Justice is Unleaded by Newton Webb

A Contemporary Supernatural Horror Short Story: Jim's crusade to bring justice to the open road turns into a fight for his life when a mysterious car hunts him with impossible speed.

Contents:

1. Horror Compilations

2. Justice is Unleaded

Horror Story Compilations

Summer Screams: 29 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Spinster’, ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’, ‘Waves of Madness’, ‘The Blighted Child’ and ‘Gomorrah’

Screams for Sale: 71 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned,’ ‘The Morrígan.’

Free Horror Stories: 29 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Gomorrah’

The Fiction Giveaway Extravaganza: 44 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Gomorrah’ and ‘The Blighted Child’

Justice is Unleaded

by Newton Webb

The engine roared underneath Jim as he opened the throttle and raced down the A41. It was a long, straight road stretching from the borderline commuter-belt town of Aylesbury to the gateway of the M25 near Watford.
But for Jim Bradley, it was a hunting ground.

Mounted on the worn saddle of a Triumph Sprint ST1050, a British-made beast of an engine wrapped in a minimalist black frame, he hunted for his prey. The bike rumbled beneath him. He wore black leathers, scuffed at the knees and elbows, and his helmet. The visor was clear, they needed to know who they’d crossed.

He was doing a steady ton, a hundred miles an hour in the outside lane, when he saw his first target. A metallic blue Peugeot 206. It drifted from the middle lane into his, forcing him to slam on the brakes. The little indicator stalk remained untouched. A flicker of orange was apparently too much effort for the driver at the wheel.

He slowed and undertook them, seeing the driver, a bald, sweating man in a T-shirt, busy talking into his phone.

Jim’s eyes narrowed.

Fuck you.

Jim eased off the power, letting the Peugeot pull ahead, giving the driver a false sense of security. He watched him chat, oblivious. He saw the child seat in the back. Empty, thank God. He did not punish cars with children in them. He had his own personal code of justice and kids were a no-go zone.

Lesson time.

He drew the Triumph level with the Peugeot’s rear bumper, keeping in its blind spot. The bike’s engine gave a low growl, swallowed by the whirring road noise and the Peugeot’s exhaust. He moved up, past the rear door, until his left knee was almost touching the driver’s side. He could see him clearly now. Mid-forties, angry-looking. He was yelling at someone down the phone.

Jim lifted his left hand from the handlebar. His glove was thick leather, reinforced over the knuckles. He waited for the perfect moment, a gap in the traffic ahead that meant the driver could not swerve. He pulled his fist back to his shoulder, then shot it forward in a single, brutal piston stroke.

The connection was beautiful.

The plastic housing of the wing mirror exploded. A spray of blue shards and silvered glass glittered in the overcast afternoon light before scattering across the tarmac. The crack of the impact was sharp and satisfying.

The man’s head whipped around. His face was a mask of shock, his jaw dropped. The iPhone fell from his grasp. Jim held his gaze for a single, long second, then, extending his middle finger, twisted the throttle and roared off.

Justice is done.

The Triumph screamed and launched forward, leaving the damaged Peugeot in its wake. As he left it in his exhaust, he heard the faint, impotent blast of its horn fading into the distance. He smirked.

Rules of the road, Spanner.

He carried on towards Watford, the rage subsiding, replaced by the warm glow of righteousness. He had nowhere else to go. He rode for one reason, to punish those who put others at risk. This stretch of road was his parish, and he was its keeper.

On the approach to the Two Waters junction, just as the dual carriageway began to constrict, he passed the exit.

The flowers were there. Every year they appeared on the same date. A sad, drooping bunch of carnations, wrapped in cloudy cellophane. Tucked into the knot was the same photograph. He had slowed down to see it before. Now he sped up to get past them as fast as possible. He did not need that memory. A woman, visibly pregnant and smiling.

A red Skoda Fabia. Startled off the road, she had crashed into the slip road exit. The couple were killed instantly. The cause was never officially determined, but Jim knew.

Never again.

Arriving at the entrance to Watford, he banked the bike hard onto the roundabout, looping back on himself.
He had enough time for another circuit.

Two Days Later
The sky was bruised. It was ‌perfect weather for a ride. Cool, but with the sun struggling through the clouds.

Jim was on patrol again.

The Triumph hummed beneath him. He had already dispensed two lessons: a white van man who had tried to bully his way out of a junction, and a sales rep in a BMW who clearly believed indicators were optional extras. In fact, most of the people he educated drove BMWs.

He was just approaching the turn-off for Hemel Hempstead when it happened.

A red Skoda Fabia pulled out from the middle lane.

It was sudden, with no indicators. Jim braked hard, swearing furiously. The Triumph bucked under him. His heart hammered against his ribs, his rage beating to a furious rhythm.

A Fabia. Of all the bloody cars.

The universe had a sick sense of humour.

You want to play, do you?

His knuckles itched.

Right. Let’s play.

He dropped a gear and the bike surged forward, a predator closing the gap. He drew alongside the Skoda, ready to deliver his signature blend of shattered plastic and justice. He glanced at the driver’s window, expecting to see some oblivious fool on their phone.

He couldn’t see a driver. He couldn’t see anything except his own distorted reflection in the glass.

The Skoda swerved. Its front wing aimed directly for his leg.

Jim yelled, a muffled curse inside his helmet, and wrenched the handlebars. The Triumph screamed onto the right-hand lane. He fought to keep the bike upright, his muscles screaming in protest.

He came to a wobbling halt, his boots skidding on the grimy surface. He looked back down the road. The Skoda had not sped off. It had slowed, its brake lights glowing like malevolent red eyes. It sat in the middle lane, twenty yards back, waiting.

What the hell? You fucker.

He dismounted. Clenching his fists, he approached the car.

You’re fucking dead.

The reversing lights came on. The car revved. He still couldn’t see the driver. He could see the driver’s seat.

He stopped, peering closer.

Where is the driver?

The car lurched towards him.

He jumped back, only just avoiding it as it came to a halt directly where he had been standing.

It revved again.

Jim turned and ran. He leapt onto his Triumph. The ignition caught. He twisted the throttle, rocketing down the A41, his heart hammering.

What the fuck?

He tried to rationalise the situation in his head as he sped down the dual carriageway, weaving through the sparse traffic. He glanced at his mirror.

The Skoda was there. It was keeping pace.

Jim pushed the Triumph harder, the needle climbing past eighty, then ninety. The wind tore at him. Cars blurred past. He made it to just past a hundred and fifty. But the red box on wheels remained fixed in his mirror. A Skoda Fabia should not, could not, keep up with a Triumph. Not even close. It should be a distant memory, but all he could hear was the howl of his own bike and the frantic pounding of his own blood.

It gained on him, impossibly. It filled his entire mirror. The small grille looked predatory. It was going to hit him.

This can’t be happening.

Panic, pure and absolute, took over. He was no longer a vigilante. He was prey.

The slip road for Hemel Hempstead appeared on his left. It was his only chance. He wrenched the bike over, cutting across a lane of traffic without a thought, and dived off the A41. He did not care about the blaring horns or the screech of tyres behind him. He just had to get away.

He flew down the slip road, his pursuer falling back temporarily before closing again. Ahead of him lay the Plough Roundabout, nicknamed ‘The Magic Roundabout’ for its complexity, a vortex of six mini-roundabouts orbiting a central one. It was a masterpiece of confusion from a time when drug and alcohol abuse were a prerequisite for town planning.

A car couldn’t manoeuvre through all that like a bike could.

Jim slowed down just enough to give him a shot at survival then plunged into the mass of cars. He shot across the first mini-roundabout. A Ford Fiesta, entering correctly, slammed on its brakes. Jim weaved a path through the complex traffic system. He cut across the centre of a second roundabout, forcing a transit van to swerve.

Behind him, the chaos he was sowing began to bear fruit. The Fiesta, having braked so hard, was rear-ended by a builder’s van. The van was clipped by a bus as it swerved back into its lane. A chorus of car horns followed him as the Leighton Buzzard Road appeared and the traffic opened up. Jim left a multi-car pile-up in his wake.

He risked a glance back. Through the growing carnage, he saw it. The red Skoda. It was not trying to navigate the labyrinth. It was simply driving through the wreckage, parting the crushed cars as if they were light as air.

Jim screamed inside his helmet, sweat dripping into his eyes. He gunned the engine and fled up into Gadebridge, leaving the carnage behind him.

#

He found sanctuary in a cul-de-sac. One of those quiet, anonymous streets that branched off the main roads like dead-end veins. Red-brick houses. It was called Bury Gardens. There were no willow trees, just cheaply built homes.

He looked in his mirrors. The road was clear.

He was safe.

Jim cut the engine. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal and the ragged sound of his own breathing. He rested his helmet on the handlebars, his whole body trembling from released adrenaline. His leathers were slick with sweat.

Some psycho had got the better of him. There had to have been someone in the car; there was no other explanation. The adrenaline had caused him to see things, that was all.

He lifted his head and looked towards the end of the street.

His blood ran cold.

It was there. Parked with its hazard lights on, blocking the only way out. The red Skoda Fabia.

Jim stared, his mind refusing to process what his eyes were seeing. He tried to restart the Triumph. He thumbed the ignition. Nothing. He tried again. The electrics were dead. The bike was just a lump of useless metal and plastic.

His gaze was drawn back to the car.

He thought back to the year 2000, when he had been riding home in the morning, hungover from a night out. His ears were ringing from tinnitus, the lingering effect of Rock Night.

A low, guttural sound escaped Jim’s throat. It was the sound of pure, animal dread.

He remembered seeing the turning too late and cutting across the cherry-red Skoda Fabia, forcing it to swerve, the sound of the crash behind him.

The driver’s door of the Skoda opened.

A figure emerged. Though he had not seen her driving, it was definitely a woman. She was heavily pregnant.

Her body was a grotesque parody of life. One arm was bent back at a sickening, unnatural angle. Her dress was torn, dark stains blooming across the cheap floral pattern. Her bare leg, protruding from the ripped fabric, was a mess of shattered bone. She moved with a disjointed, dragging gait, the scraping of her broken foot on the tarmac the only sound in the dead air.

He remembered, every year on the anniversary of the crash, seeing the flowers.

She walked towards him.

Her face glittered with exposed flesh and shards of shattered windscreen embedded in her skin; they glittered like jewels. One eye was a swollen, pulpy ruin. The other was wide and staring, fixed on him with an expression of terrible malevolence.

Jim’s victim took another dragging, scraping step forward.

Jim finally found his voice. ‘I avenged you! I dedicated my life to punishing dangerous drivers.’

She continued walking towards him.

He scrambled backwards. He had to run. He had to get away.

Jim got to his feet and bolted. He sprinted down an alleyway, away from the cul-de-sac, away from the dead woman and her impossible car. He looked back to see her standing at the end of the alley, somehow having kept up.

He burst out of Bury Gardens and towards the Leighton Buzzard Road, his eyes wild, struggling to breathe.

He looked back to see her standing closer now, despite having given no indication of moving.

He turned back to the road, to the oncoming traffic.

Then Jim looked back towards the alley.

She was standing directly in front of him. Her head was tilted at an angle.

He started to beg.

She shoved him.

He tumbled backwards. Straight into the path of a removal lorry. There was a deafening, prolonged blare from an air horn. The hiss and squeal of tyres locking on the slick tarmac.

It was too late.

THE END

If you enjoyed this story, then consider reading the rest of my stories on Amazon, as Kindle Unlimited, eBook, Paperback or Hardback.

This collection of stories is designed for quick reads, whether over a coffee or during a commute. Either way, they promise to deliver exquisitely disturbing nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss—and linger in the mind long after.

FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Available to order on AMAZON.

Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.