Track 16

“Up Around the Bend”

Two and a Half Hours Ago

Distant lightning flashed beyond the treetops. There wouldn’t be a storm tonight. Not over Dawson anyway.

Accelerating out of a hairpin corner, Hayden shifted into third, wincing as the gears crunched. He’d practiced driving as much as he could since obtaining his license six months ago. Operating a manual transmission vehicle had not come as intuitively as flying. Of course, where he came from, flying was as easy as pressing a button on a glass control panel and letting the machine do the rest.

That kind of automation was not an option in this time, in this place, in this primitive vehicle. He had to make do.

Fragrant Douglas firs towered on either side of the narrow road, their canopies stretching overhead and forming a living tunnel. The headlights of his truck were feeble and the few-and-far-between streetlights even weaker, but he could see better than most apex predators without any aids. He’d learned the hard way that driving without lights would only draw more attention to himself.

Cassidy’s car was little more powerful than a lawnmower. Yet the car was nimble thanks to its light weight. She zipped up Saddleback Ridge’s inclines while he lumbered, and then slowed down on the flatter stretches of road so he could catch up.

But up around the third or fourth hair-raising bend, he lost her. A dying flare planted on the road’s yellow centerline burned white-hot, lighting up the tree trunks. A thin plume of smoke angled with the wind.

He slowed down. Stopped. Shielding his eyes against the flare, he searched for taillights on the straight road ahead and found none. His heart thundered hard against his ribs. Something felt very, very wrong.

He checked his phone, but somehow he already knew there would be no mobile reception. As he swung out of the car to listen, twin red lights to his left caught his attention.

Heart pumping even harder, he steered the car left onto a lane hidden by brush. The asphalt was so thin and cracked it might as well not be there. Overgrown branches batted at the fenders. He knew the truck was going to look like it’d been sandblasted in a desert storm once this was over.

The winding, twisty lane gradually widened, the woods on either side becoming less dense. Hayden veered to the right, into a clearing, and his overworked heart came to a crashing stop.

He lost control of the clutch’s friction point and stalled the truck. He would’ve stopped in any case, because blocking his way were three bulky beings in black hazmat suits. Giant helmets made of a stiff plastic material covered their heads and faces. They surrounded the truck’s cabin. Hands gloved in padded fabric grabbed at his door handle and dragged him out.

“Where’s Cassidy? Who are you?” he demanded, but they didn’t answer. His eyes wild, he frantically looked for Cassidy. He slipped out of two pairs of strong hands. Again they grabbed him, and again he evaded them. On the third attempt, Hayden’s training finally took over. Don’t interfere. Observe only. He might not have conquered stick shifts, but he was a master pretender. Hayden pretended to struggle, pretended he wasn’t fifty percent stronger than most humans on Earth.

The beings blindfolded him and bound his hands and feet, then hauled him to a vehicle. Not one of them said a word. They roughly threw him inside. He came to a skidding halt against a metallic wall, on a floor made of something smooth yet unrelenting. Doors slammed, making his head throb.

The sound of steady breathing inside the vehicle was like a beacon in the darkness.

“Cassidy,” he panted. “Are you all right?”

No response. Not even a murmur.

He sensed footsteps treading heavily toward him. He knew the cadence of Cassidy’s light gait, knew the being coming his way was not her.

And certainly knew it wasn’t Cassidy who stabbed a needle full of something stupefying into his thigh.