Zed scans the road ahead through the windshield. Black, empty, devoid of headlights. Nobody takes casual nighttime trips out here. The law ends at sundown. “So now what?”
“We know he stopped for gas about twenty miles back. We intercepted his lobe scan and confirmed the license number on the van. It’s definitely the same vehicle that he loaded up before he left Mount Tabor. Anyway, we’re closing in. The next town is La Grande, and we already have assets on the ground there.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Yes, we will.”
***
Frank Turner hunches over the wheel of his old Ford pickup and stares out at the spray of his headlights on the freeway ahead. He pushes his face even farther toward the windshield, as if it will somehow improve the view. It’s just too damn dim for him to go any faster. He simply can’t see well enough. Too bad. When he was young, he once tracked a rabbit by moonlight.
Frank checks the speedometer. Fifty-five. Pitiful. But it’s the best he can do. Damn! He shouldn’t have fallen asleep at his daughter’s place back in Hermiston. When he woke up, they’d gone to bed, so he just took off.
Oh well, he’d phone her in the morning. A preemptive call, so he could defuse some of her scolding. He wasn’t a little kid. He just wished she could understand that. But how could she? Like all farmers, he has a fatalistic streak that rapidly sorts the impossible from the possible and moves on.
He pulls his face back from the windshield to check the speedometer once again. Hell. The damned dash lights are out. He fiddles with the rheostat that controls them. They flicker on, then off again. Goddamn. Thought it was fixed. He’ll have to take the old rig back up to his son-in-law tomorrow and see what they can do.
Far ahead, Arjun spots twin pinpoints of red light on the black horizon. They quickly disappear. He doesn’t bother asking Zed if he saw them. The old man’s night vision is largely a thing of the past. Maybe, if they’re lucky, it’s Anslow and the van.
Prince Vegas. It’s the only logical destination given Anslow’s direction of travel. If he can make it, he’ll seek asylum and probably get it. Because the Principality of Las Vegas is no longer officially part of the United States. It operates as a U.S. protectorate administered by an international entertainment cartel, which shares the profits with a cash-starved U.S. government. A place of princes and their princesses, but not from the lumpen backwaters of the United States. The Vegas customer base is worldwide now, with Americans in the minority. As they roll along, Arjun visualizes the enormous complexes, the exotic architecture, the maze of brilliant distractions, each more astounding than the last.
The two red taillights suddenly appear up ahead again.
Arjun presses the mic button and speaks to a second vehicle that’s following them. “We’ve got a vehicle about a hundred yards in front of us. Stand by.” By the time he finishes, the red lights disappear.
“Damn!” Frank mutters. This time, he’s lost the headlights as well as the dash lights. He reaches down to jiggle the exposed wiring. The headlights come back on.
Just in time to expose the deer. A big buck, fifty feet dead ahead.
No time to brake. He yanks the wheel to the right. His left fender collides with the deer’s left haunch. A sickening thud sends his old truck onto the shoulder and off into the desert beyond.
It happens so fast, Arjun has to wonder if it’s real. Up ahead, the vehicle’s lights come back on just as it collides with what looks like a deer. It sails off the road and down a short embankment, which launches it into a violent series of rolls. Its headlight beams rotate rapidly across the grass, sky, dirt, and sagebrush. It finally comes to a stop in a great cloud of dust.
Frank Turner hangs upside down in his seat belt. Hot oil, gasoline, and coolant mix together like smelling salts and yank him back to his senses. In a terrible moment of fright, he tries to remember what got him here, the world inverted and lit only by the beams cast at crazy angles onto the dry grass and dirt. His head is mashed up against the ceiling of the truck, and he feels the warm, wet flow from a huge laceration on his scalp. His left arm is numb and his broken right clavicle shoots out a gusher of pain. He tries to move his right hand to unbuckle the seat belt, but it’s wedged in between pieces of wreckage. When he attempts to move his legs, he finds his knees jammed into the collapsed dashboard. All the while, the electronic warning beep for an open door pulses through the darkness. In the engine compartment, something rips loose and bangs down onto the hood.
The last thing he remembers is dozing off at his daughter’s, sitting in the big old recliner with his shoes off.
The warning beeper stops and the only sound is the bubbling of the various fluids as they follow whatever path the twisted debris allows. The truck is upside down, with the hood tilted down into the dirt and undercarriage raised toward the sky. The repeated rolling has severed the fuel line, and gasoline now begins to bleed out into the cab.
Then Frank hears the rush of rubber on pavement. As it grows closer, his fear turns to humiliation. Whoever it is will stop and find him in this awful predicament, hanging helpless in his overturned vehicle, and will ask him what happened, and he will have no answer. None at all.
He can turn his head just far enough to make out an inverted image of the highway. Any farther, and his cervical vertebrae register a sharp pain. Headlights come into view and the night is filled with the snap of small rocks as a pair of big vans rolls to a stop up on the shoulder. A door opens on the far side of the rear one and the bouncing beam of a flashlight comes around and descends the embankment. In the moonlight, he can now make out the faint figure of a man behind the light.
And even through the shock of his injuries and befuddlement, something strikes him as odd. The man should be yelling toward the flipped vehicle, asking if anyone is in there, if anyone is hurt. Instead, the man advances in silence, his boots pushing little poofs of moonlit dust.
By the time the man reaches the wreck, Frank’s humiliation has turned to fear. This is not right. The dark outline of a muscular figure descends to a squat about a yard away from the truck. The beam of a flashlight probes the cab and settles briefly on Frank’s face.
“You see a white utility van out here tonight?” The voice of Zed’s security man is hard and pitiless.
Frank stares at the figure. Nobody’s ever pushed him around. Nobody’s going to start, now. His dignity is all he’s got left. He remains silent and motionless.
The figure thrusts the light out at arm’s length, so it’s closer to Frank. “I know you can talk. I saw your eyes move. Let’s make a deal. You answer me, and I’ll get you out of there.”
Franks looks away from the light.
The figure sniffs the air. “Hey, you smell anything funny? I sure do. Smells like gasoline around here.”
Frank tries desperately to move, to gain some semblance of control. But he’s hopelessly wedged.
“You look a little squirmy to me. Maybe you’re trying to tell me something, huh?”
The figure backs off a few feet, takes out a cigarette, and lights it. “Saw a man burn up once. Only it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t an accident. You don’t die right away, you know. He just screamed and screamed.”
Frank can’t help himself. “I didn’t see nothin’!” he blurts out. “I don’t remember nothin’!”
“Now, that’s better,” the figure says. “That’s much better.”
Then he flicks the cigarette into the cab, where it sails past Frank’s face, lands on the ceiling, and comes to a stop by the shattered dome light.
“Let me go,” Frank pleads in a weak voice.
The figure rises. “You’re already gone.”
The security man is halfway up the embankment when the truck explodes. No screams come from the burning wreck. The old driver is lucky. The explosion itself must have got him. The contractor recalls a similar incident in Yemen, during the third incursion.
He continues his climb and reaches the shoulder of the
highway, where Arjun Khan stares at the blaze. “Was that him?” Arjun asks.
“Negative.”
“I didn’t think so. Keep me apprised.”
“Roger that.”
The contractor moves off to the rear van, while Arjun turns to the lead vehicle. He opens the door, where Zed sits in the semidarkness.
“That wasn’t him,” Arjun says.
Zed seems not to notice. “I’m cold. It’s the start of fall. It’s beginning to get chilly at night.”
Arjun winces inside. The old man is drifting, his focus temporarily gone. It’s happening more often as of late. “I’m sorry about that. Is there anything we can do to make you a little more comfortable?”
“Take me out by the fire.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I want to go out by the fire. So I can warm up.”
“I’m not sure if that’s advisable. We haven’t secured the area. And there’s always the danger of a secondary explosion.”
“I don’t want to argue. I want to warm up. Let’s go.”
The light from the flames dances in faded peach over Zed’s convoluted skin. The old man gets up very slowly and comes to the door, where Arjun helps him step down onto the running board and then to the ground.
“My coat, please. And my hat.”
Arjun reaches in, removes the overcoat and the hat from a hook, and helps Zed struggle into them. The motion strains Zed’s connective tissue to the point of pain. He then hands Zed his cane and helps him down the embankment, one cautious step at a time.
When they reach the truck, it still burns vigorously, with bright flames billowing out the broken windows and lashing out at the night sky, an angry furnace stoked by gasoline, oil, upholstery, and human flesh. About ten yards away, Arjun’s nose takes in the stink of the bubbling corpse. It repels him and he looks to Zed, hoping for a similar reaction so they can leave. Instead, Zed smiles and put out his hands to catch the warmth of the blaze.
“It’s wonderful,” comments Zed. “There’s nothing quite as nice as a big fire on a cold night. Don’t you think so?”
“I suppose.”
“I mean, you can have furnaces, you can have heaters. But they just aren’t the same.”
Arjun looks at Zed’s face. Only the eyes seem alive, small wet pockets that glisten in the firelight.
“Have you ever been camping, Arjun?”
“Yes, once or twice.”
Their conversation is interrupted by a dull thud and the outline of motion inside the truck, followed by an extra rush of flames. For a horrible moment, Arjun thinks the man is still alive inside. Then he realizes that the seat belt has burned through and the body has fallen onto the ceiling of the cab. A flaming arm flops out the window and ignites little tufts of dry grass.
Zed stares at the sizzling arm and continues. “I went camping once. When I was a young boy. My father and I took the trolley to the edge of town. We had a blanket, some bread, and a bottle of whiskey. We walked up into the hills and built a fire when it got dark. My father drank the whiskey and passed out.” Zed pauses and wheezes out a laugh. “As soon he as he was out cold, I took the blanket away from him and sat by the fire until it went out. It was warm. It was wonderful.” He sighs. “Oh well, I guess nothing lasts forever, does it?”
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Zed.”
The little wet eyes flash bright with fire. “Nor does anyone else. At least, not yet.”
And in the center of his head, as he basks in the warmth of the ghastly fire, Zed feels a strange little clock spring forth, a clock that only tocks and never ticks. A clock whose tocks were launched so long ago, at the time of his birth, in the twilight of the nineteenth century. He tries to keep count, to see how far back the tocks will take him, but the lateness of the hour and pleasant blanket of radiant heat make it difficult to concentrate.
As best he can tell, they stop when he is about fifteen.
The crisp morning air invigorates a young Thomas Zed as he walks down Market Street and watches the first light of dawn paint the big buildings. His hands are stuffed in his pockets and he feels the twin wads of dollar bills. He’s a smart lad, they say, the men on the waterfront that let him gamble with them far into the night. Got a way with numbers. Never forgets a card. Several have silently backed him, and he splits his winnings with them. The boy’s a moneymaker, and they protect their investment from sore losers and drunks.
At Third, he looks up at the Hearst Building as he turns south off of Market. Someday, he will have a building like that. Others dream it, but he can feel it, and the power of that feeling propels his youthful legs down the deserted sidewalk. A wagon comes up from behind, the clop of horses’ hooves bouncing off the buildings and the pavement. As it passes, he sees its teamster stare stonily down the street, with a slack grip on the reins. The back is open, so he sprints and jumps aboard and rides the next few blocks before hopping off and heading west into the tenements, the ramshackle buildings constructed mostly of wood and rising four or five stories above street level.
When he reaches home, he climbs the stairs to the fourth story, walks down the dingy hall, and unlocks the door to the single room he shares with his father. The old man dozes in an alcoholic stupor on the bed. He is fully clothed and sprawled on his back. His Adam’s apple bobs from the beneath the stubble on his scrawny neck and mirrors his snoring.
Zed sits on the cot that has served as his bed for as long as he can remember. The old man is out of work again, fired from his livery-stable job. Each time he’s fired, the intervals between the new jobs grow longer and longer. Zed would have left long ago, but the old man loves him in a crippled sort of way. The only time he raises his voice is when he finds that Zed has been skipping school. Then he raves about how bright the boy’s mother was, and how she never had the chance to finish school, and about how tragic her death was, and the horrible episode out there on the prairie, and …
Zed gets up and goes to the room’s only window, which is nearly opaque with grime. He’s home later than usual, so he’ll probably skip school today. No problem. He can miss a week and make it up in a day if he has to, although his teachers won’t admit it. He looks out at the thin morning light and back into the semidarkness of the room. It stinks of cheap booze, stale tobacco, sweaty clothes, and mite-laden dust. He wants out.
It’s too late to grab any sleep. Soon, the old man will awaken, hack violently, and take his shrinking bladder down the hall to relieve himself. Then he will return and flop back down on the bed to return to his fitful slumber. Zed decides to walk back up to Market Street, buy a roll and some coffee, and watch the city come alive. He will sit on a stool and look north across the trolley tracks to the big buildings, the great strongholds of the rich and powerful. To him, their march up the hill is transcendental in nature, a journey to a mystical plateau of monetary privilege. While he munches on his roll, he will consider the first steps in this journey, the acquisition of enough capital to get him under way.
He crosses the room, takes one last look at the pathetic figure on the bed, and slips out the door.
He will never see the old man again. Because when he reaches the sidewalk, the ground beneath him buckles in a jolt of boundless violence.
Instinctively, he sprints out into the middle of the street, into a narrow zone of safety between the buildings on each side. The force of the quake tries to knock him off his feet and nearly succeeds as it issues a thunderous roar and begins to buckle the pavement all around him.
Dry wood snaps and splinters. Bricks crash to the ground. Metal ducts screech and rip. A dog howls in horror.
Then quiet. And dust. A great cloud of devastation sent heavenward into a cruelly neutral sky.
As the dust clears, Zed sees that his tenement has collapsed into a jagged heap of riven lumber. Four stories are now one. The same is true all up and down the block. He scans the street in both directions for survivors. At the end of the block, a man in striped pajamas kneels quietly, as
if in prayer. Nearby, a woman in a nightgown walks delicately around the debris, her long, curly hair falling over her shoulders. She carries an empty birdcage, its bottom missing.
The fires ignite almost immediately. Shorted wires, overturned stoves, flammable chemicals all join to start a conflagration that will eventually burn out the entire heart of the city. The whole block begins to belch great sheets of flame and smoke, and his own tenement is no exception.
From beneath the burning wood, the screaming starts.
The heat tries to clutch his skin and broil it as he runs down the block toward Third, where some of the structures are brick and have yet to catch fire. Ahead, a great geyser of water shoots from a ruptured main.
Zed turns on Third and jogs back up toward Market. After a few blocks, the blazing monster is behind him, and the streets have become strangely calm.
With the immediate danger past, he slows to a walk. On the far side of the street, a few people huddle around a man hopelessly pinned in the debris of a collapsed building. He screams that the fire is coming, that the fire will burn him alive, that someone should shoot him before he suffers.
A block later, he hears a single shot from a revolver.
He continues on and decides to cross Market Street, the perennial border between wealth and poverty. Today, no one will scorn him for his dirty clothes or greasy hair. Today, no beet-faced cop will shoo him back where he belongs.
On Polk Street, he comes upon a saloon, its windows broken and its door open. Inside, half a dozen men are at the bar, with big, foaming schooners of beer.
“Come on in, lad,” yells a beefy man with red hair sprouting from beneath a bowler. “Have one on the house!”
Zed does a cautionary scan up and down the street, and then enters. As he steps up to the bar and plants his foot on the brass rail, the redhead puts a big arm over his shoulders.
“You lookin’ for work, boy?” the man asks with maniacal grin.
“Depends,” Zed says as a beer is pushed his way.
The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller Page 6