Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

12

FADE IN: a seemingly endless stretch of smooth two-lane blacktop emptying into shadows. Crowds of people line both sides of the road, the men looking tough while clutching at their bottles of beer, the women looking anxious while clutching at the filtered tips of their cigarettes, and the kids—especially the really young ones—looking like they aren’t sure how they should be feeling while they clutch at the hands or coats of the tough beer drinkers and anxious cigarette smokers.

…and this is where we came, isn’t it?

I climbed out of the limo and saw the Ogre parked in the left lane up ahead, Sheriff Hummer leaning against the driver’s-side door. He saw me, gave a little wave, and gestured for me to join him.

I kept glancing at the crowd as I approached him, but after a few seconds of that realized it wasn’t the best idea; the people who comprised this crowd—men, women, children (God, the children…)—were all Repaired to varying degrees, and the fusion of flesh and metal, rather than repulse me as it had before, now seemed to possess an organic correctness that I was suddenly all too willing to accept as being normal…or what passed for normal, here. One little girl who couldn’t have been more than seven years old smiled at me, displaying a mouthful of spark plug tips that took the place of her teeth. She seemed so proud of that smile, like she was showing off. I smiled back at her, and she blushed.

Don’t look at them, I told myself. If you don’t look, then they’re not there.

Pitiful, I know, but it worked. They were shadows, props, decorations on the periphery, not real, not flesh and bone (and metal and steel, said the voice in the back of my head), and maybe, if I concentrated hard enough, I could Zen-out of this whole mess for a few moments.

“You seem tense,” said Hummer.

I looked up at him but couldn’t think of anything to say.

Then he did something that surprised me; he stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ll be fine. It’s almost over.”

I heard the grinding of a large engine in the distance behind us, and as I turned the crowd broke into wild shouts and applause. More lights came on, illuminating the road, and a few seconds later the object of their adulation rolled into sight.

A great semi tractor-trailer crawled out of the darkness, pulling a car-cube, smaller than the ones I’d seen before but still fairly massive. Atop the cube four large torches burned, flames snapping against the night, one set at each corner, and in the middle of it all was a raised platform. Daddy Bliss sat there, the wheels of his chair held in place by clamps attached to the base. Large concert speakers were positioned at the sides of the platform, angled outward. Ciera stood at Daddy Bliss’s side. She’d changed clothes; she was now dressed in a paisley skirt and tight short-sleeved sweater, her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, a scarf tied around her neck. She held a long red kerchief in each of her hands.

The truck crept by, rumbling and growling like a constipated dinosaur, then began a slow, wide turn, moving forward, then back, a little to the left, forward again, the driver doing an impressive job of reversing, until, finally, the car-cube was well off the road and at an angle facing the crowd.

Ciera walked to the side of the cube and pushed something over the edge; a long rope ladder that reached to the ground. She turned, blew a kiss toward Daddy Bliss, and began descending.

Daddy Bliss smiled—a celebrant at the beginning of Mass—and the crowd’s cheering grew even louder. He smiled, nodded his head a few times, then cleared his throat; amplified by the speaks, it sounded as if a section of the ground were splitting open.

The crowd fell silent.

“My children,” said Daddy Bliss.

And the crowd exploded once again. Daddy Bliss waited until the roar died down, but it took a minute; Ciera was already on the ground before he started speaking again.

“My children. As you know, our dear Road Mama has been returned to us, and is, as I speak, being Repaired. She will be back among us soon. For that, we have Driver to thank.”

The crowd erupted once more, some of them calling out my name—or, rather, the word, “Driver! Driver!”

“The Road,” said Daddy Bliss, “has granted us this contest—this trial, if you will—to see whether or not Driver is, indeed, worthy.”

Worthy of what? I thought.

“Give praise to the Road. Give thanks to the Highway People. They provide, they sustain, they bless us and watch over our loved ones under their protection.” The crowd as one looked downward and began muttering quiet thanks. Even Hummer removed his hat and bowed his head in prayer. “Driver,” said Daddy Bliss. I looked up toward him.

“You have done well for us, and have our thanks. You still have many questions, this I do realize. Know that they will be answered soon.”

I nodded.

“Very well, then,” he said, clearing his throat once more. When he spoke again, his voice was louder, powerful, commanding. “Release Fairlane.” Then he looked at me and grinned. “Sounded somewhat ominous didn’t it? Apologies. ‘Release Fairlane.’ Not quite ‘…let slip the dogs of war,’ I’m afraid.”

The crowd cheered, but this time I could hear some genuine anxiety at the edges of the sound.

And then something so incredibly absurd happened that I couldn’t even laugh at it, as much as it demanded to be laughed at: the concert speakers erupted with the opening chords of AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell” and the crowd as one turned to face the road behind me.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” I said to Hummer. “I got in a wreck on my way out of town and all of this is just some fucked-up hallucination that my subconscious has dredged up while my life trickles away.”

Hummer grinned, and then backhanded me across the mouth. “Did that feel like an hallucination?”

“That hurt!”

“Sorry. Seemed the best way to get the point across, all things considered.”

I shook it away, which wasn’t easy—he had one helluva powerful swing. When I was able to gather myself together and stand fully upright, I was looking down the darkened road at something that appeared to be a small bonfire, only it was moving.

The music became louder as the whole band kicked in, the thump-a-thump-thump of the base and drums shaking the ground under my feet, and the bonfire grew brighter, wider, and closer.

Ciera appeared at my side. “Fairlane is…I’d guess you’d call him…I dunno…The Road’s guard dog. Does that make sense?”

“Not really.” I tried to grin at her and didn’t quite make it. “I guess I could use some reassuring words.”

“Then try this,” said Hummer. “If you took every instance of violence, death, pain, and destruction that have occurred on the roads and highways of this country and forced them all together so that they’d have a single form, it would be Fairlane.”

I stared at him for a moment. “I think we need to compare notes about the definition of ‘reassuring.’”

“He’s the closest thing to an actual demon you’ll ever meet,” said Ciera, taking hold of my hand. “And he’s got terrible table manners.”

Hummer nodded. “Not a pretty motherfucker, that’s for sure.”

“Plus he cheats,” said Ciera.

I could make out a shape in the middle of the flames; the outline of a car’s body, the massive hunched shoulders of the driver, the glint of light off metal and chrome.

The flames, I now realized, were coming from two sources; the back tires and the exhaust pipes that ran along the sides of the car. The cloud of flame, smoke, and exhaust moved up to the right lane and came to a stop right beside the Ogre. I blinked, shielding my eyes, hacking against the fumes, and waited for the cloud to clear.

I have no idea if what happened next was just a coincidence or something that had been previously choreographed to unnerve me, but until the day I die I’ll swear that the cloud of smoke and exhaust lifted at the exact moment the song stopped.

And there he was. My opponent for the evening’s festivities. I couldn’t take him in all at once, that would have been too much, so I looked at the car first; at least I could get my head wrapped around that.

When I was a kid, I used to collect and build model cars. I tended to favor models of older cars because their shapes were so varied and cool—not like the generic stuff I saw on the roads then and still see now. One of my favorite models had been a Revell kit of a 1934 Ford High Boy Rumble Seat Roadster. To me, it was the single coolest-looking car I’d ever seen—forget that I’d never actually seen the real thing, I knew Cool when I saw it.

And this car was Cool. Same make and model, only the back end had been jacked up and the tires replaced by wide, dangerous-looking slicks. The body—what was left of it, anyway—was a fierce, bright, almost terrifying shade of red. The exhaust pipes that ran along the sides of the car covered the entire length of the body and then some, curling slightly outward at the ends. The front grille and headlights were still in place, but the rest of the body between them and the windshield had been removed to make room for an engine that was more like a gigantic chrome cobra than anything that functioned under the laws of internal combustion, its body coiled and tense, it hood expanded, ready to strike. It would not have surprised me if a forked tongue had shot out for a moment.

And then the cobra roared, just once, spitting smoke and sparks. Fairlane wanted my attention. I had no choice but look at my opponent.

His skin—what there was of it—had the gray fish-belly pallor of something spoiled, and his head was disproportionately large for his body; like Dash, part of his skull was visible where the scalp had been torn away and cauterized at the edges. Thick strands of long, greasy, dark hair hung down the back of his head, tied into something that was supposed to be a ponytail but looked more like a section of putrid intestine left dangling for the elements to feast upon. He still had his own eyes, after a fashion: each was embedded into the center of a cone-shaped floodlight welded into the sockets. His nose was a knot of mashed tissue that leaked a thick, brown substance onto his upper lip. Every few seconds he would smile, allowing the liquid to spatter down onto his long, dark tongue that lolled around like that of a particularly happy or stupid puppy, never disappearing completely into his mouth. Something about the texture and shape of the thing demanded closer attention, and when it flopped fully out of his mouth a second time, I realized that the tongue was maybe one-third human tissue; the rest of it was a fan belt onto which the organic tissue had been attached.

Fairlane must have seen the realization hit me, because his face began to split in half as he smiled, displaying a mouth crowded with full-sized sparkplugs that had been jammed in to replace his teeth, both on top and bottom. He chortled—that’s the only word for it—and clicked his teeth together; a series bouncing blue electrical currents danced around his smile. I wondered if the little girl I’d seen earlier was his daughter or niece. Maybe she was just a fan and was paying tribute to her hero.

Hundreds of metal strips were mixed in with the flesh of his arms, and several twisted license plates had been used to good advantage in replacing the pectoral muscles of his chest, but his hands were the most unnerving thing about him; long, wide, with quadruple-jointed fingers, each hand was equal parts meat and metal, with small silver hinges used in place of bone joints. One hand was fused to the steering wheel at the ten o’clock position, while the other was fused to the gearshift.

“Told you he was ugly,” said Hummer.

“No,” I whispered. “It’d take the light from ugly ten thousand years to reach him.”

Fairlane chortled again, this time throwing back his head, his tongue flailing through the air.

Ciera took hold of my hand. “You need to get in your car now.”

I nodded at her and crossed back to the vehicle, opening the door, climbing inside, and then buckling up—more out of habit than any belief that doing so was going to keep me safe. “Good luck,” said Ciera. “Wait a second, please.” “What is it?” “How…I mean…what’s at the end of this road?”

“All of us—or we will be. You’ll see.” She leaned down, gave me a quick kiss, and then walked about ten yards ahead, stopping in the middle of the road and raising her arms. I stared at the red kerchiefs and tried once again to Zen-out of this whole freak show.

“On your marks,” she shouted, her arms now raised to their full height, the crowd silent, wide-eyed, leaning forward.

Fairlane gunned his engine. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Ciera gave us both a smile that might have been radiant in any other place, under any other circumstances. “Get set…”

Her grip tightened on the kerchiefs in her hands. In a moment, she’d swing down those impossible arms in a swift, decisive arc, and off we’d go.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, wondering how long I’d be missing and dead before anyone took serious notice of my absence. It was quite the revelation, it was, to realize that out of all my friends…I didn’t really have any.

“GO!” Ciera screamed, snapping down both arms simultaneously.

And we had a race.