Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

“I don’t know.” Niko looks past the hood of the cab across the showdown distance. Past the Black Taxi, past the gate, at the mansion at the end of the statuaried drive. You’re still there. Unbelievably still there. Through the door and up the stairs and in the room and on the bed where mere hours ago I held you while you drew your dying breath. Hours and ages later I am back with you in hand.

“All right, screw him. We switch to Plan B.”

“I didn’t know we had one,” says the cabbie.

“We didn’t.”

QUIET NIGHT. NO traffic on the high hill road. The Checker Cab’s doors creak open and the dome light shines. The cabbie gets out already patting herself for a cigarillo and Niko gets out holding the jar like a Fabergé egg while Nikodemus struggles out. Relieved of his weight the chassis lifts. All stand waiting.

The driver’s door opens on the Black Taxi and the Driver steps out. He bids them all good evening with a touch of bony hand to glossy bill of cap and turns the hollow of his gaze toward the lambent jar in Niko’s hand.

The cabbie lights another cigarillo. “Hiya, Sparky. TGIF, huh?”

The Driver only looks at the jar. Experimentally Niko slowly lifts it. The Driver’s head tilts up. Niko lowers the jar and moves it out to the side. The Driver’s head tilts down and swivels slightly.

“Hey, how’s my ride?” calls Niko. “Sure is fun to drive, isn’t she? Handles like a dream.” He smiles. “Man, I fired her up and that bitch just opened up for me and purred.”

The eyeless gaze no longer on the jar.

“You know for a while I wasn’t even sure who was driving who. It’s a shame I had to smash her all to hell—”

A sound escapes the Driver that could not issue from a human throat. Keening and choppy and thin. Chihuahuas bark from the plastic surgeon’s estate next door. In the hills coyotes yip. The Driver shucks all pretense of patience and stalks toward Niko with cold murder on his jaundiced face.

Niko says Go.

Nikodemus sprints to the wall and jumps high and hoists himself over. His shredded wings flutter as he drops to the other side.

Niko hands the jar off to the cabbie and hurries limping toward the Driver. He veers around the Driver and makes straight for the Black Taxi where he jerks open the heavy suicide door and jumps inside and slams the door. He yanks the key from the ignition as the door is snatched open behind him.

While the Driver goes for Niko the cabbie calmly goes to the gate and hands the jar through to Nikodemus, and the demon dashes with it up the lighted drive.

Niko scrambles across the seat and gets the door open just as something grabs his ankle. He kicks out blindly and does not connect but frees his leg and tumbles headfirst from the car. He manages a halfassed shoulder roll on the driveway. Sharp pain in his side like a woodrasp drawn across his broken rib. He stands and then falls back against the open door which hits the Driver hot behind him.

Nikodemus opens the front door of Niko’s house and runs inside.

Slouched against the closed car door Niko glances at the cabbie and she calmly nods. Behind him the window rolls down and sudden fire rips across his back. The world whites out. Niko gasps and the gasp locks up. Don’t you dare fall. He jerks forward and sees the ignition key in his hand. A hot iron pierces his back when he flings the key away. The key arcs into the darkness and lands in someone’s yard downhill.

Now you can fall.

Niko falls. The opening car door nudges him. He digs in his heels. Aware of the open window just above his head. His ass grows warm. What’s that about? Oh. Blood flowing down his back. Well this sure can’t last. Come on bud. Get up stand up, like Bob Marley said.

Niko manages to stand. He pushes from the Franklin and turns around just as the door bursts open and the Driver bursts out. Niko backpedals but the Driver stops in front of him and puts a friendly arm around his shoulder and draws him close as a lover and Niko is so startled by this that he lets him. Lets him draw his gaze up slowly into the churning horror of those evershadowed eyes. He half expects a smell of fetid breath but there is no breath at all. He hears the cabbie shouting out, his name perhaps, but his true name is seldom spoken anymore upon the mythless earth. And Niko does not turn he does not hear he does not fight but only looks into that borderless and leeching face and feels a softening inside, of life of will of want, and he senses the Driver’s hand upon his chest, then senses it within his chest and rummaging there for some forgotten thing made consequential only by its perceived absence, by its need to be reclaimed and redeemed, and Niko is about to tell the Driver that what the sure and probing fingers seek is no longer there. Was bartered for a song and sold too cheaply many years ago.

Just about to gently say these things he stops. His breath taken from him as the alien fingers brush the very thing inside him he has never truly believed existed. Never despite evidence and experience felt was really there to sell or trade.

The Driver seizes Niko’s soul and pulls. Not hard. Not hard. Instead he coaxes teasing Niko’s soul from its asylum like a loose thread in a pattern. His nimble fingers are not cold at all.

Yes thinks Niko as he looks into that jaundiced faceless face. o yes I will go with you. Take me with you, strip me from the prison of my flesh. Take me fuck me o it feels so good to die like this I love you.

He feels his soul enjoined more fully than it ever was with Jemma in their most heated passion or quiet certain love. Stripped down to his foundation he shares—with the Driver! with the Driver!—a naked true communion not known since unborn he shared his mother’s body.

The river Lethe was mere forgetting. This is vast enjoining. Who knew oblivion was so intimate? Slide the needle in and push the plunger home. You’re gone, youre gone, you are gone.

PIERCING SIRENS AND howling dogs and rhythmic patting wake him. Someone says Come on come on. He wonders what all the fuss is all about and realizes that the patting is the cabbie slapping him.

He sits up gasping hugely. Ambered overcast, Hollywood night. The cabbie kneeling over him, holding his arm.

The siren is his house alarm.

Where’d the Driver go?

Niko touches his chest. Gone?

But no. He feels his self still there. Now that he knows its shape within him it seems obvious. How could he not have known it’s been there all this time?

Sudden tears. The soul I sense inside me now. As if pregnant with my self. And shamed. I wanted to go with him. I loved him. o christ that is his power. That you go with him gladly. A poisoned aphrodisiac. This is what Jemma felt there at the end. This is what she felt. I am cuckolded by death itself and in his embrace would have done the same and happily. I am sick and so ashamed.

He shakes his head to clear his mind and looks up at the cabbie looking down. “What happened?” Nearly shouting in the din.

“He jumped out of the car and ran into you. He hugged you and then your house started yelling bloody murder, so he dropped you and ran through the gate in a big hurry. That part was pretty impressive.” Looking not at all impressed she drags on her cigarillo. “I thought you were a goner.”

“I think I was. How long ago?”

“Thirty seconds?”

“I have to turn the alarm off or this place’ll be crawling with rentacops.”

“I need to compress your back. You’re bleeding pretty bad.”

“Gotta help Nikodemus.”

But she’s already going around to the back of the cab and opening the trunk. “Can’t help anyone if you bleed to death.” She shuts the trunk. “Right?”

“Yes mother.”

The cabbie removes Niko’s shredded jacket and pulls up his flayed shirt. She draws a hissing breath and winces when she sees his back. Quickly and efficiently she puts on a thick compress and wraps his waist with surgical tape.