Kiss of the Sun (17 page)

She was outside.

Martha unclipped Reggie's key ring and found his car key, a black fob with the word
DODGE
molded into the plastic. It had three buttons: one for locking, one for opening, and a trunk release. She pressed the unlock button and saw the flash of a taillight toward the end of the second row. She went toward it.

She pulled open the driver's side door of Reggie's gray Dart. The interior light came on to reveal stained upholstery and an accumulation of fast-food bags on the passenger floorboard. There was an employee hangtag on the mirror. A hairline crack ran from the center of the windshield all the way to the far edge.

Martha settled into the driver's seat, ignoring the sour odors of sweat and stale food containers. She found the adjustment lever and scooted the seat forward, then fastened the seatbelt. She popped open the glove compartment and sorted through its contents, hoping there might be a highway map. She found only the owner's manual, napkins, and oil change receipts.

When she put the key in the ignition and turned it, the sound of the engine jolted her. It brought home the enormousness of what of she was doing. Grand larceny.

You have to do this. For Jarrell.

She backed the Dodge up, turned, and drove out of the hospital parking lot. She pulled onto the rural road and proceeded for a mile through wooded countryside, with only her intuition to guide her. The fuel gauge showed a fourth of a tank, and she had only a vague sense of where the hospital lay in relation to Atlanta. She only knew that she was somewhere in central Georgia.

After another quarter mile, she saw the lights of a convenience store glowing in the mist:
GOLDEN PANTRY.
It was risky to stop, but she wasn't likely to get anywhere without a map, and she would need more gas to make it to Bartow County. She pulled up to the pumps and took off the lanyard, badge, and scrub top. She balled them up and threw them in the backseat. She put ten dollars' worth of gas in the car, then went inside and found a few supplies—a flashlight, batteries, a map of Georgia, and a 5-Hour Energy drink. As she paid, the dark-eyed, copper-skinned cashier gazed at her intensely. There was a security camera mounted to a post on the ceiling, pointed straight at her.

Back in the Dodge, she quickly studied the map and traced with her finger the old two-lane Highway 441. She would need to take it for about twenty-five miles, passing through the town of Eatonton, to reach Interstate 20, which bisected the state. From there, it would be another fifty-six miles to I-75, which led north toward Bartow County.

For the next forty-five minutes she drove north along a ribbon of asphalt that meandered through the sleepy rural countryside, careful to drive only a few miles per hour over the speed limit, occasionally glancing at the rearview mirror. She had already made mistakes. The convenience store was close to the hospital, and it would be one of the first stops the police would make after she was found missing. Now it was only a question of how soon that discovery would be made. Every glint of headlights in her rearview mirror caused her to wince, to pray that it would not be followed by the sudden burst of a siren and a flash of blue lights.

Eventually she reached the exit ramp that led onto I-20 and merged into the nocturnal highway traffic, just another anonymous commuter. Cement dividers, green highway signs, and the towering, brightly lit billboards swept past her in the night as she cruised along with single-minded focus.

Martha glanced in the rearview mirror, and what she saw triggered a sensation like a bee sting in her left armpit, a toxic prick that spread quickly through her chest. It was a tiny blue light, perhaps a quarter mile behind her, strobing against the backdrop of the night. Below the blue flash, two square headlights, and the whole thing getting larger, closing the gap with alarming speed. Her eyes darted to the dashboard speedometer: eighty-five. She let off the gas, dropping down to sixty.

She slowed further as the blue flash came up behind her and filled the passenger compartment, reflecting off the molded plastic of the steering wheel and the silver trim along the dashboard. Then the cruiser switched lanes and kept on going, sailing past her silently, like something in a dream. The blue wink grew smaller and finally vanished around a curve in the interstate. Martha's chest heaved, and she flexed her hands, which had grown damp and numb as she gripped the steering wheel. She pressed on the gas and accelerated back to the speed limit.

She'd driven for another half hour, maybe more, eyes locked on the yellow centerline, when she felt a feathery itch on her left calf and scratched it, then another on her upper arm and the back of the neck. Then, all over, the same prickly sensation, like things crawling under her clothes.

She detected movement out of the corner of her eye. A mottled spider, as big as a silver dollar, was crawling along the top of the rearview mirror. She shrieked and thrashed at it with the highway map.

The Dodge swerved, and she turned her attention back to the road, bringing the car back under control. She jerked her body to force herself back to full consciousness. She glanced at the rearview mirror. No spider.

How many hours without sleep? Two nights.
You're starting to hallucinate.

Martha slapped at her cheeks with both hands. She cracked open the energy drink and took a long pull, then opened the vents and rolled down the window, letting in the cool night air. She gripped the steering wheel and concentrated on the road.

The air whipped across her face and through her hair. As she drove northward, she imagined the wind stripping off layers of her skin, blowing away all of her prior identities: Daughter. Honors student. Published author. The air kept sandblasting her until there was only bare bone left and one single, hard purpose—to reach Jarrell. To see him again. To save him.

You're too late, Lovie.

The voice whispered through the air vents, and Martha tried to ignore it, gripping the steering wheel harder.

I've already won.

“Go away,” Martha said.

Lenny's laugh was rheumy and dry, and it seemed to come from all of the vents at once.

“You haven't won,” Martha said. “I'm going to make it to Jarrell.”

It doesn't matter. Your boyfriend is gonna pop his cork, there's nothing to be done, and it's all because of you.

The salmon blob of a streetlight slid through the car interior. Martha looked in the rearview mirror and could see the knob-like shape of Lenny's head in the backseat. His eye sockets were empty shadows.

You've screwed the pooch, Lovie.

“No,” she said. “Go away, go away….”

I'm all you've got left, I'm all that's left, innit? There's no one left but me
.

“Jarrell is still alive.”

You can't change what's about to happen, and you know it, Lovie. It's a prophecy, innit? Your boyfriend will die. He'll be gone, and then there will be no one but me.

“No.”

I'm all there is, all there ever was, all there ever will be.

Martha looked in the mirror and saw that the skin of Lenny's face was writhing. He was covered with spiders, his skin was alive with them, they were crawling out of his mouth and eye sockets—

Headlights filled the interior with sudden daylight. There was the sonorous bellow of a truck horn. She had strayed out of her lane and into the path of a semi coming up at high speed behind her. She fishtailed back into her lane, then felt a violent jounce as the car careened onto the grass beyond. The Dodge rumbled down a short embankment. She slammed on the brakes, juddered to a stop in a stand of trees.

Martha clawed at the door handle and clambered out of the Dodge, gasping.

She looked inside the open door, scanning the backseat and the windows, now illuminated by the dome light. There was no Lenny and no spiders, just empty fast-food containers. Magazines on the floorboard:
Maxim, PC Gamer.

The adrenaline of the near accident had awakened her, knocked her out of her sleep-deprivation-induced nightmare, at least for the moment. Martha took several deep breaths and dug her fingernails into her palms. She needed to ride the wave of that adrenaline now, for just another hour, to get to Erringer's mansion. Jarrell's destination.

You must do this.

She got back into the car, put it into reverse. The rear wheels spun for a second, then held. She backed up, then turned and eased back up the embankment and into the breakdown lane. From there, still shaking, she accelerated and merged back into the scattered night traffic.

She made her way to the I-285 perimeter, then followed the belt road past strip shopping plazas and cluster housing developments, their halogen security lights glowing through the luminous fog that seemed to have blanketed the entire state, until she reached its intersection with I-75.

She headed north for another forty-five minutes, pushing the Dodge, maintaining a speed of more than twenty miles per hour over the speed limit. The clock on the dashboard read 3:35
A.M.
Assuming Reggie had it set to the correct time, she had only two hours to catch up with Jarrell before he reached Erringer at his appointed time—sunrise.

The exit for Kingston, Georgia, where Martha would leave the highway and start navigating by the map and using Slinky's notes in detail, was marked by the familiar yellow block letters:
WAFFLE HOUSE.
Other fast-food trademarks shone fuzzily in the light fog.

Martha pulled into the parking lot to consult the highway map and the topographical map she'd printed at the hospital. The Erringer Preserve was about twelve miles outside of Kingston. Her heart quickened with the knowledge that if Jarrell was following the plan he'd hatched with Slinky, he would be in this area, somewhere. She was now getting closer to him. Not breathing the same air yet, but closer.

Martha put the papers aside and continued on, leaving the highway behind and then skirting the town square of Kingston to follow a two-lane blacktop in a dark, heavily wooded suburban area.

There was little to see when she reached the battlefield site except for an iron historical marker and an antique split-rail fence. She slowed and found a muddy pull-out where others had parked to view the marker. She got out of the car.

The night was quiet except for the high-pitched chirrup of cricket frogs somewhere nearby, making a sound like a thumbnail dragged along the teeth of a plastic comb. Perhaps they were along the creek shown on the map. The fog seemed to glow with an ethereal light from some unknown source. In the waxing moonlight she could see an open field behind the fence, and to the right, a stand of trees.

“Jarrell?” she called out toward the field, and listened. Her own voice sounded strange to her, unsettling. A section of the frog chorus paused for a moment, then resumed. She shone her flashlight around but could see no sign of another car. But that didn't mean Jarrell wasn't here. He wouldn't have stashed his vehicle in so obvious a location. He would have parked a mile up the road somewhere. Perhaps he had driven partway into the woods to hide the car.

She reached into the car to get the topo map, which she folded and slid into her pocket, then took the flashlight and started on her way.

The map showed a dashed line, a hiking path that wound through the trees beyond the fence. She stepped over the low split-rail fence and followed it, shining her flashlight toward the ground, hoping to pick up the trail.

There were a number of footprints in the mud behind the fence, going in different directions. She crouched down and examined them. One set was large enough to be Jarrell's and seemed fresh enough to have been made tonight, but it was impossible to tell for sure. She followed the direction of a group of prints that seemed to head toward the trees.

There was indeed a muddy trail that threaded its way through the pines and sweet gums, and she followed it, sweeping her light along the tree trunks, tracing upward across the bare limbs. “Jarrell?” she said again, too shy of the night to project her voice.
He's here,
she kept telling herself.
This is where you will meet again. This is where you will stop the vision from becoming reality.

She went on for several hundred yards and came to a place where the trees began to thin out. She could make out a dark old shack off to one side and another structure of some sort next to a larger tree, perhaps an oak.

There was a tiny orange glow floating near the base of the second structure.

“Jarrell?” Martha called out.

“Wah-ruh?” The answer came back at her, gravelly and weak.

Martha slid behind a tree and shined her light toward the voice and the glow, but the beam was too weak to reach.

“Who's there?” Martha called out.

“Wah-ruh,” she heard again, and she again spotted the orange point of light, first hanging in the air, then floating toward the ground, like an errant spark from a firework.

She stepped and looked, halting, then took another step and came around the tree, shining her light to get a better view. The main part of the shape was a stack of rotting hay bales. At the base of it was a pair of rumpled forms. Two men, on the ground, leaning against the bales. One was smoking a cigarette. The man next to him appeared to be asleep, his head hanging low.

Her light fell on one of their faces. The man with the cigarette was looking toward her, face wreathed in mud and blood. He had a short, ruddy beard that was caked with dried blood. His left leg glistened with wetness.

“Are you a nurse?” he asked.

Martha stepped a little closer and saw that the other man was asleep, his head drooped, legs stretched out straight. There was a rifle laid across his lap.

“Who are you?” she asked the one who was awake.

“My name's Daniel, ma'am. We was pinned down over yonder. In that trench. They took us out. Most all of us.” He took another puff of the cigarette and looked at her, his eyes like pale gray marbles in the glow of her flashlight. “I need water, ma'am.”

“I'm sorry, I don't have any. I'm looking for—”

“Are you a nurse? They said some nurses would be coming, but they was late because they took out the tracks down by Euharlee.” He grabbed her arm. “My brother was killed, ma'am. I saw it. A shell landed next to him.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Are you a nurse?”

“No. I was looking for someone. A young man—he was supposed to come this way.”

The man took a draw on his cigarette, squinting.

“There's a creek somewhere,” Martha said. “I saw it on a map. I'll try to find some water for you.”

He grabbed her sleeve again, leaned forward. “Tell them we held the line. Tell them we did everything we could. They got us in a pinch. Will you tell them?”

Martha stepped back, stumbled on the legs of the man next to Daniel. She shined her flashlight down to catch her footing, and the beam fell across him. There was a hole in the side of his head. It was full of writhing maggots.

“Oh God!”

“Get us some water, ma'am.”

He grabbed her pants leg, and she jerked away and stumbled. She heard a ripping sound, and then she pulled free. She shined her light along the path, revealing more bodies, dark inert forms strewn everywhere in the woods. She tripped over one, and it made a groaning sound.

She bolted along the path, stepping over and around them. She heard moans in the dark, all around her, and hands grabbed at her ankles as she stumbled on, breaking into a blind jog as she followed the sloping terrain downward. The path had grown sticky, had become a wetland of blood and mud and bodies. She stumbled onto a low mound, a berm made of dirt and flesh and limbs and muddy clothing, and she could hear a trickle of running water on the other side. She clambered over the small hill and splashed into the shallow stream. She shined her flashlight down and saw that she was standing in blood—a gushing creek of ruby red that flowed around her ankles.

She moaned and lifted her feet, the bloody mud sucking at her shoes, and took several stumbling steps until she reached the bank and climbed out, scuttling up a shallow hill toward an embankment that loomed above.

She aimed her light down, looking for the trail, and saw her own blood-soaked feet and, nearby, footprints in the mud, a faint trail. She loped along, following the trail, putting distance between herself and the gurgling river of horror below.

The trail led to the embankment, a gray rock wall. She leaned against the cool stone, panting, and could hear the rushing stream behind her. She pointed her flashlight down at her slicked ankles. They were dark and wet—but it was mud, not blood.

Just mud.

She turned and looked at the rock face. There was a depression here, leading slightly downward to the base of the low cliff. Her light caught something glinting in the face of the rock, and she went toward it. A few steps farther and she saw that it was a metal gate with bars, like the door of a prison cell. Behind it, a dark space, blacker than the night itself. A breath of cool air came out of the darkness. She moved closer to it and saw that the gate was open. Her light fell on the iron chain that hung from a bolt in the rock. The chain had been severed, one of the links cut through. The gate stood open.

She took a step backward, playing her light along the rock face, then along the ground. Something glinted among the wet leaves, and she bent down to look at it. A hacksaw. Martha knelt and touched the handle, and then she began to weep. Two letters were engraved on the metal frame of the hacksaw:
J.H.

He'd been here. He had cut through the chain, opened the gate. Somewhere in this hellish landscape, he was still alive. He was the only thing that mattered to her now, and he was very close.