Mortality Bridge (40 page)

A headless snake jabs past Niko’s shoulder as his demon points. “There’s a trail there.”

Niko heads for it. “Does it lead out of here?”

“Yeah but we’re not out of the woods yet.”

Niko drives along the rough and winding path. “Why’d you jump?”

“To make the car lighter, stupid.”

“I mean from the train.”

Silence from the back. Then, “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time? I might ask you the same question you know.”

The car spits from the forest like offending gristle out across the open hardpan, the horsemen left behind. Across the fearsome night they drive. Niko and his demon and a faintly glowing jar. See them from a sky that never saw a dawn: carshaped blackness inching over ancient plain, paltry white light leading and dim red light behind, some luminescent bottomfeeder hugging the flat plain floor to follow currents or magnetic lines because its route is charted in the very helix of its twining DNA. And so prowls on. Mercifully oblivious to the indifferent vastness of the deep it crosses. More must yet unwind from out the Stygian dark. This the route the car must forge.

Within minutes they are come to the shore of frigid Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Scant light gleams from its obsidian liquid. “How are we supposed to get across?” Niko says to the back seat. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

Niko glares at the dark instrument panel. Once again he fights the urge to look back at the smug inhuman bastard he chauffeurs.

“If you know something tell me. There are gonna be enough surprises without you adding to them.”

“I don’t know something.” The whiskey voice grows closer as the demon hunches forward. “I’m making this up as I go. Same as you.” Niko’s nostrils flare at the rot of his demon’s breath. His skin has the sour smell of a threeday bender. Mercifully the demon leans back. “When I want to go across a river I fly.”

They drive until the river flows before them.

Niko’s demon says Go right and Niko turns right. On his left the river flows. How much of my mortal life did I waste returning to that memory-cleansing water? I might still be bathing there had not the grave Achaian delivered my guitar, and the voice of it returned me to my self. Akileo, Akileo. Somewhere on this hard-packed shore I bested you. A feat no Homer will relate. Possibly your disgraceful armor weighs you still beneath those very waters. For your sake I hope it does.

Though the sand is hard and flat the car is still a little squirrely. It wants to get away from him again.

“We’re not headed out anymore,” says Niko.

“Why thank you Daniel Boone. No we’re not. If out is north we’re headed east.”

“What are we looking for?”

“A bridge would be nice.”

“I don’t see one.”

“There isn’t one.”

“Then we’re looking for the narrowest spot we can find.”

“You can never find the narrowest spot on an infinite river,” says his demon.

“The narrowest spot in the next five miles then.”

“Whyyy?” Like an obstinate six year old.

“Because we’re going to cross it your way.”

“How’s that?”

“We’re gonna fly.”

IT’S MORE LIKE ten miles but finally Niko finds a promising spot. Here some obstruction, probably logjammed bodies, has caused the mounding-up of runoff sand over uncounted centuries until a respectable dune has formed. It projects perhaps a hundred yards into the river and rises maybe thirty feet. From the end of the dune to the frozen far side of the river is about fifty yards. Using the slightly up-angled dune as a ramp, assuming the sandbar is hard and firm all the way, driving at a top speed of around ninety miles an hour ought to land the Franklin just about smack in the middle of the river.

Which is why Niko’s demon is on the roof as Niko backs up the car without looking. The mason jar is clamped between Niko’s thighs and his head is half out the window like a happy dog to hear his demon’s shouted directions.

“Right. Go right. More. Good, now straighten out. Ah nuts. Hold on, will you?”

Niko stops. The car rises as his demon jumps off the roof. “Let me do the talking.”

“Someone’s coming?” Niko doesn’t want to idle here. He must keep moving.

“One of my compadres.” He puts on a big ole shiteating grin and through clenched teeth says Look the other way, then nods amiably to whatever’s coming toward them.

Niko looks the other way. In his peripheral vision an obese demon waddles to the car. One side of her face looks halfmelted, one eye two inches lower than the other. The bottom of her face thick with caked-on food. A standard issue trident in one clawed hand. She glances at the car and Niko promptly looks away. Niko hears her say Howdy.

“How do.”

“What brings you guys to our neck of the woods? You’re a little off the beaten path.”

“Well. We’re delivering a cake. A big gooey chocolate cake with creamy rich frosting thick as dogshit.”

“A cake.” Her voice is suddenly pure sex.

“Bout yea big. In fact—” His demon’s voice lowers seductively and Niko can’t make out the rest. As she listens lustfully the obese demon’s gaze slides hopefully toward the Black Taxi where she sees Niko trying to look innocuous. “Say,” she says.

Niko hears a soft grunt and a strangled squawk and a meaty thump. By the time he looks his demon stands above the corpulent demon writhing with the blunt end of her own trident piercing her head. Her lower eye halfpushed from the socket by the length of iron rammed behind it. Niko’s demon has his foot on the trident to hold the bucking bloated figure down.

“Well, I see you did the talking.”

“My favorite form of communication. Wait here. I gotta take out the trash.” The vanquished demon’s mouth works spastically. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Fnuh fnuh fnuh,” says the fat demon.

Without looking Niko’s demon bends to the ground and loops a tendril to scoop a healthy load of sand into the fat demon’s mouth. “Look, do you know what’ll happen if they catch me?” He snorts and deposits another load into the sputtering mouth below him. “They’ll take me apart and put the pieces in boiling oil and cook them for a hundred years in a pot full of piranhas while they decide how they really want to punish me. They have rules about you but it’s open season on me, buddy pal. They can do whatever they want to catch me, and when they catch me they can do whatever they want to me. Forever and ever like the lovesongs say. So I’m unloading Shamu here before she decides to collect on the book the casino has surely put on me by now, or before she calls her wicked stepsisters in to share the loot. Okay?” He lifts the trident onto one powerful shoulder. The fat demon dangles like some bloated thing bagged out of season. “Bathtime, skinny.” He glances at Niko. “The less they bother me the easier it’ll be for you.” He turns away like some sick parody of a little lost devil running away from home. “We’re in this together sweetheart,” he calls over his shoulder.

“What else is new,” Niko mutters.

“Fnuh fnuh fnuh,” the fat demon says.

“YOU READY UP there?” Niko calls.

“I still think you’re crazy as hell,” from the roof of the car. “But insanity’s helpful in someone I’m supposed to torment.”

“That’s not your job anymore.”

“I can moonlight. Let’s go.”

Niko reaches around the ungainly seatcushion his demon tore from the back seat and set across his lap in lieu of an airbag, and he puts the car in gear. Awkwardly he shifts as the Franklin lumbers up to speed. The breeze that blows into the opened front windows contains a chill from off the frozen plain across the river.

Above Niko his demon’s tendrils, wrapped through driver’s and passenger’s sides of the window, reposition for a better grip.

They race toward the dune projecting out into the river Lethe. All their calculations say the car can’t make it by itself. And his demon can’t possibly ferry the fortyfive hundred pound sedan a hundred fifty feet across the river. But perhaps the mongrel airfoil of his demon’s outspread wings can give them enough glide ratio to make the farther shore.

Niko keeps them straight and here comes the edge of the dune and son of a bitch it’s hard not to hit the brake. The ground drops below the windshield and Niko winces and his foot stays on the gas as the ground drops away and the engine roars and the whitewalls spin on nothing. Above him his demon spreads his wings and holds them as taut and wide and flat as his considerable muscles will allow.

The car soars off the dune. Black rock of sky beyond the hood. The mason jar wedged by the seatcushion between his clamping thighs. The car tips forward and the windshield fills with the frozen line of the far bank dotted with embedded figures. Solvent water rushes upward. Water that once delivered Niko from his haunted heart. The icy bank is twenty yards away now. Ten. Will we reach it?

The schooner hood dips down.

No.

Niko just has time to bring the cushion up between himself and the steering wheel before the car slams water like Icarus on wheels. The mason jar flies free and hits somewhere forward. Without a seatbelt Niko shoots into the seatcushion and it smashes against the steering wheel and he cracks a floating rib. With the wind knocked from him Niko sees black water engulf the hood. Hiss of heated metal hitting water. The Franklin rights itself and Niko is pushed back into the seat. Water splashes his shoulder neck and ear, and where it touches him his skin goes numb. The cushion hits him in the face and he bats it aside.

The spinning whitewalls spray a rooster tail behind the car. The icy shore is only yards away. Blue and naked in the cold the embedded damned stare as the heavy sedan rages forward. The Franklin hates him but the Franklin doesn’t want to drown. If it settles to the bottom of the frigid water like some pissant Titanic will it too forget? Niko thinks it will. Niko thinks the Franklin’s fighting for its shady life.

Above him his demon shouts Come on, come on. Why doesn’t he fly away?

Niko looks around for the mason jar but only sees its glow. He still can’t breathe.

A strange and rhythmic thunder comes from overhead as Niko’s demon beats his wings with all his might to help the car glide forward. They’re barely moving now and Niko doesn’t think they’re going to make it. The invisible fist lets go his gut and Niko draws a great pneumonic breath.

Something bumps the car’s right side. One of the naked dead, paperwhite and dripping, grabs the door with bloodless hands and clambers on. She is beautiful and dead as a lawn statue and moves like an automaton. Niko leans across the seat to pry her fingers loose and wonders even as he does why he is bothering since he’s about to join her in her bath of long forgetfulness. Her fingers lifeless cold. Beneath her nails the skin is nearly lavender. Listlessly she watches Niko try to force her fingers from the door.

The car surges forward and tilts starboard. Niko knocks the Franklin out of gear as he falls sideways. His forehead touches the aquamarine of the woman’s cheek. The surge continues and something slides hissing across the rear of the car. One of the river leviathans. The wake of its passing propels the Franklin forward and the front bumper scrapes the shore.

Niko slides back behind the wheel to put the car in gear. He glances at the clambering woman who looks up as if sighting a diving hawk. Something yanks her from the car and she splashes back into the river never to remember her escape attempt. Niko’s demon jumps down in her place, standing on the runningboard and hugging the side of the car and grinning evil glee. “All ashore that’s going ashore.”

The front wheels touch the sloping icy shore and the Black Taxi slows. Niko revs the engine and the back tires spin and water gargles as the rooster tail resumes. The car glides forward until the rear tires touch the shore and spin on the ice. Niko’s demon is leaning away to open the rear door when the tires grab and the Black Taxi bucks and surges from the water. The demon looks surprised as the car shoots out from under him and he falls backward. He lashes out a tendril but he misses and he drops from sight. Niko hears a heavy splash as his demon falls into the memory scouring waters of the river Lethe.

XXV.

WALL OF DENIAL

THE BLACK TAXI skims across the ice. Niko holds it to the highest speed that he can go and still maintain some measure of control. Mottled patches blur before the headlamps’ revelation, bodies of the frozen dead beneath the ice.

The Franklin really wants to get loose. The tires slide on watery patches and bump emergent corpses. One such has already sent the car into a slide in which the back and front ends threatened to trade places for at least a mile while Niko held the wheel cut to the right and rode it out until he felt the tires bite beneath him and he straightened out. He must maintain his focus every moment. Must bear down on the frozen sea that’s ever forming from the dark ahead. The moment his attention wavers the Black Taxi will get away from him. It’s sweaty work. The big sedan is squirrely on the ice. Like piloting a grand piano in a downhill soapbox derby. Niko isn’t driving so much as aiming. He wishes the Checker cabbie were behind the wheel. This would be a walk in the park to her. Oh well. He wishes her well wherever she is.

At least he’s found the heater controls and floor vents. The trip across the icy reach is markedly warmer this time out. Small comfort. Things are going downhill fast. In the first place there’s his passenger. Wet and chilled to the supernatural bone his demon huddles in his leather wings shivering on the restored back seat hard enough to shake the car. His great teeth clack like porcelain castanets. Though Niko cannot look at him he knows his demon’s face is oddly childlike and earnest as it regards anew the world outside the window.

In the second place—oh but that doesn’t bear thinking about, no oh no.

You play the hand you’re dealt, buddy pal, whispers the voice that apparently has not left him despite its incarnation in the seat behind him. Drive.

In the second place, beside Niko on the front seat is the mason jar with its feather floating, and jagged along the surface of the jar like a photograph of distant lightning is a hairline crack.