Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

Within minutes they are come to the shore of frigid Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Scant light gleams from its obsidian liquid. “How are we supposed to get across?” Niko says to the back seat. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

Niko glares at the dark instrument panel. Once again he fights the urge to look back at the smug inhuman bastard he chauffeurs.

“If you know something tell me. There are gonna be enough surprises without you adding to them.”

“I don’t know something.” The whiskey voice grows closer as the demon hunches forward. “I’m making this up as I go. Same as you.” Niko’s nostrils flare at the rot of his demon’s breath. His skin has the sour smell of a threeday bender. Mercifully the demon leans back. “When I want to go across a river I fly.”

They drive until the river flows before them.

Niko’s demon says Go right and Niko turns right. On his left the river flows. How much of my mortal life did I waste returning to that memory-cleansing water? I might still be bathing there had not the grave Achaian delivered my guitar, and the voice of it returned me to my self. Akileo, Akileo. Somewhere on this hard-packed shore I bested you. A feat no Homer will relate. Possibly your disgraceful armor weighs you still beneath those very waters. For your sake I hope it does.

Though the sand is hard and flat the car is still a little squirrely. It wants to get away from him again.

“We’re not headed out anymore,” says Niko.

“Why thank you Daniel Boone. No we’re not. If out is north we’re headed east.”

“What are we looking for?”

“A bridge would be nice.”

“I don’t see one.”

“There isn’t one.”

“Then we’re looking for the narrowest spot we can find.”

“You can never find the narrowest spot on an infinite river,” says his demon.

“The narrowest spot in the next five miles then.”

“Whyyy?” Like an obstinate six year old.

“Because we’re going to cross it your way.”

“How’s that?”

“We’re gonna fly.”

IT’S MORE LIKE ten miles but finally Niko finds a promising spot. Here some obstruction, probably logjammed bodies, has caused the mounding-up of runoff sand over uncounted centuries until a respectable dune has formed. It projects perhaps a hundred yards into the river and rises maybe thirty feet. From the end of the dune to the frozen far side of the river is about fifty yards. Using the slightly up-angled dune as a ramp, assuming the sandbar is hard and firm all the way, driving at a top speed of around ninety miles an hour ought to land the Franklin just about smack in the middle of the river.

Which is why Niko’s demon is on the roof as Niko backs up the car without looking. The mason jar is clamped between Niko’s thighs and his head is half out the window like a happy dog to hear his demon’s shouted directions.

“Right. Go right. More. Good, now straighten out. Ah nuts. Hold on, will you?”

Niko stops. The car rises as his demon jumps off the roof. “Let me do the talking.”

“Someone’s coming?” Niko doesn’t want to idle here. He must keep moving.

“One of my compadres.” He puts on a big ole shiteating grin and through clenched teeth says Look the other way, then nods amiably to whatever’s coming toward them.

Niko looks the other way. In his peripheral vision an obese demon waddles to the car. One side of her face looks halfmelted, one eye two inches lower than the other. The bottom of her face thick with caked-on food. A standard issue trident in one clawed hand. She glances at the car and Niko promptly looks away. Niko hears her say Howdy.

“How do.”

“What brings you guys to our neck of the woods? You’re a little off the beaten path.”

“Well. We’re delivering a cake. A big gooey chocolate cake with creamy rich frosting thick as dogshit.”

“A cake.” Her voice is suddenly pure sex.

“Bout yea big. In fact—” His demon’s voice lowers seductively and Niko can’t make out the rest. As she listens lustfully the obese demon’s gaze slides hopefully toward the Black Taxi where she sees Niko trying to look innocuous. “Say,” she says.

Niko hears a soft grunt and a strangled squawk and a meaty thump. By the time he looks his demon stands above the corpulent demon writhing with the blunt end of her own trident piercing her head. Her lower eye halfpushed from the socket by the length of iron rammed behind it. Niko’s demon has his foot on the trident to hold the bucking bloated figure down.

“Well, I see you did the talking.”

“My favorite form of communication. Wait here. I gotta take out the trash.” The vanquished demon’s mouth works spastically. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Fnuh fnuh fnuh,” says the fat demon.

Without looking Niko’s demon bends to the ground and loops a tendril to scoop a healthy load of sand into the fat demon’s mouth. “Look, do you know what’ll happen if they catch me?” He snorts and deposits another load into the sputtering mouth below him. “They’ll take me apart and put the pieces in boiling oil and cook them for a hundred years in a pot full of piranhas while they decide how they really want to punish me. They have rules about you but it’s open season on me, buddy pal. They can do whatever they want to catch me, and when they catch me they can do whatever they want to me. Forever and ever like the lovesongs say. So I’m unloading Shamu here before she decides to collect on the book the casino has surely put on me by now, or before she calls her wicked stepsisters in to share the loot. Okay?” He lifts the trident onto one powerful shoulder. The fat demon dangles like some bloated thing bagged out of season. “Bathtime, skinny.” He glances at Niko. “The less they bother me the easier it’ll be for you.” He turns away like some sick parody of a little lost devil running away from home. “We’re in this together sweetheart,” he calls over his shoulder.

“What else is new,” Niko mutters.

“Fnuh fnuh fnuh,” the fat demon says.

“YOU READY UP there?” Niko calls.

“I still think you’re crazy as hell,” from the roof of the car. “But insanity’s helpful in someone I’m supposed to torment.”

“That’s not your job anymore.”

“I can moonlight. Let’s go.”

Niko reaches around the ungainly seatcushion his demon tore from the back seat and set across his lap in lieu of an airbag, and he puts the car in gear. Awkwardly he shifts as the Franklin lumbers up to speed. The breeze that blows into the opened front windows contains a chill from off the frozen plain across the river.

Above Niko his demon’s tendrils, wrapped through driver’s and passenger’s sides of the window, reposition for a better grip.

They race toward the dune projecting out into the river Lethe. All their calculations say the car can’t make it by itself. And his demon can’t possibly ferry the fortyfive hundred pound sedan a hundred fifty feet across the river. But perhaps the mongrel airfoil of his demon’s outspread wings can give them enough glide ratio to make the farther shore.

Niko keeps them straight and here comes the edge of the dune and son of a bitch it’s hard not to hit the brake. The ground drops below the windshield and Niko winces and his foot stays on the gas as the ground drops away and the engine roars and the whitewalls spin on nothing. Above him his demon spreads his wings and holds them as taut and wide and flat as his considerable muscles will allow.

The car soars off the dune. Black rock of sky beyond the hood. The mason jar wedged by the seatcushion between his clamping thighs. The car tips forward and the windshield fills with the frozen line of the far bank dotted with embedded figures. Solvent water rushes upward. Water that once delivered Niko from his haunted heart. The icy bank is twenty yards away now. Ten. Will we reach it?