Mortality Bridge (44 page)

The Franklin shudders from some impact on the plain behind and once more Niko stops himself from turning to look back. A creeping feeling grows between his shoulderblades and as it strengthens he decides to trust his intuition and yanks the steering wheel left right left.

A giant granite block slams the ground he might have occupied had he not dodged. From high above come indecipherable curses. God damn it. They’re not allowed to stop me. Are they? No. The deal was clear. They’re just trying to get me to look back.
 

Wait a second. The granite blocks?

Sure enough the plain is dotted now with slabs of granite dropped upon the running damned and left to weather away in a place that has no weather. Now the plain looks like an unkempt graveyard for some vanished race of giants. Sam Gamundi lies beneath one of these nameless markers. Digging and digging as he always will, world without end amen.

On impulse Niko honks the horn. The sound that emerges is the bellow of some ancient sea creature decrying its own extinction, an awful nightmare alarm calling to the very soul to strip itself from mortal flesh and prepare to be delivered from its bound estate. Niko shudders in his very core.

Did you hear it out there Sam? Did you know that it was me? That I’m returning with Jem’s soul in hand? I think you did. And I think that you will bless and curse me at the same time. As always.

Now a thin white line out on the dimlit distance like a scar. Can it really be the marble wall? Demarcating here and there? Niko blinks and rubs his eyes but can’t be sure. The white line blurs and fades and as it does a sound grows round the Franklin, rustling at first like swishing taffeta but quickly growing louder and more sibilant.

What had he encountered before running into Sam? So much has happened. So much is jumbled.

Strong gales buffet the heavy car. Streaking sand illuminated by the headlamps looks like rain. But this rain would not drench, this rain would flense—

Twisters. He remembers now. Enormous dustspouts scouring a baked plain intaglioed with the polished bones of the patient dead.

A stuttering rumble shudders the dirted air and a terrible coil dances past the car and lowers an undulant finger toward him like a mindless searching god. Flayed bodies flail within the spinning redlit gray, sailors drowning in a maelstrom. Constantly they bash each other and stain patches of the living wind a brief dull red.

The back end of the Franklin saws. Niko lets up on the gas and turns the wheel in the direction of the threatened spin. If the tornado touches him it could lift this car and sling it tumbling and set it smashed and crumpled on the plain with Niko pulped inside it and the glass shards of the mason jar catching the last fading glints from the feather’s dying glow.

The tires sing across a sea of polished bone as Niko swerves around the roaring serpentine. The tornado lurches and then lifts. Niko evades it and heads toward the false horizon of that thin white line. A wrenching groan behind him like some alien god sobbing in its tortured sleep. The air itself is humming now. It glows and sparks with static from the rubbing sand.

The funnel stabs toward the ground in front of him and darkens as it feeds on sand and rock and living bone, a deadly churning arabesque. Niko veers again. The whirlwind spits out some projectile that javelins toward the car. Just before it hits he sees it is the half flensed body of a man. Niko screams and swerves and ducks. The body slams the passenger side of the windshield and glass and blood and shit explode into the car. The glass is not tempered and Niko’s hands and forehead are cut by tiny shit-infected shards.

Niko sits back up. The pulped body is wrapped around the pillar post it has buckled.

The twister now meanders toward the car. The mason jar has got loose again and thumps across the floorboard. The ghastly body screams a sickening gargle and sprays teeth and bloody gobbets from its ruined mouth. Niko waggles the wheel and the body flops but does not fall of off the car. The mason jar thumps again.

With his side of the windshield starred he’s driving blind. The freight train rumble of the closing whirlwind loud and growing louder. The smashed body flails its macabre puppet arms as it tries to crawl into the car with Niko. Niko grabs the warm red mush of nearly jellied head by its matted clotted hair and tries to force the body off the hood. It feels like tepid oatmeal. The damned soul’s scream sprays warm blood mist across his arm. A gore drenched hand grabs Niko’s wrist and pulls the broken body farther into the car. For one long second mortal and tormented gazes meet. In the raw steak of the dead soul’s face one eye is crimson and the other burst. Niko glimpses awful fire in that remaining ember eye. The depth of this soul’s pain a counterpart to the abyss upon which it must look forever.

Niko pushes the man’s arm and slams the brakes. His bruised chest hits the steering wheel and his busted rib screams bloody murder as it grates. The clinging soul’s scalp peels away in Niko’s fist with a horrible soft purr and the body plows a furrow of caked brown shit as it slides along the dented hood scrabbling and clawing and slipping off to leave behind a red swath of itself. The car bucks over the fallen body.

Niko hits the gas and nothing happens. He didn’t let the clutch in when he slammed the brakes and the Franklin stalled. Now the car is barely moving.

The twister’s roar is deafening now and the bloodsoaked car interior is coating with fine sand. The abraded chassis hisses. Niko tries to start the car and the car lurches. Stinging sand sticks to his bleeding arms. Niko stomps the clutch and turns the key again and the engine catches and then something hits the front of the car hard enough to knock it aside two feet.

Niko stops the car and finds reverse and drives backward. All he can see is spiderwebbed glass in front of him. He hunches in the seat and brings up his left foot and kicks out the broken windshield. A sliver gashes his ankle. He sits back up and there it is, a wall of spinning air before him. He grips the wheel more tightly and he presses harder on the gas. He screams Go at the car. His ribcage throbs. Go, go.

The gearbox whines.

Niko’s eyes sting with grit.

Assbackward deeper into Hell and blind to boot. If anything besides the tornado is chasing him, gargoyles or mulchosaurs or demons or sherman tanks or marching bands with bagpipes for all he knows, he’s about to join their party bigtime. But it seems he’s outrunning the whirlwind even going backward.

The twister lights with static lightning. Angry god deprived of sacrifice. Across the surface of the plain its cursive body writes an endless nightmare rhapsody in some alien script.

The funnel lifts.

Niko stands on brake and clutch. The heavy car skids backward to a halt and Niko pops it into first and puts the hammer down. Shadows shift as the mason jar rolls and hits again. The slowly rising whirlwind finger stops and poises and strikes. Niko works through gears and forces the car straight and drives directly under the living funnel as it augers onto the plain intent to write his epitaph. Niko drives. He drives and the funnel touches down where he just was. The heavy car is caught within the grip of vortex winds and Niko shuts his eyes as stinging sand assails his skin. The rear end of the car tries to get away from him. He lets off on the gas and feels the car gain traction. For a moment Niko thinks he’s got control and then the Franklin spins. Niko turns the wheel in the direction of the spin. He averts his mortal gaze and feels himself turn round and round. The tires’ scream is faint against the cyclone’s freight train thunder circling and circling.

And comes to rest.

The rolling mason jar taps Niko’s shoe. He picks it up. A cold blade stabs his heart when Niko sees a tiny triangle of glass has been knocked out. But within the feather glows. And a faint smell of Jem’s perfume. The smell that filled him with when he hugged her long and hard after months away on tour. It smells like Jemma. It smells like love.

Carefully he sets the jar upon his lap and starts to look out the kickedout windshield. And stops. Which way is forward? Which way backward? The Franklin spun so many times there’s no way he can know for sure. He can hear the twister roaring down the plain—behind him? Yes behind and to the right. Then ahead and to the left is where he wants to look. Right?

Probably. But what if it’s not? The twister’s had time to move.

Niko sits unmoving in an agony of doubt. God damn it. You can’t just sit here. You’ve got to look up sooner or later. Got to pick a direction. Got to have a moment’s faith.

He takes a deep breath and holds it. Jem. The solid certainty of broken mason jar held his bleeding hands. All right. Okay.

He looks up and sees a redlit white wall separating ground and sky. All breath escapes him.

The engine that had been so well tuned idles roughly now.

The tornado closing from behind him.

The heatless jar in his cut hands.

Go.

XXVII.
 

EVERY GOODBYE AIN’T GONE

AND NOW THE mad and headlong race across the final stretch of plain. Niko pushes the Black Taxi to the limit with the pedal to the metal and hands clenched on the wheel and the broken mason jar wedged firmly at his crotch.

The engine keens. A rapid chuffing sounds beneath the tires like a speedboat rushing through a modest chop. Constant around him are bangs and thumps as metal unbuckles. The dented hood slowly smooths and the right side roof raises as the crumpled pillar post straightens. The Franklin looks as if it is inflating as it eerily heals itself. A crystalline lattice spreads across the empty windshield frame like a web weaved by an unseen spider, bowing in the steady wind and making it difficult to see what lies before him.

Niko rolls the window down and hangs his head out. Something smacks his forehead and he flinches back and wipes away a whitish paste and dark brown bits. A kamikaze cockroach. The chuffing from the tires is the Franklin running over hordes of roaches carpeting the plain.

Unable to look out the window Niko rocks from side to side to triangulate a view through the thickening lattice of reforming windshield. Occasional dead shine ghostly in the headlamps’ glare as Niko heads obliquely toward the growing line of marble wall that stretches probably forever away in either direction. Up ahead in the far distance he sees a darker patch within the wall. The gate?

Niko has become afraid to hope for anything but now he cannot help the hot anticipation that uncoils in his chest. The end in sight. The end in sight. He reminds himself that he has made it past the end before, in submerged memory, in different guise, and still looked back. And still lost everything.

I will break this. Whatever else it costs me I will break this chain.

Before him grows a steady creaking as the windshield glass reforms. It’s nearly impossible to see out now. Niko blindly heads toward the wall. When he nears it he cuts right and drives alongside it. He ought to come upon the gate soon.

He cannot shake the sense of unseen legions nipping at his heels. Surely they will not just let him waltz on out of here. Surely they’ve got something special planned.

Well let’s hurry up and find out what it is.

THE WINDSHIELD IS a solid pane of glass again, lined with a network of filament cracks that slowly thin until they disappear and leave clear spotless glass when they are gone. If the mason jar would only do that.

Suddenly the gate whips by. Niko yells and stands on the brake and then fumbles into reverse and backs up until he’s sitting in the idling car beside the massive gate. Staring out the window wondering what to do next. Beside him looms the massive iron grillwork of the gate. Just beyond that crouches the giant insane dog growling growling growling.

He forgot about the goddamned dog. This time it has no need to strain its anchorchain leash as it faces him with slobbering feral grins. The dog is posted less to keep people from going in than to prevent their leaving. If Niko tries to get past it, it will have no problem at all tearing him into bitesized chunks. No jumbo milkbone gonna save your ass this time buddy pal.

While the dog quivers like a drumhead just beyond the gate Niko surveys the wall. Featureless white marble smooth as glass rising at least thirty feet. No way in hell he can scale it. He fights to quell a white blind wave of desperate panic that will own him if he lets it break. Like trying to figure out a chess problem while a bomb ticks down to zero underneath your chair. Come on. It’s just a dog for christ sake. A hydra headed dog the size of a small elephant but still. Just a stupid fucking animal. Come on smart boy. Can’t you outthink a watchdog on a leash. That old bumper sticker, My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma. Yeah well my karma’s pretty much become—

Niko draws a deep breath as a desperate idea is born. No oh no.

But he goes into action before he allows himself to think about it. For thought would surely paralyze him now. He sees his hand reach toward the shift lever. Don’t do this, old son. Miles away his foot lets in the clutch. You won’t survive this. His remotely operated hand fumbles until it finds reverse. Jemma won’t survive this. He lets out the clutch. God damn it you stupid grandstanding asshole you won’t make it. As the car backs up he turns it to the right until the gate glides into view again in front of him. You think there’s an airbag in this thing? You don’t even have a seatbelt, you moron, you’re gonna kill yourself. He straightens out. The grated gate and eager monstrous dog beyond it shrink as he backs up. The view through the nearly regrown glass is slightly fractured, but the dog remains kaleidoscopic even when the glass is whole again.

Something heavy lands on the back of the Black Taxi. Niko flinches. Guess you were being followed. Oh well.

He stops about a thousand yards from the gate. That should be plenty.

Now winged figures land along the top of the marble wall above the gate to perch like heckling ravens on a power line. They dangle hooves or claws or feet and grin and nudge each other and wager and cackle as they hold up tridents and rocks and bricks.