Filaria - Brent Hayward [82]
Whatever this place was, it was certainly not home. And he told himself that he should continue, driving stubbornly onwards, deeper into the turmoil, against the flow, that turning around and driving in the same direction as the fractured humanity would be paramount to admitting time wasted, or the near-futility of his own passage, and recent decisions he had made. He remained lost. All anyone really ever sought was peace, and yesterdays that could no longer exist.
Or they were running away from something.
Perhaps the real reason he wouldn’t turn the car around was that doing so would make him feel like he was heading back into a trap. Even though this level was a different one from where Cynthia’s treacherous lair had been. Oh, there had been a mad flight — which was how all these adventures ended, it seemed — and he had driven, at top speed, arms around McCreedy, for a long time before frantically taking another lift pod. Down? Or had it been up? At least they had left their pursuers far behind.
Closing his eyes for a second, a whirl of blackness rushed over Phister like a vacuum, and he shuddered. Back there, on the level where McCreedy had died, there existed a monster composed of discarded and very unpleasant memories. This horrible beast, now threatening to rouse itself, licking its chops, opening one bloodstained eye, would not be as easily thrown off the trail as flesh and blood. Was it getting ready to stalk the car? The monster could only remain vague as long as Phister continued driving and did not turn around.
Who could have expected these silent, wounded people? These bizarre animals? Obviously fleeing a tragedy of huge proportions, one that Young Phister was, for all his illogic and inability to confront his own demons, driving straight into. From one disaster to another, Reena would have said. From the frying pan into the fire. And McCreedy? What would he have said, if he were alive?
But he wasn’t. And Reena was so far away that he would never find her again.
Phister swerved the car gently past a dusty, vacant couple. The man had a headwound that should have stopped him in his tracks. The pair walked on.
No one tried to stop him. No one tried to warn him from going any farther. No one had even asked for his help. Could he run them down, if he was so inclined? Perhaps the refugees would not even try to step aside or meet his gaze as they disappeared, thudding under the tires or bouncing off the hood.
Wringing his sweaty hands on the steering wheel, Phister thought for another moment about McCreedy’s sudden death, and of the nightmare fugue that had followed. He looked over at the inert body, unable to truly believe that McCreedy would never again speak, never move, never insult him.
Fumbling in the pocket of his shorts, Young Phister touched the strange brown rod he had taken from Cynthia’s vest pocket. The hunter. Rubbing the textured surface with his thumb, he fervently hoped the ancient device might dispense advice or otherwise make him feel somewhat better; it did neither.
He had experienced no more visions — unless a blackout could be considered a vision — and he could not duplicate whatever it was that Cynthia had done to activate the device. There remained a tingling in his limbs, and he was fairly certain that the innocuouslooking tube was at least partially responsible for his current dizzied state of mind, and that it had lent him the superhuman abilities he had found inside himself to escape Cynthia’s grasp —
His breath came in a great, sudden rush. He pushed his foot down on the accelerator.
“Get out of the way!” he shouted, voice muffled by his shirt. “Get out of the way!”
No one listened; he continued swerving.
Phister had told Cynthia he was not interested in being a victim of the hunter’s power again, yet here he was desperate for answers that might possibly lay in that alternate place, or in that calm, resolute mind. He would put up with pain for just one more episode. At least in that other place and mind there might be