Splintered

by Jon McGoran

  “Well, what’s faster?”

  “Belfield should be a little quicker. Just wondering if you have a preference about which exit we take.”

  I glanced back at Rex, wishing he were awake to weigh in. “Um, not really,” I said.

  As we approached the exit, her face turned serious. The sign said GELLERSVILLE 5 MI with an arrow pointing straight, and BELFIELD / BOGEN ROAD with an arrow pointing to the exit.

  Claudia gripped the steering wheel tightly as she took the car out of Smartdrive, which isn’t really programmed to drive on bad roads. The exit ramp was as smooth as the SmartPike, but just past the bottom it changed abruptly to a cracked patchwork of asphalt, punctured here and there by dead, snow-covered stalks of weeds.

  A rusted sign had two arrows pointing left, one for BELFIELD 1 MI and below it, on a new panel bolted over whatever had been underneath it, one for OMNICARE GELLERSVILLE 4 MI.

  The snow had held off while we were on the SmartPike, but it started falling as we turned onto Bogen Road, toward Belfield. The roads were already icy, and even with the Jaguar’s advanced traction, we skidded a few times. We drove by several dilapidated houses and an abandoned diner, half covered with vines. The brush thinned and fell away completely as we passed several working farms, the fields striped with snow between the rows of stubble.

  There was also a wind and solar farm, with a couple of acres of ice-encrusted panels and a handful of wind turbines spinning vigorously as if to make up for it. After that was Belfield, a quaint little town, too small to have a fence, like some towns did. The main street was lined with brick storefronts decorated with planters of dead, icy mums and lights in the shape of Christmas bells.

  I watched it go by, feeling a moment of trepidation as I wondered what kind of people lived there, if it was full of chimera-haters, like Pitman. I looked back at Rex, still asleep, then at Claudia. It occurred to me that, especially with GHA back on the books, it probably wasn’t a good idea for them to be out here.

  We drove under an old railroad bridge as a couple of other cars came the other way, off-road types with high suspensions going faster than we dared.

  The Jaguar’s heated windshield did a good job of vaporizing any snowflakes that actually landed on it, but visibility was getting worse. Claudia seemed to know what she was doing. She also seemed stressed, which was somehow reassuring. I was stressed, too.

  We hit a pretty bad pothole, and Claudia cursed under her breath. She turned to me with a forced smile. “Well, that knocked some rust off.”

  The car didn’t seem to have a speck of rust on it. I hoped it hadn’t knocked off anything else, instead.

  The snow was coming down even harder now, and Claudia and I were leaning forward, squinting through the snow, when a deep voice behind us said, “Where are we?”

  We both jumped and turned to see Rex rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “We just got off the SmartPike,” Claudia said. “We should be there in a half hour.”

  As she said it, the car lurched, worse than before, and scraped bottom with a wrenching screech. Rex’s head hit the ceiling and mine probably would have if I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt.

  “Shit!” Claudia called out. “Sorry. Didn’t see that one.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was apologizing for the pothole or the language.

  The snow eased up and the road got a little better, but it seemed that as the road got flatter, it got slipperier, too. Rex and I exchanged glances each time the rear of the car started to slide.

  A faint, metallic grinding noise started coming from the undercarriage, and after half a mile, a red light appeared on the dashboard. Then it started blinking.

  Claudia rolled her eyes and pulled over to the side of the road. She seemed more aggravated than worried.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The charger plate. There seems to be a minor short.”

  “What does that mean?” Rex asked. “I mean, practically?”

  She sighed. “It means the battery is discharging into itself.”

  “Can the car still go?” I asked.

  “Not for long. The battery won’t last, and if it starts to run hot it’ll shut itself off.” She opened her door and got out.

  “What are you going to do?” I called after her. Snow swirled in through the open door.

  She looked back at me and said matter-of-factly, “I’m going to fix it.”

  Rex shrugged and I got out the passenger side. Claudia was rooting around in the trunk. “Crap!” she said.

  “What is it?” I said, coming up next to her.

  “No tools. Argh! My dad must have borrowed them and not put them back.”

  “Does that mean you can’t fix it?” Rex said.

  Claudia straightened, holding a voltage meter in one hand and a crowbar in the other. “Well, these aren’t the ideal tools. But they’ll have to do.”

  I must have looked skeptical, because she pointed the crowbar at me and said, “It’s just a charging plate, Jimi. If you’re going to drive, you better know how to fix a dinged charging plate.” She glanced at Rex and said, “Right?”

  As she dropped onto the icy ground, wriggling under the car, Rex looked at me and shrugged, shaking his head. “I don’t know how to do that,” he mumbled.

  As we stood there in the cold, Rex and I looked at each other, but wordlessly resisted the urge to cling to each other for warmth.

  “You hungry?” I asked.

  He put his hand on his midsection and nodded. “Now that you mention it.”

  I reached into the car and handed him the bag with the muffins. “This one’s got your name on it.”

  As he started eating, a truck approached, bumping over the rough road on its high suspension. It slowed as it passed us, enough for someone inside to lower the window and shout, “Mixie trash!”

  Rex rolled his eyes and shook his head, still chewing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He swallowed. “You don’t need to apologize for every idiot in the world.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just—”

  “I know.” He stepped up close and rubbed one hand up and down my back.

  Metal clanged against metal under the car, followed by a flash of bright blue light as a handful of sparks skittered across the ground. A moment later, Claudia wriggled back out. She got to her feet and tossed the crowbar and voltmeter back into the trunk, then took off her coat and shook off the worst of the dirt and ice.

  “Well, that’s as good as I can do without a socket set. It was a pretty bad ding, but we should be fine getting out to OmniCare and back.”

  As Claudia got back into the car, I turned to Rex and said, “Full of surprises, isn’t she?”

  “Seems like it, huh?” Rex said, putting the last of the muffin into his mouth.

  As we got back into the car, it occurred to me that maybe I was the only one of the three of us who wasn’t full of surprises.

  Claudia started up the car again, and the red light started blinking. Then it went solid, then it went out.

  “There you go,” she said, smiling. The car rocked and wobbled as she eased it back onto the road. The metallic grinding noise hadn’t gone away entirely, but we didn’t mention that.

  We’d gone about half a mile when a bright light in the shape of the rearview mirror appeared on Claudia’s face. She squinted as she looked into the light. I turned and saw Rex already looking out the back window at a pair of headlights, bright, high off the ground, and approaching fast.

  None of us said anything, but the vibe in the car, already tense, grew even more so.

  As the headlights got closer, I felt an ambiguous mixture of relief and dread that it wasn’t the police. Instead it was a truck, like the one that had passed us when we were on the side of the road. Maybe even the same one.

  The truck came right up behind us, close enough that it had to be intentional, and flashed its high beams.

  “There’s plenty of room
to pass, you jerk,” Claudia said under her breath.

  It seemed pretty obvious they were more interested in harassing us than passing us. Claudia’s eyes flickered back and forth from the road ahead of us to the morons behind us. Then the truck slowed slightly, easing back to a safe distance.

  Claudia opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, the truck accelerated again with a screech of tires, rocketing straight at us before braking hard with another screech and a blast of its horn right behind us.

  Claudia gasped and the car slid just a little.

  Rex and I watched as the truck receded behind us again. The muscles in his neck and his jaw were taut. When he turned around, our eyes met. His were filled with anger, resentment, and fear, and a heartbreaking disappointment that I’d seen in them too often, especially considering how little time we’d actually spent together. Humanity continued to let him down, again and again, no matter how much he lowered his expectations.

  “Assholes,” he muttered. Strong language, for Rex.

  We were approaching the top of a slight hill, and the truck was well behind us, but its tires screeched again as it sped toward us once more. This time, instead of braking, it swerved around us, missing the Jaguar by inches. Its brake lights lit up in front of us, just for an instant, and Claudia slammed her own brakes—hard.

  The anti-lock system kicked in, keeping us straight, but the road curved to the left. Between the ice, the hill, and the uneven asphalt, the tires couldn’t get a grip. The rear of the car swung out as we slid toward the edge of the road.

  To her credit, Claudia turned into the skid and regained control of the car, but not before we slid over a huge chunk of asphalt. A terrible sound came from under our feet, like a ship hitting an iceberg. Claudia wrestled the car back onto the road, and as she eased to a stop, all three of us exhaled.

  As the truck shrank in front of us, its horn beeped twice, an oddly friendly sound, then it disappeared around the bend.

  “Is everybody okay?” Rex asked.

  Claudia nodded. She looked like maybe she wasn’t ready to talk yet.

  “Yeah, we’re okay,” I said.

  Claudia took a deep breath and let it out. She looked in the rearview, then took her foot off the brake and eased down on the accelerator.

  The car rolled forward and started picking up speed, but we hadn’t gone fifty yards before the red light on the dashboard came back on and started blinking. Then it went out, along with all the interior lights, the headlights, the motor, and apparently the power steering. Claudia had to crank the steering wheel hard to coax the car to the side of the road as it coasted to a stop.

  She was quiet for a moment, then she assaulted the steering wheel with a flurry of punches and a blistering stream of obscenities.

  I agreed with every word of it, including a few words I would have to look up later.

  In the silence that followed, a gust of wind pelted the car with snow and ice.

  “Can you fix it?” I asked.

  She let out a dubious sigh. “Let’s find out.”

  Rex and I got out with her. It felt colder than before.

  She got her crowbar and voltmeter out of the trunk and got back down under the car. Rex and I looked up and down the road, keeping an eye out for morons as Claudia cursed and clanged under the car. A minute later, she climbed out from under the car and shook her head. “Not this time,” she said, apologetically.

  “We must be almost there, right?” I said.

  She nodded. “Yeah, a mile or two.”

  “All righty then,” said Rex, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “Guess we better start walking, right?”

  CHAPTER 18

  The road curved sharply to the right, but straight ahead of us, a path cut through the woods. Claudia looked at the map and said we could save some time by going straight. Rex and I agreed, relieved to be off the road anyway.

  As we entered the woods, the air filled with the sharp, dry cracking of the frozen leaves and twigs under our feet.

  The path narrowed, and Rex ended up in the lead, but he came to an abrupt stop.

  Coming up next to him, we saw a road, or what was left of it. It wasn’t just crumbled, like the streets in the zurbs. It was buckled, or heaved, like something had pushed it up from underneath, an explosion or some subterranean monster. It looked dark, too, like the snow and ice had left it alone.

  “This road isn’t on the map,” Claudia said.

  “Well, there’s not much left of it,” Rex said. “It was probably closed long before that map was created.”

  As we crossed the road and continued on, the brush grew thicker. Vines hung from the trees, and although the trees were bare, the vines were still mostly green, despite the ice and the cold.

  A light fog was settling in.

  We came upon a tiny house, covered with mats of thick green vines. “It looks like topiary,” Rex said, and it did.

  Continuing on, we passed a few more buildings, all draped in green. As the foliage grew denser, the crisp, frozen air took on a vaguely stuffy smell, like a closed-up room. We exchanged glances as we crossed another jumble of asphalt chunks and descended into a shallow valley.

  To my left, I noted another row of leafy mounds that might once have been houses. One had steam rising from it, blending with the fog. There wasn’t a speck of snow or ice on it. I slowed, looking around, and saw several other faint columns of steam rising from dark spots on the ground where the thin layer of snow and ice had melted away.

  “Do you see that?” I said. My voice sounded thick, my words almost slurred. Before the others could answer, I saw a dull flash of color through the brush to our left.

  We all turned to look, but nothing was there.

  “I saw it,” Claudia said. She sounded far away.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw a similar flash between two trees to our right. I spun around, but my eyes wouldn’t focus. My feet weren’t working right either. I tried to make sense of what was happening, but the synapses in my brain seemed sluggish. The movement in the trees solidified into something—someone—watching us, but by then my vision was starting to fade.

  I turned my head, looking for Rex. He was standing behind me, his head tilted, like he was listening, so still it seemed as though time had stopped.

  “Rex?” I said. My voice sounded like I was in a tunnel or down a well.

  The first tendrils of fear penetrated the confusion as I realized that whatever was happening, it wasn’t good.

  Rex turned to look at me in slow motion. His body started to move toward me but his feet were rooted to the ground. His eyes rolled up and he toppled like a tree.

  “Rex!” I cried out, barely able to hear myself through the rushing noise that filled my ears.

  He hit the ground hard, sending tiny twigs and crumbled leaves tumbling out from under him. I looked around for Claudia and saw her already on the ground.

  I started to call her name, too, but my voice was no longer working. Then neither were my eyes. Then everything else was gone, except the sensation of falling.

  CHAPTER 19

  I woke up with a start and with a headache, lying on my back in the frozen woods, looking up at bare trees and a flurry of snow falling through them. I was afraid for Rex and Claudia, afraid that I was all alone. But when I looked around, I saw them lying on either side of me, both coming out of whatever unconsciousness had overtaken us.

  We were at the side of a crumbling road, similar to the one we had crossed before, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the same one. To our left there was a cluster of two or three houses, looking vacant but remarkably intact. A ways beyond them was a blue VW, relatively new, smashed up against a tree.

  I sat up, trying to figure out where we were in relation to where we had been, and saw a wide furrow that ran through the leaves and the snow. It ended at the spot where Rex was lying on the ground, and led back down into the woods, to a place where the foliage was thicker and greener.


  Once I saw the trail Rex had made, I made out two fainter trails next to it, one leading to Claudia and one to me.

  “Someone dragged us up out of there,” I said, as my head cleared. They both looked at me, confused. I pointed to the trails. “You can see where.”

  Behind us, on the side of the road, was a rotted wooden sign, sagging where one of the support posts had given away completely. WELCOME TO CENTRE HOLLOW it had once said. HOME OF THE FIGHTING BOBCATS.

  Or at least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it said. Another sign had been posted across it, diagonally, saying THIS TOWN HAS BEEN CONDEMNED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT DUE TO TOXIC EMISSIONS. NO TRESPASSING.

  “Centre Hollow,” I read aloud. It sounded vaguely familiar.

  Claudia followed my gaze. “Centre Hollow?” she said slowly. “Jesus, no wonder.”

  “What?” Rex said. “What is it?”

  “It’s Centre Hollow,” she repeated, as if that explained everything.

  “Wait.” Rex shook his head, as if to clear a fog. “Is that the town that was on top of that huge underground coal well?”

  “That’s it,” said Claudia.

  “Right,” Rex said, rubbing the back of his neck. “And all the gases started coming out of the ground.”

  “That was, like, twenty years ago,” Claudia said, peering back into the woods we’d been dragged out of. “My dad told me about it. The whole town was condemned. Forcibly evacuated.”

  Rex winced as he removed a handful of leaves and twigs that had gotten wedged in the waistband of his pants. “We could have been killed back there.”

  “Yeah, well, someone dragged us out,” I repeated. “They saved us.”

  “Not too creepy,” Claudia said sarcastically.

  “Right? I wonder who it was.”

  Rex looked back, then squinted up at the sky, like he was tracking the sun through the thick clouds. I couldn’t tell if he was creeped out, too. “Well, I’d love to thank them,” he said. “But we need to get going.”

  Claudia pointed in the direction away from the Centre Hollow sign. “I’m pretty sure that’s west.”