Doll Face

24

Sometime after climbing out of the junkyard and her manic run in the streets, Ramona came to her senses and she was crawling up the sidewalk. Not sprinting or walking or even stumbling, but crawling. Her face blackened with soot, her clothes gray with ash, she was crawling up the sidewalk, completely out of it, laid low by shock and the aftereffects of pure terror.

Finally, she stopped.

Just what in the hell are you doing?

The thing was, she didn’t know. By that point, she really knew nothing. She very badly needed a good solid dose of reality, but reality did not exist in this place and without it she couldn’t seem to get her feet under her. Literally. This was all a dark fantasy, a nightmare, a dream, call it what you want.

All right. Stop right now. Don’t think. Don’t try to make sense. Stand up like a fucking human being. That’s a start.

It took some doing, but she did it.

She stripped off her filthy coat and just breathed.

She leaned up against the brick front of a building and looked across the street. She was expecting to see the same storefronts again, but she didn’t see that at all. Instead, there was a gigantic banner draped over the faces of several edifices that said: WELCOME TO HISTORIC STOKES. If it was meant to inspire fear, it had the opposite effect: she started to giggle. The giggling welled up inside her until it became full-blown laughter and she shook with it, her girlish and manic cackling echoing up and down the empty streets. Now this was funny! This was fucking comedy! This had to prove that the Controller had a very wicked sense of humor.

Historic Stokes, she thought. Historic Stokes. Oh, that’s hilarious!

When she finally calmed down—and it took some time—she fished her cigarettes and lighter out of her pocket and lit up. Dirty and grimy and smudged with ash and smoke, she pulled off her cigarette and had to force herself not to laugh.

Then she saw the van sitting up the street and things quickly became very unfunny.

It was not idling; it was simply parked at the curb. She stood there, stiff from head to foot, waiting for it to rev up and come after her. But it did nothing. She swallowed down her fear, knowing damn well that she was not some shrinking violet and she wasn’t about to become one now. A few deep breaths. A second or two to unclench her muscles. A few drags off her cigarette. There. She was not about to fall apart again like she had in the junkyard. No goddamn way.

You were close before, real close to wearing down the Controller. Then you lost it. Well, find it again and put it to work. Do not allow yourself to be driven. Do not be predictable. Go on instinct. Act irrationally.

The van.

The van was intended to make her run screaming until she was exhausted. But no, she would not allow that. The Controller would expect her to run and hide, to find a safe place that would be, no doubt, conveniently available so she could be trapped in an enclosed space. And there the games would really begin.

Ramona took a final drag off her cigarette and tossed it.

She moved up the sidewalk at a very sneaking pace, keeping to the shadows as if she was trying to avoid being seen. This would be predictable behavior. The Controller would be expecting it. At the last moment, she made as if to run off… and then dashed across the street to the van, grabbing the handle of the driver’s-side door and throwing it open.

The broken man was behind the wheel.

A blade of fear went through her, but vanished quickly enough. He was slumped over in the seat, loose-limbed and limp. He seemed incapable of motion. He was a lifeless window dummy and no more.

Still… she was cautious, very cautious.

She knew how quickly they went from being inert to active.

Common sense told her to get the hell out of there, so she ignored it and did the irrational thing. The thing that was dangerous, but oh-so satisfying. She grabbed the broken man and pulled him out of the van, tossing him to the pavement. He broke into pieces. She kicked his head and it rolled into the gutter.

She waited for him to come to life, but it didn’t happen.

She jumped behind the wheel and started the van up. She was amazed that it ran so smoothly. Did the Controller’s power not extend to internal combustion engines? Or was she—gasp—playing into his/her/its theoretical hands again?

Fuck it.

The last time the alarm sounded it had come from the east and that’s where she was going. The rational thing would be to drive out of town, so she didn’t bother with that. She was going to track this bullshit to its source.

Guess what, Mr. Controller? she thought then. I’m coming for your ass. Goddamn right I am.