Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [85]
While Vinaldi drove in silence I’d busied myself by chain-smoking and watching the Positionex attached to the dashboard. This showed Ghuaji’s whereabouts as determined by a Global Positioning Satellite, mapped onto a layout of the local roads to within a couple of yards’ accuracy. Following him wasn’t going to be difficult. Working out what we had to do when we caught up with him was, and that looked like it had to happen soon. Covington Forge is pretty much the end of the line.
“Where the hell’s he going?” Vinaldi muttered as we came out the other side of town into yet more countryside. “This is the land that time forgot. I can’t believe that at my time of life I’m driving down a road to nowhere, most particularly in this kind of weather.” His voice was steady, and betrayed to only a tiny degree the fact that irritation was not the only emotion he was currently struggling with.
“Christ knows,” I said, shivering suddenly in a whole body spasm. “From now on, there’s squat until you’re in West Virginia.”
Vinaldi grunted and stared out of the windshield with a kind of tense gloom, making no bones about the enmity he felt toward the gnarled trees and crags outside. Then I noticed that the readout on the Positionex indicated that Ghuaji had lessened his speed.
“Looks like he’s going to make a turn. Maybe we should get a little closer.”
“Got any more good advice?” Vinaldi muttered, his breath a cloud in front of his face, “like ‘Don’t run into the back of him’ or ‘Drink your coffee before it gets cold,’ not that we have any coffee because you bought whiskey instead, despite my very clear instructions?”
“There,” I said.
Vinaldi pulled the truck to a halt and peered out distractedly. I’d almost missed it. On the right side of the road, barely discernible in the snow and darkness, was a narrow road leading up into the hills.
“That’s not a proper road,” Vinaldi said in the snow-padded silence.
I looked at the map, and saw that he was right. Another hundred yards up the mountain on the left was an exit for 616. On the right there was nothing, and yet the car had clearly gone that way. The light on the Positionex showed it heading off up toward what used to be Douthat State Park.
I shrugged, and Vinaldi turned the wheel and took us onto the road, There was no sign at the top of it, and the surface was completely covered with snow except for the tracks left by Ghuaji’s vehicle. Trees pressed hard into either side, much closer and thicker than you would expect. Vinaldi stopped the truck again for a moment, peering eloquently out into the wilderness.
“You’re sure about this,” he said, dubiously.
“Johnny, I’m not sure of anything. But if we’re following Ghuaji then we have to follow him, and this is where he went.”
And so we set off, keeping to the middle of the road to avoid the branches which stretched halfway across. Using the Positionex, I tried to ensure that we kept a fixed distance between us and Ghuaji, and this meant driving a little more quickly than either of us would have liked—though still not exactly fast. Any quicker than thirty miles an hour sent the tires spinning and the truck sliding toward the side of the road. Any slower and the truck threatened to throw its hand in with gravity and slip back down the steep incline. Vinaldi had the headlights turned as low as possible, but I was still worried that sooner or later Ghuaji was going to spot them.
The slope began to level off about ten minutes later. The snow had slackened by then and through the slowly drifting flakes we could see a stretch of straight road in front of us. We also saw a smallish tree growing up out of the left-hand lane, oddly lit by the truck’s headlights. As we passed it, Vinaldi risked turning toward me.
“This is weird,” he said.
“Tell me about it.” I noticed something on the side of the road and leaned forward to squint through the windshield. An old shack, obviously