A knob beside the steering column catches Niko’s eye. Choke. Don’t mind if I do. He pulls it and hits the starter button and is rewarded with a deep leonine purr barely audible beneath the minor earthquake rumble all around him.
Something shouts behind him and he glances at the rearview but thank god he’s knocked it slantwise. Something heavy lands on the rear of the car and Niko fumbles finding first gear and slips the clutch. The Black Taxi bucks and stalls. A leathery slap on the rear window now as Niko knocks the lever into neutral and jabs the starter button again. The engine purr resumes. The rear of the roof dents with a dull gong as Niko lets out the clutch. Still the Franklin doesn’t move.
Handbrake. Niko squeezes the brake lever and slams it down. The big car starts to roll. He doesn’t even feel or hear the gear engaging when he eases off the clutch. It’s so dark that only the motion of the speedometer needle reveals the car is moving. Behind him an awful bellow like a foghorn grips his heart. Niko gropes for the headlight knob and pulls it. Meager patches of dull red ochre plain flow toward him as the ’33 Franklin begins the drive reluctantly across the Lower Plain of Hell.
IT’S A WRESTLING match from the word go. With the casino vanished Niko has no reference point. No sun no moon no stars to steer by. No compass, no compass points. He is not north or south or east or west of anything.
He searches for second gear and finds it and forces the gearshift in. Goddamn it’s finicky. Half an inch to either side and it won’t go. He lets up on the stiff clutch and surges forward.
I need to turn right. I need to be at least ninety degrees from the direction the car was pointing when I boosted it.
Then it hits him. Holy Jesus Pez dispenser, I stole it. I boosted the Black Taxi. Oh that sallow son of a bitch will be so god damned mad. Oh yes. Niko laughs out loud and drums the steering wheel. I would pay to see his bony face when he comes back and finds it missing. But I won’t see it because I will be gone baby gone. Many miles away like the song says. Hell on wheels.
He glances at the silent glowing mason jar. Yes yes yes. I’m gonna do this thing. He pats the jar. We are going to do this thing Jem. We will bring you back into the living world and reunite you with your castoff flesh, and breathing in that living air we’ll live our span of years as man and wife. And whatever fate awaits my mortal soul I will have nonetheless escaped at last the nightmare of my history, the prison of myth. And you will have escaped, period.
Her castoff flesh. What has become of it? Was she found? I’ve been gone so long. What if she is buried? Did Hank come in from Oregon and find his daughter on the bed in our deserted house? Oh no please no. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it Jem my Jem, and if there is no bridge then we will build one.
So exalting Niko turns the car. If he turns more than ninety degrees eventually he should converge with the railroad tracks. Assuming they are still there. Assuming the landscape is not malleable as a fevered dream. But what else to do but go on assumptions? Don’t we forge ahead on faith?
Feeling that he drives more than just this car he speeds along his earthbound way.
And feels the Franklin fighting him. He should be shifting into third but both hands are on the wheel to keep the huge car from going abeam. The massive aircooled engine whines and reluctantly he lets up on the gas.
Something clatters across the roof. Wotthefuck. Niko looks up as something big clambers toward the front of the car. He brakes and tries to weave. The engine shudders and he slaps it out of third and hunts around for second with his left arm straining on the right side of the wobbling wheel. The car wriggles pathetically toward the right.
“Okay you piece of shit.” He abandons the hunt for second gear and mashes the brake and yanks the wheel twohanded. The big car leans hugely left like a lopsided boat and overhead that foghorn bellow sounds again. A heavy weight lifts from the car and the headlights sweep across something huge and pale brown with too many limbs tumbling on the ground with birdbones snapping and their blunt ends shredding thin membranous wings. Niko notes the direction of the creature’s roll because it’s where the car was headed before the power slide began.
The mason jar rolls off the seat and hits the gearshift lever and bounces out of sight. The Franklin comes to rest facing the way it came. Niko clenches his eyes. Feral cat of engine purr. Niko looks at his lap. His hands tremble on the wheel. Go. Don’t wait till you stop shaking. Go.
Staring firmly at the floorboard Niko forces down the clutch and mauls the gearshift and the Franklin grumbles into motion. Tough shit, car.
If anything was chasing you you’re driving toward it now.
Niko forces the wheel to the left. A compass would be a godsend now. Yeah right. And where’s the north it ought to point to?
Niko straightens out the wheel and takes a deep breath and looks up from the floorboard. Nothing vanishes. Reality does not shred. The enormous front grille of the Franklin eats up red ochre hellfloor rushing in beyond the headlamps’ reach.
Beneath the passenger seat a pale light glows. Niko taps the brake and the mason jar rolls out onto the floorboard. He reaches for it and the steering wheel yanks from his grip. Niko bolts up and shoves the jar against his crotch and wrests control of the car. “Bad bad bad,” he tells the car.
He struggles into third gear and puts the hammer down and rocks forward as if to urge the Franklin faster. Headed where? Anywhere but here.
CRACKED VOLCANIC GROUND rushes from the dark before the lengthy hood as the Franklin glides along the dark flat plain. How fast can he go? The speedometer goes to one twenty. He’s doing maybe eighty right now. But he is in a place where how fast you go and how far you travel may be very different things.
Something dashes in front of the car and Niko glimpses large eyes long limbs red skin. He jerks left but the big car resists and the rightfront fender clips the running creature and chunky red sprays half the windshield. The car is so damned heavy Niko barely feels the impact. He hunts down the wiper switch and the overhead wipers draw cartoon smiles in the ichor on the angled glass.
The front right headlamp now shines down and to the right. Its light ruddy with splashed gore. And yet the wayward beam drifts slowly left and up to rejoin its companion as the curved fender unbuckles itself and smooths until it is symmetrical again. A faint and distant groan of metal somehow healing. Gradually the ruddy light whitens. Niko starts to turn the wipers off but the switch moves just before he touches it. The windshield is spotless once again. Niko’s nervousness at piloting the Black Taxi returns. He sits within the gullet of a beast.
Out of habit he checks the rearview. It’s all akilter and he remembers slapping it so. That mirror sure does worry him. Does it count as looking back to look into it? Is the issue the actual act of turning to see what’s behind him, or is it the mere fact of what lies behind him being visible in any way? Perseus guided himself with a reflective bronze shield until he could cut off Medusa’s head. What was absent from her reflection that petrified in direct apprehension? And does it apply here?
The only way to find out is to straighten out the mirror and take a good long gander. A session player friend of his called this the highnote test. To learn the highest note you can play on your guitar you play the E string at the last fret and tighten the string until it breaks, and it’s the note just under that. The rearview mirror is the Cadillac of highnote tests. If a single accidental glance were to undo him after all he’s gone through he might as well floor it and head straight for the nearest immovable object. To avoid the possibility he snaps the rearview off the windshield and tosses it into the back.