Niko rolls the window down and hot stale air invades the car that speeds along the vacant plain. The only sound the fluttering of alien wind.
NIKO JERKS HIS head up and yanks the wheel. He looks around but sees nothing. Purring car and whistling wind. Some loud bang awoke him though. He hit something or something hit him. Exhausted and drained and lulled by the thrum of engine and the hum of tires on the flat cracked plain he fell asleep at the wheel. Just for a few seconds probably but that’s all it takes. That’s all it took for you and Van to slam that car. Two seconds of wandering attention and a whole bunch of lives changed forever.
All right. Enough already. Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.
Soon the railroad tracks are back. Rusted iron on ruined ground. Driving beside them Niko wonders how long he rode the train during his drunken encounter with his demon. A few hours at most. That train had sure been fast though. A couple hours could easily cover a hundred, a hundred fifty miles. Maybe more.
He frowns and raises his reclaimed love’s lantern soul to the instrument panel. The gas gauge still shows full and he’s doing ninetyfive. The tripmeter and odometer numbers roll in a slotmachine blur. His clock runneth backward.
Crucifaxes dot the landscape now. Tortured souls nailed upside down on X shaped crosses interspersed along the plain like gruesome railroad crossing signs. Niko swerves around the crucifaxes and tries to parallel the railroad tracks because they are an arrow pointing the way back. The crucifaxes brighten before him and their shadows shift and lengthen on the ground. An awful howl sounds just as Niko realizes that a train is churning down the track and slowly drawing even with him. Soon he sees it eating up the night incarnate. Thick red spewing from its demon head like the final snorts of a gored bull. Iron jaws wide to scoop whatever lies along its path. The awful screech of train horn sounds again, the grinding of a million porcelain teeth.
Clinging to the side of the train are demons. Wings tucked tight against the strong headwind or unfurled and flapping behind them like leather flags. They shake their fists at Niko speeding beside them.
Niko glances forward just in time to dodge a looming crucifax. His headlamps catch the resigned look of the inverted soul tormented there. The car that hurtles toward it merely another in an infinite series of punishments to be endured. He feels the Franklin wants to plow into the upright wood, fusing meat and bone and metal, and he muscles the car around the spraddled man. The gruesome X blurs by and gone.
The forest of crucifaxes thickens, a pinioned nation growing before him.
Something hits the side of the car and Niko swerves. On the train the demons hoot and highfive one another and then make room in a boxcar doorway for another demon who holds a naked Asian woman in his great hands.
Niko dodges another crucifax. The landscape itself is forcing him closer to the train. Up ahead the only place the car will fit is on the right of way.
On the train the demon twists the woman’s head off like an apple stem and dangles it by its long black hair and reaches back and winds up like a pitcher on the mound. A muscled leg comes up headhigh and then stomps down as the great scaled arm lashes forward. The gaping head shoots toward the Franklin like a comet trailing hair. Niko brakes and the train pulls away and the head streaks past the hood. The demons boo. If they want to stop him they can probably do it any time they want. Smash him from above or open up the ground before him. Peel off the roof and pulp him like an overripe tomato. But that’s not the deal. The deal is that Niko’s free to try to get out with the bottled soul of his lady love in tow so long as he does not look back. And they are free to do everything in their formidable power to make him look back. What could be simpler?
And, of course, Niko is perfectly free to fuck up on his own. Less than twenty yards now separate him from the train. Crucifaxes whip by like demented roadsigns on his left.
A demon separates itself from the freight of demons screaming out their joyous wrath. Its wings flat along its muscular back as tigerlike it gathers itself and springs, body seeming to elongate as it arcs from the train with tendrils reaching overhead and wings unfolding like parasols to rake back and guide.
Once again Niko slows the car, this time to no effect. This missile is volitional and banks toward him. The Franklin’s chassis rocks when the demon hits the side. Dodging crucifaxes as if playing a deranged video game Niko glances at a monstrous face that leers in the passenger window. The demon clings to the doorhandle and crouches on the rubber runner. A moment later Niko realizes that the demon is circling the tip of one tendril in a gesture for him to roll down his window.
Niko scowls. Fuck that. Dodge crucifaxes, don’t hit the train, shake the demon off the car.
Another glance at the demon’s face and he revises his game plan. Holy shit. Without another thought or word he leans across the seat and pulls up the doorlock.
The demon shakes his great leathern head. His expression says You moron. He points at the rear doorlock and Niko understands that the demon can’t open the front door without knocking himself off the runner and the back door is locked.
Niko jerks the wheel to avoid squeegeeing the demon across a crucifax. Then the car breaks into a clearing in the cruciforest and Niko nearly stands in his seat as he blindly reaches back and tugs up the lock. Foul hot air invades the car as the suicide door opens and the demon tumbles into the back. “Nice driving, buddy pal,” his own voice says behind him as its owner slams the door. “Now let’s get the Dodge out of Hell.”
XXIV.
TAKE ME TO THE RIVER
“IT’S A FRANKLIN ACTUALLY.”
“Say what?”
“The car. It’s a Franklin.”
“Whatever. Hey look out. Ooh that was close. Cut right cut right cutright.”
“I don’t have room.”
“You have room.”
“I don’t.”
“Trust me.”
“Yeah right.” Niko cuts right. There’s room, barely.
His demon bends a tendril to wave bye bye at the crucified woman they have nearly sideswiped. “Nice car.”
“Thanks. I stole it myself.” Niko’s palms are slick on the wheel. A stunt driving ace he is not. He’s gotten ahead of the train, but the thickening profusion of the crucified is giving him nowhere to drive. Suddenly ahead there looms a chasm. Redlit from below, miles wide and untold miles deep. The only bridge across it is the slender rampart of the tracks themselves atop a frail and narrow truss bridge that looks like a thread strung between the tops of two skyscrapers.
Niko feels as if he’s been dashed with icewater. “No way. No fucking way.”
“We’ve got to,” his demon urges from the back. “It’s the only way across, and if the train gets there ahead of us it’ll stop on the tracks. We’ve got to outrun it.”
“Goddamn.”
Thunder rumbles and the ground trembles. The tremors’ ripples shudder through the long and slender railway bridge.
Niko’s demon sticks his head up front. “I strongly advise you not to use such language once you’re on the bridge.”
“I really don’t want to do this.”
“Okay.” The demon withdraws into the passenger compartment.
“Pull over and stick your thumb out. Maybe they’ll give you a lift.” Niko dodges a crucifax. “There’s no way I can drive on that.”
“The car can do it.”
“I know the car can do it. I don’t think I can.”
“Sure you can.” The demon glances back. “The train’s two hundred yards back and gaining but you’ll have plenty of lead if you don’t slow down. Hey did you know your rearview mirror’s back here?”