She wished she’d gassed up her car recently. She had only a quarter of a tank, and while she was in no danger of running out of gas any time soon, the fuel wouldn’t last forever. She didn’t relish the idea of being stranded on the Nightway, gas tank bone dry, sitting behind the wheel, and wondering what the hell to do next. Her best defense in this place was to keep moving, and when she could no longer do that, who knew what would find her – and what it would do to her when it did.

The landscape around her wasn’t completely featureless, and she wasn’t entirely alone on the Nightway. She’d see shapes on either side of the road sometimes, things that looked as if they might be natural features – hills, perhaps, maybe trees too, although it was difficult to tell for certain. Occasionally she’d pass an artificial structure like the Vermilion Tower, something that had been created by the hands of whatever beings dwelled in this place. Sometimes these structures would be entirely dark, and she’d only get a basic impression of their forms as she drove by. Other times, they’d be lit somehow, giving her a clear look at them. At one point, she passed what looked like a gas station cast in the glow of fluorescent lights, except instead of fuel pumps, strange insectile creatures were bound to metal poles by strips of leather, rubber hoses protruding from their mouths. Another time she passed something that resembled a greenhouse – all glass and bright light. It was huge, nearly a mile long, and the plants inside, large-leafed things with thick stalks covered with long black thorns, swayed slowly as if in time to music she couldn’t hear.

She passed other vehicles as well. Not many, but enough to let her know that she wasn’t alone out here. She couldn’t decide if that knowledge was comforting or terrifying. Maybe a little of both. One of the vehicles – if that’s what it was – was a silver sphere about twice the size of her car. It was comprised of segmented plates, and it made her think of the way an armadillo rolled itself up into a ball when threatened. There was no obvious way for an operator to see out – no windows of any kind – but the sphere maintained a steady course as it rolled along, so its driver had to have some kind of method for navigating. Another vehicle she passed was of more familiar design, but no less alien for that. It was a covered wagon, like something out of the Old West, drawn by a team of four horses. But the wagon was constructed entirely from bone, its covering stitched-together patches of dried skin, and the horses – large, thick-bodied things – were wreathed in orange flame. There was no sign of a driver, and she wondered what sort of passengers rode within the wagon. She was glad the occupants weren’t visible to her, though. She had a strong suspicion that if she could see them, she’d wished she hadn’t.

Each time a vehicle passed her, she held her breath, fearing that it might be driven by one of the Cabal, out searching for her. She didn’t relax until the vehicle was in her rearview and dwindling fast.

She wondered where the air in this world came from. She had no trouble breathing, although the air felt flat and stale. But this place didn’t appear to have anything close to a natural ecosystem, so how was there oxygen? Wherever it came from, she was glad for it. It wasn’t like her car was an airtight spaceship with its own air supply.

She’d started driving because she hadn’t known what else to do, and while she didn’t know how long she’d been on the road – her car’s digital clock kept flashing 00:00, as if time had no meaning here – it seemed as if she’d been driving for a while. Was she getting anywhere? Was there anywhere to get to? She’d hoped that after some time, she’d snap back to the real world, as she’d done before, but it hadn’t happened yet, and she was beginning to fear that it might not. She could end up stuck here, a permanent resident of this awful non-place. She wondered what Reeny would think about her disappearance, what their parents, Larry, and Justin would think. She realized she’d thought of Justin last, as if he was an afterthought, and wasn’t that a sad commentary on their relationship?

She tried turning on the radio, but all that came out was a chorus of half-audible voices chanting words in a language she didn’t recognize – the same as what she’d heard on the Driver’s radio when she first appeared on the Nightway – and she turned it off.

She kept feeling something scratching at the back of her mind, something trying to get her attention. She suspected it had to do with her visit to Aashrita’s grave, or more precisely, why Aashrita had died so young. But thinking about Aashrita made her head hurt, so she turned her thoughts away from the subject whenever her mind began drifting toward it. There would be time for her to remember later, after she found a way to return home. She knew she was lying to herself, that deep down she didn’t want to remember, was scared to fucking death of what would happen if she allowed herself to remember. But she didn’t care. She’d lie to herself a thousand times over if it would protect her from the pain the memory of Aashrita’s death would surely bring.

It was during one of these moments, when she was purposely turning her mind away from thoughts of her dead friend, that something dashed out into the road in front of her. She had an impression of a multi-limbed thing that was formed of pale white flesh, but before she could make out any further details, she slammed into the creature head on. She heard the dull thud of the impact, and she was thrown forward the same instant the airbag deployed. She felt the bag envelop her as the car spun and skidded, tires making almost no sound as she slid across the Nightway’s slick surface. She had no time to think, no time to react, could only let the car’s momentum do with her what it would.

Chapter Ten

The motion stopped, and she sat there as the airbag began deflating. When it pulled away from her face, she drew in a gasping breath. Her nerves jangled with adrenaline, and she felt her pulse pounding throughout her entire body.

I hit something, she thought. Oh my god, I hit something.

Her car had come to a stop with its front end pointing almost ninety degrees away from the thing she’d struck, so she could see it. The car’s engine had died, one of the headlights was out, and the other seemed dimmer than it had only a few seconds ago. The Civic’s front end was dented inward, and the hood had buckled, although it hadn’t broken free from its latch and flown upward during the crash. She sat there several moments, stunned, trying to gather her thoughts. Her chest and wrists hurt from smacking into the airbag, but considering what might’ve happened to her if she hadn’t had airbags, she figured the pain was a small enough price to pay for her continued existence. She started shaking, and she knew her tremors had nothing to do with the vehicle’s internal temperature.

She thumbed the seat belt release. It didn’t do anything at first, and she thought it was broken, but she tried it again, and this time it worked. Not thinking clearly, operating on automatic, she opened the driver’s-side door, and – grabbing hold of the blanket – got out of the car. A sharp pain shot through her right knee as she put weight on it, her old soccer injury making itself known. She thought of Aashrita again, but the instant she did, the thought drifted away, and it was like she’d never had it at all. The air held a bone-chilling dampness, and she wrapped the blanket about her naked body, not that it did much to keep out the cold. The smooth surface of the Nightway felt strange beneath her bare feet, like ice but not as slippery, and there was a constant low-level vibration, almost a hum, as if some kind of energy flowed through the road’s glossy ebon surface. She walked around to the front of the car to see what she’d hit, limping because of her bad knee, and immediately regretted doing so.

The remaining headlight of her Civic wasn’t pointed directly at the thing, but the light from the beam still illuminated the creature’s form, if only dimly. It was ten feet long and roughly shaped like a scorpion. But instead of being covered in a chitinous exoskeleton, it had pale, almost bone-white skin. The first half of its body was humanoid, the head hairless, eyes receded into hollow sockets, jutting cheekbones, lips pulled away from sharp white teeth. Instead of pinchers, it had a pair of long lean arms that ended in large clawed hands. Smaller limbs protruded from the creature’s midsection, six of them, only these were bent at odd angles, giving them a more insectile appearance. The upward curving tail was a head and torso that looked exactly like the front of the thing – as if the creature was a pair of conjoined twins – except the torso had no arms and the head hung upside down. The thing was injured, the arms on its left side broken, and blood dribbled from the mouth of the tail-head. Half of the front head’s face was crushed, and blood ran freely from one of the eye sockets.

Lori found the thing revolting on a primal level, and she instinctively took several steps back to move closer to the driver’s-side door, but her attention was transfixed by the alien abomination, and she made no move to get back inside the car. Aside from a slight spasmodic twitching in the tail, the creature was motionless. Had the impact killed it? She hoped so.

She didn’t know whether the thing had been traveling on the Nightway under its own power or if it had come from the dark land beyond the road, and she really didn’t care. All that mattered was that it posed no threat to her. She had a thought then. What if there were more of these creatures out there in the darkness, watching her at this very moment, trying to determine whether she was dangerous, if it was safe to attack and take revenge for their dead companion?

She didn’t know if the Civic was still operable, but she couldn’t stay out here, exposed and unarmed. There might not be any more scorpion things out there, but there could well be other predators about, and she’d rather not meet them if she didn’t have to. She turned to reach for the car door, but in doing so she twisted the upper half of her body, changing the distribution of her weight on her legs, and her soccer injury screamed in protest. The pain made her gasp, and her leg gave out from under her. The blanket slipped off her shoulders as she started to go down, and she flung herself against the Civic, hoping to grab hold of the roof and steady herself. But her hands found no purchase on the smooth metal and she fell. She landed on her knees – hard – and she felt something crunch inside her injured knee. This time the pain was so intense that she cried out in a near-scream, and tears filled her eyes. She flopped over onto her side to take the pressure off her knee, and while this lessened the pain somewhat, the relief was minor. Her knee was on fire from the inside, and she whimpered like a child.

She became aware of two things in that moment. One was a pair of headlights off in the distance, some sort of vehicle heading toward her. The other was the sound of a large form pulling itself across the Nightway’s slick surface, a heavy, ominous sliding that could only mean one thing. Not only was the scorpion creature not dead, it could still move – and it was coming for her.

The creature made a high-pitched sound as it came, a powerful keening like it was in great pain. She hadn’t purposely harmed the thing, but she nevertheless felt a pang of guilt, as if its condition was entirely her fault.

Jesus, here she was, naked, alone, bruised and cut, being stalked by some monster on a highway in an alien dimension, and she was feeling sorry for it. Better toughen up, bitch, if you want to continue breathing.

She carefully sat up, and using the side of the car to brace herself – doing her best to keep weight off her bad knee – she pulled herself up into a standing position. She saw one of the creature’s clawed hands come into view around the front of the car, and she began hopping toward the rear of the vehicle, keeping her hands on the Civic’s roof to support herself. She reached the rear quarter panel when the creature’s front head became visible. It fixed its one good eye on her, and its keening died away, replaced by an angry hiss. Now that the thing was closer, she could smell it, and she nearly vomited. She was already nauseated as a result of the crash, and the beast’s stink was like a pile of used tampons that had been baking for hours beneath a blazing sun. It was overpowering, so much so that for a moment she was overwhelmed with revulsion and unable to move.

Light washed over her, and she heard the sound of an approaching car engine. One of the Cabal coming for her, maybe the Driver himself? At this point, she’d almost welcome it if it was.

Headlight beams played over the scorpion thing, and as if realizing it might have competition for its prey, its hiss became a shriek of fury, and its hands slapped the road as it began pulling itself toward her with increased speed, its wounded limbs seemingly little impediment to forward motion. That got Lori moving again. If she could’ve run, she would have, but with her injured knee, the best she could do was hop around to the rear of her car, hands on the trunk, and continue on to the other side of the vehicle. The scorpion thing continued its angry shrieking, accompanied by the slap-slap-slap of its palms on the ground, and the heavy sound of its body being pulled along behind.

She glanced back at the approaching vehicle. The headlights loomed larger now, and their illumination dazzled her eyes. The vehicle itself was a dim shape behind those lights, their glare making it impossible to discern any details about it. She wondered if the driver would pass on by, sparing only a curious look for the naked woman fighting to survive an attack by some monstrous thing. For all she knew, on the Nightway a sight like this might be perfectly normal, of no more than fleeting interest to one of its travelers. Or maybe whoever – or whatever – was behind the wheel would turn out to be a worse threat to her than the scorpion thing. Maybe it would be best if the vehicle did continue on past her. It didn’t, though. It was close enough now that she could see it was a van, but she could make out no other details, not with its headlights shining in her eyes. The van slowed to a stop a few yards from her, and the driver got out.

He was a black man in his late thirties, of medium height, stocky, short hair, and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. He wore a black T-shirt that said PEST DEFENSE in white capital letters, along with a pair of black satin shorts. Sticking out from the shorts were a pair of prosthetic legs that looked like jointed metal rods and which terminated in plastic feet inserted into a pair of red sneakers. The man started toward her with a rolling gait, swaying side to side as he moved forward. She was uncomfortably aware of her nakedness, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. Besides, what did personal modesty matter when a malformed human scorpion was trying to kill her?

The Civic rocked then, and Lori looked toward the scorpion thing and saw the monster pulling itself on top of the roof. Instead of following her around the rear of the car, the fucking thing had decided to take a shortcut. Once on top of the car it hissed at her again, and its muscles tensed as it prepared to launch itself at her.

The man – who up to this point had barely glanced at her, who’d kept his gaze focused on the scorpion thing – made no move toward the creature. He stopped walking when he was within a few feet of the car, opened his mouth wide and coughed forth a dark cloud. At first Lori thought he’d expelled some kind of gas, but then she heard the buzzing and saw the cloud was comprised of hundreds of small black beetles, all of which flew straight toward the scorpion thing. The insects engulfed the creature before it could attack Lori, and it began shrieking as beetles gathered on its pale flesh and started eating. It thrashed and swatted at the insects, and its tail stabbed downward, the head at the end of it attempting to tear masses of beetles away from its shared body. But the secondary head only succeeded in providing the beetles with easy passage down its throat and into its interior. The creature shrieked from two mouths now, and its exertions became so violent that it rolled off the Civic and fell to the glossy surface of the Nightway. It rolled violently back and forth in a desperate attempt to free itself from the beetles, but there were simply too many of them. Within seconds, they completely covered the creature, which no longer screamed from either mouth, as both were filled with ravening insects.

It was over quickly after that.

The scorpion thing’s exertions lessened before ceasing altogether. The creature lay motionless on the road while the beetles continued their work. Before long, the insects began to take flight once more, only a few at first, but more joined them until the insects’ departure became a mass exodus. The insects flew back toward their host, who once again opened his mouth wide to allow their return. Lori watched in revulsion as the beetles disappeared down the man’s throat without any seeming discomfort on his part. She turned to look at the scorpion thing and saw it had been reduced to a scattered pile of bones, the muscle and sinew that had held them together gone, and she closed her eyes and concentrated on keeping her stomach contents where they were.

She heard the man walk with his lurching gait, and a moment later she jumped, startled, as she felt her blanket being draped around her shoulders. She opened her eyes and saw the man smiling at her. Grateful, she drew the blanket tight around her body and put the majority of her weight on her uninjured leg. Her bad knee still hurt like hell, but at least she managed to remain standing.

“Let me guess,” the man said, voice low and sonorous. “The fucking Cabal, right?”

Surprised, Lori nodded.

The man shook his head.

“I hate those assholes.”

* * *

“Want me to turn up the heater some more?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine.”

Lori sat in the van’s passenger seat, blanket wrapped around her, seat belt buckled. The dashboard vents blew a steady stream of warm air, but it couldn’t touch the core of cold at the center of her being. She wondered if she’d ever truly feel warm again.

She glanced over at her benefactor. He’d introduced himself as Edgar Mullins, and as the business name on his T-shirt – PEST DEFENSE – suggested, he was an exterminator. Or at least he had been, back in the real world. Although the longer she spent on the Nightway, the more it was beginning to seem real and the more Earth began to seem like a dream. If she stayed here long enough, would she forget about Earth entirely and come to think of the Nightway as the only reality that mattered, maybe even the only one that existed?

The van was Edgar’s work vehicle, white, with PEST DEFENSE painted on the sides, below that a cartoon image of a black man in coveralls thrusting a sword into the midsection of an equally cartoonish human-sized cockroach. The vehicle’s interior smelled of harsh chemicals, and metal canisters in the back rattled and clanged against each other as Edgar drove. Lori wondered just how toxic the air she breathed was, but she didn’t really care. Being stranded without a working car on the Nightway was far more dangerous than huffing pesticide fumes.

Edgar could get around fine on his prosthetic legs but he needed help to drive. He had a handle to the left of the steering wheel that allowed him to control acceleration and braking, and a knob on the steering wheel, which made it possible for him to operate it with his right hand while the left was busy with the handle controls. Edgar drove with an easy confidence, and she guessed he’d been using the equipment for some time.

He had the van’s radio on, the volume turned low, but Lori could still hear the eerie, indecipherable chanting coming from the van’s speakers.

“How can you stand to listen to that?” she asked. “The sound makes my skin crawl.”

Edgar answered without taking his eyes off the road. “You get used to it. And sometimes, I think I can almost make out what they’re saying, you know?”

Lori didn’t know, but she didn’t want to discuss the Nightway’s sole radio program any further.

The collision with the scorpion thing had wrecked her Civic. She’d tried starting the engine, but she couldn’t get it to turn over. And even if it had started, one of the front quarter panels had been smashed against a tire, making it impossible to steer. So when Edgar had offered to give her a ride she’d accepted, although not without hesitation. He seemed ordinary enough, but she knew he was hosting hundreds, maybe thousands of carnivorous beetles inside his body, so many that they couldn’t possibly all fit inside him, and yet somehow they did. The insects had made quick work of the scorpion thing, and they’d be able to devour her even faster if they wished. Sitting next to Edgar was like sitting next to a ticking time bomb. If he wanted her dead, all he’d have to do was open his mouth and let his beetles out to do their thing.

If he wanted you dead, he’d have killed you already, she thought. Then again, maybe his beetles’ tiny bellies were so full after killing the scorpion creature that the insects wouldn’t be hungry again for some time. Maybe Edgar wanted to keep her in reserve until his friends’ appetites returned. It was a risk she felt she had to take, though. If the beetles did decide to eat her, at least her death would be brief, if agonizing.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue,” she said.

“No problem. I couldn’t just let the damn thing kill you. I hate void crawlers. Fucking things are worse than a million roaches. And did you get a whiff of it?”