Ascending the Boneyard (18 page)

“Why'd you give me that coin?” I ask her, my breath flash-fogging the window.

“Why'd you take it?”

“I dunno.”

“Yes, you do. Why are you so afraid of the truth?”

I shoot her a gritty look. “Hey, you don't know me. You don't know what I'm afraid of.”

“I know you're afraid of cockroaches,” she whispers, and the blood drains straight out of my face. I take out the phone, open the pulsing envelope icon I didn't even know was there.

Yeah. It's him.

“It's no mystery,” she says as I try to blast the cockroach on my wall screen with hate rays. “I saw it on your face at the casino. That last spin on the machine—”

I swing on her. “Who are you?”

“I told you, I'm Starla.”

“Fine.
Starla.
Why do
you
think I took that coin from you?”

“Same reason you came here to start with. You're hoping it'll do something for you that you can't do yourself.”

“Is that right?” I practically spit.

“That's right, cowboy. You know how desperate people can get. You'd be amazed at what some folks are willing to do to save their own lives.”

“That's pretty rich, coming from a girl who's running away from her—”

“Whoa.” The tip of Haze's finger cuts right through the tension between me and Starla. “I hate to interrupt this witty banter, but look.”

We all lean toward the windshield, staring into the distance, where, half a mile or so down the long, flat road ahead of us, the highway seems to just . . . end.

My face goes numb for a second or two. “What is that?”

Starla's mouth pulls into a one-sided smile. “That, my friends, is fog.”

“We're from Ohio,” I tell her, fighting to keep my voice steady. “We get fog. And I've never seen anything like
that
before.”

Haze leans all the way forward. “Me either.”

She turns, gives me the once-over, then Haze. She shakes her head.

“It's just weather, boys. Nothing to get crazy about.”

But the closer we get, the more obvious it becomes—this is not your typical Midwest weather. This is biblical. It has all the appearances of a solid object, like concrete, like if we hit it at this speed, we'll bust into a million pieces of rust-worn car and human flesh. The memory ricochets through my entire body with a deafening gunfire report. Devin . . . the go-karts . . .

“Weird,” Starla says.

“Ya think? Slow down,” Haze tells her, and to my surprise, she does. She slows to a crawl just as we pass through, and not to sound overly dramatic or give the impression that I've watched too much stupid crap on TV, but it's a little like going through an interdimensional portal or something.

On the other side of the fog wall, we're instantly swallowed up. The road disappears, the dried grass off the sides of the road disappears, the other cars . . . We can't even see the hood of our
own
car anymore, much less a single fender of another.

“Whoa . . . ,” Haze says, blowing the word through the chambers of his mask.

“We'll have to pull over till it passes,” I tell her.

“No need. I've got lenses.” She leans over, opens the wobbly glove box, pulls out what looks like a pair of gamer glasses identical to the ones I'm wearing. She puts them on, settles back, and breathes a contented sigh.

My hand shoots up to my face.

They're gone. The goggles are gone.

“Are you kidding me?” I swing back to look at Haze, but he just gives me a baffled shrug.

Starla is unruffled. “We get some pretty crazy fog around here. Not like this, mind you, but it's always pretty soupy.”

“Where'd you get those?” I demand.

“From my father. He developed these lenses. They really work, too. Cuts the glare, makes it easier to see. Maybe you've caught the infomercials—they're usually on late at night.” She kicks me a look, takes in my confused shock. “They're patented and everything,” she adds, adjusting the frames against her face. “That's more like it,” she says, then presses down on the gas until we're pushing forty, fifty, sixty, and beyond.

“Can I see them?” I ask, still a little lock-jawed.

“Not while I'm driving, potato chip.”

The tiny little hairs on my arms prickle. I rotate, slow and cautious, to where I can see her whole face, and I'm hit by another supreme sense of déjà vu. My hand bolts toward her head, but before I can lay a finger on the goggles,
her
hand shoots out and grabs mine by the wrist. Damn, she's strong. And fast!

“Now, why on earth would you try something like that at a time like this?” she asks, cool as gazpacho.

“I'm positive we've met before.” I jerk my chin over my shoulder. “Haze, doesn't she look—”

Skip it. Haze is out.

I spin the other way, press my face against the car window, squint hard. How can she see anything but fog out there, even with her so-called special lenses? The world outside is an ocean of white on white so dense, even the jet stream can be seen contorting inside the swirls of mist.

The known will cease to exist.

I swivel around again, slowly this time. Study her. Not her chest, not her wig, not her makeup, but her. Starla Manley, or whoever she is. Is she in trouble? Does she have any idea how right she was when she said this was a life-or-death situation?

“Why the sudden, desperate urge to escape?” I ask her.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she shoots back.

The freezing subatomic particles of fog absorb into my skin, chill me to my cellular core.

Whatever. I don't even care anymore.

The phone buzzes in my hand. Hopefully it's the commandos, chiming in once and for all with some assistance.

It's Turk.

And my battery's going dead; the low light is winking in the corner of the screen. Great. Even my phone is stacking the odds against me.

“Do you have a cigarette lighter?” I ask.

She banks a look of skepticism in my direction, right through the lenses of the gamer glasses she jacked from me.

“You don't seem the type,” she says. “Bad habit, though. You really should quit.”

“I don't smoke. I just need to charge my phone.”

“Oh. Sure. Let me light one up first, would ya?” She presses the lighter in and pulls a cigarette out of her apron pocket.

I fish my car charger out of my bag and plug it in when she's done, lean my head against the cool window and stare out. If you look close enough for long enough, you can see that the fog is made up of individual dots of supercondensed wet air. It's mind-boggling to consider how many dots surround us at this very second. Beyond trillions, beyond gazillions, whatever the biggest possible number is this side of infinity. There must be non-water-based particles floating around in the fog too: subatomic bits of what used to be something else, something tangible. Microscopic particles of decayed bird cells. Bits of departed souls. Things mixed up in the fog that were once real, that can't be seen or recognized anymore as anything remotely similar to what they once were.

The known will cease to exist.

I seriously hate this head noise.

“Can we turn on the radio or something?” I ask.

She doesn't answer, just reaches out and clicks the knob over. The way she keeps taking her eyes off the road makes me nervous.

“Let me do that,” I say.

She leans back and lets me pick a station without arguing the point.

I turn the knob. Most of the stations are either fuzz or partial fuzz, and after going through the entire dial twice, I realize the only thing coming in clear enough to hear is talk radio.

If Haze were awake, he'd be in news-junky heaven, but instead he's passed out cold in the backseat. The sight of him lying there, inert, camouflaged in his knit cap and his glasses and his face mask leaves a life-sized dent in the middle of my chest.

A news break punches through the monotonous spew of chatter. Not that I'm even listening. I mean, the radio was just meant to be a filter for my brain noise anyway, but the words “I-Tech” jump through the speakers, and I quick hit the volume.

“A stay of execution was granted today for the building formerly housing the Industrial Tech High School.”

“Hey,” Starla chirps. “That's just down from the casino.”

“Shhh.”

“Demolition crews rolled into place this afternoon, only to find a protest in progress. An unidentified spokesperson rallied the mob to a fever pitch before disappearing into the crowd. His speech, however succinct, was enough to open talks between local officials and members of an underground coalition movement. In spite of a brief but volatile counterprotest, coalition members say their mission to prevent the destruction of the abandoned building was a success and has inspired them to take up the cause elsewhere.”

A wash of relief pours over me, water-bucket style. I was invited to join that raid, maybe by Tenth Warriors and maybe by some other platoon, but I was tested, that's for damn sure. And I nailed it. Okay, so I failed the bird, but I nailed this mission. I'm well on my way now. This is going to rack up some serious Ascent Credits. I'll get a few more like this under my belt, but ultimately I'm going after Turk's lair. I can smell the victory as I unbuckle, lean over the back of the seat, wrangle Haze by the arm of his jacket to snap him out of his narcolepsy.

He grunts into semiconsciousness. “Wha—”

“Wake up!”

He shakes his head, scratches the back of his neck. “What for?”

“The old—dude, are you listening? We saved I-Tech, man.
We saved it.
”

Haze sits all the way up, looks around. “Where the hell are we?”

I slowly turn around, lower myself onto the seat, buckle up again.

“Yeah,” I ask Starla. “Where are we?”

She smiles. “Xanadu, boys.”

I no longer recognize the map we're on. Starla Manley is purposely taking us off course. Maybe she's not really a hostage; maybe she's a minion
cleverly disguised
as a hostage.

“Listen,” I say, digging my heels into the floorboard. “It's been nice of you to give us a lift and everything, but . . . we really have no need to go to Canada.”

“
Xanadu
,” she corrects me. “And you most definitely do.”

“We really don't.”

“We have shit to do.” Haze mumbles what appears to be our new mantra from the backseat.

“Then tell me,” she says—only the way it comes out sounds like a challenge. “Where do
you
think you need to go?”

Regrettably, I haven't unlocked that part of the mission yet.

“What's in Xanadu?” I ask, testing her.

“Home.”

“Whose home?”

She smiles without looking at me, nods without answering.

“Whose home?” I ask again.

“You're a clever little monkey, aren't you?”

For the first time since we met her, Starla clams up, and the next few hours pass long and quiet. We let the drone of talk radio fill up the space inside the car. We stop for food, which Haze pays for. We stop for gas, which Haze pays for. Starla never offers, never thanks us; it's almost like she thinks
she's
the one doing
us
a favor.

We spend the night in the car in a parking lot somewhere, and in the morning the fog still has a choke hold on everything in sight. Buildings, trees, cars, people, all reduced to vague shapes and variegated shades of white and gray.

The known will cease to exist.

15.5

Starla Manley
is not who she says she is.

16