Another gunshot.
Brian’s head jerked as a bullet struck the side of his neck. Blood sprayed the air, his body went limp, and he started to collapse. As he went down, time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Reeny got a good close look at her dead son’s face. His eyes were wide in what appeared to be almost comical surprise, and his lips had contracted into a small O, creating an overall grotesque cartoonish expression. This is death, she thought. Sudden and stupid, without even a shred of dignity. A split second ago this had been her son, Brian, a boy who loved to eat Cheerios only when they’d floated in milk long enough to get soggy, who loved TV shows with happy talking animals whose adventures were simple and not too scary, who begged her to read the same book to him every night – a collection of silly poems about food – and who slept on his stomach, head to the side, knees drawn up, butt in the air. A boy who laughed too loud and ran in the house no matter how many times she reminded him to walk. But he wasn’t Brian anymore. Now he was only meat.
Time returned to normal speed then and Brian hit the floor and slid several inches before coming to a stop, leaving a smear of blood to mark his path. She staggered toward him, her vision narrowing until it seemed she was looking at him from the far end of a very long, very dark tunnel. Her vision went black for a moment, and when it was restored, she was on her knees next to him, holding his hand, gripping it tight without any memory of how she’d gotten there. She examined Brian’s wound with numb, almost clinical detachment. The bullet had torn a chunk of meat from his neck, severing an artery in the process. Blood flowed from the wound, so much of it. The heart stopped pumping when you died, so the blood flow should stop soon, too, right? She wondered how long it would take. A minute or two? Longer?
She felt something warm flowing down her face. At first she thought some of Brian’s blood had hit her, but when she reached up to touch her face with her free hand, her fingers came away wet but not red.
You’re crying, she thought.
People were still screaming and shouting, running away from the ridiculous play area in all directions. She heard footsteps approaching her, the stride slow and deliberate. She looked up and saw the cop walking toward her. The woman held her gun in her right hand, down at her side, and the expression on her face was one of puzzlement and, perhaps, some small portion of regret.
As soon as Reeny saw the woman, she knew she was the shooter. There never had been anyone else. She’d killed her son and now she was going to kill her. Good. The horrible reality of Brian’s death hadn’t fully hit her yet, but it would, and soon. She didn’t think she could survive that kind of pain, and she wanted to die before she could experience it.
The cop stopped when she reached Reeny. She looked at her, then at Brian, then back to her.
“I have a message for you,” she said. “Actually, it’s for your sister.” She paused and frowned, as if trying to recall the words, wanting to get them just right.
“Confess and atone.”
She raised her gun, but instead of pointing it at Reeny, as she hoped, the cop placed the muzzle against the underside of her jaw and pulled the trigger. There was blood of course, and this time a fair amount splattered onto Reeny, much of it on her face where it mingled with her tears. The cop went down and hit the floor with a dull thud. She too was only meat now.
The bitch had cheated Reeny out of her own death, and she’d escaped without ever having to face justice for what she’d done, killing not only Brian but the others that she’d shot before him. Reeny wanted to scream at the staggering unfairness of it all, was on the verge of doing so, when she felt Brian’s small hand grip hers. Startled, she looked down and saw that his eyes once more gleamed with life and awareness, and his mouth stretched into a wide grin, displaying flecks of blood on his teeth.
“Or suffer,” he said.
It took her a second to realize he was finishing the cop’s message.
He sat up. Blood ran down the side of his face, on to his neck, soaked into the collar of his shirt. He continued holding onto Reeny’s hand, his grip tightening to the point of being painful.
“Let’s go see Aunt Lorlee,” Brian said. “We need to give her the message.”
“Yes,” Reeny said thoughtfully. Then stronger, anger in her voice. “Yes.”
* * *
Driving on the Nightway was beyond surreal. There was the monotony of moving through a world of unvarying blackness, a realm where the only things that were real were what the headlights of your vehicle touched, as if the light solidified the darkness, forced it to coalesce so that you’d have something to drive on. She wondered what would happen if she turned off her headlights. Would the surface of the road suddenly become insubstantial, would her car plummet downward through an endless void, tumbling end over end forever? It was not a theory she wanted to test.
Without markings to delineate the sides of the Nightway, Lori had to drive more slowly than she’d have preferred – thirty-five, forty miles an hour – to ensure she didn’t veer off the road into whatever lay beyond. She had the heater blowing full blast, but the air that emerged from the vents was barely warm, as if the Nightway refused to let those who traveled it get too comfortable. The blanket she had wrapped around her body helped somewhat, but she still shivered from time to time. Why she couldn’t have entered this world wearing her clothes, she didn’t know. Then again, considering they’d been soaked from her standing outside in the rain at the cemetery, maybe it was a good thing her clothes hadn’t come through with her. She’d be freezing if she’d had to wear those wet things. She supposed that was one thing to be grateful for – along with escaping the shadow creatures, of course. She hurt, too. The wounds she’d suffered at the hands of the Cabal, wounds which hadn’t followed her into the real world, had returned to her body the instant she appeared on the Nightway. None of them were life threatening – she hoped – but the pain was distracting.
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.
