The Night Parade (27 page)

T
here were napkins in the Monte Carlo's glove compartment, which David used to staunch the bleeding. The owner's manual was in there, as well, wrapped in a plastic folder bound with a large rubber band. David used the rubber band to bind the napkins to his injured arm. The band was tight enough to slow much of the bleeding, which was good; the wound was deep enough to require stitches, but he couldn't stop and worry about something like that right now.

He repaired his arm while driving, and when he finished, the steering wheel was tacky with drying blood. He'd gotten more blood down the side of his shirt and on the inside of the door, too. When he began to feel a little light-headed, he fought to keep his gaze steady on the road ahead.

He took mental inventory of all the things they'd left behind in the Olds.
At least I've still got the gun,
he thought.
Also, the money.
How much was left? He was burning through it too quickly, and he had splurged on unnecessary purchases in an attempt to keep Ellie in a state of complacency as best he could. Milk shakes had soothed her, much as the pizza lunch. As had the motels. Had he been alone, he would have risked sleeping in the car and been frugal with every dime, but he was also trying to keep some semblance of normalcy in his daughter's life. It was a delicate balance.

Red bands of light were stretching across the horizon while, at their back, the sky had darkened to a starry black. He had thought Ellie was sleeping all this time, but when he looked at her, he could see that her eyes were halfway open as she reclined in the passenger seat. She watched the scenery without really seeing anything, blinking languidly every once in a while like someone under the influence of a strong sedative.

She had the shoe box in her lap, and it struck him as peculiar that she had insisted on taking it into the sandwich shop with her and refusing to leave it behind. As if she had known they'd never return to the Olds. The thought caused a chill to ripple through him.

Perhaps sensing his eyes on her, Ellie rolled her head so that she faced him. Her skin looked mottled and fluid in the dusky light. For an instant, she looked so adult—so much like Kathy—that David felt a sudden ache in the center of his chest.

“What would those cops have done if they'd caught us back there?” she asked. Her voice was just barely above a whisper.

“They would have taken us into custody.”

“They would have taken me away from you,” she said.

“They would have tried.”

“They would have hurt you to get to me,” she said. It was Kathy talking now: Ellie's face looked so different in the dark.

“I'm not sure the local police know exactly how important you are,” he said.

Ellie turned her head away from him.

Western Kansas had given way to the lush switchbacks of Colorado. The trees that flanked the highway were enormous black pikes driven into the earth. At the horizon, the sky continued to darken as the sun settled beyond the western hills. They were roughly two hours from Funluck Park, according to the road map he'd found in the glove compartment and the calculations he'd worked out in his head.

“How exactly did those doctors kill Mom?” she asked, still not looking at him.

“It's complicated,” he said.

“Explain it to me.”

“I'm not sure if it's the best thing for you to know, honey. You don't need to think of your mom that way.”

“I want to know.”

He considered this. Finally, he said, “Mom was okay at first. The doctors were just drawing blood. But then Mom started to get worried that she might get sick. She stopped eating and grew weaker. And the doctors, they just kept taking more blood.”

“Why did you let them?”

It was like an arrow thwacking into the center of his chest. When he opened his mouth, he found it difficult to speak at first. He cleared his throat and said, “Your mother didn't want to leave at first. She was afraid of getting sick if she left the hospital.”

This was close enough to the truth that he didn't feel like he was telling a lie, although it wasn't the complete truth. Ellie didn't need to hear the complete truth.

“In the end, she'd just grown too weak. Her body just gave out.”

Enough silence passed between them that he thought he'd answered all Ellie's questions. But then she said, “Would I die like Mom if we gave up and went back home? If they took me to some hospital to study me and take my blood?”

“You don't have to worry about that.”

“I'm just asking a question. Would I die, too?”

He slammed a palm down on the steering wheel. “I don't know, El! I can't predict the goddamn future. I'm just trying my best to keep them away from you.”

“It makes me feel sick,” she said. “It makes me feel like what we're doing is wrong. It makes us no different from those people back in Kentucky. Those people with the skull . . .”

“I told you already, it's not the same thing.”

“Yes, it is. You can't even tell me why it's not.”

“Because we're not actively hurting anyone. Those people, they were going to shoot us, kill us. Don't you see?”

“You've got a gun right now. You'd shoot somebody, too, if they tried to get me. How is that different?”

“I'm trying to protect you.”

“But if I could help all those people who are sick—”

“Enough!” he shouted at her. “Okay? Enough. I'm your goddamn father and you'll do what I tell you.”

She said nothing, just kept staring at him. He could feel her gaze on him, an icy javelin pressing against his flesh until it cooled his entire bloodstream. Another glance at her and he saw she had the shoe box's lid open. She was caressing the eggs inside the nest.

He turned back to the road, feeling as if he'd just sprinted a mile. He forced his breathing to calm down. When the yellow lines on the highway began to blur, he rubbed his eyes and wished he had a cup of coffee or maybe some pills to keep him awake. For whatever reason, the image of Ellie's stuffed elephant jumped into his head then—the elephant that had been her favorite toy that was now lost forever since they deserted the Oldsmobile. For whatever reason, the damn thing seated itself in the center of his brain, as if there was something vitally important about it. The more he concentrated on it, trying to figure out its significance, the more texture it took on in his head. And then it was there, a dinosaur-size elephant undulating beyond the trees at the horizon, its thick hide pink in the waning dusk, its tremendous bulk toppling trees and causing the earth to shake, its massive face turning, tusks like lances severing the treetops, the gleam of a single melancholic eye, brown-yellow, agonized, a pupil as black as ichor, as deep as space, and as it charged them, David could make out its every detail, down to the minute blond hairs in the creases of its knees, the fat white mites scuttling through the caverns of its ear canals, the dried black mucus pressurized into a pasty gruel at the corners of its mouth—

David cried out. He jerked the steering wheel sharply to the left and felt the car fishtail. He overcompensated, spinning the wheel to the right. The tires screamed and gravel peppered the windshield. Ellie screamed.

There was a loud
pop
then a shushing sound. The Monte Carlo canted to the left and the steering wheel began to vibrate. The shushing sound followed them as they bucked along the road—
shhh-fump, shhh-fump, shh-fump.

Ellie sat up straight. “What happened, what happened?”

“Flat tire,” he said. He slowed the car down and eased it to a stop on the shoulder.

“Now it's your nose,” Ellie said, pointing at his face.

He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror and saw a fine thread of blood dribbling out of his left nostril.

B
lessedly, there was a spare tire and a jack in the trunk. He changed the tire while jacked up on the shoulder of the highway, working up a sweat despite the autumn chill in the evening air. Ellie stood beside him, studying him for a time, then turning her attention toward the headlights that occasionally cruised along the road. She held the shoe box against her chest, cradling it in both arms.

“All right,” he said, standing up and wiping the grease from his hands. He was out of breath and trembling, though less from exhaustion and more out of anxiety. For some reason, he felt like they were standing still while the whole world shifted beneath them. He felt as though he might be knocked flat at any moment.

He opened the passenger door for her. “Come on. Get in.”

Back in the car, he cranked the ignition but nothing happened. Not a series of clicks, not a grumble from the engine, not the stubborn
rrr-rrr-rrr
of the motor struggling to turn over.

“No. Come on.”

He cranked it again. Again. Again.

Dead.

“Son of a bitch!” He pounded the steering wheel with a fist. Then he ran his shaking hands through his hair. Ellie stared at him from the passenger seat. After closing his eyes and counting to ten in his head, he turned to her, forced a smile, and tried not to let her see the fear in his eyes.

“It's broken,” she said. It was not a question.

“I'll have a look under the hood. Is there a flashlight in the glove compartment?”

She opened the compartment, but it was obvious there was no flashlight in there.

“Okay.” David nodded at her. His arm ached. Again, he felt light-headedness threaten to overtake him. He took several deep breaths to regulate his respiration. “Just sit tight. I'll go have a look.”

He climbed out of the car and pulled up the hood. His arms felt like rubber. As he stared at the assemblage of mechanical parts, his vision threatened to pixelate. He felt his respiration ratchet to a fever pitch . . . yet at the same time it seemed impossible to suck any air into his lungs.

This is it,
said the head-voice.
This is the end of the road. This is as far as you were meant to go. The Night Parade stops here and death takes over. What will it be? A heart attack? Or maybe Kapoor and that Craddock guy weren't pulling your leg after all—maybe it's the Folly that's getting ready to take you down. You will die of a hemorrhage and leave your daughter stranded all alone and in the middle of the night on the shoulder of a Colorado highway.

“Go fuck yourself,” he muttered. His voice sounded hollow and tinny in his ears.

The blast of an air horn caused him to jerk upright and slam the back of his head against the hood. He twisted out from beneath it in time to see two large headlights settling behind the Monte Carlo on the shoulder of the road. The stink of diesel exhaust filled the air.

Ellie had gotten out of the car and was standing on the shoulder again, her small shape silhouetted against the approaching headlights. David winced at her, as if it hurt to see her. “I told you to stay in the car.”

“Daddy?” she said, fear in her voice.

He reached out, touched her shoulder. She felt very much real. “Get back in the car, honey,” he told her. Then he continued toward the truck, one arm up to shield his watery eyes from the glare of the headlamps.

He heard the hiss of air brakes and, a moment later, the sound of someone's boots crunching along the gravelly blacktop. A man's hard voice said, “Shitty place for car trouble.”

“Yeah,” said David.

The man was nothing more than a barrel-shaped silhouette until he stepped around the side of the Monte Carlo. He was a big guy in a nylon vest and a flannel shirt, a John Deere hat pushed back on his head. He pressed his large fists on his hips as he approached David, sizing up the Monte Carlo with evident disappointment.

“Hate to say it,” said the trucker, “but American-made cars ain't what they used to be.” The man turned toward David, his frown brightening into a grin. In the glow of the truck's headlights, the man's teeth looked as large and as gray as tombstones. “I'm Heck. Hector.” He held out one thick hand.

“Tim,” David said—the first name on his mind. He shook the man's hand. “You wouldn't know how to fix it, would you?”

“That depends. What's wrong with her?”

“I don't . . . I don't know.” He rubbed his eyes. “Everything was fine until we blew a tire. I changed it with no problem, but when I went to start it up again—nothing. Not a sound.”

“Who's ‘we'?” Heck asked while simultaneously leaning in through the open driver's window. He reached for the keys in the ignition, then saw Ellie in the passenger seat. “Well, hello, sugar.”

“Hi,” said Ellie.

Heck cranked the ignition a few times with nothing to show for it. “Bummer, ain't it?” he said to Ellie.

“Sucks,” said Ellie.

Heck chuckled. “You said it, darling.” He withdrew from the window, then went around to the open hood. David trailed behind him. Those large meathooks parked back on his hips, Heck surveyed the engine in silence. After a full minute had passed, he stared at David and said, “Can I make an admission?”

“Sure.”

“At the risk of having to turn over my Man Card, and despite the fact I make a living driving that big rig back there, I really don't know piss-all about cars.” He grinned, exposing those tombstone teeth again. “You and your kid live around here?”

“No. We were heading for a campground about a hundred miles northwest of here.”

“Well, I'm heading in that direction myself, so I'll offer you and your girl a ride. Or if this puts a damper on your camping weekend, I can drop you someplace else. Just hate to see you folks stranded out here with night closing in.”

“That's very kind. I'd appreciate it. The campground will be just fine.” It wasn't lost on him that Hector was observant enough to see through Ellie's disguise and recognize her as female. It made him slightly uncomfortable, and he would have preferred to part ways with Hector right away, but they needed this man to get them to the campground.

“Wonderful,” Heck said, removing his cap and sliding a thick-fingered hand through the buzzed gray bristles of his hair. “I'll give you a hand loading your stuff into the truck.”

“Uh, we don't have any stuff,” David said. “It's just us.”

“Guess you ain't a Boy Scout. Camping with nothing more than whatever's in your wallet.” Heck jerked a chin at David's bandaged arm and the blood on his shirt. “What happened there?”

David hugged the injured arm to his ribs. “Sliced my arm changing the tire.”

Another whiskied chuckle rattled up out of Heck's throat. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, shaking his head and moseying around the side of the car again. “No Boy Scout, all right.”