Mortality Bridge

by Steven R. Boyett

  No seatbelt. Guess that was part of the luxury package. The clutch feels like a weighted legpress. Terrific.

  He looks up to adjust the rearview mirror—and jerks his head aside and bats the mirror askew.

  Does a mirror count as looking back?

  Table that one for now. At least there are no side mirrors to compound the issue.

  Niko racks the shift lever and slides the key into the ignition. Once more his hand feels guided to the spot. Okay Houston all systems go.

  Before he turns the key he looks through the slanted windshield at casino lights reflecting along the Franklin’s nightshade hood. The lights now melt toward the ground like heated wax, coalescing light cascading down the hood like thinning watercolors washing down to dim and fade and die. As it has risen like a beanstalk from this unhallowable ground so now the big casino collapses groaning back into the plain. Niko keep his gaze fixed straight ahead as the dimming structure growls and creaks and sputters and diminishes. Soon the plain is dark again. As if the casino were never there at all.

  Unnerving silence follows the casino’s demise. Without the light to lend it shape the body of the Franklin is invisible now. In this lull that Niko senses will be very brief he grows aware of the key in the ignition, warm in his fingers like a living thing. He switches it on and nothing happens.

  Where the casino was there now begins a growing rumble.

  Niko glances around the instrument panel. Remember it’s an old car. There. Starter button. He presses it and the engine turns over but doesn’t catch. Now the heavy air is imminent with something straining to be born. Now he feels the rumble through the car. He pumps the gas and tries again. Again the engine doesn’t start. Briefly he considers getting out to push start the car. Yeah right.

  The rumble strengthens. It sounds as if it’s somehow widening. Niko dares not look to see what’s going on but it sounds as if the ground itself is opening up. Don’t look don’t look don’t look.

  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 smi
les 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.

  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?”

  “Yeah.” Niko eases the car toward the tracks. The crack in the plain looms like the end of the world. “Where’d this thing come from?”

  “Same thing that caused the Ledge.”

  “I think I’d remember going over this.”

  “We were getting bagged on the boxcar when we went across. Good thing you decided to jump later, huh?”

  Now they’re right beside the rails and near the point where the choice is hop on top or sail into the great divide. Niko takes a deep breath and says Hold on and yanks the wheel and steers the car onto the rails.