The Nightworld - Jack Blaine [26]
“Only one thing I know about life, son. And that is this: don’t ever give up. It’s always darkest right before the dawn.” He turns and disappears inside the house. The sliding door closes. That’s that, I guess.
Tank is ecstatic, pushing his nose against my hand and leaning on my legs. I kneel and try to hold him still. I shove the kibble into my pack’s outside pocket. It’s not much, but I can share my food too.
“Okay, Tank. But you better do what I tell you.”
A peek out the gate reveals an empty street. I slip through and latch the gate behind me. And I’m on my way.
We walk quickly, heading down toward the main road. Everything is strange looking. The bushes and grass all look like the backyard did—gray and flattened. It’s cold enough that I feel every breath I take as it enters my lungs. My eyes are tired within the first twenty minutes from straining to see in the dark. Gus said the best way to go would be to follow the freeway, as long as I just use it as a guide and stay off it.
Once we hit the main road out of the suburbs, it’s not long until we reach an on-ramp. I walk halfway up and try to scope out the empty freeway. No abandoned cars out there that I can see, not like the descriptions of snarled roads across the country that news reports were showing. I stand still, listening for any sound, looking for any sign that people are around, but I see and hear nothing. Tank sticks right with me, as though he’s heeling. I wish I could stay on the freeway because the road lights are still working, spilling isolated pools of illumination every two hundred feet or so. It’s comforting, and I bet it would make travel faster too.
I’m standing on the edge of the on-ramp, weighing the odds, when a green station wagon comes careening toward me from the freeway, veering crazily. Tank and I barely have time to throw ourselves into the scrub brush before it rolls right over the spot where we were standing. I hear the sound of impact and the screech of twisting metal. Before I can get up to see what the car hit, another car comes racing down the ramp just as fast as the first. Breaks squeal as the car stops suddenly. The motor idles. I risk peeking over the tops of the bushes Tank and I are hiding behind and see a red Mustang. The driver’s side door starts to open, and I duck, holding Tank down too. I hear the door shut and then footsteps, eerily distinct in the quiet after the roaring engines and crash noises. I edge upward to see if I can get a glimpse. A man is walking toward the station wagon, slowly, deliberately. The station wagon smashed into a light pole, and the front end is wrapped around it. I can hear someone trying to get one of the doors open, but it looks like they must be crunched shut.
The man has a shotgun leaning against his shoulder, barrel pointed to the sky. He’s tall and he’s wearing black leather everything. Pants, vest, hat. Some sort of white symbol is painted on the back of the jacket—it looks like a crescent moon. He stands in front of the station wagon, watching it, for the longest time. The door noises stop. I keep waiting for him to go help the people inside, but instead he lowers the shotgun and points it toward the front windshield. A muffled scream comes from the station wagon right before he unloads into it. He just keeps shooting until there’s nothing left of the windshield and no sign of life in the car.
I barely have time to duck again before he turns around. I hear his footsteps going back to the still-idling Mustang, hear the door shut. He doesn’t drive off right away, and I have a sick fear that he’s looking around, that he might be able to see me and Tank, who’s being as invisible as a hundred-pound mutt can be, but who is also, well, a hundred-pound mutt, hiding behind some scrubby bushes. Finally the motor revs, and the Mustang heads back up the ramp. I listen to it for a long time, until the sound of the engine is completely gone.
I don’t want to go look at what’s inside the station wagon.
Chapter 15
Tank whines when I start toward the car. He doesn’t want to get close to