She pulled over on some bleak and hopeless stretch of highway so they could switch seats. The air smelled of tree sap, and David could hear running water—a waterfall?—somewhere off in the distance. They hadn’t passed another vehicle since he’d woken up. While he urinated in the bushes, he took his time to breathe in the air and observe the untouched, expansive surroundings. Being out here, you could almost trick yourself into believing that the world is fine and everything is okay.
Back on the road, David behind the wheel, he said, “How much farther do we have to go?”
“We should get there around eight in the morning or so.” Gany snapped her seat belt into place, then curled onto her side so that she faced the passenger window.
“How do I know where to go?”
“There’s a map stuck down by your seat.” She yawned.
He tweezed the map out with a thumb and forefinger then spread it across the steering wheel. It wasn’t even a MapQuest printout, but an actual road map, with their route highlighted in bright yellow marker. There were handwritten notes in spidery print near their destination, telling him what back roads to take once they got off the main highway.
“Tim did all this?” he asked.
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“I get the sense that this is his usual MO, and not just because of . . . well, my situation.”
“He’s a cautious fella,” Gany said. “Now, will you keep quiet so I can catch some z’s?”
“Sorry.”
“There’s CDs in the glove compartment. Classic rock. And I don’t mean the new classic rock, I mean the legit shit. Have at ’em. Just keep the volume down.”
“I think the silence will be just fine.”
Gany didn’t respond. Judging by the deepening of her respiration, David guessed she had already fallen asleep.
50
According to the map, they were only about an hour from their destination—Tim’s so-called Fortress of Solitude—when the early morning sunlight glinted off a collection of chrome bumpers farther up the road. David slowed down. Gany leaned forward in the passenger seat and said, “What is this, now?”
“Daddy?” Ellie said, sitting upright in the backseat.
“It’s okay, hon. Looks like a fender bender, that’s all.”
“I don’t see any fender bender,” Gany said. She rolled down her window and stuck her head out. The morning air swooped into the car. It was downright cold.
Five or six cars stood in a queue behind a single vehicle that was parked slantways across both lanes of the road. The car—a pine-green Corolla with rusted quarter panels—did not appear disabled. Whatever had occurred, it must have just happened, because there were no police on the scene yet, and as David pulled up to the rear of the line, a few people got out of their cars and began to wander over to the Corolla.
“Should we see if they need help?” Ellie said. She was peering between the front seats now, gazing at the wreckage ahead of them.
“No,” Gany said. “Tim said no stopping. We don’t stop.”
David looked at her. She was right; he knew that she was.
“All right,” he said. He spun the steering wheel and rolled the Cadillac up onto the shoulder. There were grooves in the pavement, which caused the car to vibrate.
“But someone might be hurt, Dad.”
“There’s enough people around to help out,” he said. His hands were tight on the wheel, the vibrations traveling up his arms. Trees encroached upon the shoulder and he brought the car nearly to a stop in order to navigate around them.
“Hey, asshole!” someone shouted at them.
“Roll your window up,” David instructed.
Gany started to roll her window up . . . then paused. David eased down on the brake and followed her gaze. They were directly across from the Corolla now, and David saw that the driver’s door stood open and that a slim brunette had staggered several feet from the vehicle, dragging the rigid body of a child toward the center of the road. The woman held the child under the armpits, and at first David thought the kid was unconscious or possibly even dead until he saw the face.
The child was a girl, maybe a bit older than Ellie, mousy brown hair like her mother’s streaking across her pallid, sweaty face. She wore jean shorts, the hems of which were nothing but stringy white tassels. Her legs were smooth and white, the knees pink. A torrent of blood gushed from both nostrils, soaking her powder-blue shirt with a rhinestone unicorn on it. When her head lolled in David’s direction, he saw that she was perfectly conscious. The girl exposed all her bloodstained teeth in a hideous grin. When her hair fell away, David saw that her eyes were blind with madness and swelling from their sockets. As if to give David a show, the girl began chattering her blood-flecked teeth, that rictus grin fixed firmly on her face.
“Drive, David. Go.”
For a split second, his foot forgot which pedal was the accelerator and which was the brake.
“Daddy,” Ellie said again, her voice a rising whine. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt.
The woman in the street shrieked, “My baby! My baby!”
The would-be Samaritans froze in their haste to assist the woman, quickly turning into a gaggle of gape-mouthed onlookers too terrified to get any closer.