[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

He caught a brief glimpse of the passengers in the second car. A young man and
woman. The woman was pounding on the inside of the rolled-up window.
Her expression was wild, her hair disheveled. The driver of the car sat
motionless behind the wheel, both hands affixed to the plastic circle. They
went by so quickly Frank couldn't be certain, but it looked to him like the
driver had no face.
Page 44
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The two cars vanished over the horizon. The police cruiser accelerated, and
Frank, feeling utterly helpless, fed gas to the motor and followed.
"What's happening?"
Frank saw Mouse, still sleepy-eyed, standing behind Alicia's seat.
Somehow she kept her long hair from tangling while she slept.
He explained and when he was through she nodded knowingly. "Another thread has
broken. The end has entwined with your line of existence."
"They've got Wendy with them. They ordered me to follow."
"You're doing the right thing. If your daughter was here I might be able to
help." She stared at the patrol cruiser keeping ten car lengths in front of
them. "Now we can do nothing until we have her again."
"They're not going to hurt her, are they?" asked Alicia. She was fighting back
tears, fighting to keep control, Frank saw.
"From what your husband has told me they have no reason to. That is not a
guarantee, but it offers reason to hope."
"This is what you meant about this Evil allying itself with Chaos, right?"
Frank wanted to accelerate, to pull around and use the motor home's greater
weight to run the ominous cruiser and its occupants off the road.
Wanted to see the car roll over and over among the weeds and Joshua trees
until it exploded in a ball of flame. Instead he followed meekly. "They were
waiting for us."
"You told me they were not expecting you."
He sat a little straighter. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's what the
sergeant said."
"Then we are still an anomaly to them. We must break away before they learn
who I am."
"Who are they?" Alicia asked. "What is this place?"
"An outpost of Evil. That much is certain. What kind of Evil we do not yet
know."
They fell silent, following. Other vehicles passed them regularly now.
Frank tried not to look in their direction, hoped Alicia did not. Steven
remained in the back, absorbed in his comic books, for which Frank was
grateful.
Each car featured the same blank-faced driver, gray robots immune to
everything but their driving. Chauffeurs on a concrete Styx. Like the cars and
trucks, the passengers they were convoying came in all sizes, colors, and
shapes.
Frank watched as an open-topped Jeep went bouncing past, towing two
middle-aged men behind it. Both were naked and obviously had been dragged a
considerable distance. Their bodies were raw and bloody and yet they acted
lively enough. Probably more alive than they wanted to be. A big blue Lincoln
cruised by smoothly. An attractive woman of middle age hung out the rear back
window. She was screaming and waving both arms frantically. He had a quick
glimpse of her companions in the back seat. They were ugly and alien enough to
stop a sensitive man's heart.
The Jeep and the Lincoln were exceptions. The majority of vehicles that roared
past had all their windows rolled up. Their human occupants were visible only
as jerking, gesticulating silhouettes, tormented shadows riding in the back of
Chevrolets and Mercedes and VWs. Frank wondered if there was a formal
relationship between the class of vehicle and its passengers, as well as the
kind of tortures they were undergoing.
Only the motor home drove in the slow lane. We're normal, he thought.
Maybe that's why these cops find us abnormal. A check of the speedometer
showed they were doing fifty. Their captors were driving cautiously.
The landscape commenced a radical metamorphosis. This time it wasn't a matter
of a few stunted, distorted plants. The sky had turned a pale greenish hue,
sickly and unhealthy-looking. Pools and ponds of molten sulfur and other
unidentifiable acrid fluids pockmarked the terrain on both sides of the
Page 45
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]