Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [86]
“According to the maps this road should never have been here at all.”
“I thought I’d left that kind of stuff behind,” Vinaldi said. “I thought that was all gone.”
“Me, too,” I said quietly.
Suddenly, Vinaldi’s head snapped to the left, and his eyes seemed to pan quickly across the trees by the side of the road.
“What is it?” Tasked quickly.
“Thought I saw something,” he said, voice thick in his throat.
“Saw what?”
“A woman. Or something. Something in white, running through the trees alongside us.”
“Along the road?”
“No. About thirty feet into the trees.”
Uh-huh, I thought, pulling my coat a little tighter around me. I glanced out my side window. The trees seemed a little less dense for the moment, and I realized we were passing something that might once have been a picnic area. It was long, long gone, but for a moment I saw a shape out in the overgrown clearing. Like a picnic table, with four clumps of darkness around it. For a second I even thought I could see four pairs of orange pinpoints turn to watch us pass, but that was probably only because my eyes were held so wide open, and because I hadn’t blinked in an awfully long time. The one thing I knew for sure was that it was nothing to do with the Rapt I’d taken. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d become a Rapt addict to avoid.
Vinaldi heard the intake of my breath. “You see something?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing real, just more dreams.”
“We’re getting closer, aren’t we?”
“We must be. Look at the panel.” Ghuaji’s light had stopped moving, about half a mile ahead. Wherever we were going, we were nearly there.
Vinaldi let the truck grind to a halt, and his head lowered slightly until it was resting on the steering wheel.
“Mother of God on a skateboard,” he said, his voice for the first time very shaky. “Now I realize you may have been right about going back. Suddenly, your whole sitting-very-quietly-somewhere-and-hoping-it-will-all-go-away option seems to speak of immense good sense and judgment.”
“Yeah,” I said, lighting a pair of cigarettes. “But you were right. I have no choice. If Suej and Nearly are in there I have to be, too. You don’t, though. You can leave me here, and go back.”
Vinaldi stayed still for a moment, breathing heavily. I knew this was not for show. I knew he was really thinking about it.
“You wouldn’t stand a chance on your own,” he said eventually.
“No one ever does. But we’re all still here.”
At that he pulled his head up and looked at me, and, slowly, started laughing. “Any more glib crap like that,” he said, “and I’ll kick you out into the snow and go back and find a hot meal and a warm woman and sit and laugh at the thought of you freezing to death.”
I grinned and passed him a cigarette. “It’s a deal.”
Shaking his head, Vinaldi gunned the motor and we surged along the road which now seemed even darker, even more abandoned.
And that’s when the indicator light on the Positionex went out.
“Shit,” Vinaldi said. “What’s wrong with that thing?”
I reached forward, banged it. Pointless, as it was a lump of solid-state inexplicability, but instincts die hard. Nothing happened, then two seconds later the light came on. It immediately disappeared, and further thumps made no difference.
“Hit it again,” Vinaldi said. “Fuck—threaten to shoot it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” I said quickly. “He must be nearly there. If we don’t catch him he’s going to get pulled in without us.”
Vinaldi slammed his foot down on the pedal—too hard. The back wheels spun, the truck skewed sideways on the ice. He managed to back it off enough for the tires to catch and we slewed toward a corner at the end of the patch of level road.
“We’re never going to catch him,” Vinaldi said between gritted teeth, as he tried to keep the truck under