****
When Bobby saw the trailer beginning to angle towards the side of the road, towards the fog, he said, "Wowa, Danny, straighten up, man."
Danny didn't answer. Didn't straighten up, either.
Bobby checked his mirror. Saw the rear end of the trailer begin to leave the road, move into the wall of fog. He heard the clack of many trotters on metal as the pigs at the back, enveloped by fog that got through the ventilation slats, began to panic. Then, even over the engine noise and the cries of terror-stricken pigs, he heard grinding. Metal twisting.
"Danny, the pigs!" he yelled.
"Fuck the pigs. Beano's dead," Danny said quietly.
Bobby shut his mouth. Beano had been with Danny since Bobby was a kid. Beano meant the world to Danny. Danny would have killed Bobby himself if he'd hurt the dog. And now four idiot strangers had done just that. So Bobby shut his mouth and put his eyes on the road ahead and tried to shut out the noise of Wingers enjoying their buffet in a box.
By now the tractor unit had reversed twenty feet and the trailer was at a right angle to it, deep in the fog with only a few feet at the front exposed, maybe four or five pigs safe there. The ones that had fought hardest to get to the front, away from the wall of fog that moved slowly up the trailer's length, shrinking their world, annihilating those it consumed.
Danny spun the wheel hard left and the truck turned that way now, forcing the trailer deeper until it and the tractor unit's rear wheels were gone. The truck paused for a beat directly sideways in the road, nothing but fog visible through front and back, wide dark road visible out either side window. Then Danny slammed the gearstick in first, yanked the wheel hard right. The rig hopped forwards, turning sharply, but not sharply enough to avoid the wall of fog. Bobby grabbed his door and held it hard as his side of the truck scythed through the fog. He waited for the window to implode, his body to be yanked out, shredded. He heard them outside, inches away, scratching the metal of the truck. Scratching but not attacking. Perusing, checking out this intruder into their world, then deciding - thankfully - that they couldn't eat it.
Bobby saw the clear, long road ahead again. He breathed. The truck straightened up on the tarmac, hit a higher gear, and gave chase. Bobby didn't want to check his mirror. He didn't want to see the trailer. But he couldn't turn away his hearing. He was aware of the silence from back there.
****
The dashboard headlights winked, then flashed, then died.
"Wow, what's going on?" Drums said.
That was when the headlights followed suit: wink, flash, dead. The engine coughed, its form of a wink. Then again, a flash. Then it too died.
"Shit." He knocked the gearstick into neutral and began to coast. Sixty miles an hour, rapidly dwindling.
"What's happened?" Vocals said as she moved to the front.
"That crash earlier, when that idiot ran into us. Must have damaged the engine. Oil temp's right up and... I don't know, but we're dead. We're stopping."
That freaked the others. They started yammering, until he told them he had a plan to deal with the maniac truckers. And he did. He'd just seen something up ahead that ignited the spark of a plan in his head.
Forty metres ahead was a spot where the road was wider. A half-oval of worn dirt was stuck on the left side of the shiny tarmac lane like a knobbly knee. The passing place. Ten metres of track just wide enough for the van to sit there with its right-side tyres barely touching the tarmac. Which would leave enough room for the big rig to pass them by.
If it did. No choice. Drums turned a shallow angle as the passing place approached. He was down to twenty now. No need for the brakes. The van's front left tyre bumped onto the track, then its back left. Two more light jolts and the van was in the passing place, crawling at ten miles an hour, then five. He chose to park right in its middle, where it was widest. One jab of the brakes to take the dead van from two miles an hour to zero in half a second.
The only sound was the ticking engine. Drums stared ahead, seeing the wall of fog. Strangely, the wall of fog should have enveloped the passing place - hell, it should smother the whole road - but it didn't. It curved around the outside edge of the track as if there really were a giant sheet of glass holding it back.
"This is your great plan?" Guitar moaned. "Sit here and hope he drives on by without noticing us?"
"Out. Everyone," Drums said. "Hide low at the front of the van. Now."
Guitar laughed. "You're joking. This is your plan?"
Everyone got out. The sliding side door was on the left, inches from the fog, so keyboard and the two girls climbed over into the front and exited through the driver's door behind Drums. They moved to the front of the van and bent low. All except Guitar, who just watched them from a place near the van's front bumper.
"What do you hope will happen here?"
Drums squared up to him. "Use your head. If we park in the middle of the lane, he's going to just ram us right off and into the fog. This way we have space."
"Space for what? And what's with this fucking fog anyway?"
"Did you see that dog? He didn't just fall in some barbed wire." Drums looked at the fog on the other side of the road. "I don't know, man. Something corrosive in the fog. Something living in it?"
"That's just stupid."
"Put your bloody arm in it, then."
The two men just stared at each other.
"I see him!" Keyboard hissed as a pair of headlights blazed on about eighty metres down the lane. The two men quickly got low at the front of the van. Drums watched the truck from around the corner of the van. Three seconds. Five. Then he stood. Ignored his friends' whispered shouts of come back and what are you doing and strode to the centre of the lane and stared at the truck.
"He's just sitting there, guys. Trying to scare us."
"Ten out of ten for effort," Guitar said.
Just sitting there, looking back at him. Engine idling, too low to hear. Not planning to creep up, because of the headlights. He'd crept close enough to give them a shock, while keeping back far enough to not limit his options. At fifty metres, Drums might have tried to bolt at the truck. Six or seven seconds, maybe not enough time for the truck to get any real speed. He would have fancied he could have dipped alongside and grabbed a bar or rail or something and hauled himself up. Shimmy along to the cab, get inside, save the fucking day.
At fifty metres, sure. Maybe sixty. Probably not seventy, but worth a punt. Not eighty, though.
He thought about walking, closing the gap, then decided not to. Maybe the guy wanted that. So he waited. Stuck to the plan.
He noticed the weather. It was not cold. There was a breeze, but it was lukewarm, soft, slow, constant, and it came straight at him from behind, following the line of the road. The fog, he realised. Their walls made the road like a channel down which the breeze floated, unable to penetrate the grey barrier.
That was when he realised the fog glowed.
Not glowing, he corrected himself. But it was there, still grey, still as grey as had been before the sun set. Not dark like the clouds. Still visible in the dark when really it shouldn't have been.
He looked up. The night sky was not a sky at all, but a line. There was no sky beyond the top of the fog walls, if they had a top. The black line of sky followed the line of the road, as if it were not sky at all but a reflection of the black tarmac itself. He suddenly felt claustrophobic, as if he were in a deep trench.
"So what's this great plan?" Guitar shouted, which broke him from his strange thoughts. He saw the truck again. Just sitting there, like a snake about to pounce.
"We want to live, then you all do as I say."
***
"Bet you can't squash them all in one go," Bobby said. He was trying to lighten the atmosphere. But Danny didn't acknowledge him. Just kept facing forward, gripping the steering wheel as if he thought something might try to yank him right out of that seat.
Then he gunned it.
The truck pounced forwar
d. Quick through the gears, up to forty in no time. The road whizzed beneath the truck. Bobby held on tight.
Bobby had already suggested Danny let him out. He could go bash some heads and save the driver for Danny. Danny just shook his head. Danny, he knew, wanted to do it all himself. He'd done it before. No one had ever come asking about the others, and no one would come for these four punks. Bobby tried to relax and enjoy the show.
The passing place raced at them. last second, Danny jerked the wheel left. The big rig obeyed. Bore down on the van. Danny didn't know why they'd stopped the van. He knew it wouldn't be moving again.
He braced himself. Half a second before the truck hit, he saw the four punks scramble out from cover. They pelted across the road. The truck just missed them, but it got their vehicle dead on.
He felt the truck vibrate as it hit, but it lost no momentum. An almighty crashing thunder stung his ears. The back of the van blossomed like a flower against the hammer-flat front of the truck, with rent metal for petals, and then it was gone, punted into the fog. Danny hauled hard on the wheel at the same time, forcing the truck to the right, back onto the tarmac. He levelled it out while the cab was still reeling on its hydraulics like a bush in a hurricane. Bobby relaxed. A little.
***
On Drums' shout, they ran, and they dove, and they rolled. The tarmac was littered with tiny stone debris and it scratched at them. They were still rolling aside when the world seemed to explode. A noise a thousand times greater than the big rig's beastly rumble.
"Now run!" Drums shouted, scrabbling to his feet. He helped the others up, one at a time, impatient. Guitar was in no hurry. The plan was suicide as much as sitting here to wait was.
But they got up and they ran, because it was the plan. Not away, but towards the receding truck, which hadn't started to slow yet. The trucker wanted to make sure he had enough distance before turning, Drums knew. Wouldn't help to be halfway turned in the road when they got to him. So he would drive a bit yet. And they would run a bit.
"Why didn't we go back?" Guitar shouted.
Drums didn't answer, but the answer was the sign back at the fence. Passing place: 8 miles. Eight miles back to the village. It could be twenty this way to the next village, but it could also be two. So they would go onward.
The truck was a good two hundred and fifty metres ahead now, lost in the gloom, only its pinprick tail lights visible.
And then the brake lights.
"Faster!" Drums urged.
***
Danny hit the brakes hard enough to toss Bobby forward. His head nearly hit the window. After that, he put his seatbelt on. First time in six years delivering with Danny.
The truck started to back up. Same as before, feeding the ruined trailer into the fog one slow metre at a time. Bobby saw the trailer in his wing mirror by accident. Tore his eyes away as soon as he remembered he didn't want to see, but too late. He'd seen the ragged metal, the ventilation slats torn wide, as if a bomb had exploded in there. And he'd seen the blood and bits of guts splattered all over the outside. No way the owner of the pigs was going to pay them now.
When Danny moved forward again, turning right, feeding the truck onto the lane to head back at the punks, Bobby saw them. A hundred or so metres away. Running towards the truck, strangely. At first he was puzzled, then he wasn't. "They're trying to catch us before we can turn, Danny."
***
"He's coming back!" Keyboard said. "We have to go in the fog."
Drums stopped running. The others stopped, too. He watched the truck straighten up and accelerate as the other three chattered about the fog. Some wolf or something had gotten the dog, he heard. The dog had run into some farming machinery, someone else said.
"Side of the road, when I say. Side by side, close to the fog as you can get. Right side. On my call."
"This is stupid," Keyboard said. She seemed to have overtaken Guitar as lead moaner.
And so they stood there, middle of the road, as the raging truck bore down on them like a shark. Forty metres, then twenty. Forty miles an hour. Fifteen metres out, Drums shouted NOW and they darted right. But he grabbed Vocals' arm and yanked her left instead. She started to protest, but then the truck was right on them. Just before he saw it blow past them, impossibly close, mere inches, close enough to smell its diesel stink and feel its heat. he saw Keyboard bail on the standing around idea and turn and jump into the fog, screaming in mortal terror.
***
A second before the truck would splat all four punks across its grille, they split and rushed aside. Danny realised he couldn't get both pairs. Good plan. He uttered a snigger and tweaked the wheel to the left. Just a jot. Just enough to drift. He was aiming for the other guy and one of the girls. Not the guy driving the van, the guy who'd killed Beano. Bobby had half a second to wonder why, then he knew. Danny did the same thing with his Sunday dinners. Ate the veg and potatoes first and saved the meat till last. Saved the best till last.
Just metres away, the woman turned and fled into the fog. A fraction of a second later, the lone guy was hit. Bobby watched him vanish below the big windscreen, heard a dull thud. A small spatter of blood hit the window, like the first stroke of an action painting. That was all. The guy was gone.
Danny cackled.
***
"Run!" Drums shrieked, but he had to grab Vocals' hand and drag her. They staggered onwards as the truck tore away from them. He knew this was a fruitless plan. It might have worked if there had been twenty in his band. Just for a second he wished he'd joined a choir.
But there were two of them left. They had gotten only a hundred or so metres closer to the next town on the truck's first pass. maybe a hundred and fifty more the second time. But to cover any great distance would take dozens of passes from the truck. A choir would have done it. But half the team were going to be lost with each pass, and there were only two of them left.
He threw a glance back. Brake lights. The truck was stopping, soon to be turning, then coming. One more pass. One more person to lose. Vocals was going to extend Drums' life by maybe a minute, maximum.
In the second he spent looking back at the truck, Keyboard came back. Same way as the dog: as if tossed by something. Same condition as the dog: she was just a tatty red skeleton. Strangely, whatever was in the fog must have not liked blue, because it or they had left her scalp and blue hair alone.
Told ya so, he thought, then regretted it. He looked away, fearing if he didn't, he was likely to see the scraps of Guitar come back, too.
They got another eighty metres before the engine noise and headlights were so close he had to stop, turn, force Vocals to one side of the road, force himself onto the other. They stood there, facing each other, four metres apart, becoming steadily more illuminated as powerful headlights closed on them.
Vocals was crying now. "What are we doing?" she yelled.
"Survival instinct, babe," Drums said. He'd fancied her for years, but never made a move. Never flirted with her or called her a name like "Babe." Nothing to lose now. No goddamned chance of a shag, though. "He can only get one of us. The other gets a chance. And I killed his dog."
That was to make her think he would be the next target, but Drums didn't believe that. The trucker could have taken him on the last pass. He didn't, which meant he was playing. Tormenting. Saving Drums till the end. Maybe when it was down to two of them against him, they might stop the truck and get out the bats. A more personal touch to their revenge. That would be fine with Drums. More suffering in the long run, maybe, but he wanted to live. The longer the better, no matter the pain.
"Here we go, babe," he said as the truck bore down on them. He looked at it and saw a splash of red on the grille. Guitar's red. The guy had gotten off easier than Keyboard, that was for sure.
The truck's horn blared. Playing.
The truck was close enough that he could see the occupants. He saw the fat trucker, the driver, raise a hand and give a salute. Drums turned his head, looked the ot
her way up the lane, shouted to Vocals that he loved her, and then held his breath, certain he had already taken his last.
He got more.
The truck blew past. He watched its length whiz by, reminded of watching trains go past a station as a kid, standing as close to the edge of the platform as he dared. He felt the vibration of the road in his soles. And he felt the wind the truck pushed aside, thrown at him, then a more violent wind from its slipstream, and then it was past, and Vocals was gone. He saw something under its wheels, tumbling, then thrown into the fog on the far side. The big wheels on the left side left a trail of blood on the tarmac.
Last pass. No one left but him. The truck would soon stop, and turn, and come back, and he had nowhere to hide because he was in a channel. He couldn't run because the way he was heading was where the truck was. He should have stayed at the passing place. Enough room there to keep diving aside with each pass of the truck, until his energy or the big rig's fuel ran out. But the passing place was too far to reach. He would be mown down before he got anywhere close.
He knew he should run that way anyway, because the further he got from the truck, the longer it would take to catch him. And he wanted to live as long as possible. But he also had a fire in his belly. He wasn't going to turn his back and just give up.
So he ran after the truck. It kept speeding onwards until it was lost in the dark, just a couple of red taillights. For a few seconds he held out hope that it would just go on and on and vanish and be gone and never come back, and that he would run on and on and soon the road would widen out into a town. And then he saw the brake lights flare red.
***
Now Danny had a great grin on his face, like some guy loving a fairground ride. He stopped the truck and started the curving reverse process. Bobby looked in his mirror to watch. He could see part of the fuel tank and a great splash of red on it. The woman had gone under the wheels on his side. He remembered the slight jerk, as if the truck had hit nothing more substantial than a speed bump. The great weight must have popped her like a balloon, throwing blood and guts all over the underside of the tractor unit, and all across the fuel tank. He looked away.
"I'm gonna do him at twenty miles an hour, so he lives. Then do it again."