Part 33 (1/2)

”Where am I?” I said, aloud, and then inside: ”Where are we? h.e.l.lo?”

No reply. But it wasn't like there was no one in the pulpit to answer; it was like the pulpit itself wasn't there. That scared me. I wanted to go inside and investigate, but I couldn't leave the body unattended in this playground.

I stood up again.

All this time I'd been facing more or less in one direction. Now I made myself turn around and see what was behind me.

A motel rotated into view. The playground was situated at the narrow end of a V-shaped parking lot; two single-level rows of guest rooms extended diagonally left and right along the lot's outside edges, while a triangular island in the center held the motel office. A slowly turning neon sign on the office roof said badlands motor lodge.

I took a few steps out into the parking lot, moving cautiously, as if it were paved in black ice rather than asphalt. The lot opened out onto a four-lane road. Directly across the road was a pair of fast-food restaurants, but beyond them I saw what looked like private houses, and more buildings and rooftops beyond them, though nothing taller than two or three stories. A small town, then; I was on the edge of a small town, a town in the Badlands. . . wherever that was.

I tried to imagine the chain of events that had brought me to this place -- not the whole story, just the last ten or fifteen minutes. Was I staying at the motel, or had I just been pa.s.sing by, seen the playground, and decided to have a swing? The latter was the kind of thing Jake would have done -- like most little kids, he loves dinosaurs -- but on the other hand, he's not much for wandering around strange places on his own, and I couldn't picture him just walking aimlessly down that road. Of course if house discipline had broken down completely, somebody else could have been doing the walking, only to have Jake pop out at the sight of the dinosaurs.

I thought about going into the office to see if the motel manager recognized me. That might work, unless I'd signed in when a different manager was on duty. Then again, if the manager didn't recognize me, I could try asking straight out whether I was registered at the motel -- but what name should I ask for?

Then it hit me: a key. If I was registered at the motel, I should have a key.

I started checking my pockets. In one of them, a different one than I usually kept it in, I found my wallet. It was light; the last time I'd taken it out, at the bar in Autumn Creek, I'd had almost a hundred dollars in cash, and now I had less than half that. It looked like someone had been using my credit card, too; there's a ”secret” compartment where it's supposed to be hidden, but the card had been moved to the center billfold, next to the remaining cash. The wallet's other contents -- my library and video rental cards, my father's expired driver's license, and a picture of Andy Gage's mother -- appeared untouched.

I searched the rest of my pockets. I found my house key but no motel-room key. It occurred to me that that still didn't settle the question -- I might have left the key in the room when whoever-it-was decided to visit the playground. I scanned the rooms on both sides of the parking lot, looking for one with an open door. All the doors were closed.

For the first time, I began to get a real sense of the chaos my father had lived with before the house was built -- the chaos Penny Driver still lived with.

Penny. . . wait a minute. In a parking s.p.a.ce off to my left was a familiar-looking black sedan: a black Buick Centurion, with -- yes! -- Was.h.i.+ngton state license plates. I moved up for a closer look, and as I did so, the door of the nearest motel room swung open, and Penny herself came running out. She was barefoot, wrapped in a fuzzy green bathrobe with dinosaurs on it, her hair wet and plastered to her skull. When she saw me standing by the car, she pulled up short and let out a squeak.

”Penny?” I said.

At the mention of her name, Penny looked freshly startled. . . and suddenly hopeful. ”Andrew?”

she said. I nodded. ”Oh thank G.o.d!. . . Andrew!. . . Finally!”

”Finally,” I repeated, wondering just how much lost time that word represented. ”What day is it, Penny?”

”May 8th,” she told me. ”Around ten o'clock in the morning, local time. It's OK, it's only been two days. You left Autumn Creek the night before last.”

I nodded again, thinking that it wasn't OK at all but that at least it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I looked back at the playground, at the landscape beyond it. ”Where are we?”

”South Dakota,” Penny said. ”I don't know the name of this town, but it's close to Rapid City.”

She frowned. ”Or at least that's what I was told.”

”South Dakota. . .” I went off for a moment, trying to picture where in the country that was -- east of the Rocky Mountains, I recalled vaguely, and at least two or three states over from Was.h.i.+ngton.

But this was procrastination, a way of delaying the big question: ”How did we get here?”

”That. . .” said Penny, and sighed. ”It's complicated.”

20.

As they follow the truck across Was.h.i.+ngton state, Maledicta and Malefica take turns at the wheel; Mouse is relegated to backseat driver status, stuck in the cave mouth. This is not what Mouse had in mind when she asked the Society for help. But she's learning there's a price to be paid for requesting the Society's a.s.sistance -- and for voluntarily giving up control.

”Which way did Andrew go?” she had asked, back in Autumn Creek. It was a simple question, and the answer, when it came, was one that Mouse could have guessed on her own: west. He was headed towards the highway, probably intending to hitch a ride to the airport.

”But what the f.u.c.k are you going to do when you catch up to him?” Maledicta inquired, as Mouse started up the Centurion and got rolling. ”Run him down? Punch his f.u.c.king lights out?”

”No,” said Mouse coolly, not interested in talking to herself now that she had what she needed.

”Leave me alone now, please.”

”c.u.n.t.”

Mouse reached the Interstate junction without catching sight of Andrew. Crossing her fingers that he had not already been picked up by someone, she drove up the westbound on-ramp. At the top of the ramp, as she paused to scan the road shoulder in both directions, she saw brake lights flaring on the other side of the median -- an eighteen-wheeler was pulling into the eastbound breakdown lane.

”Oh G.o.d,” said Mouse, as a figure came running up behind the truck and was briefly illuminated by its taillights. It was Andrew. Mouse was on the wrong side of the highway. ”He said he wanted to go to the airport!”

”He said he wanted to go to Michigan,” someone corrected her. ”And you told him he couldn't afford a plane ticket.”

Mouse glanced at the broken, rocky strip that separated the two sides of the Interstate. She recalled how, coming to work the first day at the Reality Factory, she'd missed the Autumn Creek exit and had to go miles out of her way before she could turn around.

”Let me drive,” Maledicta suggested from the cave mouth. ”I'll get you over there in no time.”

Andrew had boarded the truck. The eighteen-wheeler's brake lights went off and it started moving again. At the same moment, there was a surge in westbound traffic, vehicles whizzing by so close together that now even getting on the highway going the wrong way was going to be a challenge. Mouse started to panic.

”Come on!” Maledicta pressed her. ”Let me f.u.c.king drive. He's going to get away!”

The truck was out of the breakdown lane now, picking up speed, about to disappear around a curve.

”You're going to f.u.c.king lose him!”

”All right,” Mouse said, and let go. Reality telescoped; Mouse flew back into the cave mouth.

She braced herself there, expecting Maledicta to tromp the accelerator and cut right into traffic. She wondered what a car crash would feel like from inside the cave.

But instead of going onto the highway, Maledicta threw the Buick into reverse and started backing down the on-ramp. ”Oh G.o.d,” Mouse said, cringing, as another car appeared behind them. ”Ah, you c.o.c.ksucker,” Maledicta exclaimed. Steering one-handed, she swerved around the other car; the Centurion's fender sc.r.a.ped a guard rail, but there was no collision. Maledicta repeated the maneuver a few seconds later, dodging around another car. And then they were at the bottom of the ramp, coasting backwards onto West Bridge Street. ”f.u.c.k but I'm good,” Maledicta praised herself.

She braked and s.h.i.+fted into drive. She should have gone straight forward, taking the underpa.s.s to the eastbound side of the Interstate, but once again she behaved unexpectedly, pulling a U-turn and driving back towards Autumn Creek.

”Hey,” cried Mouse, ”what are you doing? You're going the wrong way!”

She tried to step forward and take the body back, but found that she couldn't. It wasn't even a question of a struggle, like the last time Maledicta had tried to keep the body from her; Mouse simply couldn't get beyond the cave mouth.

”You're going the wrong way!” Mouse repeated, frustrated. ”We're going to lose Andrew!”

”The f.u.c.k we are,” said Maledicta. ”That's a long-haul truck he's on; it'll stay on the f.u.c.king Interstate, and we'll f.u.c.king catch up to it, no problem. But” -- she nicked a finger at the gauges on the Buick's dashboard -- ”before we drive over the f.u.c.king Cascades, we need gas. Gas and supplies.”

”Oh,” said Mouse. ”Oh, OK, that's fine then. . . but let me drive. . .”