Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys

by Gary A Braunbeck

  The crowd erupted once more, some of them calling out my name—or, rather, the word, “Driver! Driver!”

  “The Road,” said Daddy Bliss, “has granted us this contest—this trial, if you will—to see whether or not Driver is, indeed, worthy.”

  Worthy of what? I thought.

  “Give praise to the Road. Give thanks to the Highway People. They provide, they sustain, they bless us and watch over our loved ones under their protection.”

  The crowd as one looked downward and began muttering quiet thanks. Even Hummer removed his hat and bowed his head in prayer.

  “Driver,” said Daddy Bliss.

  I looked up toward him.

  “You have done well for us, and have our thanks. You still have many questions, this I do realize. Know that they will be answered soon.”

  I nodded.

  “Very well, then,” he said, clearing his throat once more. When he spoke again, his voice was louder, powerful, commanding. “Release Fairlane.” Then he looked at me and grinned. “Sounded somewhat ominous didn’t it? Apologies. ‘Release Fairlane.’ Not quite ‘…let slip the dogs of war,’ I’m afraid.”

  The crowd cheered, but this time I could hear some genuine anxiety at the edges of the sound.

  And then something so incredibly absurd happened that I couldn’t even laugh at it, as much as it demanded to be laughed at: the concert speakers erupted with the opening chords of AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell” and the crowd as one turned to face the road behind me.

  “I’m dead, aren’t I?” I said to Hummer. “I got in a wreck on my way out of town and all of this is just some fucked-up hallucination that my subconscious has dredged up while my life trickles away.”

  Hummer grinned, and then backhanded me across the mouth. “Did that feel like an hallucination?”

  “That hurt!”

  “Sorry. Seemed the best way to get the point across, all things considered.”

  I shook it away, which wasn’t easy—he had one helluva powerful swing. When I was able to gather myself together and stand fully upright, I was looking down the darkened road at something that appeared to be a small bonfire, only it was moving.

  The music became louder as the whole band kicked in, the thump-a-thump-thump of the base and drums shaking the ground under my feet, and the bonfire grew brighter, wider, and closer.

  Ciera appeared at my side. “Fairlane is…I’d guess you’d call him…I dunno…The Road’s guard dog. Does that make sense?”

  “Not really.” I tried to grin at her and didn’t quite make it. “I guess I could use some reassuring words.”

  “Then try this,” said Hummer. “If you took every instance of violence, death, pain, and destruction that have occurred on the roads and highways of this country and forced them all together so that they’d have a single form, it would be Fairlane.”

  I stared at him for a moment. “I think we need to compare notes about the definition of ‘reassuring.’”

  “He’s the closest thing to an actual demon you’ll ever meet,” said Ciera, taking hold of my hand. “And he’s got terrible table manners.”

  Hummer nodded. “Not a pretty motherfucker, that’s for sure.”

  “Plus he cheats,” said Ciera.

  I could make out a shape in the middle of the flames; the outline of a car’s body, the massive hunched shoulders of the driver, the glint of light off metal and chrome.

  The flames, I now realized, were coming from two sources; the back tires and the exhaust pipes that ran along the sides of the car. The cloud of flame, smoke, and exhaust moved up to the right lane and came to a stop right beside the Ogre. I blinked, shielding my eyes, hacking against the fumes, and waited for the cloud to clear.

  I have no idea if what happened next was just a coincidence or something that had been previously choreographed to unnerve me, but until the day I die I’ll swear that the cloud of smoke and exhaust lifted at the exact moment the song stopped.

  And there he was. My opponent for the evening’s festivities. I couldn’t take him in all at once, that would have been too much, so I looked at the car first; at least I could get my head wrapped around that.

  When I was a kid, I used to collect and build model cars. I tended to favor models of older cars because their shapes were so varied and cool—not like the generic stuff I saw on the roads then and still see now. One of my favorite models had been a Revell kit of a 1934 Ford High Boy Rumble Seat Roadster. To me, it was the single coolest-looking car I’d ever seen—forget that I’d never actually seen the real thing, I knew Cool when I saw it.

  And this car was Cool. Same make and model, only the back end had been jacked up and the tires replaced by wide, dangerous-looking slicks. The body—what was left of it, anyway—was a fierce, bright, almost terrifying shade of red. The exhaust pipes that ran along the sides of the car covered the entire length of the body and then some, curling slightly outward at the ends. The front grille and headlights were still in place, but the rest of the body between them and the windshield had been removed to make room for an engine that was more like a gigantic chrome cobra than anything that functioned under the laws of internal combustion, its body coiled and tense, it hood expanded, ready to strike. It would not have surprised me if a forked tongue had shot out for a moment.

  And then the cobra roared, just once, spitting smoke and sparks. Fairlane wanted my attention. I had no choice but look at my opponent.

  His skin—what there was of it—had the gray fish-belly pallor of something spoiled, and his head was disproportionately large for his body; like Dash, part of his skull was visible where the scalp had been torn away and cauterized at the edges. Thick strands of long, greasy, dark hair hung down the back of his head, tied into something that was supposed to be a ponytail but looked more like a section of putrid intestine left dangling for the elements to feast upon. He still had his own eyes, after a fashion: each was embedded into the center of a cone-shaped floodlight welded into the sockets. His nose was a knot of mashed tissue that leaked a thick, brown substance onto his upper lip. Every few seconds he would smile, allowing the liquid to spatter down onto his long, dark tongue that lolled around like that of a particularly happy or stupid puppy, never disappearing completely into his mouth. Something about the texture and shape of the thing demanded closer attention, and when it flopped fully out of his mouth a second time, I realized that the tongue was maybe one-third human tissue; the rest of it was a fan belt onto which the organic tissue had been attached.

  Fairlane must have seen the realization hit me, because his face began to split in half as he smiled, displaying a mouth crowded with full-sized sparkplugs that had been jammed in to replace his teeth, both on top and bottom. He chortled—that’s the only word for it—and clicked his teeth together; a series bouncing blue electrical currents danced around his smile. I wondered if the little girl I’d seen earlier was his daughter or niece. Maybe she was just a fan and was paying tribute to her hero.

  Hundreds of metal strips were mixed in with the flesh of his arms, and several twisted license plates had been used to good advantage in replacing the pectoral muscles of his chest, but his hands were the most unnerving thing about him; long, wide, with quadruple-jointed fingers, each hand was equal parts meat and metal, with small silver hinges used in place of bone joints. One hand was fused to the steering wheel at the ten o’clock position, while the other was fused to the gearshift.

  “Told you he was ugly,” said Hummer.

  “No,” I whispered. “It’d take the light from ugly ten thousand years to reach him.”

  Fairlane chortled again, this time throwing back his head, his tongue flailing through the air.

  Ciera took hold of my hand. “You need to get in your car now.”

  I nodded at her and crossed back to the vehicle, opening the door, climbing inside, and then buckling up—more out of habit than any belief that doing so was going to keep me safe.

  “Good luck,” said Ciera.

&
nbsp; “Wait a second, please.”

  “What is it?”

  “How…I mean…what’s at the end of this road?”

  “All of us—or we will be. You’ll see.” She leaned down, gave me a quick kiss, and then walked about ten yards ahead, stopping in the middle of the road and raising her arms. I stared at the red kerchiefs and tried once again to Zen-out of this whole freak show.

  “On your marks,” she shouted, her arms now raised to their full height, the crowd silent, wide-eyed, leaning forward.

  Fairlane gunned his engine. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Ciera gave us both a smile that might have been radiant in any other place, under any other circumstances. “Get set…”

  Her grip tightened on the kerchiefs in her hands. In a moment, she’d swing down those impossible arms in a swift, decisive arc, and off we’d go.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, wondering how long I’d be missing and dead before anyone took serious notice of my absence. It was quite the revelation, it was, to realize that out of all my friends…I didn’t really have any.

  “GO!” Ciera screamed, snapping down both arms simultaneously.

  And we had a race.

  13

  I didn’t have to touch anything for the first ten seconds because, as Daddy Bliss had told me, the Road was in control. My rear tires spun madly for a second or two, screaming burned rubber and churning up a lot of smoke, and then the car shot forward, slamming me back against the seat. Fairlane gunned it—or, rather, the Road gunned it for him—and flew ahead, but a few seconds later, just as the crowd disappeared from my rear-view mirror and the safety railings began, control of the vehicles was returned to us and I gripped the wheel, shifted, and floored the accelerator, coming up fast on him.

  For a few seconds, we were side-by-side, both of us increasing speed, both of our cars shuddering, both of us being followed by bulky overhead shadows that finally swept down, causing both of us to hunch so they couldn’t touch us, and just as quickly as they had appeared, the Highway People vanished and we got back to business.

  And that’s when Fairlane began cheating. He slant-drove across my front and squealed into my lane. I resisted the impulse to break and instead sped up, ramming into his rear bumper; once, gently; the second time, not so much; and then with everything the car had, taking off part of his rear bumper and slewing him back into his own lane and against the railing where he scraped along, throwing off sparks for about a hundred yards. Some of the sparks flew toward my face, a couple of them landing on my cheek and burning the skin, but it was quick, the wind saw to that, and the pain kept me focused, kept my grip tight on the wheel, and I ran up alongside Fairlane, keeping him pinned between my car and the railing, and he was screaming, and I was laughing in panic, and when another set of sparks came spitting over against my face I jerked the wheel to the left, shot back into my lane, and surged forward.

  It didn’t take Fairlane long to right his vehicle and close the distance between us, but at least now he’d gotten the idea and remained in his own lane, and pretty soon we were side-by-side again—

  —and that’s when I discovered that Fairlane wasn’t the only person here who cheated, because I looked ahead and saw the flashing visibar lights of the Sheriff’s Department cruiser coming at us, roaring down on top of us, right the fuck smack in the middle, it would hit us both unless one of us did something, and I heard myself screaming “A fucking game of CHICKEN? This all boils down to a game of CHICKEN?” but Fairlane either didn’t hear me or didn’t care because he moved closer to me, so I returned the favor, our cars pressing against the each other’s side, neither one of us moving to get out of the cruiser’s way—there was nowhere to go, the railings made sure of that—but whoever was driving the cruiser wasn’t budging, just kept barreling down on top of us, and when I saw the lights of the burning torches flicker in the distance I knew we were almost done, this was it, now or never, and I figured, fuck it, I didn’t have to prove my nerve to anyone, so I took a chance and stood on the brake, spinning over into the right lane, but Fairlane didn’t follow suit, he just kept burning forward, looking back over his shoulder at me and laughing, and when he turned back toward the road it was too late, the cruiser was right there, and the two vehicles impacted at over a hundred miles an hour; the cruiser caught it hard in the left front, went up on its side, ricocheted, spun out, and walloped into the railing a twisted mass of steel, flames, and shattered glass. Fairlane was horizontal across the center and caught a shattering side punch from the cruiser as it spun out; he hit the railing, spun out a second time, flipped onto his side, and then scraped along for a few yards until he flipped tail-over onto his top, snapping his neck and sliding to a stop, leaving a long, wide, dark, wet trail behind as the cruiser caught fire, sputtered once, and then blew apart like an M-80 tossed into a can of kerosene.

  I stared at the destruction for a few seconds, then put the car in gear, floored it, and shot through the flames and debris to cross the finish line to wild, deafening cheers. True to Ciera’s word, everyone and everything that had been at the beginning of the road were now here at the end.

  I slammed on the brakes and threw open the door. I couldn’t get out of that car fast enough. Staggering back toward the finish line, I watched as Fairlane tore himself from his burning vehicle and stumbled out into the middle of the road, both arms missing from the elbows down, spurting blood, his head twisted at an impossible angle, black smoke skirling from his charred, sluicing flesh.

  He shook his stumps at me, and then began to dance as the concert speakers once again began blasting “Highway To Hell.”

  Why aren’t you dead? I thought.

  “Because you can’t kill a demon,” said Hummer, stepping up beside me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about Fairlane. He digs the pain. Always has. Any excuse for more Repairs makes him happy.”

  I spun around and surprised him with an uppercut to the jaw that knocked him squarely on his ass.

  “Who was driving the goddamned cruiser?” I screamed.

  “Nobody,” he replied, massaging his jaw and spitting out a small glob of blood.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Because I didn’t know, all right? None of us did. The Road gets a wild hair up its ass sometimes. It decided that it wanted someone to bleed, so….” He touched his jaw again, winced, and then stuck out his arm. I helped him to his feet and fully expected him to slug me into the next decade.

  “Nice punch you got there,” he said. “So now we’re even.”

  “Driver!” called Daddy Bliss from atop the car-cube. “You have, indeed, proven yourself worthy.”

  “Of what?” I shouted back at him.

  “Of the Road’s trust, and our family’s respect and affection.”

  Ciera pulled up alongside me in the meat wagon, got out, and handed me the keys. “You did good, you know that, right?”

  I could not find any words. The full impact of what had just happened hit me all at once, and my legs turned to rubber. She helped into the driver’s seat, smoothing down my hair and laying her hand against my cheek. “I really hope I get to see you again someday.”

  I looked at her, swallowed once, and finally found my voice. “What happens now?”

  She tilted her head to the left, indicating the darkened road ahead. “You go home. Just drive straight for a little while, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Just…drive. That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  A small orange-red stain began to spread across the horizon. The crowd began to disperse.

  “Time’s up, Driver,” said Daddy Bliss. “A new day with new responsibilities awaits us all. Off with you, dear boy; off with you.”

  Ciera closed the door, kissed her finger tips, and pressed them against my lips.

  I started the meat wagon and drove away, never once looking in the rear-view mirror.

  It took only a few minutes before the sunlight was right i
n my eyes. I blinked, slowed down, and dug around until I found a pair of sunglasses on the passenger-side floor. I knew they hadn’t been there when I left Cedar Hill. Ciera or someone else had known that I’d be driving into the rising sun, and so left them for me.

  Ten minutes. I drove for only another ten minutes before I saw the exit sign for Cedar Hill. I took the exit, turned right—

  —and found myself on 21st Street.

  I braked, looking around, confused. There was no traffic at the moment, no early-morning joggers on the sidewalks, no bicycle riders cruising along the curb…nor was there any sign of the exit I’d just taken. My guess is, had anyone been there to see, it would have looked like the meat wagon had just appeared out of thin air, and me with it.

  Tired—Christ, I was suddenly so tired. And hungry. It felt like I hadn’t eaten in days, despite the meal Nova had prepared for me earlier.

  Do something normal, I thought. Something banal.

  So a breakfast at Bob Evans it would be.

  I’d completely forgotten about the cash I still had and so drove to my bank to get some money from the ATM. I withdrew thirty dollars and was walking back to the meat wagon when I glanced down at the receipt to check my balance and damn near tripped over my own feet.

  According to the receipt in my hand, my checking account had a balance of seventy-five thousand dollars. I went back to the ATM, inserted my card, and asked for a checking account balance once more.

  Still seventy-five grand.

  I checked my savings account: seventy-five thousand.

  I suddenly didn’t have much of an appetite.

  14

  A brown, business-sized envelope was taped to the door to my apartment. It had no address, no return address, no stamp; only a single, handwritten word: Driver.

  I opened it and removed the single-page letter inside.

  Driver:

  You needn’t worry about the government or the IRS becoming too interested in your sudden financial windfall. No one asks questions when we tell them not to.