WebWorld (2.5)

Sunset turned to night. Darkness made all the difference.

We were driving through an eerie world of invisibility. A darker world than we were accustomed to, no lights out here except our own, a painted conveyer-belt of road. Opaque vegetation out of which anything might emerge. There were a few stars up there in the sky but no moon.

We’re in a big metal cage though, aren’t we? What’s going to get through that?

But, of course, the corollary to that: what are we going to do against something that can tear its way through the frame of a car like it’s tinfoil?

We shouldn’t be out here at night.

There was no such thing as a radio broadcast anymore, but the car had some CDs. We played music to sooth our nerves, keep our imaginations calm.

“About an hour,” I said at one point.

“Yeah.” She was staring out the window.

For a while Zara sung along to what was playing on the CD player. I noticed that her voice was beautiful, that it was all raw melody and richness, and I wondered if I was hearing it true, or if this was just the intensity of our situation coupled with pre-existing infatuation. She said at one point: “Look, there’s no proof, you know?”

“I know.”

“That he was there. In the house. In town.”

“Sure. I know.”

“He might have left. He might have gone somewhere. Maybe he went looking for you.”

“He didn’t find me.”

“He got stuck, or trapped, or waylaid. Or he’s found people to help, or be helped by. So, I’m just saying: you really don’t know.”

“That he’s dead.”

“I… Well, yeah. Okay, yeah. You don’t know he’s dead.”

“I might never, either. Maybe we’ll never figure out what happened to him. Or anyone.”

There was a telling silence. “I don’t know what’s become of my family either.”

“We’d have tried… I mean if we could… if they were on the same block of land…”

“Yeah I get it.”

“We would have tried.”

“I know. I hope… I don’t know what I hope. Maybe…”

“Don’t go down that rabbit hole right now.”

The rabbit hole glared up at me from the darker parts of my mind, beckoning me in, my own advice notwithstanding – what if? what if? what if? – it was hard to turn away from; it followed us along the empty road, keeping up along every turn.

#

We stopped. Just for ten minutes to eat and drink. We had chocolate biscuits and cheesebreads for dinner. We drank some orange juice and looked up at the stars. It didn’t seem like it would pay to stay still for very long. I told Zara that I thought it was my turn to drive.

She said, “Okay.”

I admitted, “We stayed out too long.”

“We’re okay. We seem to be okay.”

Not quite okay. I was starting to want to take a piss. But I didn’t fancy getting out of the car and pissing into that sinister, pregnant vegetation. I wasn’t sure what might come tearing out of the impenetrable, loaded darkness. “Whatever it is, I don’t want it biting off my wiener, I’m sorry but that’s not cool.”

“Do it from here then.”

“Just avert your eyes or something.”

“Wuss,” she said, doing as I asked, “but I already know what size it is.”

It’s humiliating, all the same, sticking your dick out a crack of an opening of a car door to piddle onto the ground just below, eyes always on the environment, watching and waiting for something to come barrelling out, hungry.

“Done?”

“Yeah, done.”

And we clambered over each other, swapping drivers. Sure, we were laughable. But I did believe there was something out there. All the burst puffballs of Peanut; and the creatures we’d been assaulted by back home when we started this journey: less than 24 hours, fuck me, it feels like there’s a lifetime flowed under the bridge.

“Let’s do this thing,” I said. We were actually nearly there.

#

In fact, we were approximately fifteen minutes away. We were keeping to our pattern of taking the back roads, lights dipped, not drawing too much attention to ourselves. But as we drove, we saw headlights. Just a pinch of light at first, but then they brightened. It felt as if we were caught in some massive spotlight. A solid-looking truck came roaring up behind us.

“What do they want?” I murmured.

“Maybe nothing.”

“I hope nothing.” I glanced at the gun that lay between us next to the hand-brake. “Pick that up if things go south, and don’t hesitate to fire it.”

She nodded.

“Just if…”

“Okay.”

The truck was moving up behind us. Not some full-sized, diesel belching rig, but a light truck maybe 20% bigger than Duncan’s. It looked meaty and muscular in this light – and in the tension of our mood – animalistic and threatening. And it was riding us too close. The mix of darkness and tail-lights reflecting on glass kept me from seeing any faces. I almost jumped out of my skin when a speaker mounted to the top started playing a clanging heavy-metal music.

“Crap.” Zara murmured.

“We gotta lose them.” But where? How? We were on a narrow road, hilly and rocky, any turnoff was going onto harsh terrain, heading at a sharp angle downhill into a small river valley. And the kicker: wherever we could go, they could.

Out-run them? There was only one way to find out. “You’ve got your seatbelt on, right?”

“Yeah, of course, what sort of dumb shit…?”

“Yeah, okay. Just warning you because…” I was stepping on the gas already. And I wasn’t that good a driver. But maybe the engine’s a little bit faster, or I can make him miss a turn and lose his grip for that critical second… We had a backseat full of stuff. I had Zara in the seat beside me.

But we were gaining ground. I was pushing that poor truck with everything I could throw at it, and we were opening a thin, elastic gap between us and the following vehicle. Yeah, you push a bit harder, don’t brake for that corner buddy, you don’t need to do that.

“The highway’s coming up,” Zara had a map pulled up on her phone. “no turn-offs on the way.”

“Good,” I said, “I think we’re faster.”

But we came up on the highway, and it was brighter than it should be. And in the brightness, there was what looked like an accident. An overturned car lay there on its side, bleeding smoke and oil. There were slug-shapes that I had just enough time to acknowledge must be bodies, splayed out there on the road and not moving. There were wet patches hemming those figures that were probably blood. And then in the next instant there were two more vehicles, these ones moving, displaying full-voltage headlights, and they were coming straight for us.

Before I could think the word, ambush, we were already caught in that triangle. I was skidding trying to swerve from the path of the closest one; taking a lopsided circle to avoid running straight into him; and somehow sliding out of the path of his companion. But in the distance that manoeuvre cost me, our friend from behind us caught up. I’d spun most of a 360 trying to get out of the way of the two oncoming vehicles, so it took no effort on the part of the truck to strike us full broadside, to send us spinning in the opposite direction to the turn I’d tried to make. Spinning like a roundabout, 360, 360, 360; and the heavy thuck of hitting our tail end hard against a power pole. We juddered, we completed another 180, jerked back in the opposite direction, before we almost toppled over on our side and came to rest hard, upright, in the full glare of all three assailants.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work