Chapter Eight
"So, have you actually got a plan?" Gabe asks.
They're on their way to Las Vegas, following Route 40 through the Texas Panhandle. It depresses her, having grown up on the edge of the Rockies in Colorado, how flat everything is. The sky and the earth seem to be two shades of blinding white under the broiling sun, and the only thing breaking the monotony of the plains is an occasional house. Who the hell lives out here, she wonders, but she doesn't dwell on it any more than to wonder if someone could have seen Caleb from the road. If he was walking-she has no idea how Caleb is getting around, only that he is. Gabe has taken the top off the Jeep, the better to let the wind blow, but it's a hot wind, and Melinda is reminded of the convection oven her mother had installed the year before she died, and how much quicker it cooked meat. Luckily she's not the type to burn, but she can feel the heat around her, sucking the water-the life-out of her body.
"Not a clue," she says. She's taken off the plaid Keds and put her feet up on the dashboard, enjoying the feel of the wind on her bare skin. The cult had mandated that women wear oppressive long-sleeved dresses that covered everything, skimming no more than one inch from the ground. Cut-offs and a t-shirt meant that she was practically naked, by their standards. Her knees, she notices, have gotten knobbier. She knows that she has gotten skinnier since she has been with the Knights-but she looks practically scrawny, now. No wonder Gabe can't get over the whole "kid sister" thing.
She's been trying to think of what they'll do when they find Caleb, but she keeps getting sidetracked with thoughts about Gabe and this Jessica Meyers he says is his girlfriend, even though he keeps lying to her. Now Gabe is "helping my uncle move a few things". She had to confess, though, that if she didn't have this gift, "Chasing down a rogue angel" was a lot less plausible.
Caleb. What are they going to do about Caleb?
What can we do? she wonders. Ask him to stop? "If we say 'please' nicely enough maybe he'll listen," she says, sarcastically, but Gabe doesn't laugh.
As the sun browns her skin, she wonders why Caleb didn't try to escape the compound. They'd kept him in a simple kennel. The elders didn't know any spells or charms that could bind an angel-or a demon, for that matter-they simply kept him in chains and beat him every moment they had.
Chains.
She sits up in her seat suddenly. "I just realized what an idiot I was-"
"And I just realized we're being followed," Gabe says. "Don't look," he adds, just as she's about to glance in the mirror. "If they think we've noticed them they might take a shotgun to us again."
"Shit," she mutters, settling back into her seat. "Are you sure?"
"In case you hadn't noticed, we're like, the only car on this stretch of highway for miles around. And it's been with us since we left the motel."
"Maybe it just hasn't reached its exit yet," she says, but she knows, even as she says it, that it's a false hope. If Gabe-sensible, reliable, logical Gabe-thinks they're being followed, they probably are.
"What are you going to do?"
"Hope that it runs out of gas before we do," Gabe says grimly. She checks the fuel gauge. They've got a quarter-tank left.
The sign on the side of the road tells them that the next rest stop is ten miles farther on. They can make it, but it'll be close, and they'll be coasting in on the fumes. Still, they don't have a choice. Gabe looks at her, and offers her his hand. At least we'll go down fighting, kid, his look says. She takes it. Amen.
By the time they pull into the rest stop, the engine is coughing, and it's all Gabe can do to ease the Jeep next to the fuel pump. They both get out, their stomachs churning in anticipation for a knock-down-all-out fight. Melinda flicks her uncle's lighter open, then closed. She's not sure she's suicidal enough to actually blow up the gas station on purpose, but she's sure she's not going back to the compound.
"Act normal," Gabe says, tossing her the squeegee that was sitting in a bucket of soapy water next to the pump. He tells her to keep an eye out for a blue sedan. She catches it and begins to wipe the windshield, watching the highway, while Gabe pays for a tank and thunks the nozzle into place. Twenty-five gallons of liquid explosive rush into his tank-she wonders if Gabe realizes how desperate she is.
The car never passes. Five minutes later, the tank is filled up, the windshield is clean, and Gabe is buying them stale hot dogs and chewing gum from the store. A semi roars by, then two pickups, but no blue sedan. Ten minutes later, and they've run out of excuses to stay there, and Gabe eases back onto the highway, checking both directions. Nothing.
"Weird," he mutters. "There wasn't any other exit, I'm sure of it," he says, but he keeps going.
"I don't think it's the Knights," she says, glancing backwards. The road behind them is empty, as far as she can see. "There were only ten cars on the compound, and Caleb blew up most of them, if not all of them."
But they keep checking the mirror until they get close to Albuquerque, where the increased traffic makes it impossible to keep track of which car was behind them and when. Gabe drives through the city, pausing to buy toothbrushes and fresh socks for them, and pulls into a seedy motel five miles outside the city limits. He parks the Jeep, and goes around the back to make arrangements to stay there. The sun is sinking, and the desert air cools off a lot faster than Melinda realizes. She digs around in the bag of thrift store clothes, and finds a sweatshirt. It's slightly too small and smells faintly of mothballs, but she puts it on anyway.
Presently Gabe returns, satisfied. "Fifteen bucks a night, can you believe it?"
She gets out of the car and stretches her legs. "There'd better not be bugs in the sheets," she says, but at this point she doesn't really care-as long as they're not in the Jeep, she'll be happy. She has to dive into the back seat to get the stuff that Gabe had bought earlier. "So which room?" she asks, as she loops the plastic bags around her wrists.
Gabe doesn't answer. "Which room?" she asks, louder this time. She stands up, and sees him staring. She follows his gaze.
Straight to a blue sedan.
Chapter Nine
There was a company policy against picking up hitchhikers, and there was a company policy against picking up hookers, and there was a company policy against driving more than six hours at a stretch. None of which had ever kept Jimmy Keegan from picking up hitchhikers or whores, though he was almost religious about keeping to his six-hour limit. He'd picked up more than one college student in his years on the road, and they were usually glad to give him what he wanted, in return for an extra thirty miles in his rig. He never had any trouble persuading them. The view of the open road and miles of nothing did that for him.
The young man walking alongside the road, for instance, seemed to be just the type of person who could use a ride. His fair hair-kid with color like that would burn up quicker than toast in this heat. He slows the empty big rig down and lowers the passenger window. "Need a lift?" he asks.
The young man smiles at him. He's even good-looking, too, in an androgynous, elfin way.
"Well, come on up," he says.
The kid-hard to tell how old he is-clambers up the side. He has to jump to reach the handle to pull himself in, but he manages to get himself inside the cab. Only now does Keegan realize that the kid doesn't have any baggage. Or shoes.
"What're you doing out here?" Keegan asks.
The kid shrugs. Fine, Keegan thinks. He'd prefer to have a talker, but he could deal with a silent one, too. "Hope you don't mind Aerosmith," Keegan says. The kid stares out the window, so Keegan pops the CD into the player, and as Train Kept a-Rollin' starts up, he casts a wary glance at his new passenger and puts the rig into gear. Kid's seventy pounds, soaking wet, Keegan finds himself thinking. I could take him, he reassures himself. Keegan might be starting a beer gut, but he's only been driving for five years, and he can still bench press two-hundred pounds. Then he shakes his head. What're you so worried about, Jimmy boy? But the feeling won't go away.
The miles roll aw
ay. In this part of the country, the only thing that changes is the crop-corn, wheat, soy, and there's an occasional herd of cattle that can be seen from the road. They've passed exactly two trees in forty minutes, and the next one is half an hour away on the horizon. Keegan thumps his thumbs against the steering wheel, keeping time with the music. He doesn't know if the kid is annoyed by this, but it soothes his nerves. He can't figure out why he's so jittery. He's picked up college athletes before, linebackers and basketball players, and never felt threatened. But this kid-he just doesn't know.
Finally-two albums and a gas tank later-Keegan stops, unable to stand his passenger's presence for another minute. "Look, kid. Would you at least tell me where you're going?"
"I am going where you take me," the young man answers, still staring out the window. He hasn't moved at all since he got in, Keegan realizes.
"And where is that, exactly?" Keegan asks.
"Hell."
The finality of the answer startles him for a moment. "Are you, like, a Mormon, or something?" he asks.
"I am something."
Christ, I sure know how to pick 'em, Keegan thinks, rolling his eyes.
"You wish me to pay," the kid says, suddenly, turning to face him. He smiles again, and it's all Keegan can do to keep his pants from tenting. He is more beautiful now than he was when he got in-his pale eyes are larger, his smile is somehow more charming... more lovely. It must be a trick of the light, Keegan thinks, but even his admiration for the boy sitting before him can't quell the feeling that there is something terribly wrong.
"I shall gift you," the kid says, and suddenly he's no longer a kid, but a man, beautifully sculpted and statuesque, sitting next to him, giving him a look that can only mean, "Come and get it, buddy." Keegan feels himself leaning over.
The man-kid-thing-reaches across the seat for him and touches Keegan's cheek, so softly, so gently. It feels like a benediction, like grace-and then all of a sudden, it turns into a searing pain of unbelievable agony, but Keegan realizes that he can't move, or scream. He hears a hiss, and feels something drip on his lap-and he realizes my face is melting. He wants to move, wants to get the hell out of this cab and away from this-this-whatever it is-but he's frozen in place, and can't do anything. Open your mouth. He doesn't know where the words come from-neither of them spoke-but he feels his mouth opening, farther and farther until he hears the crunch of his jaw breaking-and the thing sticks his hand in it. His entire hand. And then his elbow disappears. And then his shoulder. And then-
It's a small mercy that he's dead long before his body rips apart in a splatter of blood and flesh.
The man that is not Jimmy Keegan sits in the driver's seat of the big rig, feeling the steering wheel and the pedals, listening to the engine as it purrs. He puts it into gear, and the powerful engine surges to life, and begins rolling down the highway, faster and faster. And faster.
A comet, spewing diesel fumes and flame, heading for Albuquerque.
Chapter Ten
Gabe pushes Melinda behind him. She clutches his arm. The back of her mind is aware that this is an awkward gesture, given that he has a girlfriend. The rest of her is only aware of the terror, and that Gabe is clutching her hand almost as hard as she is his arm. And that the windows of the sedan are deeply tinted, rendering the glass opaque in the setting sun.
"I swear-" Gabe sputters. He opens the passenger door and reaches into the storage compartment. He fishes out a flashlight, one of those heavy-duty steel Maglites that are fifteen inches long and could easily kill someone. "Get back in the car, Melinda," he says.
She does what he says, and starts the engine for him, while he goes around the front of the Jeep, never taking his eyes off of the sedan. He rockets out of the parking lot, back onto the highway, turning on his headlights and buckling his seat belt as he goes. "How the hell...?" Gabe mutters, but he doesn't finish.
They drive in the dark for several more hours before the cold finally becomes intolerable. Gabe stops and puts the top back on the Jeep, then switches off his lights and drives off the road in the dark. "They weren't following us," Melinda says. She's kept her eyes glued to the rearview mirror for the entire way. There hadn't been a headlight in sight.
"God, but I hope you're right," Gabe says. He gets out. Melinda wants to tell him to get back in, because her stomach is still in knots and she's not entirely sure that they're safe. She can't decipher why she's so nervous, only that she is. "What're you doing?" she asks, instead, unlocking her door and getting out.
"Getting out the emergency blankets," Gabe says. "Oh, wait," he says. There's a click, and suddenly in the darkness of the desert there's a blade of white. He's turned on the flashlight, and he adjusts it so that the beam looks like a fan. "Better?" he asks.
"Are you insane?" Melinda shrieks, grabbing the light and turning it off. "You've just let them see where we are!"
"There's nobody around for miles," Gabe says, sullenly. "You said so," but he keeps the light off, going by touch and starlight. He lifts the trunk liner, and there, along with the spare tire, is a small emergency kit-blankets, stale granola bars, road flares, a hand-cranked radio and flashlight, and a bag of kitty litter. "Hungry?" he asks, handing her a bar.
"Not really," she says, watching the desert and the road they came on. "I just have a bad feeling."
"Nothing's going to get us," Gabe says, but the uncertainty in his voice belies his reassurance. "I just don't understand how that blue sedan could have gotten past us. Route 40 is the only interstate around. He'd have had to be doing, like, three-hundred or something to blow past the small towns and come out ahead of us."
They get back into the Jeep, and Gabe reclines his seat all the way. "It's not too bad," he says, wrapping a blanket around him. "I've done it a few times, when I got snowed in."
"Do you love her?" she asks, lowering her seat so that it, too, is almost horizontal.
"Don't ask me that," Gabe groans.
In the desert darkness, the only sounds are the Jeep clinking as it cools and the ghostly howl of the wind above them, carrying the yipping noise of coyotes. Gabe whistles occasionally-he's already asleep, and who can blame him? Squinting for five hours into a blinding landscape would take it out of anybody. Melinda sighs, wishes she has a book, and settles for naming the constellations that she can remember from seventh-grade astronomy. She's amazed at the brilliance of the stars and the shimmery band of light crossing the sky. The Milky Way, she thinks. Gemini. The Big Dipper. Occasionally there's the hum of an all-night semi going by, or the whining buzz of a car. It's quiet out here in the desert. There's no indication that there's anything wrong. So why can't she rid herself of this feeling that something incredibly shitty is going to happen?
It starts as a low rumble, so quiet that she can only hear it if she holds her breath, and then only between heartbeats. She sits up and looks around. It takes a moment to find it-an orange-ish ball of light, coming towards them from the horizon. It's weird. It looks like a fireball. She stares at it, trying to figure out what it might be. A really well-lit semi, perhaps?
As the noise gets louder, she realizes that it's moving really, really fast, almost impossibly so. And that it's heading directly for them. She shakes Gabe, but he swats her away. "Not now, Mom," he mutters.
"Gabe!" she hisses. "Gabe!"
He bolts awake. "What?" he demands.
She points at the glowing ball of flame coming at them. "Get us out of here," she pleads.
"Christ," Gabe mutters nervously, but he pops the driver seat up and turns the ignition. The engine coughs-and stalls out. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" he says, as he tries again, but the Jeep just won't start.
Chapter Eleven
The fire ball is streaming closer and closer, eating up the distance impossibly quickly. They can see, now, outlined against the flames, the metal skeleton of what was once a big rig, barreling down at them like a giant fireball. Melinda can see, in the driver's seat, a blinding-white aura, but the figure si
lhouetted in black is not the boy she pulled out of the barn two days ago.
A white light emanates from the figure's mouth. He looks like he's smiling, and where his eyes should be there are two glowing red embers, and charnel lighting rings his body. Through the roar of the engine and the flames that run it, they hear a cackle, and Melinda throws herself over Gabe a split second before the fireball slams into the Jeep. God don't let him die, she thinks. The roar of the explosion rips through them, but the flames wrap around them. God don't let him die. The Jeep disintegrates instantaneously into a million swirling metal flakes, shredding them both. God don't let him die, as the world around them dissolves into flame.
Melinda opens an eye and sees the creature that was once a scared, frightened boy coming towards them, black as sin with limbs of smoke and flame. Behind him are a pair of silvery, smoky wings, but this is no angel. And Melinda, strangely enough, becomes insanely angry. She risked her life to save him, and he does this to her? "How dare you?" she screams.
He actually stops. He considers her, and somewhere in the galaxy her rational mind is thinking that she should be terrified right about now, but her fury is so great that she actually stands up to meet him. "How dare you?" she screams again, with the full force of her anger behind her, and her voice changes-there's something underneath it, a register of pure power that physically forces him and the flaming inferno back. She's just as surprised as he apparently is, and that detracts from the purity of her rage. A part of her mind now realizes that the flames have not engulfed her, or Gabe, and it's not for his lack of trying. As she starts to wonder about this, her fury ebbs, and he pushes back. The circle of safety in which she and Gabe have been sheltered from the fire starts to shrink, and the terror comes back to her in full force. She shrinks against Gabe, trying to protect him from the flames, trying not to get burned, to summon back the anger against the fear. It's not working. The flames are getting dangerously close-the heat emanating from them burns her. She closes her eyes, hoping that it won't hurt too badly.
And all of a sudden, it's gone. The flames, the smoke, the creature. It's silent-all around her the ground is smoking, covered in ashes-the only patch of desert sand that isn't burnt is the patch that Gabe is lying on. He's alive-breathing, at any rate. She doesn't have the wherewithal to see if he's truly okay, because two men in gray suits and sunglasses are standing where the creature was. And behind them is the blue sedan.