Part 19 (1/2)
The bird sighs and glares up at her.
”What difference does it make?”
”Do you think they're dead? Maybe there was an earthquake, or an asteroid, or-”
”Maybe there never were any people in this city,” the bird says.
”Then who the h.e.l.l built it?”
159.
The bird frowns at her and ruffles its feathers. ”Maybe no one built it. Maybe it was always here. Maybe it's only a dream or a fancy or a possibility. You have to stop thinking like someone who only lives in one world, Niki Ky, if you mean to ever come out the other side in one piece.”
The jackals begin to howl again, calling zealously back and forth to one another, their voices bouncing off the walls of empty buildings like sonar off the walls of subma-rine canyons, signals in the dark, guiding them closer.
”You'd think they'd be a little quieter,” Niki says, reaching for her backpack. ”I wouldn't be so hard to catch if I couldn't hear them coming.”
”They would live for the chase,” the bird says grimly, ”if they were alive. They don't have to be silent. Nothing has ever escaped them.”
”You're no end of cheer, you know that, bird?”
”There's no point in lying about the jackals, Niki.”
She manages to get the backpack on again using only her left hand, and then she checks the bandages on her right. After the scramble up the collapsed off-ramp, they're dirty and beginning to unravel a little, but there's no sign of blood leaking through.
”I'm not asking you to lie,” she says. ”But I'm also pretty sure there are things I don't need to know.”
The jackals have stopped howling again, and once more there's only the silence, the mute city pinned beneath that sprawling butcher sky, with not even an ocean breeze to spoil the desolate, unnatural calm.
”Bird, do you know how far it is to the other side?” she asks, and before it can answer, ”Almost eight and a half miles, ” she says. ”That's how far it is. I can't walk that far, I don't care what's chasing me.”
”We don't have to cross the whole bridge,” the bird replies.
”We only have to go a little ways more. The Weaver will meet us above the water, at the last tower before the island.”
”And she can stop the jackals?”
”No. No one can stop the jackals. Not even the Dragon can stop them, once the hunt begins.”
160.
”Then what good is she?”
”She'll take you across and bear you safely to the Palisades. She'll set you on the Serpent's Road.”
The Serpent's Road, and now Niki remembers the things that Spyder said before sending her across the Dog's Bridge. You'll follow the road that Orc took, and Esau.
You'll follow the road beneath the lake, the Serpent's Road, because He's watching all the other ways.
”The Weaver,” she says, and it's so obvious, so obvious she should have seen it right from the start. ”The Weaver is Spyder, isn't she?”
For an answer, the bird squawks something incoherent and takes to the air, flaps its wings and soon it's wheeling far above Niki, circling the interstate. She shades her eyes, force of habit even though there's no sun to burn them, and watches the bird.
”I'm never going to see Daria again,” she whispers. ”I'm lost now, truly lost, and I'm never going to see anyone ever again.” Except Spyder, she thinks, wis.h.i.+ng that were the consolation it ought to be. Nearby, the jackals howl, and the bird stops circling and heads northeast towards the bay, its tiny shadow sweeping quickly along the wide, forsaken highway.
It takes Niki the better part of an hour to walk the two miles from the off-ramp to the last tower before the shaley cliffs of Yerba Buena Island. Almost an hour, and the only sounds are the steady tattoo of her footsteps against the pavement of the bridge's westbound upper tier and the occasional bellow and barking of the jackals, her own labored breathing and, from time to time, the white bird cries out overhead. Perhaps it's trying to warn her that the jackals are closing in, but when she stops and looks back there's never anything but the empty expanse of I-80 West leading towards the city. The bay stretches away on either side, bloodred and smooth as gla.s.s, not a wave or a ripple to break its mirror surface.
The last tower before the island, and in the light from 161.
this alien sky, the steel beams seem to have been painted the color of pomegranates. Niki drops her backpack and sits down in the road, facing the entrance of the Yerba Beuna Tunnel. It might as well be the gates of h.e.l.l, ”abandon all hope” spelled out by that black hole bored seventeen hundred feet through ancient metamorphic rocks. Maybe, she thinks, the jackals have circled round somehow, and now they're watching her from the conspir-ing darkness of the tunnel. When they've finally had their fill, when they've glutted themselves on her fear and dread and confusion, they'll come for her. She thinks about her meds, the prescription bottles tucked safely into her backpack, and wonders if a handful of Xanax would kill her quicker than the jackals.
”I'm sorry this has to be so hard,” Spyder Baxter says, and when Niki looks over her left shoulder, Spyder's standing right behind her. ”I thought we'd have a little more time before they figured out what's going on and came after you.
I thought it would take them longer to break through.”
”What is going on?” Niki asks her and gets up, turning to face the ghost of the girl with white dreadlocks and a cross carved into the flesh between her eyes. The mark her father gave her when she was only six years old, the mark so the angels he saw might forgive him and spare him the apocalypse of blood and fire that haunted his nightmares and waking dreams.
”A war,” Spyder replies. ”A war that was old a hundred billion years before there were men to fight on either side.
A war that has scorched worlds beyond counting and stained the walls of Heaven.”
”And what does this mean?” and Niki raises her aching, bandaged hand. ”There's something inside me, Spyder.”
”I tried to keep you out of this. If there had been any other way, you wouldn't be standing here now.”
”But what is it? What the f.u.c.k's it doing to me? And why does everyone keep calling me the Hierophant?”
”A hierophant presides over certain ceremonies, and is a keeper of sacred mysteries.”
162.
”Yeah, I know what the word means. I don't know why people-why talking birds and f.u.c.king bridge trolls-keep calling me one. I'm not a hierophant, Spyder. I'm just crazy Niki. I'm just a G.o.dd.a.m.ned schizophrenic.”
”No, Niki. You aren't insane. You've never been insane.
That's the very first thing that you have to understand. I tried to tell you that before.”
”Why am I so angry, Spyder?” Niki asks, and she bites her lower lip because she doesn't want to start crying now.
”I should be happy to see you, shouldn't I? I wanted to see you for so long. After you died, I thought that was the end of the f.u.c.king world. So why can't I believe that any of this s.h.i.+t is real?”
”I can't answer that question for you, Niki. n.o.body can answer that question for you. That's something you have to figure out for yourself.”
”f.u.c.k you,” Niki whispers, and wipes at her nose. ”I don't want to hear any more of this. I don't want to see any more. I want to go home. I want to see Daria.”