Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

The schooner hood dips down.

No.

Niko just has time to bring the cushion up between himself and the steering wheel before the car slams water like Icarus on wheels. The mason jar flies free and hits somewhere forward. Without a seatbelt Niko shoots into the seatcushion and it smashes against the steering wheel and he cracks a floating rib. With the wind knocked from him Niko sees black water engulf the hood. Hiss of heated metal hitting water. The Franklin rights itself and Niko is pushed back into the seat. Water splashes his shoulder neck and ear, and where it touches him his skin goes numb. The cushion hits him in the face and he bats it aside.

The spinning whitewalls spray a rooster tail behind the car. The icy shore is only yards away. Blue and naked in the cold the embedded damned stare as the heavy sedan rages forward. The Franklin hates him but the Franklin doesn’t want to drown. If it settles to the bottom of the frigid water like some pissant Titanic will it too forget? Niko thinks it will. Niko thinks the Franklin’s fighting for its shady life.

Above him his demon shouts Come on, come on. Why doesn’t he fly away?

Niko looks around for the mason jar but only sees its glow. He still can’t breathe.

A strange and rhythmic thunder comes from overhead as Niko’s demon beats his wings with all his might to help the car glide forward. They’re barely moving now and Niko doesn’t think they’re going to make it. The invisible fist lets go his gut and Niko draws a great pneumonic breath.

Something bumps the car’s right side. One of the naked dead, paperwhite and dripping, grabs the door with bloodless hands and clambers on. She is beautiful and dead as a lawn statue and moves like an automaton. Niko leans across the seat to pry her fingers loose and wonders even as he does why he is bothering since he’s about to join her in her bath of long forgetfulness. Her fingers lifeless cold. Beneath her nails the skin is nearly lavender. Listlessly she watches Niko try to force her fingers from the door.

The car surges forward and tilts starboard. Niko knocks the Franklin out of gear as he falls sideways. His forehead touches the aquamarine of the woman’s cheek. The surge continues and something slides hissing across the rear of the car. One of the river leviathans. The wake of its passing propels the Franklin forward and the front bumper scrapes the shore.

Niko slides back behind the wheel to put the car in gear. He glances at the clambering woman who looks up as if sighting a diving hawk. Something yanks her from the car and she splashes back into the river never to remember her escape attempt. Niko’s demon jumps down in her place, standing on the runningboard and hugging the side of the car and grinning evil glee. “All ashore that’s going ashore.”

The front wheels touch the sloping icy shore and the Black Taxi slows. Niko revs the engine and the back tires spin and water gargles as the rooster tail resumes. The car glides forward until the rear tires touch the shore and spin on the ice. Niko’s demon is leaning away to open the rear door when the tires grab and the Black Taxi bucks and surges from the water. The demon looks surprised as the car shoots out from under him and he falls backward. He lashes out a tendril but he misses and he drops from sight. Niko hears a heavy splash as his demon falls into the memory scouring waters of the river Lethe.

THE BLACK TAXI skims across the ice. Niko holds it to the highest speed that he can go and still maintain some measure of control. Mottled patches blur before the headlamps’ revelation, bodies of the frozen dead beneath the ice.

The Franklin really wants to get loose. The tires slide on watery patches and bump emergent corpses. One such has already sent the car into a slide in which the back and front ends threatened to trade places for at least a mile while Niko held the wheel cut to the right and rode it out until he felt the tires bite beneath him and he straightened out. He must maintain his focus every moment. Must bear down on the frozen sea that’s ever forming from the dark ahead. The moment his attention wavers the Black Taxi will get away from him. It’s sweaty work. The big sedan is squirrely on the ice. Like piloting a grand piano in a downhill soapbox derby. Niko isn’t driving so much as aiming. He wishes the Checker cabbie were behind the wheel. This would be a walk in the park to her. Oh well. He wishes her well wherever she is.

At least he’s found the heater controls and floor vents. The trip across the icy reach is markedly warmer this time out. Small comfort. Things are going downhill fast. In the first place there’s his passenger. Wet and chilled to the supernatural bone his demon huddles in his leather wings shivering on the restored back seat hard enough to shake the car. His great teeth clack like porcelain castanets. Though Niko cannot look at him he knows his demon’s face is oddly childlike and earnest as it regards anew the world outside the window.

In the second place—oh but that doesn’t bear thinking about, no oh no.

You play the hand you’re dealt, buddy pal, whispers the voice that apparently has not left him despite its incarnation in the seat behind him. Drive.

In the second place, beside Niko on the front seat is the mason jar with its feather floating, and jagged along the surface of the jar like a photograph of distant lightning is a hairline crack.

Niko drives and the night goes on forever and Niko drives.

WHEN NIKO HEARD his demon splash into the river he got out of the dripping wet sedan, the engine still running and steam glowing in the headlights as it rose from the Franklin’s dark contours. Niko looked up at the solid roof of night and realized he couldn’t run back to the water to help his demon or even look to see where his demon was. From behind him came splashing. “Hey,” he called to a Polynesian man embedded in ice up to his waist. “Can you see what happened to the demon who fell in?”

The man nodded agreeably and said something Niko couldn’t understand. Near the rear of the Black Taxi a chubby man with a patchy beard was embedded up to his thighs and bent over as far as he could to warm his hands in the car’s softly puttering exhaust. “Yo,” he called to Niko. “He’s right there. You blind?”

“I have a curse. I can’t look back.”

“Ooh, some curse.”

“Is my, has the demon gone under?”

“You kiddin? He’s standing right there like he lost a fuckin contact lens. The water’s yay high.” The man put a hand near his hairy genitals. “Hey. You’re that guitar guy aren’t you? Nike, some shit like that. My fuckin kids used to get stoned and listen to you. Bouncin around the house with their fuckin hair and pretendin to play the guitar. Dope dealin little bastards. Fuck, I sent one of em down here.” The man straightened from the exhaust pipe. Melted ice puddled beneath the car. “So you’re here too huh? Like I’m surprised. Weren’t you a junky or something?”

“Or something. Listen—”

“So I guess you’re just mister big fuckin rock star huh? Clothes and a fuckin gangster car for the big celebrity. Whose big ol devil dick did you suck, Mister Dope Fiend?”

Niko started looking around for another source of help. “It’s not like that. I’m sorry but I’m in a hurry—”

“Oh he’s in a hurry. He’s got a fuckin schedule. No shit, I’m glad you’re even talking to a nobody like me. Before you go I wonder if I could get your fuckin autogra—”

“Could you yell for him to come here?”

Patchy Beard crossed his arms. “Fuuuuck you.” He nearly sang it. Niko glanced at the Black Taxi. The well of its reflection on the melted ice. “Call him over and I’ll pull you out.”