Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have laughed.”

All I could do was nod my head, and even that hurt like hell. “We can get you some clean pants and underwear,” said Dash. “…would be nice…” I heard myself whisper. Then the radio crackled and the dispatcher’s voice chimed in. “You still there, Hummer?” He grabbed the microphone. “Where else would I be?” “That’s my line, Sheriff.” “Sue me.”

“ Touchy tonight, aren’t we?”

“Did you talk with Daddy Bliss?”

“No, I just missed the sound of your voice— of course I talked with him.”

“ And…? ” “And Daddy says, no worries. He wanted Driver to have the grand tour, anyway.” Hummer stared out at the road, saying nothing for a few seconds, looking confused. I leaned toward Dash. “Is that a nickname, ‘Hummer’?” “Nope.” Sheriff Hummer was still speaking to the dispatcher. “When’s the tour supposed to start?” “As soon as possible.” “Can we at least get him a change of clothes first?” “A change of clothes?” said Nova. “What did you—never mind. Sure thing. He can look through the wardrobe when he gets here.” “Call our ETA five minutes. Ciera’s right behind us with Road Mama.” “You want me to call Stick and tell him to hit the lights?” Hummer glanced in the rearview mirror toward me, then said, “Might as well.” “Oh, you’re gonna like this,” said Dash. “Ain’t everyone who gets to see Levegh Lane.” “Why’s that?” Deputy Dash shrugged. “We don’t get many visitors.” “So this is big deal, huh?” “Yep.” “Why…why do you call it that? Is there some significance to the name? Is that Daddy Bliss’s real name or something?””

Hummer answered this one: “It’s named after Pierre Levegh, a race car driver. Drove a Mercedes at Le Mans in 1955. In the third hour of the race, this Jaguar driver named Mike Hawthorn got a signal from his pit crew to stop for gas. He slowed down, but there was this Austin-Healey right on his ass, and it had to swerve to avoid him. A little ways behind, Levegh raised his hand to signal another car to slow the hell down. Levegh was going 150 miles per hour.” Hummer shook his head. “He never had a chance.

“Levegh slammed into the Healey and his car took off like a rocket, crashed into the embankment beside the track, hurtled end over end, and then just…disintegrated over the crowd. The hood decapitated a bunch of spectators. The engine and front axle cut through a bunch of people, splitting them in half. The car had a magnesium body, right, and that son-of-a-bitch burst into flames like a torch, burning dozens of others to death. The whole thing took maybe 12 seconds, but in that time 82 people were killed and 76 others were maimed.”

I blinked. “And you named a street after him?”

“That’s right. Levegh was a great man.”

“A great man,” said Dash.

Hummer nodded. “Only a truly heroic man could bring so many new members into Road Mama and Daddy Bliss’s family in a few brief seconds.”

Do I need to tell you exactly how anxious this little exchange made me? It finally sank in that I was trapped in a car with a couple of out-patients. If my luck held up, we’d soon be passing the Bates Motel.

I was so scared…but I was also damned if I was going to show it; at least, no more than I already had.

“You might want to sit up,” said Hummer. “Make sure you can get a good look out the window. You might not know it, but this a great honor, Daddy Bliss wanting you to see everything.”

I heard a distance buzzing noise, like a massive electrical grid warming up. Even through the vibration of the tires against the streets I could feel the deep, powerful thrum that rose in power with the pitch of the grid.

“You might want to prepare yourself some,” said Hummer. “This could be a bit of a shock.”

That didn’t even begin to cover it.

8

The street exploded with light, bright and blinding, bearing down like a curse from Heaven and forcing me to close my eyes and throw my arms up against my face.

After the stars stopped going supernova behind my lids, I slowly opened my eyes and saw that both sides of this cliff-lined street were being illuminated by rows upon rows of huge stadium lights that rose easily a hundred feet above the surface of the road. I wondered how they’d managed to install them at the tops of the cliffs, and then realized that these weren’t cliffs or hollowed mountainsides at all.

They were cars.

Crushed, smashed, mangled, and twisted, stacked dozens atop dozens, held together by steel beams and girders that had been welded into place to form main spannings and supports, creating something like a life-sized shadowbox. The stacks

( dead piles? )

rose so high I almost couldn’t see the tops of the damn things. Each car-cube was roughly the size of a large building, nine or ten stories high, separated from its neighbor by a space of maybe 30 feet. It was in those spaces where the stadium light towers were installed, and as we passed the first group and I looked through those spaces I saw that the car-cubes not only lined both sides of the street but extended backward for what seemed miles, a giant child’s building block set, each one placed at a point equidistant from those beside, in front of, and behind it. It was like something out of an Escher painting.

“Where did all of these come from?” I asked.

“Everywhere,” replied Dash. “They come from all over the place in the U.S.”

“And sometimes Canada or Mexico,” said Sheriff Hummer. “If someone drives here from Canada or Mexico, they’re on our roads, so their ass is ours if something happens.”

“‘Ours’?” I said.

“Ours,” replied Dash.

“Well, technically,” said Hummer, “they belong to Road Mama and Daddy Bliss, but since the rest of us are family, we like to think of them as ‘ours’. That answer your question?” “Not really.” “Don’t worry, things’ll be explained to you.” Ciera came up alongside us in the meat wagon, waving and smiling before hitting the turn signal and taking a side road. “She’s using the shortcut,” said Dash. Hummer nodded his head. “I got eyes, little brother.” “Daddy Bliss told us we weren’t supposed to take no shortcuts tonight.” “And Ciera will have to explain herself to him, so it’s not our problem.”

“But he won’t do anything to her, he never does. It ain’t fair! How come she gets to do whatever she wants and the rest of us gotta do as we’re told?”

“Because Daddy Bliss favors Ciera, you know that. She was the last person he brought into the family himself.”

Dash folded his arms across his chest and pressed his chin down, pouting. “Yeah, well, still …it ain’t fair.”

“Not much is, little brother. Don’t need to keep reminding ourselves.”

We made a left, turning onto a stretch of road where the car-cubes were replaced by typical middle-class houses on a typical middle-class street. All the lights were on inside each house, and several people were standing on their front porches, watching us pass by.

“Gonna be a big night for everyone here, Driver,” said Hummer. “A big night.”

I swallowed, leaning forward. “Why are you called ‘Hummer’?”

The sheriff looked into the rear-view mirror. “Because that’s what I was driving when I got myself and my little brother killed. It was my fault, I was screwing around, pretending that the goddamn thing was a tank, I accidentally side-swiped a semi, lost control of the wheel, and went over the side of a bridge.”

“I was pretty scared,” said Dash. “I was all bent over and crying. That’s how I busted open my head on the bottom of the dashboard.” “And I was the driver,” replied the sheriff. “That’s how it works.” I returned his stare in the rear-view mirror for a few moments more, then said, “Fuck you.” “What was that?” One of his hands snapped down to the butt of his gun. “I said fuck you. I’m supposed to believe that you two are dead, is that it?” “We ain’t dead,” said Dash. “Just Repaired,” said Hummer. He pronounced the second word with such awe and reverence I could almost see the capital ‘R’.