Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys

by Gary A Braunbeck

  “Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have laughed.”

  All I could do was nod my head, and even that hurt like hell.

  “We can get you some clean pants and underwear,” said Dash.

  “…would be nice…” I heard myself whisper.

  Then the radio crackled and the dispatcher’s voice chimed in. “You still there, Hummer?”

  He grabbed the microphone. “Where else would I be?”

  “That’s my line, Sheriff.”

  “Sue me.”

  “Touchy tonight, aren’t we?”

  “Did you talk with Daddy Bliss?”

  “No, I just missed the sound of your voice—of course I talked with him.”

  “And…?”

  “And Daddy says, no worries. He wanted Driver to have the grand tour, anyway.”

  Hummer stared out at the road, saying nothing for a few seconds, looking confused.

  I leaned toward Dash. “Is that a nickname, ‘Hummer’?”

  “Nope.”

  Sheriff Hummer was still speaking to the dispatcher. “When’s the tour supposed to start?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “Can we at least get him a change of clothes first?”

  “A change of clothes?” said Nova. “What did you—never mind. Sure thing. He can look through the wardrobe when he gets here.”

  “Call our ETA five minutes. Ciera’s right behind us with Road Mama.”

  “You want me to call Stick and tell him to hit the lights?”

  Hummer glanced in the rearview mirror toward me, then said, “Might as well.”

  “Oh, you’re gonna like this,” said Dash. “Ain’t everyone who gets to see Levegh Lane.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Deputy Dash shrugged. “We don’t get many visitors.”

  “So this is big deal, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why…why do you call it that? Is there some significance to the name? Is that Daddy Bliss’s real name or something?””

  Hummer answered this one: “It’s named after Pierre Levegh, a race car driver. Drove a Mercedes at Le Mans in 1955. In the third hour of the race, this Jaguar driver named Mike Hawthorn got a signal from his pit crew to stop for gas. He slowed down, but there was this Austin-Healey right on his ass, and it had to swerve to avoid him. A little ways behind, Levegh raised his hand to signal another car to slow the hell down. Levegh was going 150 miles per hour.” Hummer shook his head. “He never had a chance.

  “Levegh slammed into the Healey and his car took off like a rocket, crashed into the embankment beside the track, hurtled end over end, and then just…disintegrated over the crowd. The hood decapitated a bunch of spectators. The engine and front axle cut through a bunch of people, splitting them in half. The car had a magnesium body, right, and that son-of-a-bitch burst into flames like a torch, burning dozens of others to death. The whole thing took maybe 12 seconds, but in that time 82 people were killed and 76 others were maimed.”

  I blinked. “And you named a street after him?”

  “That’s right. Levegh was a great man.”

  “A great man,” said Dash.

  Hummer nodded. “Only a truly heroic man could bring so many new members into Road Mama and Daddy Bliss’s family in a few brief seconds.”

  Do I need to tell you exactly how anxious this little exchange made me? It finally sank in that I was trapped in a car with a couple of out-patients. If my luck held up, we’d soon be passing the Bates Motel.

  I was so scared…but I was also damned if I was going to show it; at least, no more than I already had.

  “You might want to sit up,” said Hummer. “Make sure you can get a good look out the window. You might not know it, but this a great honor, Daddy Bliss wanting you to see everything.”

  I heard a distance buzzing noise, like a massive electrical grid warming up. Even through the vibration of the tires against the streets I could feel the deep, powerful thrum that rose in power with the pitch of the grid.

  “You might want to prepare yourself some,” said Hummer. “This could be a bit of a shock.”

  That didn’t even begin to cover it.

  8

  The street exploded with light, bright and blinding, bearing down like a curse from Heaven and forcing me to close my eyes and throw my arms up against my face.

  After the stars stopped going supernova behind my lids, I slowly opened my eyes and saw that both sides of this cliff-lined street were being illuminated by rows upon rows of huge stadium lights that rose easily a hundred feet above the surface of the road. I wondered how they’d managed to install them at the tops of the cliffs, and then realized that these weren’t cliffs or hollowed mountainsides at all.

  They were cars.

  Crushed, smashed, mangled, and twisted, stacked dozens atop dozens, held together by steel beams and girders that had been welded into place to form main spannings and supports, creating something like a life-sized shadowbox. The stacks

  (dead piles?)

  rose so high I almost couldn’t see the tops of the damn things. Each car-cube was roughly the size of a large building, nine or ten stories high, separated from its neighbor by a space of maybe 30 feet. It was in those spaces where the stadium light towers were installed, and as we passed the first group and I looked through those spaces I saw that the car-cubes not only lined both sides of the street but extended backward for what seemed miles, a giant child’s building block set, each one placed at a point equidistant from those beside, in front of, and behind it. It was like something out of an Escher painting.

  “Where did all of these come from?” I asked.

  “Everywhere,” replied Dash. “They come from all over the place in the U.S.”

  “And sometimes Canada or Mexico,” said Sheriff Hummer. “If someone drives here from Canada or Mexico, they’re on our roads, so their ass is ours if something happens.”

  “‘Ours’?” I said.

  “Ours,” replied Dash.

  “Well, technically,” said Hummer, “they belong to Road Mama and Daddy Bliss, but since the rest of us are family, we like to think of them as ‘ours’. That answer your question?”

  “Not really.”

  “Don’t worry, things’ll be explained to you.”

  Ciera came up alongside us in the meat wagon, waving and smiling before hitting the turn signal and taking a side road.

  “She’s using the shortcut,” said Dash.

  Hummer nodded his head. “I got eyes, little brother.”

  “Daddy Bliss told us we weren’t supposed to take no shortcuts tonight.”

  “And Ciera will have to explain herself to him, so it’s not our problem.”

  “But he won’t do anything to her, he never does. It ain’t fair! How come she gets to do whatever she wants and the rest of us gotta do as we’re told?”

  “Because Daddy Bliss favors Ciera, you know that. She was the last person he brought into the family himself.”

  Dash folded his arms across his chest and pressed his chin down, pouting. “Yeah, well, still…it ain’t fair.”

  “Not much is, little brother. Don’t need to keep reminding ourselves.”

  We made a left, turning onto a stretch of road where the car-cubes were replaced by typical middle-class houses on a typical middle-class street. All the lights were on inside each house, and several people were standing on their front porches, watching us pass by.

  “Gonna be a big night for everyone here, Driver,” said Hummer. “A big night.”

  I swallowed, leaning forward. “Why are you called ‘Hummer’?”

  The sheriff looked into the rear-view mirror. “Because that’s what I was driving when I got myself and my little brother killed. It was my fault, I was screwing around, pretending that the goddamn thing was a tank, I accidentally side-swiped a semi, lost control of the wheel, and went over the side of a bridge.”

  “I was pretty scared,” said Dash. “I was all bent over and cryi
ng. That’s how I busted open my head on the bottom of the dashboard.”

  “And I was the driver,” replied the sheriff. “That’s how it works.”

  I returned his stare in the rear-view mirror for a few moments more, then said, “Fuck you.”

  “What was that?” One of his hands snapped down to the butt of his gun.

  “I said fuck you. I’m supposed to believe that you two are dead, is that it?”

  “We ain’t dead,” said Dash.

  “Just Repaired,” said Hummer. He pronounced the second word with such awe and reverence I could almost see the capital ‘R’.

  I looked at the houses we were passing. The people on the porches all had something wrong with them; some used canes or crutches, some were in wheelchairs, others had arms missing or in slings, and a couple of them wore those square metal-cage get-ups that people who suffer severe neck injuries are saddled with using.

  “What about them?” I asked, nodding toward the onlookers.

  “Repaired,” said Hummer. “Everyone who lives here has been Repaired or is in the process of being Repaired. Sometimes the Repairs aren’t that big of a deal, like with Dash and Ciera and me. But some Repairs, they take a bit of work.”

  Dash looked at me and nodded his head.

  “So this is, what? Zombie Town U.S.A.?”

  Hummer glared at me. “I’d watch the sarcasm if I was you. And, no, there aren’t any zombies here. Only the Repaired.”

  We turned off the street and hit a long patch of road that wound through a heavily industrialized section of town. Factories small and large lined both sides of the road for nearly three miles, and judging from the amount of noise and smoke pouring from each building, things were busy.

  It was only as we were turning off onto another street that I caught a glimpse of any of the factory workers (which I think was Hummer’s intention, seeing as how he was driving not only slowly but quite close to the curb). A large set of heavy iron doors were open, giving me a clear look into the foundry where one of the workers was emptying a vat of white-hot molten metal into an arc furnace. Despite the shimmering heat waves and sparks scattering as the liquid metal gushed down, I got a very clear look at the man.

  His right arm had been replaced by a steel prosthesis whose components had been molded, bent, twisted, and press-punched into something that was meant to look organic and serve the same function as his missing arm. It had an elbow joint that bent easily enough and a semi-robotic hand with five finger-like appendages. The wires and conduits that snaked through the openings in the metal were in a configuration comparable to that of veins. The prosthesis moved stiffly, and every time the worker turned his back to us, the highly-polished sheet of silver chrome used to replace his shoulder blade caught the light and threw it back into my eyes. I was still blinking when the worker stopped what he was doing, rose straight up, and—like he’d known all along that he was being observed—turned to face me.

  The left half of his face had been Repaired, as well. I saw the bright protruding taillight that had taken the place of his eye, the section of sheared metal that served as his jawbone, and what I swear looked like seat leather that now replaced the flesh of his cheek.

  He lifted his robotic hand and waved.

  “Believe me now,” said Hummer, “or do you want us to get out so I can make a personal introduction?”

  “…incredible…” was all I could get out.

  “No,” said Dash, “just Repaired, that’s all. Ain’t no big thing, really.”

  Hummer laughed and sped up the cruiser.

  I turned around in the seat, staring out the rear window, and saw the foundry worker walk out into the middle of the street and watch us drive away. Even after his body disappeared into shadow, I could still see the bright red light of his Repaired eye.

  I was about to ask Hummer where they got the parts to Repair people, then thought of the car-cubes and knew the answer.

  9

  We pulled up in front of a large concrete building that contained few windows and began to park.

  “If he’s getting the tour,” said Dash, “then shouldn’t we take him in through the back?”

  “Shit,” said Hummer, backing out of the space, “you’re right. Thanks for reminding me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  We drove around to the back where a single streetlight provided little illumination. We got out, and then entered the building through a heavy steel door.

  The first thing that hit me was the smell of the place; it was combination of that sweaty, metallic, smoky, machine-grease stench of the factory floor and the overly-antiseptic aroma of a hospital corridor. I’d never smelled anything like it in my life.

  “You get used to the smell,” said Hummer, clamping a hand on my elbow and leading me through a set of doors on the left. Dash made a beeline for a set of doors on the right—the vending machine area.

  We entered a somewhat cramped but well-lit office filled with scuffed wooden desks and chairs that were easily 30 years out of date, the furniture made all the more anachronistic by the expensive state-of-the-art equipment setting on it: 25-inch flat screen LCD monitors on broken roll-top desks, iMacs being used by people sitting in slat-backed wooden chairs held together in places with duct tape, and a trio of huge 50-inch plasma televisions mounted on the walls displaying a slide-show series of maps, as well as images from what I assumed were security cameras; empty streets, empty corridors, empty parking lots.

  “It’s impolite to stare,” said Hummer, pulling me toward a door marked Holding Room at the back of the office. Opening the door, he reached in and flipped on the light, then pushed me inside. “Bathroom’s on the right, and there’re snacks in the refrigerator.” He pointed to a rolling metal rack filled with hanging clothes. “Nova’s already had some stuff from the wardrobe put in here, so you can change out of those pissy clothes. Clean yourself up and get a bite to eat. You won’t be in here for too long.”

  “Wait a second,” I said as he began closing the door.

  He paused. “Yes?”

  I took a deep breath and summoned what little nerve I still had. “Aren’t I entitled to one phone call?”

  “You are.”

  “I’d like to make it, please.”

  Hummer grinned. “Who have you got to call, Driver?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “More like your daydream, from what I understand.”

  Glaring at him, I made a fist but did not raise it. “I demand my right to a phone call.”

  “You’ll get your call, stop whining.” He stared at me for a moment, his features softening a bit. “You’re really scared, aren’t you?”

  “…yes…”

  Hummer looked over his shoulder, then stepped back into the holding room, pushing the door most of the way closed. “Listen to me, Driver. I don’t know what you did to piss off the Highway People, but it must have been pretty goddamn serious for you to wind up here. The folks who come to this place, they don’t drive in, and they sure as hell don’t leave. Nobody just passes through here, the Highway People won’t let them. But you, you’re getting special treatment. I can’t tell you whether or not you’re gonna leave here alive because I don’t get to make that call, but I can tell you that no one, the Highway People included, has any intention of harming you. Anything that might or might not happen to you will be your own doing, not ours.”

  I was still trying to get past I can’t tell you whether or not you’re gonna leave here alive when I heard myself asking, “Who are the Highway People?”

  Hummer shrugged. “That’s just what we call them. I don’t know what their actual names are—hell, I don’t even know if they have names. They’ve been around as long as there have been roads and cars. I guess they’re…I dunno…the gods of the road.”

  “Have you ever seen them?”

  “Once. Right after the accident. They came for me and Dash.” He was staring out at something only he could see. For the fir
st time that night, he looked so much older than his years. “I remember,” he said, “that the windows were rolled halfway down—it was a warm night, Dash had his open and so did I, so when we went over the bridge and hit the water below, these…these swords of water slashed through the interior. I guess that happened because when we hit, we made a mother of a splash, it happened so fast, and we were both panicking because the interior was filling up and we were trying to get our seatbelts undone…Dash’s arms were flailing all over the place and he kept looking in the back seat for something, and I remember…I remember that those first swords of water felt like they’d actually gone in, y’know? Straight through flesh and into the bone. Even though everything was happening very fast and I knew it was happening very fast, in my eyes it was all in slow motion. Getting my seat belt off and then trying to help Dash with his, and that’s when I saw that he was already dead. His arms weren’t flailing, they were just floating, and the reason he was looking in the back seat was because his head had slammed against the dashboard and he’d broken his neck.” He looked back at me. “His head had just…turned around like that, and I could see where a good portion of his skull had been caved in. I undid his seat belt, anyway, and even though we were sinking there was still an air pocket inside, and I tried to get to it, and that’s when the semi that I’d hit came over the side of the bridge and landed on top of us. I felt my back shatter, and then it was dark and cool and quiet, and then a hand gripped my arm, and I opened my eyes and there was this…this shadow floating over me. It had silver eyes, and I knew it was going to help me. ‘Make sure you get my brother,’ I said to it. And it pointed over to another shadow with silver eyes that was pulling Dash out of the car. They swam away so smoothly, it was kind of graceful.

  “I remember looking back at the car and…seeing our bodies still trapped inside. What was left of our bodies, anyway. It took me a long time to understand the process, how it was that our bodies are left behind—at least, for a while, and….” His words trailed off as he smiled to himself, then blinked, and—remembering his duty—pointed toward the bathroom door once again. “Get yourself cleaned up.”