Joe and the woman stood between the glowing truck and me, standing hand in hand, watching it, waiting.
The truck changed.
It wasn't highway hypnotism. Too much had happened. Too much still would happen. The square lines of the truck were flowing, shifting, coalescing, like a slow fade on the TV, as one scene shifts slowly into another. The glowing truck flowed and altered and—wasn't a truck any longer.
"Take him with us!" Joe said suddenly.
The woman grabbed my arm. I pulled loose from her and she started to yell. She came after me, throwing herself on my back. I was plenty scared by what I had seen, and I wasn't having any, not if I could help it. I threw the woman off my back and she fell away yelling into the rain, but Joe came after me with the wrench. I stumbled and fell just as Joe swung the big wrench. It thudded in the sand half a foot from my face and I got up and started running.
Joe threw the heavy wrench this time and it hit the small of my back, driving me down to my knees. Joe came after me, kneeing my face as I swung around and tried to get up. I flipped over but grabbed his foot as he tried to stamp it down on me. He didn't know what he wanted, that boy. I guess if he couldn't take me with him, he was going to try and kill me. I twisted his leg and he yowled and fell down on top of me and we rolled over and over in the sand, clawing for each other's throat.
The woman was yelling something but I didn't hear what it was and I'm sure Joe didn't either. We were both breathing raggedly and swinging without much force at each other now. Call it almost a draw—except I was fighting for my life and I knew Joe had an ally in the woman. I climbed to my feet slowly, unsteadily, and found the monkey wrench on the ground. I wielded it, shaking it in Joe's face.
I said: "You can do what you want. I won't stop you. But just leave me the hell out of it."
All of a sudden something struck my back. It was the woman, trying to knock me over from behind. I whirled and she backed out of my reach, but then Joe was on his feet again and when I turned to face him she clawed at my back. "Kill him, Joe!" she cried. "Kill him now!"