What followed was a shaky, hand-held shot of a country road.
In the foreground, slightly out of focus but still readable, was a road-sign. 117, it said, but Alan didn't need it. He had driven that stretch many times, and knew it well. He recognized the grove of pines just beyond the place where the road curved-it was the grove where the Scout had fetched up, its nose crumpled around the largest tree in a jagged embrace.
But the trees in this picture showed no scars of the accident, although the scars were still visible, if you went out there and looked (he had, many times). Wonder and terror slipped silently into Alan's bones as he realized-not just from the unwounded surfaces of the trees and the curve in the road but from every configuration of the landscape and every intuition of his heart-that this videotape had been shot on the day Annie and Todd had died.
He was going to see it happen.
It was quite impossible, but it was true. He was going to see his wife and son smashed open before his very eyes.
Turn it off! Brian screamed. Turn it off, he's a poison man and he sells poison things! Turn it off before it's too late!
But Alan could have done this no more than he could have stilled his own heartbeat by thought alone. He was frozen, caught.
Now the camera panned jerkily to the left, up the road. For a moment there was nothing, and then there was a sun-twinkle of light.
It was the Scout. The Scout was coming. The Scout was on its way to the pine tree where it and the people inside it would end forever. The Scout was approaching its terminal point on earth. It was not speeding; it was not moving erratically. There was no sign that Annie had lost control or was in danger of losing it.
Alan leaned forward beside the humming VCR, sweat trickling down his cheeks, blood beating heavily in his temples. He felt his gorge rising.
This isn't real. It's a put-up job. He had it made somehow.
It's not them; there may be an actress and a young actor inside pretending to be them, but it's not them. It can't be.
Yet he knew it was. What else would you see in images transmitted by a VCR to a TV which wasn't plugged in but worked anyway? What else but the truth?
A lie! Brian Rusk's voice cried out, but it was distant and easily ignored. A lie, Sheriff, a lie! A LIE!
Now he could see the license plate on the approaching Scout.
24912 V. Annie's license plate.
Suddenly, behind the Scout, Alan saw another twinkle of light.
Another car, approaching fast, closing the distance.
Outside, the Tin Bridge blew up with that monstrous riflecrack sound. Alan didn't look in that direction, didn't even hear it. Every ounce of his concentration was fixed on the screen of the red Sony TV, where Annie and Todd were approaching the tree which stood between them and all the rest of their lives.
The car behind them was doing seventy, maybe eighty miles an hour.
As the Scout approached the cameraman's position, this second car-of which there had never been any report-approached the Scout. Annie apparently saw it, too; the Scout began to speed up, but it was too little. And it was too late.
The second car was a lime-green Dodge Challenger, jacked in the back so the nose pointed at the road. Through the smokedglass windows, one could dimly make out the roll-bar arching across the roof inside.
The rear end was covered with stickers: HEARST, FUELLY, FRAM, QUAKER STATE... Although the tape was silent, Alan could almost hear the blast and crackle of exhaust through the straight-pipes.
Ace!" he cried out in agonized comprehension. Ace! Ace Merrill!
Revenge! Of course! Why had he never thought of it before?
The Scout passed in front of the camera, which panned right to follow. Alan had one moment when he could see inside and yes; it was Annie, the paisley scarf she had been wearing that day tied in her hair, and Todd, in his Star Trek tee-shirt. Todd was looking back at the car behind him. Annie was looking up into the rearview mirror. He could not see her face, but her body was leaning tensely forward in the seat, pulling her shoulder-harness taut. He had that one brief last look at them-his wife and his son-and part of him realized he did not want to see them this way if there was no hope of changing the result: he did not want to see the terror of their last moments.
But there was no going back now.
The Challenger bumped the Scout. It wasn't a hard hit, but Annie had sped up and it was hard enough. The Scout missed the curve and veered off the road and toward the grove of trees where the large pine waited.
"NO!" Alan shouted.
The Scout jounced into the ditch and out of it. It rocked up on two wheels, came back down, and smashed into the hole of the pine tree with a soundless crunch. A rag doll with a paisley scarf in its hair flew through the windshield, struck a tree, and bounced into the underbrush.
The lime-green Challenger stopped at the edge of the road.
The driver's door opened.