by Brian Bakos
think he’s just trying to act tough, after his crash and all, and doesn’t really mind getting let off the hook.
Tommy rejoins us. We all sit quietly, observing the water drip off the roof in a steady beat. Another lighting flash, this time farther away.
After a while, the rain peters down to a misty drizzle. The atmosphere is still pretty glum, though. Then it turns downright scary.
“Look,” Tommy says, “somebody’s coming.”
A big, hunched over man is heading our way from the right. He wears a long greenish-black coat and a floppy hat pulled low so you can’t see his face. A pale hand grips the coat collar around his throat.
Melissa digs her fingers into my arm.
“I don’t like the looks of him,” she says.
“Me neither,” Tommy says.
Quentin pulls a sling shot from his bike bag.
“He’d better not be looking for trouble,” he says, “cause I’ve got some for him.”
“I hope you brought more of those,” Tommy says. “Look over there!”
Another man, also dressed in a long coat and floppy hat, is coming from the left. And a third guy is coming straight at us out of the mist!
“This is really weird,” Melissa says. “Let’s get out of here!”
Her voice is all shaky. I’m feeling pretty scared myself. For an instant I think of screaming for the policeman, but he is too far away. Besides, an atomic blast probably wouldn’t be enough to wake him up.
The three men move slowly toward us through the drizzle – like identical, nightmare chess pieces, boxing us in. The only escape route lays behind us, toward the creek.
“Come on,” Quentin says, “I know where there’s a bridge.”
We grab our bikes and run.
8. Retreat to the Wasteland
We slip and slide over the wet grass toward the creek. Water soaks right over my shoe tops again, though I hardly notice the clammy wetness on my feet. The walking chess pieces vanish back into the fog, but I’m sure they’re still following us.
The ‘bridge’ is just a couple of boards thrown between the steep banks. Quentin slings his bike over his shoulder and wobbles across.
Melissa looks very doubtful.
“I can’t go on that thing,” she says.
“Then get out of the way!” I practically shout.
“Oh, all right,” Melissa says, “if you’re going to be that way about it.”
Quentin comes back and picks up her English racer.
“Thank you, Quentin,” Melissa says, “be careful with it, now.”
She starts walking daintily across the boards, as if she has all the time in the world.
“Hurry!” Tommy yells. “I can see them.”
This gets Melissa moving pretty quick.
“Ohhh!” she cries and takes off.
The bridge rattles and bucks as she dashes to the far side. It’s my turn now. The boards stretching out by me feet look about as solid as crepe paper.
“Just go, Amanda,” Tommy says, “leave your bike.”
In a few seconds of mindless terror, I make it to the other side. Tommy is kind enough to carry my Hornet over for me, I don’t know if I could have managed otherwise. Quentin makes a final run to pick up Tommy’s bike. He gets back to us just as the strange men are slithering out of the mist on the other side of the creek.
“Ahhhhh!” Melissa and I howl a stereo scream.
“Let’s give it the old Heave Ho!” Quentin says.
He and Tommy send the flimsy bridge tumbling into the water moments before the mystery men can move onto it.
The three of them stand together on the far side, motionless as statues, staring down the muddy bank. All I can see are their long coats and the tops of their hats. They seem like Halloween costumes with nothing inside.
“Well, that’s the end of that,” Quentin says.
We heft our bikes and scramble up the stony bank to the railroad tracks.
All around us sprawls a wasteland of trestles, scrub vegetation, and electrical towers. The double tracks disappear into the gloom. Farther away, an eerie red light shines through the mist like in invitation to the lower regions. A narrow, muddy road runs along the other side of the tracks, a dense tangle of bushes and trees hems us in on the far side. The whole area looks as if the end of the world has passed through.
And to think I cast the deciding vote to come out here. What an idiot I was!
In the distance, I can hear cars hissing along wet pavement, but I can’t see the freeway. The noise is kind of reassuring, but also a bit spooky.
We moves down the slope from the tracks to the dirt road.
“Now what?” Tommy asks.
“This road goes by the city hall,” Quentin says. “We can get off there.”
“But the police station is there, too,” Melissa says. “The cops might pick us up.”
“That’s the least of our worries,” I say. “Look!”
Two more of the awful men are coming at us down the road. They don’t seem to be walking so much as drifting along, their coats trailing in the dirt.
“Come on!” Quentin yells.
We barrel away in the opposite direction. Our fat tires roll over the soft ground okay, but Melissa’s skinny ones can’t handle it.
“Oh! Oh!” She cries.
I look back over my shoulder. Melissa swerves, recovers, swerves again.
“Hang on Melissa!” I shout.
She falls off the English racer, right into the mud. She gets up quickly.
“Oh my hair!”
She brushes at the mud splatter. I stop pedaling.
“Forget your hair. Hop on!”
“No way, Amanda, I can’t leave my bike.”
She picks up her English racer, but the two mystery men are closing in on us fast.
“Get over here!” I shout.
Melissa runs up to me.
“Okay, but let me peddle. I can go faster.”
I start to get off, but then a nightmare vision stops me for an instant. What if Melissa simply takes off with my bike, leaving me behind?
Deal with it, Amanda!
I get off, Melissa jumps on. I position myself on the back carrier and we’re all set to go. Then Tommy and Quentin come barreling back toward us.
“There’re more of them up there,” Quentin says. “We’re surrounded.”
Melissa jumps off my bike. “What do we do now?”
She picks up her English race and hugs it to herself like a security blanket. I look desperately around the wasteland – there must be some way out!
“Follow me!” I yell.
Pushing my bike ahead like a battering ram, I shove my way into the dense tangle of bushes and trees beside the road. Pickers scrape my skin, a branch whips against my face. I just keep going, though, like some explorer hacking through a jungle.
When I’m about done for, Quentin pushes ahead and takes the lead – then Tommy. Melissa brings up the rear with her rescued bike.
“Oh, my shoes will be absolutely ruined,” she complains.
At last we come through to a broad open area overlooking the freeway. I feel an instant of triumph, then –
“The Tire Giant!” we all gasp.
It looms high above us huge and terrible, like a black hole punched into the real world leading to some other fiendish reality. All the light in the universe seems to soak into its dark walls. Its deep tread leers at us, just aching to swallow us up. The air crackles.
“Down the hill,” Quentin says. “Let’s go!”
We make for the slope down to the freeway, but more mystery men block our path. They come at us from all sides now.
“This isn’t pretty!” Melissa wails.
We flee back toward the Tire Giant. A ramp drops down from the massive treads. Before we understand what we’re doing, we run inside with our bikes.
The ramp closes behind us.
Two: Trapped
9. Mystery Cavern
; Everything turns as dark as an unlit closet in the middle of the night, at the bottom of a coal mine. Only my luminous watch dial and another one on Melissa’s wrist give off tiny specks of light.
We all crowd together in a tight pack. Our bikes ring us in like a fortress wall. An odd, whirring sound fills the air, along with a faint patter of rain coming from some faraway world that we’ll never see again.
Thank heaven I can feel my friends all around me, can hear them breathing. Otherwise, I’d be screaming my head off.
I once visited Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, and the guide asked us: “Would you like to experience total darkness?”
Before we could answer, he switched off the lights. That was very weird – this is a thousand times worse.
“Somebody turn on a light,” Quentin whispers harshly. “I don’t have one.”
He sounds about as scared as I feel.
“M-mine doesn’t work unless the bike is moving,” Melissa says.
“I’ve got one,” Tommy says, “but I’m afraid somebody will see us. Or maybe we’ll see something we don’t want to.”
This dreadful place seems to be a land of unearthliness where time and space have shifted to another dimension. I stare at my glowing watch dial so as to keep the darkness from sweeping away my mind.
My watch is this big, clunky, communist thing made in East Germany, or some other horrible country. Grandma Lenin gave it to me last year, and it has worked okay. But now the second hand is stopped dead.
I grope for the headlight on my front fender. I feel all jerky, like those people in old silent movies.
“Well, let’s try it, anyway,” I say, “and if we don’t like what we see, we can turn it off again.”
I flick on my light. The beam shoots straight into the blackness, then turns upwards at a crazy angle, as if it were a bent soda straw.
“Oh, man,” Tommy says.
He switches on his light next. Our two rays twist together into a psycho pretzel that shimmers