Mortality Bridge (39 page)

The forest of crucifaxes thickens, a pinioned nation growing before him.

Something hits the side of the car and Niko swerves. On the train the demons hoot and highfive one another and then make room in a boxcar doorway for another demon who holds a naked Asian woman in his great hands.

Niko dodges another crucifax. The landscape itself is forcing him closer to the train. Up ahead the only place the car will fit is on the right of way.

On the train the demon twists the woman’s head off like an apple stem and dangles it by its long black hair and reaches back and winds up like a pitcher on the mound. A muscled leg comes up headhigh and then stomps down as the great scaled arm lashes forward. The gaping head shoots toward the Franklin like a comet trailing hair. Niko brakes and the train pulls away and the head streaks past the hood. The demons boo. If they want to stop him they can probably do it any time they want. Smash him from above or open up the ground before him. Peel off the roof and pulp him like an overripe tomato. But that’s not the deal. The deal is that Niko’s free to try to get out with the bottled soul of his lady love in tow so long as he does not look back. And they are free to do everything in their formidable power to make him look back. What could be simpler?

And, of course, Niko is perfectly free to fuck up on his own. Less than twenty yards now separate him from the train. Crucifaxes whip by like demented roadsigns on his left.

A demon separates itself from the freight of demons screaming out their joyous wrath. Its wings flat along its muscular back as tigerlike it gathers itself and springs, body seeming to elongate as it arcs from the train with tendrils reaching overhead and wings unfolding like parasols to rake back and guide.

Once again Niko slows the car, this time to no effect. This missile is volitional and banks toward him. The Franklin’s chassis rocks when the demon hits the side. Dodging crucifaxes as if playing a deranged video game Niko glances at a monstrous face that leers in the passenger window. The demon clings to the doorhandle and crouches on the rubber runner. A moment later Niko realizes that the demon is circling the tip of one tendril in a gesture for him to roll down his window.

Niko scowls. Fuck that. Dodge crucifaxes, don’t hit the train, shake the demon off the car.

Another glance at the demon’s face and he revises his game plan. Holy shit. Without another thought or word he leans across the seat and pulls up the doorlock.

The demon shakes his great leathern head. His expression says You moron. He points at the rear doorlock and Niko understands that the demon can’t open the front door without knocking himself off the runner and the back door is locked.

Niko jerks the wheel to avoid squeegeeing the demon across a crucifax. Then the car breaks into a clearing in the cruciforest and Niko nearly stands in his seat as he blindly reaches back and tugs up the lock. Foul hot air invades the car as the suicide door opens and the demon tumbles into the back. “Nice driving, buddy pal,” his own voice says behind him as its owner slams the door. “Now let’s get the Dodge out of Hell.”

XXIV.
 

TAKE ME TO THE RIVER

“IT’S A FRANKLIN ACTUALLY.”

“Say what?”

“The car. It’s a Franklin.”

“Whatever. Hey look out. Ooh that was close. Cut right cut right cutright.”

“I don’t have room.”

“You have room.”

“I don’t.”

“Trust me.”

“Yeah right.” Niko cuts right. There’s room, barely.

His demon bends a tendril to wave bye bye at the crucified woman they have nearly sideswiped. “Nice car.”

“Thanks. I stole it myself.” Niko’s palms are slick on the wheel. A stunt driving ace he is not. He’s gotten ahead of the train, but the thickening profusion of the crucified is giving him nowhere to drive. Suddenly ahead there looms a chasm. Redlit from below, miles wide and untold miles deep. The only bridge across it is the slender rampart of the tracks themselves atop a frail and narrow truss bridge that looks like a thread strung between the tops of two skyscrapers.

Niko feels as if he’s been dashed with icewater. “No way. No fucking way.”

“We’ve got to,” his demon urges from the back. “It’s the only way across, and if the train gets there ahead of us it’ll stop on the tracks. We’ve got to outrun it.”

“Goddamn.”

Thunder rumbles and the ground trembles. The tremors’ ripples shudder through the long and slender railway bridge.

Niko’s demon sticks his head up front. “I strongly advise you not to use such language once you’re on the bridge.”

“I really don’t want to do this.”

“Okay.” The demon withdraws into the passenger compartment.

“Pull over and stick your thumb out. Maybe they’ll give you a lift.” Niko dodges a crucifax. “There’s no way I can drive on that.”

“The car can do it.”

“I know the car can do it. I don’t think I can.”

“Sure you can.” The demon glances back. “The train’s two hundred yards back and gaining but you’ll have plenty of lead if you don’t slow down. Hey did you know your rearview mirror’s back here?”

“Yeah.” Niko eases the car toward the tracks. The crack in the plain looms like the end of the world. “Where’d this thing come from?”

“Same thing that caused the Ledge.”

“I think I’d remember going over this.”

“We were getting bagged on the boxcar when we went across. Good thing you decided to jump later, huh?”

Now they’re right beside the rails and near the point where the choice is hop on top or sail into the great divide. Niko takes a deep breath and says Hold on and yanks the wheel and steers the car onto the rails.

“GO. GO. SERIOUSLY go.”

“It won’t go any faster.”

“Then we’re S O L, buddy pal.”

“How far now?”

“Hundred fortytwo yards. The rate they’re gaining, a minute before they hit us.”

“I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this.”

“Drive.”

The unbordered tracks look like a slash across a landscape painting of a Martian canyon. Close-set crossties shoot from the vanishing point and disappear beneath the car.

“Where’s Jem? Where’s the jar?”

“I’ve got it. You just keep us on the rails.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“Cause I’m the one with the wings.”

Humming tires run atop the narrow rails before the gaping train behind them bearing down. Niko struggles not to blink. He’s so terrified he wants to cry. His mouth is dry, he fights an urge to sneeze. He wants to scream but all he does is clench his teeth. His palms are sweaty on the wheel. He dares not look away from two slim lines on which the big car rides above the deep crevasse without an inch of play on either side. Maybe that’s best. They’re balanced like a clown bike on a tightrope and if he looked down and saw nothing but miles of empty space above a redlit and unfathomable bottom he would surely lose whatever fraying thread of nerve he still possesses.

“How far?”

“Forty yards now.”

“We gonna make it?”

Another pause. “No.”

Niko narrows his eyes. “If I’d stopped every time I thought that.” An awful pressure builds between his shoulderblades as the voracious iron engine burns down the heated night toward them. Worse than looking back to see the locomotive gullet straining to engulf them is not being able to look back at all. Now his demon is his eyes and ears.

The very iron trembles with the resonance of hurtling weight behind them. This bridge should not support its own weight, much less a locomotive, but it does. The rolling thunder gains and Niko swears he smells its heated iron breath. His demon yells Faster but the pedal’s on the floorboard.

“Maybe if we lost three hundred pounds of deadweight,” Niko says.

His demon whoops and snaps a tentacle with inspiration and before Niko knows it the backright suicide door has been flung open and the demon has leapt from the car. The door rakes back in the airstream and suddenly the car wants to veer right. Niko’s neck aches from the effort not to turn his head. Then his demon forces shut the door and leaps from the siderunner. He glides alongside for a moment and then spreads great batlike wings and snaprolls out over the uncontainable immensity of the canyon. Relieved of weight the Franklin gains some distance on the hungry metal hurtling behind it.

The cliff edge of the fissure’s other side is bottomlit hot lava red. Half a mile maybe. Niko’s face hurts and he’s paralyzed with muscle tension.

The car’s own shadow now precedes it, shortening and growing more opaque as fierce behind the car the massive train crowds up until its headlamp glowers down upon the roof. A sudden primal scream of trainhorn nearly causes him to veer off of the rails. Five hundred yards. Come on come on. Thick hot oil smell. Screaming demons over thundering metal and rumbling rail. Iron lip of locomotive kisses polished bumper chrome. The car is pushed along the tracks now by the unrelenting train. Niko knocks the gearshift into neutral and clamps both hands on the wheel to keep the tires on the rails. The Lower Plain’s resumption is a thousand feet away now. Distant crucifaxes stubble the flat ground.

Something lands on the back of the car and Niko stops himself from looking back so fast he pulls a muscle in his neck. His hands twitch on the wheel. He yells God damn it. Distant thunder dimly rumbles. Niko’s breath catches. o what have I done.

The rails shudder beneath him and he remembers tremors rippling down the gossamer length of railway bridge. He imagines an iron tidal wave rolling his way like a moving hump in a flicked garden hose. Roused from monstrous sleep the bridge beneath him groans. Bucking in the metal surge the light behind him wavers. Niko screams but cannot hear his voice in all the clang and thunder. Iron screams on iron and the car is lit by flashing sparks behind it as a thousand tons of locomotive angles off the slender bridge of rails. The train horn howls its outrage at the death that is the price for breaking free from its conscripted fate, tie spike rail wheel, howls out as the massive locomotive plummets from the trestle bridge to arc over the precipice.

The Black Taxi’s rear tires thump off the rails and the car begins to slew and then the edge is past and the interrupted plain resumes. Behind him now two hundred thousand iron pounds of locomotive missile slams the anvil of the sheer cliff face. The Franklin bucks on crossties. Unbelted Niko is airborne and anchored only by his grip upon the wheel. Then he lands back on the seat and stomps the gas and the car gains traction and rooster tails a gout of red plain floor as it speeds away from empty rails and a murdered locomotive.

NO SOONER IS he off the rails than Niko’s dodging crucifaxes. He nudges the wheel and the car slips between two inverted souls staked to their fate. No way he can keep this up. But wait. With the train gone now he doesn’t have to drive fullout. Duh.

As he slows the car he catches motion in the passenger window and sees a whippet thin and windraked demon opening the door.

A crucifax looms dead ahead. Its inverted tenant gaping like a deer at the oncoming lights. Niko speeds up and jerks left. A thud and a crack and the demon is gone. Clotheslined by the crucifax crosspiece.

Niko slows and threads his close way through the cruciforest till he breaks into a clearing. Ahead lie piled lumber and massed demons and the herded damned of the slaughtermill. The 4:07’s gonna be a little late today boys.

Niko gives the station of the cross a wide berth as he drives along his ruthless way.

A STEADY FORTY mph is both the slowest and the fastest Niko dares go right now. He’s shaking and his breath is ragged, senses overloaded. He wants to drive walleyed into what unmarked path lies leading where. Wants to let go the wheel and let the car itself take him where it may. Wants to get out of the car and get on hands and knees and shake until the shaking stops. Instead he holds the car at forty.

Now his route has led him to the forest. Trees swell toward him and flash by, souls entombed in living wood and someday to be wedded to the fleshly dead by iron spikes airgunned into the conscious pulp of their incessant being.

The roof above him buckles. Niko readies for another salvo but it’s not another assault. It’s his demon, who has glided overhead like a carrion bird to watch the car escape the train and then returned. Once again he lets his demon in and once again his demon fills the spacious rear compartment. A swath of blood that might not be his gleams his enormous chest.

“Nice flight?”

“Lost my baggage.” His demon looks backward at pursuing shapes not apprehended by the mind of man. “Go for the woods. They can’t fly there, they’ll get tangled up like kites.”

The wood is sparse compared to the forest of the crucified. The ground is rough and the Franklin’s passengers are bounced around as Niko threads among the rotund gluttons imprisoned in themselves exactly as he left them. Jouncing headlights glance upon the pale bruised creatures with their spines snapped backward and heads shoved up their rectums to look so like the plucked and headless corpses of turkeys. The suicides run horrible and blind like panicked fawns. They trip over branches and gluttons and stumble across roots and slam into trees.

From behind approaches arrhythmic pounding. Niko’s about to ask his demon what’s going on when suddenly around them gallop emaciated horsemen on elongate mounts like anorexic jockeys on enlarged greyhounds. They part around the Franklin to the left and to the right so spindly on their matchstick legs they cannot possibly support their famished weight. Yet they dart like nimble antelopes and flash so quickly in and out the headlamps cone that some dozen of them have sped by before it can be seen that horse and rider are not separate entities at all but joined and of a single will. Running easily beside the car are centaurs. Not the burly robust creatures of Greek myth but gaunt and predatory frames supporting taut thin flesh the gray of crematorium ash stretched near to piercing by protruding bones. If there are eyes within those hatchet heads they are so deepset or black that they appear as twin holes only, painted patches like dark spots on the wings of dusty moths. Their hooves kick up no leaf or twig or clod. Three dozen of them run before the Franklin’s prow like shepherd dolphins before a schooner’s bow, their hoofbeats’ number not accounting for the distance they advance. In their aspect more like insects than like creatures with a meated heart. They part to flow around the bleeding trees and sessile gluttons and argus demons they encounter, each obstacle revealed to Niko moments before he might plow into it. He dodges and swerves, and he curses the centaurs because of course it is their aim to lull him into fallen logs and stone outcrops.