Unpossible (37 page)

The night we were to call the Engine, I walked into the City early, just before dusk. I wanted to look at the car alone, in daylight.

I took almost as much pride in it as Zeke did.

At that time I’d only seen one race on the white highways, between two cars on the pro circuit from Nevada. I’d thought the cars were the most beautiful, terrible things in the world. But Zeke’s car, our car, surpassed them.

Not in beauty. Even by lamplight, the lines on the Chevy did not look delicate; the interior did not look padded and luxurious; the wheels were not trimmed in gold like the circuit cars were. But for sheer terribleness, you couldn’t match Zeke’s Chevy.

It was red, but a red shot through with yellow and white lines that, by lamplight, flickered and burned. I’d asked Zeke how he did it. How did he know what design was needed, what pattern of lines and circles and rectangles was called for. Zeke said that every pattern on every car was exactly the same, but I said that was horse-hockey—I’d seen the pro cars, and each design was as different from the other as strangers.

As I entered the alley I could see that the Chevy was no less terrible by daylight. I could make out each line and shape, and as I looked I began to grasp the logic of their relationships. Each line bound one shape to another; each shape froze the line in its path. There was no way to look past that design to the base red, and there was no path from the red out.

The pattern was bars to a cage, and the cage was the car.

Suddenly I realized that there was someone in the car behind the wheel; nearly as quick I knew it was Frank. The door opened and he heaved himself out. He stumbled forward, then leaned against the hood. As I walked toward him he drew a flask and swallowed hard.

"Who are you?"

"Joseph Peterson," I said. I was ready to break and run if he got crazy. I’d seen Frank drunk, but I’d always stayed out of his way. So did Zeke.

His eyes narrowed. "Sam’s boy?"

"That’s right." He shook his head as if to clear it. He looked at the car beneath his hand.

"What the hell are you boys trying to do out here?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Nothing? C’mere, boy. Look at this." Cautiously I walked over. He traced one of the lines with his finger. The finger, and now I noticed the entire hand as well, was covered with pink scars. I looked at where he pointed. There was a small break in the paint. "That’s sloppy, boy, sloppy that could get you killed. That line’s useless, and if your Engine finds that break it’s gonna try to pop right out of there." He pulled me around to the open driver’s door. "Look at that steerin’ wheel."

I looked. "I don’t see anything wrong."

Frank made a sound like a man trying to push a mule uphill, and he shoved me into the seat. "Put your hands on the wheel."

I did as I was told, but I was also trying to see if I could scoot over to the other door and get out before he could grab me again. "No no no. Look where your hands are. Put ’em at two o’clock and ten. Now, see where the pattern stops to either sides of your hands? Those are your channels, and if your hand’s not completely covering those blank spots when the blood’s flowing, the Engine’s gonna climb up into your lap and bite your head off. Then you go zombi."

"Zeke’s hands are bigger," I said defensively.

"Nobody races with channels that big. Don’t you understand, boy? It’s a two way street. You reach in, and it reaches you."

"But Zeke says with bigger channels you get more speed, more fuel out of the Engine ... "

"Boy, speed’s not everything."

Suddenly a big bandaged hand reached in and hauled Frank out of the door. Zeke held him by the shirt collar and shouted at him. "What are doing here, old man? What are you doing here!" Zeke pushed Frank away from him. Frank stumbled backwards and fell to the ground.

Zeke stalked off to the other side of the car. I was left looking at Frank. He wasn’t getting up. After half a minute I got out of the car and went to see if he was all right.

His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing me. It was like he was caught up in a memory, or a dream that he couldn’t shake.

"Can I give you a hand?" I asked. His eyes focused on me. He shook his head and slowly levered himself up into a sitting position. After a while he eased himself up and walked stiff-leggedly out of the alley.

"That was kind of rough, don’t you think?" I told Zeke.

He didn’t answer, or even look at me. He was flipping through one of his books again. And if I hadn’t known Zeke as well as I did, I would have sworn he looked like a boy about to cry. He slammed the book shut, picked up a brush, and began filling in the breaks in the lines of the pattern with quick, angry strokes. He left the channels on the steering wheel untouched.

An hour or so later Zeke began to talk again as he worked, but it was only about the Circuit, and how fast this car was going to be, and taking on Brujo Mendez in Mexicana.

"What’s the big deal with Mendez?" I asked.

"He’s the best," Zeke said. "No one’s ever beaten him."

By eleven, Zeke was almost finished.

If the car was a cage, the Gateway pattern was the carrot to lure the Engine in. Zeke had drawn three blue circles on the ground, lined up in a row, each circle edge touching the edge of another circle. The biggest circle was around the car. The middle circle was smaller and laced with intersecting diagonal lines. The last circle was the smallest. Zeke was sitting in the center of that circle and painting in a complex double row of shapes and lines around the inside of the border.

"I don’t get it," I said.

Zeke smiled. "I sit here," he said, "and the demon pops up there." The middle circle. "Then it becomes a test. Can I push it into the car or not."

"What if you can’t?"

"Then either of two things is going to happen. It’s going to force its way into my circle, or it’s going to go back where it came from."

"And if it gets in?"

"Then you’d better run like hell, Joey. I’ll already be gone."

"Shit."

Zeke laughed. "I never heard you swear before! You’re hanging out with the wrong guy, Joseph."

"I know it. When do you start?"

"Midnight."

We waited out the hour (Zeke inside his circle, me outside the whole pattern) listening to the silence of Dead City. I still feared the City, but it was a familiar fear.

I tried to imagine thousands of people living in these buildings, but I couldn’t do it. Where would all the food come from? What did they do for a living, besides drive cars?

Zeke said, "All right. It’s time." Zeke told me to douse the lanterns around the alley. Before the last of the lights went out, though, I saw Zeke take off his bandages. The scabs on his palms that looked like black holes in his skin. I turned away and doused the last lamp.

Moonlight glinted off something metallic in Zeke’s hands. I heard him gasp, and then I saw blotches of phosphorescent blood appear in the middle circle. Then the entire pattern flared into blue fire.

After a minute the fire subsided to a glow that lit up the alley. Zeke sat in the center of his circle, hugging his knees, staring at the middle circle. The blotches were burning brighter now. I gazed from Zeke to the middle circle to the car. For the longest time nothing happened at all.

I can’t tell you how the thing appeared, because I was looking at Zeke’s face when I heard it. It sounded like a huge downpour, or the center of a waterfall. Zeke gritted his teeth and grunted like he’d been stabbed in the gut, and I flicked my eyes to the middle circle again. It was already there ...

... the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It swirled like a dust-devil, but a dust-devil made of light. It was not green, or red, or any other color, really. It simply was. I know that’s crazy.

It spun toward Zeke, moaning like a tornado, and as it moved I saw the bright blotches rise up and become part of the whirlwind. It battered at Zeke’s circle, sparks flying as flakes of paint chipped off the ground and joined the spinning air. Zeke clenched his fist. Blood poured down his arms. The thing spun backwards; then Zeke was on his feet, shouting at the top of his lungs. I couldn’t make out the words over the roar.

After that it was over almost instantly. The whirlwind broke through the circle surrounding the car, then vanished. The circles and rectangles on the Chevy flared a moment and went dark. The blue circles on the ground faded.

We were in darkness.

That’s when I realized Zeke was calling for help. I ran to him, picked the bandages off the ground, and began to wrap up his hands. There was so much blood I couldn’t tell where the wound was: but I cinched both bandages tight. Zeke’s hair was matted to his head with sweat. A smile was playing around his face. He stood up, holding me. Then he looked at the car and whooped for joy.

When Zeke got in and started her up, I whooped too.

August was race season. Any kid who could escape his family snuck off at night to the white highways.

The highways have always been here. They are cracked, and full of holes, and some whole sections of bridges have collapsed, You can still ride the white highways from one ocean to another, from Canuck to Mexicana. And if you’re a driver, you can race on them.

The pro driver that first Saturday in August was a blond-haired guy from Appalachia who called himself the Bobcat and drove a blue and gold Ford. The local girls who’d ditched their folks were pooling in the glow of his headlights like moths, jockeying to get closer to him. The boys were standing around in tight bunches outside the light, looking at the car. Everyone was very careful not to lean on the Bobcat’s car.

We watched him from a ridge above the highways. Zeke had said he wanted to size up the competition. He snorted. "I’m gonna bury this guy."

I wasn’t so sure. The Bobcat wasn’t famous on the circuit, but he was still a pro driver, and Zeke had never raced before. But Zeke was Zeke. And he was confident as hell. "Let’s go," he said. I climbed in from the passenger side and Zeke slid in the other door. He planted his big hands on the steering wheel—completely covering the channels, I saw—and his face contorted into an angry sneer like he was wrestling the Engine for control. Finally he smiled.

We shot down the ridge, the Engine growling like a caged bear, and popped through a hole in the railing. Zeke slid to a stop just behind Bobcat, his lights focusing on the blue Ford. The blond-haired driver looked at us for a moment. I thought I saw a little doubt in his face, but then he shrugged and turned back to the girls.

Zeke eased the Chevy up to the line. "Hey, piss-head," Zeke said. The Bobcat ignored us.

"I said, ‘Hey, piss-head.’"

Bobcat thumbed one gloved hand at us and asked one of the girls, "Who is this yokel?"

It was Lydia Mitchum, the Preacher’s daughter, who answered. "That’s Zeke Landers."

The Bobcat turned to us and leaned down to look into the car. "That’s it? Just ‘Zeke?’"

Zeke was ready to jump out of the car and punch this guy. I looked at his wild red hair falling like a mane down his back and I said, "Don’t you know who this is, little Bobcat? This the King of the Beasts, Zeke the Lion!"

Zeke gave me a look that told me to shut up, but the word was already out among the watchers.

Bobcat looked annoyed. "Okay, ‘Lion.’ What stakes are you willing to put up?"

Zeke didn’t hesitate a second. "Pink slips."

"Are you crazy, yokel? You’re going to go zombi for sure."

"I win, I take your Ford."

"And if I win, I take your ugly Chevy and drive it off a cliff!"

"Do what you want," Zeke said. "Down to Busted Bridge, two miles." He grinned. End of argument.

"Two miles. You’re on." Bobcat pushed the girls out of the way and climbed into his Ford. Zeke and I watched him pull the inserts out of the palms of his gloves, prick the exposed skin with a small knife, and then fit his hands over the channels. He called Lydia over to tie the thongs of his gloves to the steering wheel.

Zeke snorted. "Wimp." Zeke’s hands were bare as always. I pushed the handle to get out.

"Hey! Where you going?"

"I’m going to watch," I said.

"Like hell. Don’t you know you’re my lucky piece? You ride with me!" I got back in, scared but excited as all hell. The Bobcat started his Engine and the crowd backed away to the railings. Zeke tightened his grip on the wheel. Our Engine growled to life.