Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [125]
While they were traveling faster than the cyclists, this narrow and treacherous road didn’t allow them to travel over twenty-five miles per hour, so as they passed them, each biker was able to get a gander at Stephens inside the Porsche. He hadn’t been counting on that. The first was Muldaur, who seemed to be suffering as much as any man could. The look of shock on Muldaur’s face when he recognized Stephens in the Porsche was exceeded only by the bitter look Zak gave him a moment later. Giancarlo, unexpectedly the lead rider of this trio, had the temerity to flip him the bone. Stephens knew they were disappointed that he’d circumvented their group negotiations to make a deal for himself, but hey…there was survival and then there was everything else. If they weren’t smart enough to figure that out, it wasn’t his fault.
And then it happened. The eventuality Stephens had been warning the others about for some minutes now. The white Ford in front of them had stopped in the middle of the road, was actually rolling down the hill backward. The brake lights came on and the engine, which had stalled, roared back to life. Momentarily. Then a cloud of black smoke poured out the tailpipe, and the truck stalled again.
There was barely enough room for the Porsche to squeeze past, and even then its driver’s-side wheels were bouncing over the rocks that rimmed the road. Kasey swung out even farther. The driver’s door on the Ford popped open, then closed when the driver realized the Porsche was about to take the door off.
After they were safely in front of the disabled Ford, Stephens turned around and saw Bloomquist and Scooter climbing out of the tall cab. Behind Scooter, maybe two hundred yards down the mountain now, a stand of trees burst into flame. The three cyclists were in front of the flames, but only barely. Stephens couldn’t take his eyes off them. They were about to be roasted. He couldn’t believe it.
Bloomquist and Scooter yelled for the Porsche to stop, but the Porsche engine was running rough, too, so maybe Kasey was afraid if he stopped and let it idle it would quit, that they would all die. Or maybe he was afraid that if he stopped, the fire would overtake them in those few seconds. Or the cyclists would. It was hard to know why he floored the accelerator, speeding into a bank of black smoke that had drifted onto the road, but he did. Stephens felt sick about it, but still he was glad they hadn’t stopped.
“Slow down,” Jennifer yelled. “We need to pick them up.”
“You’re going to crash,” said Fred. “Can you even see?”
Stephens could feel the rocks under the car as they edged off the road. They rolled sideways and then hit a tree and came to rest, rear wheels spinning, the Porsche canted at a forty-five-degree angle. Now they’d done it. Now they were on foot, too. Without knowing how, Stephens found himself on the road blundering through a web of smoke, running. He couldn’t see the fire racing up the mountain behind them, but he could hear its dull roar.
All six of them had been relegated to climbing the mountain on foot. And, of course, the cyclists were so far back they were all probably dead by now.
59
Zak was surprised to see Stephens in the backseat wearing a smug look of satisfaction. It took a couple of seconds for it to sink in, but when it did Zak found himself enraged to the point that he actually felt a wave of energy run through his limbs. Good. Anything to help propel him to the top of the mountain in front of the fire. It was the first shot of adrenaline he’d felt in a long while, and it perked him up. It was one thing to get chased up a mountain by fire, another to die while one of your erstwhile friends gloated over it. Zak would have ridden through hell to wipe the self-satisfied look off Stephens’s face.
Flames began licking at their backsides. Zak hadn’t noticed that the fire was so close until he rode into the ditch and then quickly back out. He’d felt