Ascending the Boneyard (8 page)

Even though he's pissed, Haze follows me as I stumble-run down the street.

As he barrages me with questions I have no intention of answering, I spot what I'm looking for. There, on Clinton just off Buchanan. Not the same yellow car, but a taxicab-yellow
Termi-Pest
truck with its mutantly larger-than-life cockroach on top and the company motto painted along the side.

COCKROACHES ARE OUR SPECIALTY.

Yeah. Only now cockroaches are
my
specialty.

I swallow my disgust at the sight of that four-foot-long fiberglass bug perched on top of the truck, channel my inner ninja warrior, and approach the driver's-side door all stealth-like.

“Whoa. What are you doing?”

I make a visual sweep of the perimeter before peeking inside the window. Just as I figured: the keys are in the ignition.

I reach for the door handle, but Haze tackle-pins me to the truck.

“Whatever you're thinking about doing?” he says. “Don't.”

I try a Roundhouse move to get him off me. But he pushes harder, hard enough to make my shoulders burn against the siding.

“This is a bad idea, Tosh. You're not thinking this through. You don't even know how to drive.”

“The hell. We took drivers' ed together.”

“We never actually
drove
a car.”

“We used the simulators,” I hiss through my pain. “Same thing.”

“No, it's not.” He leans into the shove, and I clench my teeth to keep from grunting in agony. The mantel clock is ticking down on this mission, and I'm starting to panic.

“You're being totally irrational, Tosh.”

“You're wrong,
Nate
.” Little droplets of spit fly out of my mouth as I utter that one unforgivable word—his real name. We've been last-name-only since fourth grade. “I'm being
totally
rational. I'm doing what you said.
See the world. Live in the now.
”

Haze's face goes blank.

His grip slowly eases from around my arms.

He backs away from me, and even though I know it makes me the biggest dick-friend in the UpperWorld, I turn, unlatch the handle, open the door. Just before I get in, I hear a quick whiz, feel something strike my back and then fall to the road at my feet.

It's his face mask. Haze threw his face mask at me.

Good. I may need it.

I bend down to pick it up.

“If you get in that car and drive away,” he says, “you're crazy for sure.”

I swing into the seat. “If I stay here, I'm even crazier. I can fix this, Haze.”

We stare at each other for a few tense seconds through the open window. I don't want him to try to talk me out of anything. Because he's right—there are potentially hundreds of reasons I shouldn't do this and only one solid reason why I should.

To Ascend.

I throw the truck into drive and screech off toward the UnderWorld.

5.5

The commandos
made it look so easy when they hopped in that fat yellow car and shot off down the abandoned highway. I fix the scene in my mind exactly the way I saw it on the computer, try to copy their moves to the
n
th degree.

I mean, it's just driving.

How hard can it be?

6

Cruising down
the empty streets of Sandusky is pretty snap.

Taking the turns? Nothing snap about that. I'm gonna need special ops just to keep the truck in the center of the lane.

My eyes drift over to the passenger's seat, catch sight of my cell phone and Haze's painter's mask sitting where his ass would be if he were any kind of friend. At a stop sign, I take the mask, place it over the empty headrest. There. Now it's more like Haze is riding shotgun. For some reason, that calms me down.

Do you have any idea how far it is from Sandusky to New York?

I cast another glance at the mask before peeling away from the stop sign.

“Five hundred and seventeen miles,” I say. “It's for a good cause, though.”

You just committed grand-theft auto. How could that possibly be for a good cause?

“I'm a first timer with no criminal record. What's one little felony?”

One little felony means spending the best years of your life in jail.

That's the thing about jail. You can already be locked up in a certain way and no one else would ever know.

This better be important, Tosh. You'd better be on a mission to save the world.

“Something like that.”

And while we're on it, could you have stolen a more conspicuous car? I mean, you're driving a bright yellow truck with a gigantic bug on top. And you have five hundred and fifteen miles to go. Does that not alarm you?

“Actually, no,” I say. It's true, too. There's no way to articulate how
not
alarmed I am at this moment. Haze is with me—my posse, the real one, the guy who knows the hell I've been through for the past 1,586-plus days. Who saw the first signs of cataclysm from the go-kart seat next to mine. This is one raid I need him with me on. Cam is loyal to the game, sure; he knows the Boneyard like his own backyard, and that's worth something. But Haze knows
me
, and that's worth everything.

I reach for the knob on the radio.

Keep your eyes on the road.

“It's too quiet. I need something in my head.”

Well, that's accurate.

It's not accurate, though. My head isn't empty; it's full of chaos right now. I usually pour some Motor City or Bunny Puke into my ear to solve that problem.

I take one hand off the wheel, unwrap my headphones, pop a single earbud in, and hit play.

What are you doing?

“Clearing the fog.”

I'm pretty sure that everything you're doing right now is against the law.

I don't tell Haze, but wearing an illegal earbud is the least of my worries. If I were him, I'd be more concerned that I'm chasing a cockroach on a quest to turn back the clock. Me, Caleb Tosh, trying to become Worthy so I can keep the UpperWorld from self-destructing.

If that doesn't have “superfail” written all over it, I don't know what does.

By my math-lame calculations, it'll take about nine hours to drive five hundred and seventeen miles to New York City, and since I've never done anything for nine hours except game, I'm pretty sure that the next leg of my life is going to drag solid ass. Bunny Puke helps drown out most of the unwanted noise: the sounds of a raid I couldn't finish, the screams of grim panic, the click-and-report of my worst fail ever, the eruption and fallout of a total wipe.

I squeeze my eyes together, lift the goggles to clear the beads of fog off the lenses.

That's when my phone starts going nuts on the seat next to me. I tick my eyes at Haze's face mask, knowing what he'd say if he were really here, then grab the phone anyway and open my messages by rote memory. My eyes dart between the screen and the road so I can see who it is, as if I don't already know. It's either the cockroach or the commandos, and if it's them, I'd like to read their instructions without pile-driving into a guardrail.

Avoid the toll.

That's it? That's the big instruction,
avoid the toll
? How do they expect me to do that? There's pretty much one way to get to New York from Ohio, and it's a straight shot. I look back at the screen to make sure I read it right.

Yep.

You're texting behind the wheel?

“Well,
you
weren't gonna answer it.” I thumb through the app icons on the screen.

What are you doing, Tosh?

Devin. The go-karts. On a mission to save—

“I need to figure out how to avoid the tolls.”

Man, I can't believe you're texting. You don't even have a license!

“You're not exactly being helpful right now, Haze. Besides, I need to get off this highway, fast. Can you at least tell me when I get to the app with the car on it?”

I don't know how to use that thing.

“You don't have to. Just tell me when I hit the right icon.” My thumb dances across the screen.

You don't have the best track record behind the wheel, Tosh. Watch the road.

“I am, but just tell me when I get to the car.”

There.

I sneak a peek.

“Not the map,” I say, leaning over. “The car!”

Damn it, Tosh. Keep your eyes on the road!

“I need to get off this highway,
now
!” I take the phone back into my own airspace, watch the icons as I zip through them to get to the car app. I don't know where it is since I don't drive and therefore have never needed to use it.

Tosh, the road . . .

“I'm almost there.”

Tosh! The road!

The world outside the truck hovers for a few seconds, then kicks into stop-motion. Trees and asphalt and truck and sky flash-flicker past. I have no idea how long it takes for the Termi-Pest truck to finish rolling and come to an upright stop on the side of the highway, but eventually it does.

I may have blacked out for a second or two.

When I manage to get my eyes open, my head fills with dense fog. It's the truck, I realize; the truck is belching smoke from under the accordion-fold of the hood. For a split second I think I may have forgotten to use my seat belt, which would be bad . . . very bad. I could be ejected, injured, lying on the highway having a surreal, out-of-body experience.

A frantic dig reveals the belt strap tangled up in my T-shirt.

And then I look over, see Haze twisted into an impossible shape against the door. I barely remember him coming with me, but he must have, right? Yeah. Riding shotgun, giving me all kinds of crap about using my phone while driving . . .

I rush to unbuckle before spinning around in a panic to see if he's okay.