Evil Jester Digest, Vol.1 (11 page)

His knuckles went white as he gripped the steering wheel, guiding the car down the curving, sloping road, the car swaying gently from side to side. Still wondering if the GPS really had spoken to him, he kept flicking his glance at it while he navigated the road ahead.

“Did you really just…?” but that was all he could manage.

The eighteen-wheeler was still on his tail, impossibly large in the rearview mirror. It looked to be less than six feet from his rear bumper. The wailing blast of its air horn thumped Mark’s chest like a series of punches.

“Are you talking to me?” Mark asked, but the GPS was silent.

He was stressed from the drive, he told himself, and had imagined…hallucinated the comments. He should pull over and take a nap before something worse happened.

He snapped back to reality, wondering if the truck might be a runaway. This high in the mountains, he’d noticed numerous emergency ramps angling off from the roads—long, straight dirt exits ramps that ran flat for a hundred yards or so and then ended with a sudden steep upgrade backed by ten-foot tall piles of sand to slow and stop runaway trucks.

What if this guy was having trouble with his brakes?

Maybe he was trying to warn Mark to get out of his way.

“Screw it,” Mark said, gritting his teeth as he glanced at the grille in his rearview. “We’ll know what’s what if he slows down at the bottom this hill.”

“He’s laughing at you, you know.”

The voice caught Mark off guard, but this time there was no denying that the GPS unit had spoken.

“Are you…? You’re really talking to me?” Mark glanced at the curling red arrow on the digital view screen.

“No, asshole,” the metallic voice replied. “I’m talking to your mother.” After a lengthy pause, during which Mark wrestled with amazement and disbelief, the GPS unit added, “Of
course
I’m talking to you.”

“How can you—you’re not programmed to…to—”

Mark snapped his focus back to the winding road when he caught himself drifting into the opposite lane. Thankfully, there was no on-coming traffic, but the driver in the semi must have thought Mark was making room for him because he suddenly sped up and tried to pass him on the right. Realizing he was about to get squeezed out, Mark stomped down on the accelerator. His car sped ahead, pulling back into the travel lane mere inches from the semi’s front bumper.

That earned him another ear-splitting blast from the horn, and Mark couldn’t resist sticking his left hand out the window and flipping his middle finger at the driver. The wind tore at his hand.

The scenery was going by in a green blur as Mark negotiated the twists and turns, forgetting for the moment what had just happened with the GPS. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, and he realized his stomach was tight and sour.

“He won’t back off,” the GPS unit said.

“Shut up!” Mark shouted, still only half believing he was really hearing this.

“He thinks you’re a goddamned idiot. He’s trying to run your ass off the road.”

“Why would he do a thing like that?”

“Because he doesn’t like you.”

“Doesn’t like me? How does he—” but Mark couldn’t finish the question as he glanced at the GPS. With the wind whistling in his ears, he wanted to believe—he
had
to believe he was imagining all of this…Maybe his radio was on, tuned to some talk radio station that was fading in and out. When he looked at the radio, though, he saw that the dial was unlit. He twiddled the volume control back and forth a few times just to make sure the radio was silent.

“You’re not real,” Mark said, hearing the tremor in his voice. “You can’t be.”

His lips were suddenly as dry as paper. He licked them, but there was no moisture on his tongue. A sour taste, like vomit, filled the back of his throat. He felt around until he found the water bottle on the seat beside him, but when he shook it, he realized that it was empty. He had forgotten to buy another bottle at the last rest stop, and up here in the God-forsaken boonies, who knew when he would find another gas station and convenience store?

“There’s no water in hell,” the GPS said.

“Will you
please
shut the fuck up?” Mark shouted, fighting the feeling that he was talking to himself, trying to shut off his own chattering thoughts.

“I’m just saying…” was all the GPS said, its robotic voice as emotionless as ever. But Mark was sure he had heard a mocking tone in the voice, nonetheless.

Negotiating the twists and turns of the down slope, Mark couldn’t help but gaze at the damned thing, fighting the urge to tear it off its window mount and fling it out the window. If he did that, though, the truck driver could report him for littering and get him pulled over. Hell, he had probably already radioed ahead to the local police barracks to notify the Staties to be looking for him.

“He’s laughing at you right now,” the GPS said.

“Really?” Mark’s grip on the steering wheel was so tight his wrists throbbed. “And how, exactly, do you know that? You’re just supposed to give me turn-by-turn directions. I don’t need any shi—”

“I told you back a ways to turn left, and you didn’t listen to me.”

“So you’re doing this to—what? To get even with me? For ignoring you?”

The GPS unit was silent, and Mark concentrated on driving even as the big rig bore down on his ass, swaying back and forth, jockeying for an opportunity to pass.

“I don’t need any crap from you…from you or…or anyone else,” Mark said.

Nothing but silence.

“You hear me?” Mark shouted.

“No need to lose your temper, but we both know how you resolve your disagreements with people, now, don’t we?”

“What the hell does
that
mean?” Mark asked, but he winced at the words, and the cold tingling in his wrists that moved up his arms.

The GPS was silent.

The road leveled out into a straightaway. Off to the left, through a break in the woods, Mark caught a view of a wide, smooth-flowing stream that laced out across a meadow in a wide curving arc that reflected the deep, blue sky. The painted lines on the road were broken, and up ahead Mark could see a rest stop. He considered yielding and allowing the semi pass, but the thought of giving in sat like a lump of cold oatmeal in his gut. As the road leveled out into the straightaway, Mark stepped down on the accelerator, smiling wickedly when he heard the blubbering roar of backfiring exhaust as the truck driver also accelerated his vehicle.

“Aw’right, wise guy,” Mark whispered, watching the truck swing heavily out into the passing lane. “Let’s see what you got.”

Tension blossomed in his stomach as he sped down the road, keeping his lead on the semi. Wind ripped through the opened windows, thumping loudly, sounding like huge fists were pummeling the car.

“How are you for gas?” the GPS asked, its sharp voice piercing Mark’s ears like an electric drill.

Mark glanced at his fuel gauge and saw that he had less than a quarter tank of gas.

“How’d you—”

“I guess you’ll have to stop at the next service station, huh?”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

A heavy concussion smacked the air inside the car when Mark passed a car heading in the opposite direction. It appeared to be moving much slower than he and the semi, almost as if it was standing still. The trees and shrubs along the roadside whisked by in a dreamy haze of green and brown.

“If you pull into this gas station, he’ll follow you.”

“And?”

“And…he’ll probably beat the shit out of you.”

Mark couldn’t deny the anxiety that twisted like a tangle of barbed wire in his stomach. He fixed his gaze on the GPS unit and said emphatically,
“He’s
the one’s causing trouble. Not
me!”

“Uh-huh.”

The voice sounded colder now, accusing. A shiver ran up Mark’s spine as he imagined a confrontation with the truck driver. No doubt he was a beefy son-of-a-bitch who would wail on him with a tire iron or baseball bat. The exit for the gas station was rapidly approaching.

Mark had to decide.

Finally resolved, he slowed down and even snapped on his turn signal a couple of hundred yards away from the rest stop exit. His shoulders tensed as he waited to see what the truck would do. Mark hoped he would swing out to the left and pass him by, but after a tense moment or two, he heard a thundering rumble of backfiring exhaust as the truck slowed to pull over.

“Fuck,” Mark whispered.

“You’re screwed, man,” the GPS said. “When he catches up with you, he’s gonna kick your ass from here to tomorrow.”

“The hell he will.”

Mark smiled when he saw the fork in the road ahead with large painted signs, indicating that passenger vehicles should exit to the left, and trucks should go to the right.

“Suck on this,” Mark said as he slowed down and took the turn, but a lightning bolt of terror hit him when the truck driver, ignoring the signs, remained right there on his tail.

“Oh, boy. You’re a dead man now,” the GPS said.

“Will you
please
shut the fuck up?”

There weren’t many vehicles in the parking lot, but Mark slowed down to ten miles per hour in case a pedestrian darted out in front of him. Through the opened window, he could hear the semi as the driver rapidly downshifted, its air brakes gasping like a laboring beast as he slowed down.

Why isn’t there a cop around when you need one?
Mark asked himself, looking around for a cruiser. He was certain—now—that the truck driver was going to stay on his tail no matter what.

“You’re fucked twelve ways to Sunday,” the GPS said, and this time Mark couldn’t ignore the almost gleeful note in the machine’s voice.

It’s a damned machine,
he reminded himself.
That’s all it is.
If it really was talking to him, then someone at the factory must have messed with it, programming it to screw with him like this.

Mark slowed down, letting the truck close in on him, making as if he was going to pull into one of the vacant parking spots close to the front door of the convenience store. The truck rolled behind him silently now, blue exhaust spewing from its exhaust pipes and rising like smoke into the crisp morning sky.

“Aw’right, asshole,” Mark said as he squeezed the steering wheel and slammed the accelerator down hard. His tires screeched on the asphalt, sending up plumes of black smoke and gravel behind him. The smell of burning rubber filled the car, making Mark nauseous, but he let out a whoop of joy as he sped toward the entrance ramp leading back onto the highway. Glancing at his rearview mirror, he saw that the truck had come to a full stop.

“I’ll bet he calls the cops and reports you,” the GPS said.

Mark glared at the GPS and said, “What the fuck do you know?”

“Oh, I know plenty,” the GPS said.

“I’ve got enough gas to make it to the next rest stop,” Mark said, but the truth was, he had no idea where that was.

“Next gas station in twenty-three point five miles,” the GPS unit said and then, after a slight pause, added, “But if you ask me, I don’t think you’ll make it.”

“Who asked you?”

Mark smiled grimly as he drove past a grove of red pine with a scattering of picnic tables before merging back onto the highway. There was no traffic in front or behind him, and his smile widened as he settled into the car seat, letting the steering wheel play loosely in his hands. It would take the eighteen-wheeler a long time to get back up to speed, and by then, Mark would be miles down the road. Just to be on the safe side, he figured he would take the first side road he saw, but he was now leery of leaving the main roads.

How could he trust his GPS unit?

Then again, he could always stop at the next gas station and pick up a map. Do it the old-fashioned way. He was in no real hurry to get to Florida, and now that it was behind him, he wondered why he had let that confrontation with the trucker get on his nerves so badly. He should have just let the fool pass when he first came up behind him. If he had, none of this would have happened.

For the time being, anyway, he was free and clear.

As he drove, he started whistling the old John Denver song “Take Me Home, County Roads.” The day was warming up fast, and the piney woods smell that filled the car was intoxicating.

All of that changed when a black and white police cruiser came up the road heading in the opposite direction. Its lights weren’t flashing, and its siren wasn’t sounding, but the cop was speeding as if he had a definite purpose.

“You bet’cha he called the Staties, all right,” the GPS said.

The suddenness of the mechanical voice broke the hypnotic road sounds, startling Mark who had all but forgotten that the damned thing had been talking to him.

“When this is all over,” he said, “I intend to write a sternly worded letter to the company.”

That was a quote from some damned movie or other. At the moment, Mark couldn’t remember which one. Probably some dumb-ass flick Eileen had made him sit through. But Mark didn’t have time to ponder that for long. He tensed as he watched the police cruiser pass by. And then his stomach dropped when, in his side-view mirror, he saw the cruiser’s brake lights flicker. The police car pulled over to the side of the road and slowed. A second later, the emergency flashers came on, winking madly. Mark watched with steadily mounting horror as the cruiser cut across the median strip, bumping and bouncing in the grassy gully. Its tires spit up clumps of grass and roadside gravel. Then it started speeding up the road, heading in his direction.

“You’re fucked now,” the GPS said.

Mark glanced at his speedometer and saw that he was only doing about five miles per hour over the speed limit. He was tempted to speed up, but he’d never be able to outrun the cruiser; so he slowed down to a hair below the speed limit just in case the cop wasn’t after him. The skin on the back of his neck tightened as the cruiser rapidly closed the distance between them, its red lights flashing in his rearview mirror like razor slashes.

“Kind of makes your ball sack shrivel up, doesn’t it?”

Mark bit his lower lip and shook his head in frustration.