He tried to tick them off in his mind and where they were coming from. If they were where they belonged. The oil was pouring out of the fractured engine. The wires were just hot, and the gas was in the back by the tank. No forest fire tonight. Meg wouldn’t have wanted him to start a forest fire.

He was thinking that his legs should hurt more, or at all, as he faded out into nothingness.

“—far out is that rescue truck with the jaws?” a dim, wavering voice was asking tensely.

“Still twenty minutes at least,” another answered. “We’re pretty far out here.”

He couldn’t get his eyes all the way open, but he sort of got the impression that there were flashing lights overhead, strobing across him and the wreck.

“What the hell did this knucklehead think he was doing?” the first voice wondered. “Old fart like him. Damn good thing that old lady called us about hot rodders disturbing her sleep, or we might not have found him ‘til Monday or Tuesday.”

“May take us that long to cut him out of that wreck, the second voice replied. He did a pretty comprehensive jo—”

“—ld on, mister,” a new voice was saying, much closer in. There was a roaring in the background that almost drowned him out. “We’ve almost got you clear. Only a few more min—”

“—ANK,” the voice was calling now. “He’s clear! Get over here and help me get him on a backboard!

“Hang on, Buddy,” the voice assured, and he thought he could feel pressure on his shoulder, although he still couldn’t feel much below chest level. “You’ll be fine, jus—”