by Peter Clines
The driver’s door opened and the faceless man rose up out of the car. His clear mask now had round cheeks and a wide, cartoon smile like a clown. He had changed his suit too. The deep-blue pinstripe made him look thinner, and a silk handkerchief poked out from the breast pocket. A tiny gray tuft rode on one side of the hat, tucked into the band. It was an old man’s hat, or a hat young men wore in old pictures.
“He isn’t following you,” Harry said. She swung the rifle up, aiming at the sky, and then pushed it into Eli’s hands. “This is the one that’s been after me.”
9
“Hello,” said the faceless man, turning its mask toward Eli. “Please drop the weapon, Mr. Teague. If you could both put your hands above your head, it would—”
The sides of Harry’s colonial coat flapped open. Her hands swung up, each holding a pistol. The guns thundered in the open space—three, four, five, too many shots—and the faceless man staggered back, kicked hard in the chest.
Eli flinched away, glanced back, and saw no blood on the fallen man.
Harry spun, shoulder-checked him, and ran. Three long strides carried her past him, over the plants, to the sidewalk. Tires squealed and horns wailed again as she sprinted across the street.
“Come on,” she bellowed over her shoulder.
The faceless man sat up next to his car. He didn’t seem to notice the bullet holes in his coat or pale shirt. He reached for his fallen pistol, a movement with no urgency behind it.
Another mirror-black Hudson Hornet roared up Pasadena Avenue, and another chorus of tires and horns echoed across the small park as drivers avoided it. Eli heard the heavy, hollow crunch of two cars colliding as the big sedan charged onto the island and came to rest along the southern point of the triangular park.
Eli turned and ran. He lurched, thrown off balance by the flintlock rifle he clutched and didn’t dare release. The leafy plants crunched under his feet.
“Hello, Mr. Teague,” boomed a voice behind him. “You were instructed to remain in your hometown. You haven’t followed these instructions.”
The cars in the street hadn’t worked back up to speed, so Eli earned more angry honks than screeching brakes as he dove through traffic. An SUV scuffed its tires and bumped him just hard enough to stagger him. The rifle clattered against the grille. The big truck’s driver, a woman with platinum blond hair, shouted at Eli through the windshield.
Then the windshield spiderwebbed with a bang as a gunshot rang out behind him. The driver screamed. Eli barely pushed himself off the big car’s hood before she gunned the accelerator and sped away.
Twenty yards ahead, Harry yanked open the Model A’s passenger door. She threw herself across the rumble seat and behind the wheel. The engine coughed once and let out a roar of its own. The car lunged forward a few feet just as Eli reached it.
He dove into the passenger space just as Harry slammed the car into reverse. Momentum threw Eli off the seat and the flapping door banged against his shin. The rifle’s barrel hit him in the side of the head. Outside the pavement rushed past the car.
He pushed himself back up onto the bench. Harry had her arm over the seat, craning her neck to see out the rear window while she drove full speed down the street in reverse. The transmission whined with the effort.
Through the windshield, Eli could see the faceless men. Two of them. They stood in the middle of the street and stared down the road after the old car.
A horn blared, Harry swerved the car, and Eli grabbed the dash to keep from being flung out the passenger door.
The Model A swerved again, sharp. The wheels on the passenger side lifted off the road, and Eli slid back into the car, bumping up against Harry. She shoved him away and slammed the pedals to the Model A’s floor. The vehicle lunged forward, the passenger door slammed shut, and the seat back hit Eli right below the shoulder blades. The rifle shook free of his grip and fell between him and the door.
Harry spun the steering wheel back and forth, hand over hand like she was piloting a ship. The Model A wove through traffic. She ignored the yellow line and earned a few blaring horns and shouts.
It took Eli a moment to recognize the cylindrical speedometer, but it swung back and forth with every sharp turn. He guessed their speed at around sixty miles an hour. Through what looked like a residential area. Maybe even the outskirts of some kind of college. The engine didn’t seem to be straining at all.
Harry wove around a pickup and muttered something under her breath. She spun the wheel again, and the passenger door thumped Eli in the side. There didn’t seem to be any seat belts. Which made sense for a 1929 Model A, he realized.
“What…” Eli flinched as the old car slid between a moving truck and a green sedan. “What just happened?”
The Model A swooped around another corner. Eli braced his feet and pushed himself back against the seat. He didn’t slide as much this time.
“Can we slow down a lit—”
“No.”
The road ahead was empty. Harry shot straight through the stop sign at the end of the block without hesitation. She glanced over her shoulder without slowing. Eli looked back too. The road looked empty for at least two blocks. But then he caught a glimpse of something black and gleaming. He could hear the growl of the Hudson Hornet’s big engine as it closed on them.
“We have to get out of their range,” she said.
“Their what?”
“Their range.”
Harry turned right at the next corner. There were no other cars, but she still didn’t slow down. Eli pushed himself into the seat and managed to not end up pressed against her again. He heard tires screech and skid behind them, and the growl grew louder. He glanced through the rear window and saw the Hornet just a few dozen yards back.
The Model A blasted through another stop sign. This time it got them a sharp bleat from a small blue car. The next cross-street had a full stoplight, which Harry also ignored. Eli heard brakes squeal and flinched away from a close view of a bus headlight and then they were through the intersection.
Behind them he heard a sharp squeal of brakes and the deep growl faded away.
He spread his feet a little wider as they went around the next corner. Again, Harry didn’t move. She almost rode the car’s controls, standing on the pedals and using the steering wheel to pull herself up off the rumble seat. It made him think of kids on bikes, using their own weight to force every ounce of speed out of the cranks. Her ponytail swung out to the side and then back.
The growl of the Hudson Hornet’s engine faded more. Eli couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like the car was driving in a different direction. It sounded like a distant freeway.
Harry glanced at Eli, then back to the road. “When people are scared,” she said, “they tend to move in straight lines. That’s why most people search for them that way.”
“They do?”
“Have you ever heard stories of children lost in the woods? When it takes days to find them, how often are they right near where they first vanished? No one can find them because they’re in the last place most people think to look.”
Eli looked at the houses and cars as they flew past. “Isn’t everything in the last place you look, technically?”
“The problem is,” she continued, ignoring him, “if we don’t make any turns, we just end up going where they expect us to go, and they catch us. But if we make too many turns, we don’t get out of their range.”
“And they can catch us?” Eli guessed.
She nodded once and spun them around another corner. A small dog on a leash yipped at them twice.
“What do you mean, their range? Can they see somehow? Do they have…” The memory of a blind superhero danced on the edge of Eli’s thoughts. “I don’t know, radar-sense or something?”
“Mr. Teague,” she said, “right now I’m spending a small part of my concentration driving this car and a very large part reminding myself I shouldn’t kick you out and leave you for them to find. Please conside
r this before distracting me. Or asking any further questions.”
The Model A swerved around a pack of bicyclists, then cut them off to take another corner. Half a dozen angry men and women glared at Eli through orange-lensed glasses as the bikes clattered to a halt. A female voice followed them around the corner: “Asshole!”
He let another two intersections go by before he asked, “Where are we going?”
“East, at the moment.”
“No, I mean, where are—”
“I know what you mean, Mr. Teague!”
Eli looked over his shoulder. “Are they…do you think we lost them?”
“They’re always following. It’s just a question of how far behind they are.”
He opened his mouth, but closed it before any actual sounds came out.
Harry looked back and cocked her head to listen for a few beats. Her shoulders dropped. “I think we may have done it,” she said. “I thought our goose was well and truly cooked when the second one showed up. I’ve never heard of anyone getting away from two of them.”
Her feet shifted. The Model A slowed. The car still moved faster than the speed limit, but not so much it would gather more attention. Almost two minutes passed before she took another turn.
“Can you…Are you going to drop me off somewhere?”
She guided them past a gorgeous green 1970 Chevy Chevelle. The lanky driver blinked at them as they went by. Eli heard the muscle car’s engine rev behind them. It sounded small after the roar of the Hornet.
He cleared his throat. “Are you going to—”
“I heard you the first time, Mr. Teague.”
“Sorry,” he said. “You can call me Eli.”
“I think it’s best if we keep things formal for now, Mr. Teague.” Harry sighed. “As tempting as it is to leave you here, I can’t do it.”
“Why?”
“Because they’d interrogate you and then kill you.”
“Ahhh.”
“If you were lucky, they’d kill you first.”
He managed a nervous laugh. “Yeah, lucky me. Can’t question a dead man, right?”
She glared at him. “Of course they can,” she said. Her attention shifted back to the road. “It just doesn’t hurt as much when they cut the answers out of you.”
Eli tried to come up with a response, but it withered in his throat.
She shook her head. The ponytail swished back and forth across her back. “I’m stuck with you, Mr. Teague.”
10
They’d been driving for almost an hour. Harry had stayed off the highways. For the past thirty minutes they’d been on a two-lane road which seemed to shift between residential areas and long stretches of plains or almost-desert. If Eli’s reading of the sun was correct, they were heading more or less northeast.
It occurred to him he’d seen more types of terrain in the past week than he’d seen in the previous twenty-nine years of his life.
Cars zoomed up and swerved around them. Shiny sports cars, pickups, a U-Haul, minivans, even one big sixteen wheeler. Harry seemed determined not to go over sixty-five. Once Eli got used to reading the cylindrical speedometer, he realized how steady she’d kept their speed once they were out of Pasadena.
“So,” he said.
She glanced at him. She’d been giving him quick looks every few minutes, usually as she looked over her shoulder. Her expression shifted between sad and aggravated. She hadn’t said much. When she did, it was just short, simple commands. Stop crowding her (a challenge on the tiny bench that made up the rumble seat). Brace for a turn. Adjust one of the mirrors.
Eli knew a 1929 Model A shouldn’t have side mirrors. Yet another upgrade. He wondered how many others the car had.
“So,” he said again, “is this all about the treasure hunt?”
Harry sighed. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“The guys with…the faceless men…” A dozen questions raced onto his tongue and tripped over one another. A dozen more pushed their way to the front of his mind.
“That’s what everyone calls them,” she said when nothing else came. “It’s what they’ve always been called.”
“Always?”
She nodded. “Since the country was first founded.”
Three new questions shoved themselves into his forebrain, and knocked a random one off his tongue. “What did you mean about their range?”
She reached up and tugged the point of her tricorne away from him, just an inch. “They’re certain of everything within about three hundred feet. Some of them a little more, some a little less.”
“What do you mean, certain?”
“Are you wearing stockings right now, Mr. Teague?”
“What?”
“Stockings. Socks.”
“Yeah,” he said with a confused nod.
She glanced at him, her eyes flitting away from the road. “You didn’t check.”
“Yeah, but I know I am.”
“You’re certain,” she said with another nod. “Just as you could be certain walking through a dark room you’re familiar with. Just as they are. It’s how they move. How they drive.” Her fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “How they aim.”
“So it’s some kind of…ESP? Telepathy or something?”
She shook her head. “It’s just certainty.”
“But what does that—”
Harry glanced in the tiny side mirror and raised two fingers off the steering wheel, silencing him. Another engine rumbled up behind them. Eli waited to see the car rush past them, but it hung back. He looked over his shoulder, through the oval rear window.
A police cruiser followed a few car lengths behind them. A Dodge Charger, with an aggressive-looking push bumper. It settled in and matched speeds with them. The morning sun splashed across the windshield and hid the officer. Or officers.
“Consarn it,” muttered Harry.
“It might not mean anything,” Eli said. “Maybe he’s just checking out the car.”
“That’s what worries me.”
Eli tried to picture the Model A from behind as the officers would see it. A blank spot formed in the image. “Does your car have license plates?”
Her chin went up once, then back down. “Yes.”
“Are they up to date?”
“Not precisely as such, no.”
Eli fought the urge to glance back at the cruiser again. “How out of date are they?”
Harry’s fingers danced on the steering wheel as if she was counting. She glanced at the side mirror again. “Seven decades? Maybe eight?”
“Seven decades?”
Red light flashed in the side mirror and the cruiser’s sirens let out a squawk.
Harry snarled.
“Pull the car over,” a voice echoed behind them.
“Hang on,” she said, “I’m going to make a run for it.”
“What?!”
“If we can find a slick spot, we can lose him. It’ll be tough out here, but if we can make it to the next town—”
He grabbed her arm. “Why are we running? He’ll give you a warning or a ticket and then we’ll be gone anyway.”
“The faceless men sometimes use local law enforcement,” she snapped, shaking him off. “The police could have orders to arrest us on sight.”
“They might not. They might just be—”
The siren squawked again. “Pull the car over now!”
Harry glanced from Eli to the mirror. The Model A’s engine rumbled. Eli braced his feet.
The cruiser lunged up alongside them. The lights on the roof flashed in their eyes. “Now!” shouted the officer through the PA system. Eli could see the figure in the passenger seat pointing emphatically at the highway’s shoulder.
Harry reached for the gear shift, but Eli touched her arm again. “They’ll run us off the road,” he said.
The cruiser’s passenger wheels crossed the line. Its doors were inches from the Model A. The officer in the passenger seat pointed at the shoulder a
gain.
She glared at Eli, grumbled something he couldn’t hear over the competing engines, and took her foot off the gas.
The car slowed. The cruiser stayed alongside them until Harry angled the car into the dirt and gravel on the side of the road. It dropped back at the last moment to pull in right behind them.
Doors opened. Feet crunched in the gravel. Eli glanced back and saw two officers with their hands on their guns, but neither of them had drawn. He looked at Harry and saw her feet poised over the pedals. “Just so you know,” she said through gritted teeth, “there’s a good chance we’re about to die.”
“What?”
“Try to act casual, Mr. Teague.”
“What do you mean, die?”
The policemen walked forward and split to come up on either side of the car. The one by Harry stood tall enough that the Model A’s roof hid his eyes and hat. Eli’s was thick and heavy, with a name tag that read FOSTER.
“Kill the engine,” said the one by Harry. With one hand he removed his sunglasses and hung them on his shirt pocket.
Harry glanced at Eli and pasted on a smile. “Of course, Officer.” She reached out, flicked two switches, and the car’s engine coughed itself to sleep.
“Keys,” he said with a nod at the steering column.
“There are no keys in a Model T, Officer,” she lied sweetly, moving her hands away from the column. “If I want to start it again, I’ll need to get out and turn the crank for the magneto.” She gestured at the front of the car.
The officer looked out at the hood, studied the small dashboard, and weighed the information for a moment. “License and registration,” he said. Not a question, just a simple command.
Foster shifted next to Eli’s door. The posture felt familiar from assorted run-ins with Zeke over the years. Two parts arrogance, one part excitement that he might get to pull his weapon. Eli hoped he was imagining it.
Harry looked up at him. “Is there a problem?”
The officer looked at her, then turned his head to look at the space behind the bench. “Why didn’t you pull over when we instructed you to?”
Harry took in a breath. “Well, you see—”