Nowhere (11 page)
He shined the penlight up under the seat. It wasn’t very bright at all, but in this darkness it did the job. He looked under the seat on both sides, he even felt up under the cushion for anything that could have been taped or attached with Velcro to the bottom, but still there was nothing.
He sighed and lifted the floor mat knowing this was a fruitless spot to look, but finding himself quickly running out of possibilities. Then to the pedals, nothing there, finally under the dash, but he could barely reach two fingers back behind it and decided that wouldn’t be a good spot to hide anything if you ever wanted to see it again.
He did one last scan of the entire driver side, and finally spotted a small box shaped indention in the plastic of the lower dashboard. It was so small and out of eye line that he had missed it entirely on his first scan. It was the same color of the upper dashboard and the seems in the plastic were so meticulously cut that one could barely tell anything was there at all.
Even as he stared right at it he could barely tell it was there. He went at it with prying fingernails and pulled away from the dash. finally he was able to get some leverage on it and heard a Pop! as the heavy plastic gave way and the small compartment opened.
It was a fuse box for the vehicle. Inside were small fuses, red, yellow, and green with a few blue ones mixed about, and at the bottom, again almost invisible, a small black velvet bag.
He pulled the black bag out. It was light whatever it was. Lighter than he expected a gun to be at least. He pulled the drawstring open and out fell a small silver hand radio. The station dial was set to 101. Just as Steven had said, his two realities collided and suddenly he knew he was on the right track. He still didn’t know how it was possible that he had been to the gas stations, but also been in the parking lot of the pharmacy listening to the radio.
A wave of relief suddenly hit him now as he also realized what this radio meant.
“It wasn’t a gun…” he smiled. “I’m not suicidal after all.”
He turned on the radio…
At first there was static, but then he heard the faint sound of a song playing.
Richard got back into his car. He tuned his car radio to the same signal. He suddenly had new bearing on where to go, he just hoped to talk to Steven again to find out what to do. He started the car and wheeled out of the parking lot, back toward the highway. He turned out and headed further out of town. As the radio signal became stronger he could understand words… ‘Well, well I went, to see the doctor, and I had, my fortune read; and you know, the doctor told me, Son you better stay in bed…’ He was closer than he thought.
He drove on for about an hour before noticing that the signal had become crystal clear. Now he realized the difficulty of this method of discovering a location. He figured that he could still be five or six miles from the actual broadcast tower, but still be receiving a clear signal. He couldn’t cover a whole five to ten mile radius in one night.
He decided that it may be best to try to drive to the highest point that he could get to and scope out the area for any signs of a nearby tower. He had seen a sign a few miles back for a scenic overlook and decided to backtrack and take a look there. He performed a u-turn and went back to the road for the scenic overlook.
Soon he was driving up narrow canyon roads towards the top of some small peak. There weren’t any real mountains in the area, but this seemed pretty high. The narrow dirt roads were a spiraling maze lefts and rights and winding curves so tight that he swore he was going back in the opposite direction and back down the cliff. Suddenly though, the forested dirt road gave way to a clearing which then gave way to a large cliff.
He pulled up close to the edge so he could see as much of a view as possible. He could just barely make out a set of picnic tables and little metal grills just to his left, so he figured that this must be the overlook the signs were talking about. He parked the car and killed the engine and the lights so he could again avoid any detection. He looked back at the road from which he came.
Someone would be hard pressed to have followed him up here without him detecting them, but he still stared back toward the road. He watched intently for about five minutes. Then he stared out over the edge of the overlook. It took only a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness without his headlights projecting out into it.
He could see in the distance what looked like two towers. Both had blinking red lights at the top and they were so close together in the distance that Richard thought they could both be part of the same installation. He guessed that they were about six miles away at least and decided to look back at his map for some kind of reference as to how to get to them.
It took him a bit to get his bearings right, but was almost certain from the map that a little pair of binoculars with a picnic table next to them represented the overlook that he was currently at. With a pen, he drew a little X next to the binoculars. Then he determined that the overlook must face to the south because of the way the contour lines were drawn that way. It seemed like on the map there was a contoured valley that stretched out for the next twenty miles or so.
He began to see how the map matched up with what he was seeing in the darkness beyond the overlook. Then using the scale bar on the map, he projected south about 8 miles or so and drew the best free hand semi circle arc he could. This was his search radius. Now finally he looked for any map symbols that could represent a radio station, but there were none within the search radius. Just for good measure, he shined the penlight to the area just outside his ten mile search direction and radius, but could find nothing significant there either.
He then thought to scan the area for any roads that could be named after a radio station. He knew how some businesses had the roads leading to them named after things significant to them, like a software company being located on Technology Dr.
The map had names like Wooded Village Ln. and Parker House Circle which mostly sounded like subdivision roads. The routing and proximity of them also gave the impression of being small country subdivision roads not a road that a radio station would be on. There was only one road that sat just beyond his projected search radius that seemed to be unnamed or at least unlabeled by his map. It had no real capillary roads branching off of it either, and according to the contour lines, it looked like the road ended at the top of a large hill overlooking the canyon.
Richard decided that it was his best guess at the location of the tower he was seeing and tried to establish the best coarse of how to get there by driving. As the crow flies, there was only a little more than seven or eight miles between him and the red light that represented his next clue as to why these aliens seemed to be coming after him, but on the map, it looked like many more miles by road.
First there was the canyon to contend with. There were only two ways across the canyon, neither of which were in the direction of the tower. He would have to either drive three quarters of the way back towards town just to divert onto the main county road which connected the north and south portions of the county across the canyon, or he would have to travel the highway up to Sergeant Bridge and then reroute back on the other side of the canyon.
He had only used about a quarter of a tank of gas, so he figured he could make it about another two hundred miles or so, and that’s only if he didn’t pass another fill up station. He finally decided that back towards town would be a bad idea if his absence had been detected. If he was ultimately caught by the sheriff’s deputies, he wanted to have as many questions answered as possible first.
His course was set, his decision made, and his determination rejuvenated. He fired up the car and reversed away from the drop off, then spun around and headed back down the dirt roads by which he had come.
Soon however, he realized that getting back down off this small mountain would be much more difficult than getting up it. The signage…all signage was facing the way coming up the mountain. There were no signs saying “Highway this way” or anything of the sort.
He tried to remember the order of turns that he had taken ascending the cliff so that he could take them in reverse order, but knew that there were far to many to recount and it would be a waste to even attempt it. He then tried to play tracker and determine which road had been most recently traveled by how fresh the rutted tracks appeared down each road. The problem with this idea was realized on his first attempt as he came to a four way stop. From his present position he couldn’t see the tracks on the other roads, so he had to take a turn down each to shine his lights down them. He would then have to mentally rate how fresh the tracks appeared, reverse and turn down the next road, rate those tracks and then try to remember how they compared to the tracks from the other road.
He soon realized that he was screwed and might never get off the mountain. Finally Richard decided that whichever way looked the most ‘down’ was the one he would take, making sure to be careful enough not to drive over a drop off by mistake. he drove through the dark forest weaving down one spiraling road after the next. At one point he came to a clearing and thought for a second that he had made it out and back to the highway only to find that the road made a dead end at a small maintenance barn.
He put the car in reverse and his frustration got the better of him as he slammed down on the pedal sending the car speeding backwards in reverse. He felt the back end pop up as he ran over a large root or something and then the back driver side tire sank down into a low spot. This predicament turned the car into something of a see-saw as it was hung up on the root.
He tried feebly to free himself by revving the car in all directions he could think of, but the car was caught up bad. He stopped, put the car in park and got out to check the status.
It was a wheelbarrow that he had run over and gotten hung up on. He tried kicking it a few times, he pried back and forth on the handles, but the thing would not budge. Finally he gave up. He decided that he would have to stop for now and wait it out till the morning so that he could better analyze the whole dilemma. He may have to gather rocks and branches to put enough material under the tire to simply gain traction and run back over it the other way. He thought that maybe he had a jack that could extend that high in the trunk, but for now he would simply have to stop and get some rest until morning. It was going on five, so it wouldn’t be long before day broke. He could figure it out then.
He checked once more to make sure there was not a car in sight, that his headlights had not been spotted by some passing law enforcement, but saw nothing but the dark night and brief glimpses of the moon through broken clouds.
He cracked the windows so that he could hear if any vehicle turned into the clearing, and then shut the car off, locked the doors and climbed into the backseat to lay down. His jacket was in the floorboard of the back seat and he pulled it up to use as a blanket.
He sat for some length of time, scanning the dark field and the road leading back into the forest and to the highway for any signs that he had been noticed and listening to the sounds of the night for anything that seemed off. There was nothing but the sound of locusts in the field and the rustle of trees in the forest.
He lay back, and breathed deeply to relax in hopes that he would get a few hours of sleep before going back on the run. Minutes passed and he was almost asleep, when he heard a dog bark in the distance. If it had been in the middle of town and was light when he heard it, he would think nothing of it. It was the sort of sound that commonly fades into the background noises of life and is quickly forgotten. But the fact that he was stranded in his car on a dark, unknown road off the highway in the middle of nowhere in the depths of night made him take note of every new sound.
He paid attention.
It was a long and drawn out set of barks something like the bark of maybe a Bloodhound or an old Labrador. He kept listening though and didn’t hear anything for what seemed like a long time, then he adjusted himself in the uncomfortable, unleveled back seat of the car and tried to get to sleep. Then he heard it again, the same sound of a dog, but not the same dog it couldn’t be because it was in the complete opposite direction and sounded farther away. It was just as he was near sleep again too, so again his mind took note. He sat up in the back seat of the car and listened.
It was uncanny how similar it had sounded, but yet… Again from behind him he heard the first dog, this time closer, then almost three minutes went by and he heard the second dog resonate its drawn out howl. It was still somewhat in the distance but clearly in front of the car and closer than before. He looked both ways across the clearing then down the road and saw nothing in terms of a car, or lights, or anything. Then he suddenly realized they were coming in for the attack. They sounded to each other once more and Richard could tell they were much closer than before. He mentally asked himself what was going on, trying to piece together what these noises meant, and somewhere deep inside of him an answer came and he knew that there were not any dogs out there in the darkness.
“raoor, raoor, raooor, raooroor” and then something hit the back of the car hard and it began to jostle about. He looked back in time to see the silhouette of something completely foreign to this world. It was large like a man and stood up right, but then it broke down to all fours and leapt onto the car and up onto the roof. Richard shouted obscenities at it and started shaking wildly in fear. He sprang forward into the driver’s seat and felt the car shake as it moved forward above him, mirroring his position in the car. He made feeble attempts to start the car, but it did nothing. The engine didn’t attempt to roll over but clicked as if the battery were low. Then he turned the key again and the car literally did nothing.
He heard the barking noise again from the front of the car. Looking up, he saw the second one running up to the car and then dropping onto all fours and scurry quickly under it. The thing above him began to scratch wildly at the roof. It won’t be long before they get in here he thought.
Suddenly everything got quiet again and all Richard could hear was the panicked straining of his own breaths. He looked all around trying to know where they were. Then through his rear view mirror he saw the trunk opening slowly. They’re in, he thought. Suddenly he knew that the rear seat trunk access option had been a bad idea to ask for in a car. He felt the weight of something crawl into the trunk and the car teetered a bit backwards. Then the one on the roof jumped off and over to the passenger side.
It stood there staring at him. Its large black eyes were emotionless, empty. The small nostrils on the creatures face flared in and out making the creature look like it was panting. The window began fogging up as the creature loomed forward closer to the glass. It tilted its head as if Richard’s fear was a curiosity.
He knew though that ultimately it was all just a distraction, a decoy for the one that was coming after him through the trunk. He began to scream as he peered back and saw a large hand reaching for him from between the seats. He could hear the thing’s skin rubbing wetly against his leather seat. It grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and tugged down on him as if it would somehow begin pulling him through the seats. Richard began kicking and flailing wildly to get loose. The car suddenly flared to life as if to merely add to the chaos and the radio station started blaring out some old David Bowie song.
Richard’s flailing feet must have kicked at the volume knob because suddenly David Bowie was wailing at max volume. “Blue Jean can send me!” Bowie yelled “Somebody send me!” and then the car was alive with a sonic blast of saxophone. The speakers in the trunk were pelting so loud that the whole car vibrated. Richard could feel the creature’s grasp loosen and he tugged hard to get free.
