To the Vanishing Point

by Alan Dean Foster

  "Then we are still an anomaly to them. We must break away before they learn who I am."

  "Who are they?" Alicia asked. "What is this place?"

  "An outpost of Evil. That much is certain. What kind of Evil we do not yet know."

  They fell silent, following. Other vehicles passed them regularly now. Frank tried not to look in their direction, hoped Alicia did not. Steven remained in the back, absorbed in his comic books, for which Frank was grateful.

  Each car featured the same blank-faced driver, gray robots immune to everything but their driving. Chauffeurs on a concrete Styx. Like the cars and trucks, the passengers they were convoying came in all sizes, colors, and shapes.

  Frank watched as an open-topped Jeep went bouncing past, towing two middle-aged men behind it. Both were naked and obviously had been dragged a considerable distance. Their bodies were raw and bloody and yet they acted lively enough. Probably more alive than they wanted to be. A big blue Lincoln cruised by smoothly. An attractive woman of middle age hung out the rear back window. She was screaming and waving both arms frantically. He had a quick glimpse of her companions in the back seat. They were ugly and alien enough to stop a sensitive man’s heart.

  The Jeep and the Lincoln were exceptions. The majority of vehicles that roared past had all their windows rolled up. Their human occupants were visible only as jerking, gesticulating silhouettes, tormented shadows riding in the back of Chevrolets and Mercedes and VWs. Frank wondered if there was a formal relationship between the class of vehicle and its passengers, as well as the kind of tortures they were undergoing.

  Only the motor home drove in the slow lane. We’re normal, he thought. Maybe that’s why these cops find us abnormal. A check of the speedometer showed they were doing fifty. Their captors were driving cautiously.

  The landscape commenced a radical metamorphosis. This time it wasn’t a matter of a few stunted, distorted plants. The sky had turned a pale greenish hue, sickly and unhealthy-looking. Pools and ponds of molten sulfur and other unidentifiable acrid fluids pockmarked the terrain on both sides of the highway. He turned the air-conditioning up all the way. They might freeze, but at least they could breathe. The air outside stank of rotten eggs and burning flesh. The distant mountains were now obscured by steam and mist rising from pools of boiling mud.

  Once Frank thought he glimpsed a line of at least fifty men, women, and children yoked to an enormous four-wheeled wooden cart. The cart had barred sides through which twisting, contorting bodies tried to squeeze. Blood and excrement formed a noisome trail behind the great wheels.

  Squatting atop the front of the cart, wielding long metal whips, were a pair of nightmare faces with bulging eyes and long fangs. They had no legs and bounced up and down on a pair of muscular arms. All in a nightmarish glimpse as the motor home cruised past, its air-conditioning humming efficiently. After that he ignored the terrain on both sides of the highway and concentrated on the road ahead.

  Whatever else might happen, he did not want to break down in this country. Alicia rested a hand on his leg. Even going fifty with the air conditioner running on high he could still hear occasional pitiful screams from the passing cars. The shrieks of the damned filled the air beyond the barbed-wire fences that delineated the limits of the highway.

  Only the cacti had done well here. They had ballooned to enormous sizes, with spines like swords. Prickly pear and jumping cactus, cholla and devil’s tail covered the ground. Everyone he’d seen beyond the fence had been naked and barefoot.

  It took him a moment to recognize a different humming sound. A glance in the rearview showed Mouse cuddling a frightened Steven. Apparently he’d forsaken his comics for a look outside and had been traumatized by what he’d seen. Now she was doing her best to reassure and comfort him.

  "It’s all right," she was telling the boy over and over. "Everything will be all right."

  "But I want to go home." Steven’s voice was barely audible. "I don’t like this place. I want to go home."

  "In good time we shall all return home."

  Alicia raised no objections to Mouse’s maternal exertions, realizing that their visitor was doing a better job of calming her son than she could herself. She had enough trouble fighting down her own hysteria. All she could do was concentrate hard on the taillights of the police car in front of them, concentrate and not think.

  Once she’d made the mistake of looking to her right, at the land beyond the highway. She’d seen half a dozen creatures, each no taller than four feet, stockily built and clad in black pants striped with yellow. They surrounded two women, a mother and daughter. Each time the women would try to run through the circle, two or three of the imps, or devils, or whatever the creatures were, would grab the naked figures and throw them back into a pile of bed-shaped cacti. Both women were thick with imbedded spines, and blood trickled endlessly down their bodies. Beyond them two young men fought to escape a similar circle. It struck her then that the men were trying to reach the women, and the women the men. Shuddering, she turned away from the ghastly sight, praying that the four were not related.

  The smooth unbroken concrete roadbed was a white slash of normality in the midst of nightmare. That, and the police cruiser ahead that held her daughter.

  "Frank, what’s going to happen to us?"

  "Nothing’s going to happen to us." He said it because he didn’t know what else to say, and because he strongly suspected that to give in to pessimism in this would be to give in to madness. "We’ll get out of this all right. Wendy, too. It’s just a mistake on somebody’s part. Like the patrolman told us."

  "He’s not a patrolman."

  "I know that!" Immediately he apologized for snapping at her, conscious how close he was to the breaking point. He lowered his voice. "I just don’t know what else to call him."

  She was sobbing now. Softly, not hysterically but steadily. "What’s going to happen to us, Frank? What is this place? Where are we?"

  "I think you know where we are, Alicia. I think we’ve both known for several miles. It can only be one place, and it isn’t Baker."

  6

  An off ramp loomed just ahead. Frank wasn’t surprised when the police cruiser’s turn signal began flashing.

  There were two lanes. The right one was backed up onto the highway with cars and trucks. The left was empty until the patrol car started up it. As they followed close behind, Frank saw that the land surrounding the highway was still barren but full of red buildings. The plethora of architectural styles was astonishing. There was no rhyme or reason to the town that he could see. Victoriana slumped next to early medieval, Islamic alongside Frank Lloyd Wright, Balinese beside early Russian.

  There was a stop sign at the top of the off ramp. A crossroad ran right, through part of the town, and left via an overpass to the other side of the highway. Directly ahead lay an on ramp. Part of him desperately wanted to take it, to chance pursuit by the patrol car, which had already turned right onto the crossroad. They’d have a slight head start and the down ramp would let him build up speed quickly.

  But not without his daughter. Not without Wendy. She might be something of a rebellious airhead, but no more so than many teenage girls her age. He loved her even when he yelled at her. No way was he leaving her in this place.

  There was a big parking lot off to the left, fronting a squat, single-story building. Feathery antennas protruded from the roof, giving the edifice the appearance of a bloated caterpillar hugging the ground.

  Frank had no trouble turning across the road since there was no oncoming traffic. It was all one way. The lot was full of police cruisers and vans, all the same color as the one carrying Wendy. Above the main entrance a sign unsurprisingly proclaimed:

  HADES JUNCTION POLICE

  The cruiser they’d been following parked. Its driver turned off the spinning red lights and exited. A moment later Wendy emerged in the firm grasp of the sergeant. Her headphones hung from her neck. Fear and confusion vied for dominance on her fac
e.

  The older officer held onto her as he beckoned toward the motor home.

  Frank rose, unlatching his seatbelt. "You stay here."

  "Not a chance, Frank. I’m coming, too."

  "I think we’d all best go." They both looked at Mouse. She indicated the waiting police. "Their company offers official protection, at least until they find out more about us. I’d rather not stay out here alone."

  Frank hesitated, then nodded. "All right. I’m taking your advice because I don’t know what else to do. Steven comes, too?"

  "Especially Steven." She put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. Alicia noted the gesture but said nothing.

  After checking to make sure the doors and windows were locked, Frank followed them outside. He paused atop the steps, his attention caught by the long line of vehicles backed up in the lane they’d just exited. They crawled slowly toward an imposing gate a couple of hundred yards down the road, inland from the highway off ramp.

  He couldn’t read the symbols atop the gate, but he had no trouble with the big steel sign just down the road from the police station parking lot. It was painted cherry red and only confirmed what he’d already guessed. The three words were a contradiction in terms.

  WELCOME TO HELL

  He hurried after Alicia and Mouse and Steven, not wanting to be left behind outside. As he hurried, he wiped sweat from his cheeks and forehead. It had been hot by the side of the road, but not this hot. The paved parking lot was a frying pan, Death Valley’s Furnace Creek in high summer. He fancied he could hear his sweat evaporating into the air.

  If anything, it was hotter inside the station.

  The sergeant was waiting for them. "If you’ll all just follow us we’ll get this business cleared up straight away." He turned and led them up a corridor, chatting with his taller, younger subordinate.

  Frank went straight to his daughter. She wasn’t crying, but there was panic in her eyes and she was trembling visibly. He opened his arms and she sagged gratefully against him, her hair disheveled, her blouse torn from one shoulder.

  The slimy-looking officer behind the front desk was staring at them and grinning. His teeth were filed to fine points. His desk, like the floor and walls, was fashioned of cut stone. There wasn’t a sliver of wood to be seen in the building.

  Trembling a little himself, Frank started to step around his daughter. Her arms tightened against his.

  "No! No. It’s okay, Dad. I’m all right." She glanced back over her shoulder to where the two officers had stopped to wait on them. "He didn’t do anything much. Just got me scared, that’s all."

  "You sure?" He searched his daughter’s eyes, was immensely relieved not to find what he’d feared there.

  She nodded. "Daddy, where are we?"

  He remembered the sign, didn’t have the heart to quote it. "A bad place. Very bad. But we’ll be out of here soon, you’ll see. As long as we keep our cool and stick together we’ll get out all right. We have to keep our composure, though. Understand?" He gripped her shoulders hard.

  "I understand."

  "Okay. Now wipe your face. We don’t want to let these things think they’re getting to us, right?"

  She nodded again, managed a feeble smile.

  They followed the two officers up the corridor.

  It might have been any office building in Los Angeles except for the intense heat and the fact that everything was made of stone or metal. No air-conditioning in Hell, he thought. Only heat and hotter. Officers and nonuniformed help passed them in the halls. Doors opened onto busy rooms full of clerks and technicians. Many of them were far less human than the two patrolmen who’d picked up Wendy. Steven stayed between Alicia and Mouse while Wendy hung close to her father. The station’s personnel ran the gamut from near-human to semihuman to utterly alien grotesqueries equipped with multiple tails and horns. Some had more than the usual complement of eyes and arms. Others sported fangs borrowed from saber-toothed cats. There were computer operators with forked tongues and filing clerks with long, narrow skulls that showed more bone than flesh.

  They stopped outside a door while the sergeant vanished into the office beyond. The younger officer picked his teeth while something seven feet tall slumped down the hallway, long arms dragging the floor, knuckles turned inward. It did not turn to inspect them, for which Frank was grateful. He had no desire to encounter those vast yellow eyes with their tiny black pupils nor to see what might live inside that cavernous, bulging mouth. It held a sheet of plastic in one immense paw. Two red chevrons gleamed on the six-foot-long sleeve of its tunic.

  Two more-modest monsters flanked a water cooler in the room opposite. The cooler jug contained an amber-colored liquid. Gasoline? he wondered. Or something equally volatile?

  The sergeant emerged from the office he’d entered, took the younger patrol creature aside and whispered to it. Frank wanted to smash in both smug faces. He might’ve tried it in Los Angeles, but not here. Not in this place. A stupid, probably futile gesture that would do neither him nor his family any good. He wasn’t afraid of the younger officer who’d tormented his daughter, but he was damned afraid of the other things that lurked throughout the building. Besides which it wasn’t a smart idea to take a poke at a cop inside a police station, no matter what kind of things populated the place.

  The sergeant turned back to them. "We’ve done some checking. The lieutenant wants to see you." He turned and they followed him inside. Frank kept a protective arm around his daughter. The younger officer kept staring at her and grinning. She avoided his gaze.

  In the outer office they passed something like a shell-less tortoise. It had a uniform and a face like a demented wild boar. The sergeant spoke to it and it grunted a reply before waddling past.

  They halted outside a door of frosted glass, except the design in the glass wasn’t frost but rather flames. It was very artistically done, even to the details of the human hearts that floated in the midst of the flames.

  The lieutenant was waiting for them. He was four feet across at the shoulders and weighed in the neighborhood of a quarter ton. His oversized desk barely accommodated his enormous frame. It was dominated by piles of plastic sheets, which he was perusing as they entered.

  Frank’s gaze rose to the pictures that filled the wall behind him. There were several framed certificates, including a crimson diploma. A miniature gold pitchfork was mounted on an engraved brass plate. Obviously symbolic rather than practical, it looked like the sort of thing you’d give a retiring judge, only he’d get a gavel.

  He preferred not to study the actual photographs, would have given a lot to keep Steven and Wendy and Alicia from having to look at them at all. He could only hope that they were too stunned by what they’d encountered already to pay much attention to them. They’d ignore the long string of preserved human organs that hung above one filing cabinet, twisting slowly in the hot air of the office, only because their attention was drawn to the mounted, stuffed, perfectly preserved figure of a four-year-old boy that sat regarding them blankly out of glass eyes from its marble base atop another cabinet.

  The lieutenant’s saucer-sized eyes were pink with red pupils, framed by towering bushy eyebrows that resembled dancing flames. His orange hair had recently undergone a severe crew cut. The uniform he wore could serve as a tent for any three normal men. Whether it was his natural body odor or some grisly cologne, Frank had no way of knowing, but the great body stank like the backside of a slaughterhouse.

  The uniformed monster put aside his plastic sheets and regarded the arrivals with interest. His was not a pleasant stare and Frank would have given a lot to be out from under it.

  "Well," a voice rumbled, as if from somewhere deep beneath the ground, "it’s clear you shouldn’t be here."

  Frank hadn’t made it close to the top of the business world by being meek and deferential. This wouldn’t be the proper place to show weakness, he decided quickly.

  "Of course we shouldn’t be here! We were just cruising along,
observing all the local laws, minding our own business, not in the flow of traffic at all, when these two pulled us over and insisted we follow them." He indicated the sergeant and younger officer, who stood off to one side. "And that one," he added for good measure, "tried to take advantage of my daughter."

  "Good," the lieutenant growled. "Glad to know my people are doing their job. As for pulling you over, what else would you expect them to do? I’ve read the transcript of their report and you’re right about not being in the regular traffic pattern. Around here that’s more than unusual: it’s exceptional. There is only the prescribed traffic. Casual travelers just don’t end up on that piece of highway. It’s reserved for the departed who’ve been assigned this as their final destination."

  "We did our own determining," Frank insisted. "We must’ve taken a wrong exit somewhere. We were on our way to Vegas and — "

  The lieutenant interrupted him, nodding to himself. "That could explain it. Las Vegas is as close to Hell as humans can get in the real world. I can see how there could’ve been a mix-up. An interchange under repair, some fool places a detour sign improperly — not impossible. You’re certain you were going to Vegas, not coming from there?"

  "That’s right."

  Great craggy eyebrows bunched together. "Damn peculiar. I knew when Joe described you to me we had a real problem here."

  While he pondered the fate of those before him, the young officer had worked his way next to Wendy. He grinned down at her while she tried to move away from him. Frank wanted to shout in his inhumanly beautiful young face, to order him to stay away from his daughter, but he held on to his temper. The slightest wrong move might upset the lieutenant’s fragile objectivity. So far he’d been courteous, even polite. But not apologetic. Frank could not risk getting on his bad side, assuming he wasn’t all bad side already.

  He kept his mouth shut until he heard Wendy whimper.

  "Look, if this situation’s beyond your authority I’ll be glad to speak to your superior officer."