The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [62]
★★I am going to have to lose these guys before they phone ahead and get some muscle ahead of me on the road to Philipsburg. Any ideas?★★
★★Yes. I’ll be on my way in about five minutes. Just stay ahead of them for now.★★
★★Be fast, okay? If you can’t be safe.★★ I pull out recklessly and floor the accelerator again, passing the van as the driver waves angrily at me. There’s a kink in the road ahead and I take it as fast as I dare. The Smart is bouncy and rolls frighteningly but it can’t be any worse at road-holding than the SUV tailing me, can it? ★★Just what are they doing with the women?★★
★★What women?★★
★★The women Marc was kidnapping and selling to the boat crew. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about that?★★
The Suzuki has pulled past the van and is coming up behind me and I’m fresh out of side streets. From here, it’s a three-kilometer straight stretch around the foothills of Paradise Peak before we get to Orient Beach and the fork down to the sea. After that, it’s another five kilometers to the next turnoff. I’m doing eighty and that’s already too damn fast for this road. Besides, I feel like I’m driving two cars at once, one of them a sawed-off subcompact and the other a topless muscle-machine that dodges in and out of the tourist traffic like a steeplechaser weaving through a queue of pensioners. It’s deeply confusing and it makes me want to throw up.
★★What do you know about—★★ pause ★★—the abductions? ★★
★★Women. Young. Blonde. His wife owns a cosmetics company and he looks too young. What conclusion would you draw?★★
★★He has a good plastic surgeon. Hang on.★★ The muscle car surges effortlessly around another bus. Meanwhile the SUV has pulled even with me, and the driver is waving his gun at me to pull over. I glance sideways once more and see his eyes. They look dead and worse than dead, like he’s been in the water for a week and nothing’s tried eating him. I recognize that look: they’re using tele-operator-controlled zombies. Shit. My steering wheel is crawling with sparks as the occult countermeasures cut in, deflecting their brain-eating mojo.
I tense and hit the brakes, then push the cigarette lighter home in its socket during the second it takes him to match my speed. We come to a halt side by side on the crest of a low hill. The SUV’s door opens and the dead guy with the gun gets out and walks over. I sniff: there’s a nasty fragrant smoke coming out of the lighter socket.
He marches stiffly round to my side door, keeping the gun in view. I keep my hands on the steering wheel as he opens the door and gets in.
“Who are you?” I ask tensely. “What’s going on?”
“You ask too many questions,” says the dead man. His voice slurs drunkenly, as if he’s not used to this larynx, and his breath stinks like rotting meat. “Turn around. Drive back to Anse Marcel.” He points the gun at my stomach.
“If you say so.” I slowly move one hand to the gearshift, then turn the car around. The SUV sits abandoned and forlorn behind us as I accelerate away. I drive slowly, trying to drag things out. The stink of decaying meat mingles with a weird aroma of burning herbs. The steering wheel has sprouted a halo of fine blue fire and my skin crawls—I glance sideways but there are no green sparks in his eyes, just the filmed-over lusterless glaze of a day-old corpse. It’s funny how death changes people: I startle when I recognize him.
“Drive faster.” The gun pokes me in the ribs.
“How long have you had Marc?” I ask.
“Shut up.”
I need Ramona. The smell of burning herbs is almost overpowering. I reach out to her: ★★Phone me.★★
★★What’s the problem? I’m driving as fast as—★★
★★Just phone me, damn it! Dial my mobile now!★★ Fifteen or twenty endless seconds pass, then my Treo begins to ring.
“I need to answer my phone,” I tell my passenger. “I have to check in regularly.”
“Answer it. Say that everything is normal. If you tell them different I’ll shoot you.”
I reach out and punch the call-accept button, angling the screen away from him.