The Brotherhood of the Wheel (45 page)

“You mean the little road signs?” Heck said. “The interstate shields and the mile markers? All that stuff?”

Max nodded, pointing to a small mile-marker post as they passed. “Exactly,” she said. “It's a formula for accessing and tapping the power of the earth's magic. In theory, it could allow a skilled practitioner of the mystic arts to perform all manner of impressive magical feats.”

“Like hiding a whole town from being found,” Jimmie said. “Or transporting us there?”

“Exactly!” Max said.

“So you're a skilled practitioner of the mystic arts?” Jimmie asked her.

“Um, no,” Max said. “But I've read a great deal about it, and I'm sure I can—”

“Oh, shit,” Heck said. “We're screwed.”

“—activate the system and operate it to get us to Four Houses.”

Jimmie sighed. “Okay, Max, do your voodoo.” Max smiled at the trucker. Jimmie gave her a thumbs-up. “You got this, Max,” he said. “Take us to Lovina.”

Max took a deep breath and settled herself into a crossed-legged position in the passenger seat. She closed her eyes and took several minutes to control and focus her breathing. Jimmie shut off the music and turned down the CB. He slowed the truck, but Max shook her head, keeping her eyes closed. “Faster,” she whispered. “Go faster.” Jimmie accelerated down the desolate two-lane, barren empty fields on either side of them as they moved faster and faster. Max opened her eyes when he hit seventy. She began to recite strings of numbers, formulas, and equations, one smoothly sliding into the next. Solutions becoming new integers, streams of outcomes and possible outcomes, theorems, solidifying into something more.

The road in front of them began to waver, like the heat coming off a desert highway. They were at eighty now, and the sky was growing dark, filling with brooding clouds. There was a strange shift in pressure, which made all three feel as if their ears were going to pop. The semi was almost at ninety now.

“Damn,” Heck whispered, tapping Jimmie on the shoulder and pointing out the driver's-side window. “Jimmie, what the fuck is that, man?” Far off in the field to the left of the truck was something massive and dark, squatting at the horizon. It was partially obscured by the wavering curtain of distortion and the looming storm clouds. A few stray droplets of rain began to pat softly on the windshield, as if they were driving into a summer thundershower.

“The city,” Jimmie said. “We're crossing. You're doing it, Max.”

“Hold the speed!” Max said, sounding as if she were dreaming with her eyes open. She recited more strings of numbers, and a thin black line of blood trailed down from her nostril and spread along her lips. “Hold the speed,” she mumbled again, and then returned to her numeric incantation.

Heck looked over, and now the dark shape was closer. He could make out skyscrapers and spires, temple domes and Gothic cathedrals. “It's getting bigger, Jimmie,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jimmie said. “It does that. Pray we don't have to drive into it, or through it.”

More blood was streaming out of Max's nose now, and she was convulsing a little, but she kept reciting the numbers and formulating complex concepts out of the basic building blocks. The raindrops hissed and steamed as they hit the hood and the windshield. Jimmie saw a massive green-and-white highway sign coming up on the right side of the road. It said M
ETROPOLIS-
U
TOPIA 23 MILES
.

“Why is it called that?” Heck asked, not taking his eyes off the city as it edged closer.

“Back when they were building the highway system,” Jimmie said, “they put signs just like that up as place markers for real interstate signs. The stories say no one is sure if the city was always there and the Road just gave us access to it or if it was created along with the Road.”

Heck tried to look away from the massive black tumor, the outline of architectural styles—lines and forms that didn't match and couldn't fully be processed by the human brain.

“Well … shit,” Jimmie said, and glanced over to the left. The dark city took up most of the wasteland from floor to sky. The scene was much clearer now, and Jimmie recalled every detail from his nightmares after his last visit here. Heck made a noise, a catch in his throat, behind Jimmie. The trucker sincerely wished he could have prepared his squire for this, but he had no clue how one would do that. There weren't words.

Heck looked deeper into the city, and his mind tried to make some sense of it. All the buildings, all the bizarre hodgepodge of structures, were made of the twisted scraps and hulks of cars, trucks, semis and motorcycles. Some dark, shiny material held the millions of scraps of vehicle metal together like a glue. Whatever it was, the smooth organic nature of it—its sheen and its slightly viscous motility—made Heck think of a bug's carapace as it skittered across a dirty tiled floor.

There was a sound Heck could hear now that was growing louder above the semi's engine. It took him a moment to identify it—it was screaming, millions of voices screaming, howling, weeping, begging, singing, laughing. Millions of voices from every tower window, every roof, every parapet, every street. It was the sound of a million million lunatics, all looking straight at the tiny rig coming ever closer to their dark city.

Heck and Jimmie looked at Max. Her eyes were white orbs with tiny bloodshot cracks stretching across the surface. Black blood streamed down from her nose, and now from her tear ducts as well. She was still muttering formulas and hissing numbers. Heck grabbed an old flannel shirt and took off her glasses. He tried to wipe away the blood. “Jesus, this is killing her,” he said.

The Road was burning at its edges with white fire. The simple lines of paint on Route 281 flared and sparked with blue-white current, and the light from the Road was now the only light, bathing the cab in a weird, refracted miasma, like lights underwater. The black thunderheads had blotted out the sky to the horizon; occasionally, chains of lightning bounced between the menacing mountains in the sky. There was a horrible crunching, rumbling sound all around the truck, like rocks being pulverized. Heck looked over at Jimmie. The trucker was focusing all his might on driving, staying inside the lines of the Road, staying on course. Jimmie was sweating, but his eyes were steely and calm. Past Jimmie, Heck saw through the driver's window something that froze the reason in him and let the fear run rampant for an instant. The city was there, moving, throwing rock and dirt aside as it plowed across the field, an unstoppable juggernaut of madness and movement. He could smell it now, as well as hear it: decades of human waste and garbage left unattended to fester and stink. The city smelled of death. From the vantage point they had now, Heck saw them, the viamancers, the road witches, the mad inhabitants of Metropolis-Utopia. They were little more than indistinct silhouettes, but he could feel all those eyes on him, burning him, like cigarettes and X-rays. He could see the wires of the city now—the countless bodies in various states of dress and decay, hanging across the skyline like a row of paper dolls. Some of them were missing limbs or heads; others were little more than skeletons held together by rotting tendons and cartilage.

“Fuck!” Heck said. It was like the war, every war—the madness, and the stench, and the bodies. It was like the place war retired to when it wasn't raging across the earth. It was a billboard for Hell. Every cell in Heck's body screamed to run, to get away. “Jimmie, man, punch it, come on, it's gaining on us.”

“Got to hold the speed until she says otherwise,” Jimmie said, as cool and calm as a fishing pond in winter. “Got to hold, squire.”

Heck's heart thudded like a wild animal trying to get out of his chest. A wave of claustrophobic panic swept over him. He had to get out of this damn cab, get away from that fucking city, that thing. He looked out Max's window to see where he could bolt to and was horrified to see that the city was now on that side of the Road, too, ready to swallow them in its stinking, screaming maw.

“Turn, turn now, right!” Max screamed. “Now!” There had been no road to the right, but now there was one, a simple two-lane, its lines burning with cold fire. Jimmie turned hard onto the two-lane. There was a rumble of thunder and an audible
whoosh,
like the air outside the cab trying to regulate a difference in pressure. Then it was all gone. It was just a two-lane road, in the middle of quiet, normal farm country, with a blue sky and a cool, strong, wind—Kansas, Earth. From the position of the sun, it was early Saturday afternoon. The truck's clock said it was still late morning.

Jimmie slowed the rig and then stopped in the middle of the quiet road. He looked over at Max. Her eyes were normal again, but very bloodshot. Her hands were shaking, and she looked as if she might pass out. Jimmie handed her a jug of Gatorade, and she chugged it greedily.

“My glasses?” she asked quietly, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Jimmie handed her another bottle. Heck presented the glasses to her, and Max put them on in between gulps. “We make it?” she asked.

Jimmie pointed in front of the rig. “That answer your question, Max the Great and Powerful?” he said, grinning. There was a simple wooden road sign on the side of the two-lane. It said W
ELCOME TO
F
OUR
H
OUSES
.

“Hot damn!” Max said. Then she shook her head. “I think you two are rubbing off on me.”

Jimmie stuffed a pinch of chaw into his cheek and laughed. “You should be so lucky. Here, drink some more. Working viamancy takes a hell of a lot out of you.”

Max wiped some of the dried blood from the edges of her nostrils. “Clearly. I feel horrid.”

“But you did it, Doc,” Jimmie said. “Damn if you didn't. How did it feel?”

“Like I was losing control of my body, like a stroke, or maybe an epileptic seizure. It felt horrible, like a dream, like dying a little. I hope we don't need to do that again anytime soon.”

“Nah, we're going to be here for a spell,” Jimmie said. “We got work to do. You lay back on one of the bunks, Max. You did real good—now rest. I'll wake you when we're there.”

Max, surprisingly, didn't put up a protest. She traded positions with Heck and disappeared behind the curtain that separated the living quarters of the cab from the driver compartment without a word.

“Tough enough,” Heck said, looking back at the curtain.

“And then some,” Jimmie said, smiling. “That she is.”

Jimmie got out to stretch his legs and look around. It was a clear, perfect day. The cool of the morning was burning away and you could smell wildflowers and not a trace of exhaust. There was no traffic on the road, no sound of the freeway or any other man-made sound. Jimmie checked his cell and, just as he suspected, there was no service. He did notice that two texts had come through during the rough ride, most likely just before they crossed over.

Jimmie checked the numbers; the first was a Washington, DC, phone number. The text said,
“Mark Stolar gave George Norse a digital copy of a video from the Pagan. It involves a girl running in the woods being chased by the Pagan and apparently some hunting dogs. There is some Devil-looking thing with horns and goat legs too. Norse is cooperating. Gave us a copy of the video. He plans to run it tonight on his TV show
.
Spoke with DOJ and FCC about stopping him, but so far no word back. Good hunting. I refuse to say the stupid wheel thing.—Dann”

The second text was much shorter:
“I love you. We love you. Be careful.—Layla”

Heck returned from a piss break in the scrub that was on either side of the two-lane. Both men climbed back into the rig, and Jimmie started it up. He noticed that the odometer indicated that they had traveled only a few miles during the time Max performed the ritual, but his full tank of gas now read as three-fourths empty. He shook his head.

“Well,” Jimmie said, rubbing his tired eyes. “Here we go—let's go find Lovina.”

The rig lurched forward, and they cruised down the empty road headed for Four Houses.

“Hey, Jimmie?” Heck said.

“Yeah,” Jimmie replied.

“That city … That fucked-up city back there … You drove
through
that before?”

“Yeah,” Jimmie said. “I had to, for a friend.”

“Fuck,” Heck said. “Next time I give you any shit, feel free to smack the hell out of me,”

“Hmm,” Jimmie said, spitting into a cup, “We'll see how long that lasts.”

 

TWENTY-ONE

“10-15”

Usually in Four Houses, when you wake to pounding on the doors before dawn you pull the covers over your head and pray the locks hold. However, this time the booming voice of Wald Scode accompanied the pounding. “Get your lazy asses up! There is work to be about! He commands it!”

They gathered in the parking lot of Scode's Garage early Saturday morning. There were about seventy-five of them—all men. It was still dark when they began. Wald and Toby handed out hunting rifles, shotguns, and pistols and all the ammo that had been scrounged over the ages. Some weapons were old black powder muskets, and many were surplus military from World War II and Korea. When the guns were gone, they handed out machetes, axes, knives, pitchforks, baseball bats, and clubs. The sun was almost up when they were ready. The Master of the Hunt was not present, but everyone knew that Wald spoke with his voice. “Every home!” Wald shouted to the assembled army. “We kick in every door! Everyone, they all die! Spare no one! This is his will!”

“I'll go,” one voice in the crowd called out. Albert Dalton was a regional salesman who had gotten stuck in Four Houses in 1993, ending his spree of serial rapes across the Midwest. “But I'll be damned if I'm messing with that old lady up on the hill!”