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Authors: Stephen King

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The asphalt chunks in the ditch were mostly buried. Some still showed - the wind was picking up, and it had blown the

dirt around - but that looked like the remnants of an old paving job. The compressor I'd brought in the back of the van

looked like Highway Department equipment.

And from here the illusion of the canvas strip was perfect - Route 71 appeared to be utterly untouched down there.

Traffic had been heavy Friday and fairly heavy on Saturday - the drone of motors heading into the detour loop had

been almost constant. This morning, however, there was hardly any traffic at all; most people had gotten to wherever

they intended to spend the Fourth, or were taking the Interstate forty miles south to get there. That was fine with me.

I parked the van just out of sight over the brow of the rise and lay on my belly until ten-forty-five. Then, after a big

milk-truck had gone lumbering slowly up the detour, I backed the van down, opened the rear doors, and threw all the

road cones inside.

The flashing arrow was a tougher proposition - at first I couldn't see how I was going to unhook it from the locked

battery box without electrocuting myself. Then I saw the plug. It had been mostly hidden by a hard rubber O-ring on

the side of the sign-case ... a little insurance policy against vandals and practical jokers who might find pulling the plug

on such a highway sign an amusing prank, I supposed.

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I found a hammer and chisel in my toolbox, and four hard blows were sufficient to split the O-ring. I yanked it off with

a pair of pliers and pulled the cable free. The arrow stopped flashing and went dark. I pushed the battery box into the

ditch and buried it. It was strange to stand there and hear it humming down there in the sand. But it made me think of

Dolan, and that made me laugh.

I didn't think Dolan would hum. He might
scream,
but I didn't think he would
hum.

Four bolts held the arrow in a low steel cradle. I loosened them as fast as I could, ears cocked for another motor. It was

time for one - but not time for Dolan yet, surely.

That got the interior pessimist going again.

What if he flew?

He doesn't like to

fly.

What if he's driving but going another way? Going by the Interstate, for instance? Today everyone else is ...

He

always
goes by 71.

Yes, but what

if

'Shut up,' I hissed. 'Shut up, damn you, just
shut the fuck up!'

Easy, darling - easy! Everything will be all right.

I got the arrow into the back of the van. It crashed against the sidewall and some of the bulbs broke. More of them

broke when I tossed the cradle in after it.

With that done, I drove back up the rise, pausing at the top to look behind me. I had taken away the arrow and the

cones; all that remained now was that big orange warning: ROAD CLOSED USE DETOUR.

There was a car coming. It occurred to me that if Dolan was early, it had all been for nothing - the goon driving would

simply turn down the detour, leaving me to go mad out here in the desert.

It was a Chevrolet.

My heart slowed down and I let out a long, shuddering breath. But there was no more time for nerves.

I drove back to where I had parked to look at my camouflage job and parked there again. I reached under the jumble of

stuff in the back of the van and got the jack. Grimly ignoring my screaming back, I jacked up the rear end of the van,

loosened the lug-nuts on the back tire they would see when they came, and tossed it into the back of the van. More

glass broke, and I would just have to hope there had been no damage done to the tire. I didn't have a spare.

I went back to the front of the van, got my old binoculars, and then headed back toward the detour. I passed it and

got to the top of the next rise as fast as I could - a shambling trot was really all I could manage by this time.

Once at the top, I trained my binoculars east.

I had a three-mile field of vision, and could see snatches of the road for two miles east of that. Six vehicles were

currently on the way, strung out like random beads on a long string. The first was a foreign car, Datsun or Subaru, I

thought, less than a mile away. Beyond that was a pick-up, and beyond the pick-up was what looked like a Mustang.

The others were just desert-light flashing on chrome and glass.

When the first car neared - it was a Subaru - I stood up and stuck my thumb out. I didn't expect a ride looking the way

I did, and I wasn't disappointed. The expensively coiffed woman behind the wheel took one horrified glance and her

face snapped shut like a fist. Then she was gone, down the hill and onto the detour.

'Get a bath, buddy!' the driver of the pick-up yelled at me half a minute later.

The Mustang actually turned out to be an Escort. It was followed by a Plymouth, the Plymouth by a Winnebago that

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sounded as if it were full of kids having a pillow-fight.

No sign of Dolan.

I looked at my watch. 11:25 A.M. If he was going to show up, it ought to be very soon. This was prime time.

The hands on my watch moved slowly around to 11:40 and there was still no sign of him. Only a late-model Ford and a

hearse as black as a raincloud.

He's not coming. He went by the Interstate. Or he flew.

No. He'll come.

He won't, though. You were afraid he'd smell you, and he did. That's why he changed his pattern.

There was another twinkle of light on chrome in the distance. This car was a big one. Big enough to be a Cadillac.

I lay on my belly, elbows propped in the grit of the shoulder, binoculars to my eyes. The car disappeared behind a rise

... re-emerged ... slipped around a curve ... and then came out again.

It was a Cadillac, all right, but it wasn't gray - it was a deep mint green.

What followed was the most agonizing thirty seconds of my life; thirty seconds that seemed to last for thirty years.

Part of me decided on the spot, completely and irrevocably, that Dolan had traded in his old Cadillac for a new one.

Certainly he had done this before, and although he had never traded for a green one before, there was certainly no law

against it.

The other half argued vehemently that Cadillacs were almost a dime a dozen on the highways and byways between

Vegas and LA, and the odds against the green Caddy's being Dolan's Cadillac were a hundred to one.

Sweat ran into my eyes, blurring them, and I put the binoculars down. They weren't going to help me solve this one,

anyhow. By the time I was able to see the passengers, it would be too late.

It's
almost too late now! Go down there and dump the detour sign! You're going to miss him!

Let me tell you what you're going to catch in your trap if you hide that sign now: two rich old people going to LA to

see their children and take their grandkids to Disneyland. Do it! It's him! It's the only chance you're going to have!

That's right. The only chance. So don't blow it by catching the wrong people. It's Dolan!

It's not!

'Stop it,' I moaned, holding my head. 'Stop it, stop it.'

I could hear the motor now.

Dolan.

The old people.

The lady.

The tiger.

Dolan.

The old

'Elizabeth, help me!' I groaned.

Darling, that man has never owned a green Cadillac in his life. He never would.

Of course
it's not him.

The pain in my head cleared away. I was able to get to my feet and get my thumb out.

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It wasn't the old people, and it wasn't Dolan, either. It was what looked like twelve Vegas chorines crowded in with

one old boy who was wearing the biggest cowboy hat and the darkest Foster Grants I'd ever seen. One of the chorines

mooned me as the green Cadillac went fishtailing onto the detour.

Slowly, feeling entirely washed out, I raised the binoculars again.

And saw him coming.

There was no mistaking
that
Cadillac as it came around the curve at the far end of my uninterrupted view of the road it was as gray as the sky overhead, but it stood out with startling clarity against the dull brown rises of land to the

east.

It was him - Dolan. My long moments of doubt and indecision seemed both remote and foolish in an instant. It was

Dolan, and I didn't have to see that gray Cadillac to know it.

I didn't know if he could smell me, but I could smell
him.

Knowing he was on the way made it easier to pick up my aching legs and run.

I got back to the big DETOUR sign and shoved it face down into the ditch. I shook a sand-coloured piece of canvas

over it, then pawed loose sand over its support posts. The overall effect wasn't as good as the fake strip of road, but I

thought it would serve.

Now I ran up the second rise to where I had left the van, which was just another part of the picture now - a vehicle

temporarily abandoned by the owner, who had gone off somewhere to either get a new tire or have an old one fixed.

I got into the cab and stretched out across the seat, my heart thumping. Again, time seemed to stretch out. I lay there

listening for the engine and the sound didn't come and didn't come and didn't come.

They turned off. He caught wind of you at the last moment anyway ... or something looked hinky, either to him or to

one of his men ... and they turned Off.

I lay on the seat, my back throbbing in long, slow waves, my eyes squinched tightly shut as if that would somehow

help me hear better.

Was that an engine?

No - just the wind, now blowing hard enough to drive an occasional sheet of sand against the side of the van.

Not coming. Turned off or turned back.

Just the wind.

Turned off or turned b-

No, it was
not
just the wind. It was a motor, the sound of it was swelling, and a few seconds later a vehicle - one single

vehicle - rushed past me.

I sat up and grabbed the wheel - I had to grab
something - and
stared out through the windshield, my eyes bulging,

my tongue caught between my teeth.

The gray Cadillac floated down the hill toward the flat stretch, doing fifty or maybe a little more. The brake lights never

went on. Not even at the end. They never saw it; never had so much as the slightest idea.

What happened was this: all at once the Cadillac seemed to be driving
through
the road instead of
on
it. This illusion

was so persuasive that I felt a moment of confused vertigo even though I had created the illusion myself. Dolan's

Cadillac was hubcap-deep in Route 71, and then it was up to the door-panels. A bizarre thought occurred to me: if the

GM company made luxury submarines, this is what they would look like going down.

I could hear thin snapping sounds as the struts supporting the canvas broke under the car. I could hear the sound of

canvas rippling and ripping.

All of it happened in only three seconds, but they are three seconds I will remember my whole life.

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I had an impression of the Cadillac now running with only its roof and the top two or three inches of the polarized

windows visible, and then there was a big toneless thud and the sound of breaking glass and crimping metal. A large

puff of dust rose in the air and the wind pulled it apart.

I wanted to go down there - wanted to go down right away - but first I had to put the detour to rights. I didn't want us

to be interrupted.

I got out of the van, went around to the back, and pulled the tire back out. I put it on the wheel and tightened the six

lug-nuts as fast as I could, using only my fingers. I could do a more thorough job later; in the meantime I only needed

to back the van down to the place where the detour diverged from Highway 71. I jacked the bumper down and hurried

back to the cab of the van at a limping run. I paused there for a moment, listening, head cocked.

I could hear the wind.

And from the long, rectangular hole in the road, the sound of someone shouting ... or maybe screaming.

Grinning, I got back in the van.

I backed rapidly down the road, the van swinging drunkenly back and forth. I got out, opened the back doors, and put

out the traffic cones again. I kept my ear cocked for approaching traffic, but the wind had gotten too strong to make

that very worthwhile. By the time I heard an approaching vehicle, it would be practically on top of me.

I started down into the ditch, tripped, landed on my prat, and slid to the bottom. I pushed away the sand-colored piece

of canvas and dragged the big detour sign up to the top. I set it up again, then went back to the van and slammed the

rear doors closed. I had no intention of trying to set the arrow sign up again.

I drove back over the next rise, stopped in my old place just out of sight of the detour, got out, and tightened the

lug-nuts on the van's back wheel, using the tire-iron this time. The shouting had stopped, but there was no longer any

question about the screaming; it was much louder.

I took my time tightening the nuts. I wasn't worried that they were going to get out and either attack me or run away

BOOK: Dolan's Cadillac
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