Paul reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of candy, and popped it from its wrapper. He held it between his thumb and forefinger. They were driving over a bridge now, and the lights of the city twinkled through the storm as if laughing at him.
He thought about the months it'd taken him to make contact with the woman—he still didn’t know her real name—and the countless hours of digging through old newspaper articles, police records and dusty documents in the city archive to verify what little information she'd given him. They had planned to meet on the bus, and now he was alone, bouncing along the frozen road. She should have gotten here already.
Paul thought back to the last time he’d spoken to her. He remembered that the fear in her voice was palpable over the phone. He had told her that she would be alright, that he didn’t want to know her name, and that he wouldn’t even reveal the gender of his source.
“It’s going to be big,” she had said and couldn’t mask the fear in her voice. “And it’s going to change the world.”
“You can trust me.” His words had sounded empty, even to him. "No one will ever know who you are."
Paul knew that it was going to be big—already it was bigger than he’d ever imagined, if she was telling the truth, that is.
“No one will believe you, and you can’t protect me."
“Anonymity,” he responded simply. In truth, it was the only thing he could offer her, and it was her best protection. Paul wasn’t a formidable man and certainly couldn’t provide her with any physical protection. He didn’t own a gun and wouldn’t know how to use it even if he did. He was on the shorter and paunchier side of a medium build, and what muscles he’d had over the years had long since started to sag. He could jog for nearly a mile, but any physical exercise beyond that would put him out of commission. Anonymity was really the only thing he could offer, but in this case, he was confident that it would be protection enough. You couldn't kill the rat if you didn’t know who the rat was.
“They’ll know, and they’ll kill me,” she said. The finality in the way she said that struck a chord in Paul. He’d been an investigative reporter for twenty-some-odd years and there was something about the way she was talking.
Not just fear. Fear was a normal part of talking to sources and contacts with information. They were naturally afraid that they’d be found out. Most were afraid that they would lose their jobs or friends or family, or that they would be exposed as a whistleblower, but few were afraid for their lives.
This woman was not just scared. There was something more in her voice: acceptance. As if she could sense the end coming—like a cancer victim after years of treatment, who had finally accepted death with open arms as a friend and a companion to accompany into the darkness.
If not death, then what was she afraid of?
Then it struck him. Paul started to worry that she wasn’t just running late. He worried that her paranoid fears had finally caught up with her, that whatever she was afraid of had finally caught up with her.
He feared that she was dead, or that whatever was worse than death in her mind had actually happened. His heart ached for her, but he didn't kid himself—couldn't kid himself. He was worried that he would never know the information that she had promised him.
His cell phone vibrated on the hard plastic seat next to him, its tiny square screen blinking to light. He reached over and grabbed the phone, snapping it open.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, Paul?” It was Dennis. In his rush, he hadn't looked at the caller id.
“Dennis.”
“Hey boss, don’t sound so happy to hear my voice.”
“What’s going on?” Paul demanded.
“Did you make contact?” Dennis asked and Paul glanced around the bus as if hoping that the woman would materialize from nowhere.
“No,” he said, not even trying to mask the disappointment he felt. "I'm going to finish up this route, and then get off back at the hotel. I'm guessing that if she was going to meet me, she'd have been here before now."
"You think she's okay? I mean, maybe she isn't the paranoid nut you thought she was," Dennis said, echoing Paul's thoughts.
"I don't know," Paul said.
"Okay, so then am I done?" Dennis asked. “The wife is at home and is getting restless. Something about how I work too hard and my boss doesn’t pay me enough to put up with this crap.”
“Give it another hour, follow the police scanner,” Paul said, “and I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“Whatever,” Dennis said and ended the call.
Paul put his phone away and stared at his notes. He wondered if asking Dennis to monitor the police scanner was a good use of time. In truth, he had no idea—and no idea what Dennis should be listening for except that he was sure if the woman he’d spoken to on the phone was about to kick the bucket, she would go out with a fight. He was sure that if there was a fight, it would generate at least some radio chatter with the police.
Then again, she may have just hedged her bets and disappeared. Paul couldn’t fault someone for wanting to avoid getting killed, but he hated that it came at the expense of his story, or worse yet, at the expense of truth.
He cursed himself again for not insisting on a way to contact her instead of waiting for her to reach him. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another piece of candy.
Chapter Twelve
Ryan dropped the car into third and jammed the accelerator as he made a turn in the middle of an intersection. The rear tires skidded across dry pavement, then hit a patch of black ice, and the back of the car almost slid out from under them. On the corner of the intersection, a man stood by a small hibachi grill, holding his hands over the fire that flickered. He wore a thick coat that was tattered and worn, and his face shown an expression of shocked surprise. For a fleeting second, Sam caught the man's gaze in his own, and he burst with laughter.
"Whoa!" Sam screamed and then laughed again. "Almost lost that one and hit that guy on the corner."
Ryan smiled as the engine revved to 6,000 revolutions per minute, and in a swift motion, he shifted to 4th gear and the car shot forward, snowflakes pelting the windshield.
"Prepare for a 45 degree turn to your left in 600 meters," the woman said through the speakers.
Up ahead, the road was black and any visibility was blocked by the incessant snowstorm. Ryan looked at the control panel of the car, gauged his speed and the distance to the curve on the map of his phone. He gripped the steering wheel and peered into the darkness.
"How about some tunes?" Sam said. He pressed a few buttons on the console and heavy rock and roll blasted through the speakers. The song was unfamiliar to Ryan, except that the song was distinctively early 90s. The heavy guitar and the steady drums thudded his adrenaline into further action, and he sped up toward the curve. The digital speedometer blinked and shot up from 73 miles per hour to 86, and the snowflakes didn't hit the windshield so much as swirl in the wake of the car's speed.
They hit the curve a minute later, and the back wheels did slide out from under them. For just a moment, they both felt as though the car would spin out of control. At that speed, if they hit a patch of dry asphalt while sliding like that, the car would roll, flipping through the air until it crunched to the ground, twisting and crushing the metal. Ryan adjusted the wheel expertly, the back tires caught, and the car righted itself as they moved into the turn.
Sam whooped again as the car seemed to float over thin air, shooting through the darkness like a meteor crashing through the atmosphere.
"You feel that?" Sam screamed. "That is some quality suspension, dude!"
"You gotta stop talking so much," Ryan said, his entire focus on the feel of the slide, the angle of the curve, feeling for that moment when—
—the road straightened, and he jerked the wheel and shifted down to third gear as he jammed the accelerator. The engine bellowed and the sedan shot forward.
"Data collected," the woman said, barely audible
above the smashing sounds of guitar and drums. "Bridge straight ahead in one mile, beware of ice."
"Beware of ice!" Sam screamed and laughed again. "As if, man, she probably thinks this is such a cake walk."
They shot forward, their soundtrack the heavy garage rock and the roar of the engine. A pair of headlights blinked into view, coming at them in the opposite direction.
"That a civilian?" Sam asked, but looked at Ryan's phone on the dashboard and answered his own question. No colored dots flashed on the screen just yet, so the approaching car wasn't driving with the Lit Dragons. It must have a civilian driver.
Ryan adjusted the trajectory of the car, pulling it to the right side of the road, away from the middle. He liked to drive in the night like this, because fewer cars on the road meant more room to drive, more room to flex and still dodge civilian drivers.
They shot past the other car and sped toward the bridge. Ryan massaged the leather steering wheel in the grip of his hands, as if kneading bread, his adrenaline pulsing through him.
He glanced at the screen of his phone and saw an orange dot suddenly appear. It was approaching the bridge from the opposite direction.
Lit Dragons.
The adrenaline in his body felt as though it had been shooting through a pipe or down a gorge, and then was suddenly stopped, the force of it piling against the blockage. His heart thudded hard in his chest, and his breathing quickened.
Too soon, he thought. It felt as though they'd only just gotten in the car, and it was too soon for this to be over. He looked at Sam, who'd also seen the orange dot on the screen. Blood drained from Sam's face. The look of pure joy and energy died as the paleness set in. Ryan saw Sam tensing his muscles, tightening his grip on the handle above the window.
"You ready?" Ryan asked. He consciously reminded his muscles to relax and physically forced the relaxation into his muscles.
"Yeah right. How can you ever be ready?"
"Stay loose, Sam," Ryan said. "Don't be so tensed up."
"That's kind of hard," Sam said. "The Orange Team is coming fast, and a bridge? Man, they're pushing it."
"It's what they do." A faint smile appeared on Ryan's lips.
"Increase speed on approach," the woman said over the speakers. The bridge was coming fast, and suddenly another pair of headlights peeked out from the opposite side. Ryan looked at the blinking orange dot on the screen of his phone and furrowed his brow. The orange car wouldn't have cleared the bridge just yet, and there were no other Lit Dragons on the road. The closer car was a civilian. He tapped the brakes, and the car slowed slightly.
"Increase speed on approach," the woman said again, her voice emotionless.
"There's another car! A civilian!" Ryan said, his voice more shrill than he'd intended.
"Increase speed on approach." The woman said, and the screen of Ryan's phone flashed red, indicating that their speed was too slow.
Ryan pressed down on the accelerator, and the car again jumped forward. The power in this engine was incredible, and Ryan wondered if it might be too much power. The headlights cleared the top of the bridge and began their descent toward Ryan and Sam.
"You can't hit that civilian," Sam said. "That's collateral, man."
"I know."
"Data processing," the woman said.
They both watched the orange dot start ascending the other side of the bridge.
"It's going to be too close!" Sam yelled.
Ryan didn't respond, just gritted his teeth, and the car shot forward. They rode up on the bridge just as the second pair of headlights—the orange dot—cleared the top, driving at least as fast as Ryan, and coming up on the civilian car, which was driving much slower.
What happened next, happened fast.
Very fast.
The orange dot swerved to miss the car in its path, swerved onto Ryan's side of the road. The two cars barreled toward each other, the light from their headlights meeting and melting together, becoming one, and the world seemed to slow to an almost standstill. Ryan jerked the wheel even further, dodging the civilian car—a minivan.
Snow flurried as Ryan corrected the wheel. He tried to dodge the orange car, but he dodged to the left and their front ends clipped, knocking his car into a sidewise slide. He felt the tires ripping into the snow and ice as they cleared the summit of the bridge, and then the full force of their momentum lifted the car up into a roll. In mid air, he saw for the briefest second the orange car smashing into the guardrail along the downward slope of the bridge, crashing through the concrete and metal. Ryan was turning and flipping, the roof caving in, the glass exploding outward, and he was distantly aware that Sam was no longer sitting next to him, that his seatbelt flipped loosely around as the car rolled and skidded on its roof in a shower of sparks and a swirl of snow, until it came to rest at the base of the bridge.
The world around him fell instantly quiet, his ears ringing from the explosion of sound that came from the wreckage of his car. He looked at the black ice that blanketed the ground just beyond the broken windshield, just inches from his face. Fat snowflakes, the size of cotton balls, settled in around him, and the world fell silent, black.
Chapter Thirteen
The snow swirled like ghosts on an alien planet, the flakes whirling in the wind and dusting the street. Mae stood on the side of the road, just outside the spot of yellow light shining from the street lamp above. Her wet clothes had already started to harden, the dampness turning to ice and clinging to her shivering body. She looked down the road, which seemed to extend forever into the empty and starless night. Tall, looming trees lined the road, and icy snow stood in banks along the tree line. The fresh layer of powder was lying atop the dirty mounds of ice and the black asphalt like a fresh, clean blanket.
Through the falling snow, a pair of headlights pierced the darkness, coming up over a hill and driving toward her. She watched the lights as they grew closer and tried to see what type of vehicle was approaching. The lights were low to the ground, too low for a bus. She wished she could flag the car to a stop, to climb inside the dry, warm interior and be whisked away from this place.
But she was waiting for a bus. A specific bus—Michigan Avenue Route B, she remembered. Her mom was supposed to meet a reporter on that bus tonight, but that was hours ago, and Mae doubted the reporter was still waiting. Despite the danger that they would be found (which seemed silly now, given that the men hunting her had never really lost them), the meeting was supposed to set them free. The reporter had unknowingly unearthed a conspiracy that was not just a theory, but was closer to truth than he'd ever imagined.
He was the reason they were in Chicago, to find him and bring the final pieces of the puzzle out into the open.
As the car got closer, she shrank into the shadows. Her feet crunched through the crust of hardened snow and ice as she backed away from the light and out of sight. A gust of wind whistled from the trees behind her, and she figured that if the bus didn’t come soon, she would freeze to death. Already, she felt the wisps of sleep creeping in around her mind and body. Hypothermia was again fast approaching, followed by that long and endless sleep that ebbed at the corners of her consciousness.
The long sleep would be warm, she thought. A warm darkness that would envelop her and take her away from this place. The girl’s body shivered with such violence that it rattled her bones and made her muscles ache. She clenched her jaw, forcing her teeth not to click together as her muscles convulsed in a vain effort to stay warm.
The car whizzed by, driving much to fast for the icy conditions of the road. She waited in the dark for several seconds after the car passed, making sure that if the driver looked in the rear-view mirror, she wouldn’t be seen. The headlights disappeared over the long hill and once again she was alone in the night.
It’s going to be okay, she kept telling herself, doing her best to refocus her mind on something good and hopeful. Never mind her mom's screams of terror, and never mind the writhing ball of panic that grew wi
thin her, threatening to take control of her mind and body and plunge her headlong off the cliff into the depths of insanity.
It was going to be okay. She’d done what she needed to do, and she was safe. She’d lost them.
Mae shuddered, as much from dread as from the cold. She peered into the darkness and strained her ears for the sounds of the bus that she knew would be along soon.
She lifted her arm closer to her face and pulled aside her flannel shirt. The scratched and battered Timex read 9:03 PM, and she shivered harder. The watch had been a gift from her father when she was 12, and she held onto it not because it was fashionable, with its pink and green band and its slightly childish design, but because it reminded her of a time before all of this.
Before the bad things. Before the evil.
The wind died, and she suddenly caught a wisp of a sound—the blast of a large engine roaring up hills and churning through the falling snow. She looked down the hill toward the sound, and saw headlights cutting through the darkness. A few feet above the headlights were the words: ROUTE B MICHIGAN AVENUE BRIDGE.
A branch snapped somewhere behind her, and she whirled around to peer into the dark woods beyond.
“Oh, please no,” she whispered when she saw the dark form a few hundred meters into the woods. Hunched, the figure was running over the drifts and snow, dodging dark trees and low hanging branches. It was Eddie, the hunting rifle held tightly to his chest, his head low.
The Snow Swept Trilogy Page 8