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

And then the cobra roared, just once, spitting smoke and sparks. Fairlane wanted my attention. I had no choice but look at my opponent.

His skin—what there was of it—had the gray fish-belly pallor of something spoiled, and his head was disproportionately large for his body; like Dash, part of his skull was visible where the scalp had been torn away and cauterized at the edges. Thick strands of long, greasy, dark hair hung down the back of his head, tied into something that was supposed to be a ponytail but looked more like a section of putrid intestine left dangling for the elements to feast upon. He still had his own eyes, after a fashion: each was embedded into the center of a cone-shaped floodlight welded into the sockets. His nose was a knot of mashed tissue that leaked a thick, brown substance onto his upper lip. Every few seconds he would smile, allowing the liquid to spatter down onto his long, dark tongue that lolled around like that of a particularly happy or stupid puppy, never disappearing completely into his mouth. Something about the texture and shape of the thing demanded closer attention, and when it flopped fully out of his mouth a second time, I realized that the tongue was maybe one-third human tissue; the rest of it was a fan belt onto which the organic tissue had been attached.

Fairlane must have seen the realization hit me, because his face began to split in half as he smiled, displaying a mouth crowded with full-sized sparkplugs that had been jammed in to replace his teeth, both on top and bottom. He chortled—that’s the only word for it—and clicked his teeth together; a series bouncing blue electrical currents danced around his smile. I wondered if the little girl I’d seen earlier was his daughter or niece. Maybe she was just a fan and was paying tribute to her hero.

Hundreds of metal strips were mixed in with the flesh of his arms, and several twisted license plates had been used to good advantage in replacing the pectoral muscles of his chest, but his hands were the most unnerving thing about him; long, wide, with quadruple-jointed fingers, each hand was equal parts meat and metal, with small silver hinges used in place of bone joints. One hand was fused to the steering wheel at the ten o’clock position, while the other was fused to the gearshift.

“Told you he was ugly,” said Hummer.

“No,” I whispered. “It’d take the light from ugly ten thousand years to reach him.”

Fairlane chortled again, this time throwing back his head, his tongue flailing through the air.

Ciera took hold of my hand. “You need to get in your car now.”

I nodded at her and crossed back to the vehicle, opening the door, climbing inside, and then buckling up—more out of habit than any belief that doing so was going to keep me safe. “Good luck,” said Ciera. “Wait a second, please.” “What is it?” “How…I mean…what’s at the end of this road?”

“All of us—or we will be. You’ll see.” She leaned down, gave me a quick kiss, and then walked about ten yards ahead, stopping in the middle of the road and raising her arms. I stared at the red kerchiefs and tried once again to Zen-out of this whole freak show.

“On your marks,” she shouted, her arms now raised to their full height, the crowd silent, wide-eyed, leaning forward.

Fairlane gunned his engine. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Ciera gave us both a smile that might have been radiant in any other place, under any other circumstances. “ Get set …”

Her grip tightened on the kerchiefs in her hands. In a moment, she’d swing down those impossible arms in a swift, decisive arc, and off we’d go.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, wondering how long I’d be missing and dead before anyone took serious notice of my absence. It was quite the revelation, it was, to realize that out of all my friends…I didn’t really have any.

“ GO!” Ciera screamed, snapping down both arms simultaneously.

And we had a race.

13

I didn’t have to touch anything for the first ten seconds because, as Daddy Bliss had told me, the Road was in control. My rear tires spun madly for a second or two, screaming burned rubber and churning up a lot of smoke, and then the car shot forward, slamming me back against the seat. Fairlane gunned it—or, rather, the Road gunned it for him—and flew ahead, but a few seconds later, just as the crowd disappeared from my rear-view mirror and the safety railings began, control of the vehicles was returned to us and I gripped the wheel, shifted, and floored the accelerator, coming up fast on him.

For a few seconds, we were side-by-side, both of us increasing speed, both of our cars shuddering, both of us being followed by bulky overhead shadows that finally swept down, causing both of us to hunch so they couldn’t touch us, and just as quickly as they had appeared, the Highway People vanished and we got back to business.

And that’s when Fairlane began cheating. He slant-drove across my front and squealed into my lane. I resisted the impulse to break and instead sped up, ramming into his rear bumper; once, gently; the second time, not so much; and then with everything the car had, taking off part of his rear bumper and slewing him back into his own lane and against the railing where he scraped along, throwing off sparks for about a hundred yards. Some of the sparks flew toward my face, a couple of them landing on my cheek and burning the skin, but it was quick, the wind saw to that, and the pain kept me focused, kept my grip tight on the wheel, and I ran up alongside Fairlane, keeping him pinned between my car and the railing, and he was screaming, and I was laughing in panic, and when another set of sparks came spitting over against my face I jerked the wheel to the left, shot back into my lane, and surged forward.

It didn’t take Fairlane long to right his vehicle and close the distance between us, but at least now he’d gotten the idea and remained in his own lane, and pretty soon we were side-by-side again—

—and that’s when I discovered that Fairlane wasn’t the only person here who cheated, because I looked ahead and saw the flashing visibar lights of the Sheriff’s Department cruiser coming at us, roaring down on top of us, right the fuck smack in the middle, it would hit us both unless one of us did something, and I heard myself screaming “ A fucking game of CHICKEN? This all boils down to a game of CHICKEN? ” but Fairlane either didn’t hear me or didn’t care because he moved closer to me, so I returned the favor, our cars pressing against the each other’s side, neither one of us moving to get out of the cruiser’s way—there was nowhere to go, the railings made sure of that—but whoever was driving the cruiser wasn’t budging, just kept barreling down on top of us, and when I saw the lights of the burning torches flicker in the distance I knew we were almost done, this was it, now or never, and I figured, fuck it, I didn’t have to prove my nerve to anyone, so I took a chance and stood on the brake, spinning over into the right lane, but Fairlane didn’t follow suit, he just kept burning forward, looking back over his shoulder at me and laughing, and when he turned back toward the road it was too late, the cruiser was right there, and the two vehicles impacted at over a hundred miles an hour; the cruiser caught it hard in the left front, went up on its side, ricocheted, spun out, and walloped into the railing a twisted mass of steel, flames, and shattered glass. Fairlane was horizontal across the center and caught a shattering side punch from the cruiser as it spun out; he hit the railing, spun out a second time, flipped onto his side, and then scraped along for a few yards until he flipped tail-over onto his top, snapping his neck and sliding to a stop, leaving a long, wide, dark, wet trail behind as the cruiser caught fire, sputtered once, and then blew apart like an M-80 tossed into a can of kerosene.