Mystery: Satan's Road - Suspense Thriller Mystery (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Crime Thriller) (25 page)

He moved closer and the head flinched, the bird snapping its beak open and closed.

Sean stood there, the glare of the headlights blinding him. It was an owl. The eyes were huge. Sean could see it rotating its head in that
way
they do.

He reached across with one gloved hand, and the owl immediately attacked with both sets of talons. Sean pulled back, realizing there was no way to get close enough to pry the bird out without having his arms shredded. The plastic grill had split when the bird struck and then closed around its chest again, holding the owl in an inhumane vise.

Sean trudged back to his door and climbed inside the SUV.

“It's an owl,” he said, letting out an exasperated lungful of air. “It must have flown up from the road and hit us dead on. Now it's stuck and can't get out.”

“What kind of owl?” Tracy looked like she was about to cry.

Sean shrugged. “Look it up.” Tracy took her phone from the center console cup holder and tapped the web browser.

“What color is it?” she asked.

“White. All white with little brown spots and big yellow eyes. And very scary claws.”

After a few seconds, she moaned. “My God, it's a Snowy Owl.”

“That's appropriate.”

“It's an endangered species, Sean.”

“Well, I didn't purposefully hunt it down.”

“They nest on the ground. It was probably hunting or resting, not knowing it was on the highway. Then it saw us coming, flew up, and we hit the thing.”

“I don't know what to do. I can't pry it out of the grill. And we can't just sit here waiting for some long haul trucker to plow into the back of us.”

“Is it suffering?” she asked.

Sean looked at her. “How happy would you be, your ass jammed into a grill on a night like this.” He’d realized right away that he said the wrong thing. “I'm sorry. I'd like to do the right thing here, but in this case I don't know what that is exactly. I think we need to keep moving.”

“Poor thing,” Tracy said, her head down, swiping through a whole library of big eyed Snowies.

Sean put the SUV in gear. As soon as he accelerated, one wing flashed up and banged on the hood. Tracy flinched and Sean swallowed hard. This was going to be a long drive.

If Sean’s mother were here, she'd say this was an omen. Like the gods had sent a message to them regarding an uncertain future. An email would have been more humane. Now they were going to have to witness every last dying effort of the owl as they crawled down a road that looked more like an endless snow-covered cow pasture.

He looked at the GPS. Two more miles to go on this highway and then they could turn left, back towards the Interstate in North Dakota. He glanced over at the gas gauge, and his stomach clenched. They were on empty. How had that happened so fast? They’d filled up that morning in Canada. They should have half a tank left.

He looked at the GPS again, willing the screen to zoom through the two miles as quickly as possible, their four-wheel-drive apparently burning gas faster than a Greyhound bus. And where was the closest gas station? He could use the GPS to check that out, but didn't want to waste any more time.

“How's Ash?” he asked, not willing to take his eyes off the road for even a second.

“She's still sleeping. She's slept a lot on this trip. She'll probably be up at twelve.”

“Midnight,” thought Sean. By that point we'll be sitting at the side of the road, out of gas, covered in a mountain of snow.

“Turn left in half a mile,” said the GPS.

“Thank God,” said Sean.

“Are you OK?” Tracy leaned toward him, but Sean was more worried she would see the gas gauge. She rubbed his neck, then stopped when the owl’s wing flew up again and thrashed at the hood.

“This is terrible,” moaned Tracy. “The owl is dying right in front of us, and there's nothing we can do. I'm glad Ashley is sleeping through this.”

“Mommy. Where are we?” asked Ashley, her voice sleepy and uncertain. They were both well acquainted with three-year-olds and their great sense of timing.

“Half a mile from a plowed road,” Sean said, thinking out loud. That's the way he imagined it. A super highway cleaned right down to the blacktop, dotted with brightly lit gas stations and maybe a nice clean Ramada where they could get out of this storm.

“Turn left in three hundred feet,” said the GPS, and Sean's heart swelled with hope. Except from where he was sitting, all he could see was more of the same. No lights or signs; snow swirling into the muzzy edges of the road.

No tracks to follow. A bleak lifeless hinterland.

When the GPS told them to take a left, Sean could see no sign of a turnoff. He slowed to a stop and rolled down his window.

“I don't see a road,” said Tracy. “I don't see anything. Just more plowed field and frozen trees. Even the stubble is buried.”

“What the hell?” Sean hit the steering wheel with his fist. Why should he trust the GPS? It was just another computer, and every computer he had ever owned had disappointed him in moments of need. The PowerPoint file that disappears five minutes before a key meeting, the cell phone that runs out of juice just as your tire goes flat and you need to call a tow truck. What was different about this?

Even though he dreaded the idea, he got out of the Explorer again and walked over onto the left shoulder to see if there was a turn-off hidden somewhere under an endless drift.

He couldn't see anything.

He threw his hands up then let them drop to his sides. The international symbol for
I'm fucked
. He turned back to Tracy and shrugged.

Her uncle had been right. Despite his dementia, he seemed pretty clear about their travel plans.
Stay away from twenty-one,
he’d said.
It’s haunted
.

Back in the SUV he wiped snow off his shoulders. At least the wind was dying down. But now the snow was coming down even heavier.

“We've done something to upset the snow gods. And now the GPS gods are messing with us too. The gas gods will be next.”

“I saw,” said Tracy. “We should have filled up in Grand Forks. Or at least Climax.”

“On a night like tonight, I didn’t think it was a good idea to stop in a town called Climax. I think I saw that slasher movie.”

Tracy just shook her head.

“Well, if we run out, at least we can call someone,” he added.

“Not on my phone,” she said. “For the last mile or so I've had zero bars.”

Sean hung his head on the steering wheel for a few seconds, staring at his soggy running shoes. “Great. We went on a weekend trip, took a wrong turn, and now we're in the Bermuda triangle of North Dakota.”

If that was even the state they were in. He wasn’t sure anymore.

.   .   .

SEAN LOST WHATEVER FAITH
he still had in the GPS. It seemed hopelessly lost.

He asked Tracy to punch in a search for the closest gas station. She got a hit about ten miles up the road. Except, the road had no name, and the computer was starting to sound like it had early-onset dementia.

“Gas station ahead nine point six miles. Turn around now.”

“Turn around now?” Sean was flummoxed. “The arrow is pointing forward, but she's saying to turn around?”

“It's not a she, Sean. It's a computerized voice. The program is confused. Maybe it's the weather. The snow might be blocking the satellite signal.” Tracy should know; she was in IT. She worked for a big insurance company back home as a project manager.

“I'm not stopping. If the GPS, who shall now be referred to in non-gender specific terms, believes there's a gas station ahead, then I'm a believer too.”

Tracy shook her head.

“Daddy mad?” asked Ashley.

“No. Daddy's not mad, dear. He's just talking to the GPS.”

“Let's call the voice Pat. How's that? A good solid Irish name,” said Sean, swinging the steering wheel to the right because they had hit another patch of ice under the snow, and the SUV was slipping into the other lane. If there was another lane. Driving in the winter in these parts was a matter of faith more than skill.

Sean had taken a course on driving skills with the RCMP a few years before. On the test course, he had successfully mastered a power turn at forty-miles-an-hour. Like the kind you see in the movies.

You speed in one direction, then twist the wheel and reverse the vehicle, and then accelerate in the opposite direction.

They didn't cover driving on sheer ice buried under a foot of heavy snow though. No one was doing a high-speed chase under these conditions unless they had a death wish.

“Gas station in one point seven miles. Turn around now.”

“Pat's of two minds on the gas station,” said Tracy, and Sean smiled for the first time all day. This would all work out in the end, he thought. They'd laugh about this experience one day. If Tracy could see the humor in a situation, and she was his litmus test for these kinds of things, then he knew they would be all right. Once they filled the tank, even if they slid into a drainage ditch, at least they'd be able to stay warm.

“Turn right in three hundred yards.”

Sean peered through the heavy snowfall. This time he could make out a turnoff ahead, barely discernable, an extended bulge in the field arrowing off to the right.

He took the turn at a crawl, worried about missing the road and dipping down into the shoulder or crashing into a culvert. Then he stopped.

He wanted to swear, but Ashley was at the age where she repeated everything she heard.

So he swallowed his words.             

Ahead of them, spanning the two-lanes and stretching off into the distance in both directions was a tall steel fence. The kind you would see in a high security prison. Unclimbable – with sharp spikes turned down at the top, facing inward.

It was hard to estimate the height exactly, but this was no ordinary barrier. Sean guessed ten feet high, maybe more.

At the road, the fence ended at the shoulder where rolling barred gates extended into the road, one from each side. They were both stalled at the halfway point in each lane. As if they had been deserted.

“Is Pat leading us into a military installation?” asked Sean. Tracy had her face up close to her window, as if she couldn't believe her eyes.

“But there's no one there. And the gates are jammed midway,” she said. She looked back at the GPS. An icon of a gas pump was glowing on the screen, seemingly minutes away, like a valued prize in a video game.

A re-up pill drawing them in.

“There's no name on the map. Maybe they use this to keep cattle in during the summer,” offered his wife.

“Or a herd of T-Rexes,” said Sean. He wasn't a farm kid, but he knew a few strings of barbed wire usually did the trick. Cows weren't high jumpers and they weren’t known for their climbing skills.

“What choice do we have?” he asked. “The gas gauge is past empty. The needle is boldly going where it has never gone before. We might run out any second.”

“So go, then. We have a young child to look after. I don't care if it's Area 51.”

Sean pulled ahead, feeling odd passing through the gap between the two barred gates. He couldn't see any signs. Wasn't that unusual? A 'No Trespassing' banner would make him feel better. One of those biohazard warnings you see in movies about the apocalypse. Or some indication of what they could expect on the other side.

Then he saw the giant lights mounted on the last fence pole on each side. Gone dark. Wouldn't they be on right now? They were usually triggered by low light levels.

He looked back at the GPS display.

Pat was still convinced there was a gas station ahead. But Pat's performance had been iffy lately. Maybe she had caught a bug. Or maybe she was a computerized homicidal maniac leading them to the slaughter.

They bought the GPS for forty-nine dollars on sale at some discount mall.

That should have been a clue.

.   .   .

THE TOWN SIGN
, which looked to be at least fifty years old and had never been touched by a paintbrush since, read
Berzerker
; basically a weather-beaten plank mounted on two twisted fence posts. Like something out of a horror movie.

Sean frowned.

Who names a town
Berzerker
? Why not
Insane Acres
or
Maniacville?
The local Chamber of Commerce needed to hire a new tourism consultant.

“I just got the chills. And it's not from the weather,” Tracy murmured.

“I'd love to look this up on the Internet. Imagine what Wikipedia might have to say.”

“Still no bars,” said Tracy, looking at her cell phone. “So Wikipedia is not an option. Do you believe in time warps?”

“I do now.” They passed the sign and continued down what they believed was a gravel road only because the traction had improved. They could see buildings ahead in the distance, but no lights.