Big Driver Read Online Free PDF

know, unless you woke up with the angels and they told you? The afternoon’s light breeze had gotten a little stronger, and the ticking of the tin sign was a little louder. YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU.
    â€œ7Up,” she said. Her voice was hoarse but serviceable. “That’s what it is. You like it and it likes you.” She heard herself raising her own voice insong. She had a good singing voice, and being choked had given it a surprisingly pleasant rasp. It was like listening to Bonnie Tyler sing out here in the moonlight. “7Up tastes good . . . like a cigarette should!” It came to her that that wasn’t right, and even if it was, she should be singing something better than fucked-up advertising jingles while she had that pleasing rasp in her voice; if you were going to be raped and left for dead in a pipe with two rotting corpses, something good should come out of it.
    I’ll sing Bonnie Tyler’s hit record. I’ll sing “It’s a Heartache.” I’m sure I know the words, I’m sure they’re in the junkheap every writer has in the back of her . . .
    But then she went away again.

- 11 -
    She was sitting on a rock and crying her eyes out. The filthy carpet-remnant was still around her shoulders. Her crotch ached and burned. The sour taste in her mouth suggested to her that she had vomited at some point between walking around the store and sitting on this rock, but she couldn’t remember doing it. What she remembered—
    I was raped, I was raped, I was raped!
    â€œYou’re not the first and you won’t be the last,” she said, but this tough-love sentiment, coming out as it did in a series of choked sobs, was not very helpful.
    He tried to kill me, he almost did kill me!
    Yes, yes. And at this moment his failure did not seem like much consolation. She looked to her left and saw the store fifty or sixty yards down the road.
    He killed others! They’re in the pipe! Bugs are crawling on them and they don’t care!
    â€œYes, yes,” she said in her raspy Bonnie Tyler voice, then went away again.

- 12 -
    She was walking down the center of Stagg Road and singing “It’s a Heartache” when she heard an approaching motor from behind her. She whirled around, almost falling, and saw headlights brightening the top of a hill she must have just come over. It was him. The giant. He had come back, had investigated the culvert after finding her clothes gone, and seen she was no longer in it. He was looking for her.
    Tess bolted down into the ditch, stumbled to one knee, lost hold of her makeshift shawl, got up, and blundered into the bushes. A branch drew blood from her cheek. She heard a woman sobbing with fear. She dropped down on her hands and knees with her hair hanging in her eyes. The road brightened as the headlights cleared the hill. She saw the dropped piece of carpeting very clearly, and knew the giant would see it too. He would stop and get out. She would try to run but he would catch her. She would scream, but no one would hear her. Instories like this, they never did. He would kill her, but first he would rape her some more.
    The car—it was a car, not a pickup truck—went by without slowing. From inside came the sound of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, turned up loud: “B-B-B-Baby, you just ain’t seen n-n-nuthin yet.” She watched the taillights wink out of sight. She felt herself getting ready to go away again and slapped her cheeks with both hands.
    â€œNo!” she growled in her Bonnie Tyler voice. “No!”
    She came back a little. She felt a strong urge to stay crouched in the bushes, but that was no good. It wasn’t just a long time until daylight, it was probably still a long time until midnight. The moon was low in the sky. She couldn’t stay here, and she couldn’t just keep . . . blinking out. She had to think.
    Tess picked the piece of carpeting out of the ditch, started to wrap it