by Jack Martin
Phantom trees shunted past the car, an occasional renegade branch reaching out to swipe at the fender, then slipping back to rejoin the waving darkness. The tiny agate eyes of countless small animals that only come out at night shone back from stunted scrub and half-seen ditches; once the headlights clipped an opossum or overgrown rat, he could not tell which, lumbering across the white line, the nude antenna of its tail sprung high in the air. It froze like a shooting-gallery target halfway across the road, struck blind by the high beams. Challis hit the horn with the heel of his hand and swerved before it scurried to safety on the other side.
He passed it and bore down the line.
As they swung around a curve, Ellie straightened in the seat.
Her eyes stared ahead, not at the road but somewhere beyond the immediate landscape, at the scene they had left behind or at the larger reality that lay before them.
Or perhaps she was seeing none of it, nothing at all.
For now, it would be easier for her that way.
“Take it easy,” he said, unable to do more for her at this moment. “Try to rest. You ought to rest.”
She did not answer.
“Ellie? Can you hear me?”
Probably not, he thought. And just as well. He had seen the reaction before. It was a special healing grace, this withdrawal. Like down-time on an overloaded computer. Time to process the nightmares so that they don’t take over when the sun comes up again.
He reached over and pressed her hand.
It was still cold.
He flicked on the radio.
“. . . EXPECTING OVERCAST SKIES AND A FIFTY-PERCENT CHANCE OF RAIN THROUGH TOMORROW. IT’S PRESENTLY SEVENTY-FOUR DEGREES AT SEVEN TWENTY-EIGHT P.M. HERE ON YOUR MIGHTY KAB. THIS IS STEV—”
He jammed the selector button to another station.
I’ll make it in time, he thought. I have to. Don’t think about the alternatives.
The tail end of an overwrought piece of music blipped by, a country-and-western tune about too little love or too much, too soon or too late, in the wrong place or nowhere at all. He ignored it but let it play. It was soothing in its way, a first step toward turning the familiar world back on again.
“IT’S ALMOST TIME FOR HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN . . . TAKE YOUR MASK TO THE TV SCREEN, TV SCREEN, TV SCREEN . . .”
He began to tremble, his hands dragging on the wheel.
He twisted the radio off and regained control.
The clock on the dashboard read 7:30.
Just a few more miles, he told himself, grinding his teeth down to bare nerves. We’re almost far enough away to be able to call for help to people who will listen. And they will. They will. They’ve got to . . .
He said it over and over to himself like a litany until he was able to hold himself together again.
“Ellie, are you all right?”
She leaned her head against his shoulder as they jolted around a curve.
He held her leg through the jeans.
“That’s right,” he said, “rest. We’ll be there soon.” Wherever “there” is, he thought. If only I could see a map.
But we can’t be that far away from civilization.
Another turn.
Her hand flopped into his lap.
He touched her fingers. Still cold, he thought. All those drugs Cochran must have shot her up with; her metabolism’s so low her skin’s like ice.
He put his arm around her and drove with one hand.
Her hand crept up to his shirtfront.
He was relieved. For a second there . . .
But he put it out of his mind. Tried to put it out of his mind.
She had been so withdrawn, so lifeless after he had put her in the car. It had taken only a half-minute to kick in the door to Cabin One; but of course her things, including the keys, weren’t there. He had had to lift the hood and hot-wire the starter to get going. In that short time it seemed that he had lost her completely. She had been sitting round-shouldered, like a broken doll, as if all the life had gone out of her . . .
But she was all right now. Getting better, at least. He could feel it. Already her fingernails were picking at the buttons of his shirt.
Her hand moved up to his neck, the backs of her fingers caressing his cheek.
He took hold of her fingers and kissed them.
The first suggestion of lights far ahead, through the trees.
“Honey,” he asked, “does any of this look . . . ?”
She doesn’t remember. But that’s all right. Neither do I.
As soon as I get to a real phone, he thought, it’s all over for those jokers. I’ll pull the plug on them like they wouldn’t believe; I’ll blow the goddamned whistle so long and so loud . . .
Her fingertips traced his lips.
He was aware of her head turning, her eyes on him.
Her fingers were so cold.
“Ellie?” he said as she reached across him with her left hand and grabbed the wheel. “What are you . . . ?”
Her right hand curled into the shape of a claw and snapped onto his face.
“ELLIE!”
The car swerved.
He regained the wheel and tried to pull her hand off his face. But it was gripping like a vise, pressing higher, going for the eyes.
He fought to get away. Her nails raked his face, ripping out tracks of skin. He felt the sting in his cheek, then the sharpness of her nails entering his eyes.
He slammed his elbow and shoulder into her. But she would not be moved. She clung, spidering over him.
Her left hand yanked the wheel again, hard.
Now they were bumping off the road, tearing through bushes, heading straight for a tall, twisted oak.
“ELLIE, NO!”
The car slammed into the tree and buckled like a child’s toy. The hood hissed steam. Challis felt something tearing loose and the door opening next to him, and then he was tumbling out into wet leaves and vines, rolling free of the wreckage.
He wiped blood out of his eyes and staggered to his feet.
Ellie’s door was open, too.
She was emerging from the other side, propped up stiffly.
Her eyes were cold and fixed, utterly without emotion.
Her right arm was missing.
He stumbled around the car. The hood was sprung open. He heaved for air, gathering strength.
Ellie found him.
As her one arm snapped out and locked onto his face, he lost his balance and reeled back into the open jaws of the trunk. He grasped her wrist with both of his hands and wrestled with it but that did no good. Her arm was a bar, her fingers steel, going for his eyes, his nose—
He reached behind him. His hand connected with something long, something hard.
A tire iron.
He swung it down once, twice. There was a crunching sound. That broke the grip.
She rocked back on stiff legs, her mouth spewing white fluid.
She regained her balance.
He had no choice. He swung the iron again. The blow spun her around, her head cocked quizzically at an impossible angle. Then she fell.
The torn joint where her arm had been continued to pulse for a few seconds more as the electronic works slowed and finally ceased spinning.
A feeble jet of silicone pumped into the dirt.
He stood over her a bit longer, trying to comprehend.
But it was late. Very late.
Almost too late.
He lurched back to the car.
The motor was still running, the fan blades hacking away at the radiator. A fog of steam poured from under the hood as he attempted to back out.
It was no good. The car wouldn’t move. It was caught on the tree. Or wedged against something in back. He held it in reverse and rocked it back and forth, back and—
At his feet, on the floorboard of the car, Ellie’s missing arm was crawling in a circle.
It leaped for his face.
He rolled out. But the fingers were stil
l on him. They wouldn’t let go.
He smashed into the tree, again and again, until the arm fell loose.
As he ran off into the night, the fingers of the severed arm continued to dig their painted nails into the earth, burrowing for prey.
Jones saw him coming through the rain and dropped his magazine.
The filthy man jumped down from the passenger side of the diesel truck and nearly bashed his brains out on the silver pumps. The truck driver gave him one last look, shook his head and geared up Charter Way like a bat out of hell.
The attendant started to lock the door to the station, then hesitated and squinted through the rain.
The man, filthy with mud and soaked to the skin, staggered across the concrete islands, blood washing from his face and mingling with the oil on the pavement. He could not see where he was going. He held his head with one hand and reached out like a blind beggar for help.
The attendant put up the hood of his slicker and opened the door.
“Gotta . . . use . . . phone!” said the filthy man. “Life and death! It’s . . .”
“Sure, man,” said Jones. “Say, don’t I know you?”
The man pushed past him and fell upon the phone.
Jones shut the door and turned down the volume of his portable television set.
“No! Don’t turn it off!”
“Sure, sure, man. Whatever you say.”
This time the operator came on the line. She gave him the numbers he wanted and he started dialing. First one network, then the other.
As soon as he said “bomb,” they listened.
“. . . If it goes out, it means death to millions of people! To everyone watching! Death, do you under—right, a bomb! I’ve planted a bomb! Why can’t you understand?”
He wept tears of blood.
“No, I can’t prove it—you’ve got to believe me! You’ve got to!”
He hung up, dialed again.
Behind him, there was a movement in the doorway.
He flattened against a shelf of oil cans in horror as a witch, a pumpkin and a skull-face wandered in to stand behind Jones.
They gave the man a quick glance, giggled and shrugged, and turned their attention to the TV set.
Onscreen, a close-up pumpkin began to flicker.
“No!” screamed the filthy man.
Abruptly the commercial was replaced by a printed card.
PLEASE STAND BY.
“It worked! It worked . . .” He fumbled for support and kept himself standing. “Thank God . . . it worked.”
One of the Halloween trick-or-treaters clicked the TV to another channel.
WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. PLEASE STAND BY.
The filthy man nodded silently and fell to his knees.
Then the witch flipped to ABC.
The Silver Shamrock commercial.
A jack-o’-lantern began to flicker and strobe in the narrow office.
“The other one, the third network!” He tore at the phone dial with his bloody finger. “Get it off the air! Get it off now! Get it—!”
But it was too late.
He dialed his home.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
He screamed on into the useless phone.
“Turn it off! Linda, for the love of God, turn it off now!”
He turned to the attendant, the children in costume.
Who watched him blankly, as if he were a madman. They did nothing.
The room began flickering an electric orange, flaming around them like a giant graven pumpkin in the night.
“Turn it off!” he cried. “Stop it!”
The phone shook out of control in his hand, as he screamed on and on, waiting for someone to answer.
Bella.
Or Willie.
Anyone.
“STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP . . . !”
Then there was only the sound of the rain outside in the endless blackness of the long night and, presently, the rising tones of a pitiful wailing within and without, spreading across the station, the town, and the land without end.
