While one part of Luz dangled Milo’s feet on the edge of a precipice, two other parts sped along the freeway.
The Orson part awoke somewhere near the Huffton exit, and the sudden split of consciousness made the Carmella Luz’s hands slip on the wheel—and, coral snake that she was, Carmella Spalding took advantage of Luz’s lapse by trying to hijack herself:
GET OUT.
She didn’t beg—it was a command that almost made Luz cower.
The car drifted onto the rumble strip and Carmella had to refocus on driving to bring the car back to center. She pulled the wheel and Luz pulled her back to heel.
When he felt he had a steady grasp on both bodies, he parked Carmella’s car outside a rest area. He didn’t bother checking for witnesses. Orson climbed out of the trunk and settled into the passenger seat. In another three minutes, the car was back on the road, driving away from the sunset.
“We’re going to drive all night,” the Carmella Luz said.
“You don’t need to say anything aloud, dumbass,” said the Orson Luz.
“And you didn’t need to answer aloud, either.” Luz used Carmella’s most condescending trill. “So we’re both dumbasses, aren’t we?”
Minutes passed. Luz’s bodies were sweating, though it was growing colder.
“It was better when we were cohabitating, not dominating.”
“But that didn’t work out.”
Orson’s head nodded. “I know you’re right. But where are we even going?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re just going.”
“Okay. Fine. Just go.”
For another ten minutes, they drove. Sweat beaded on two foreheads, under two sets of arms. Luz’s vision blurred in two separate skulls.
On the edge of Nameless Canyon, the Milo Luz raised his arms over his shoulders. He prepared to jump.
“It’s getting harder to fight the noise,” said the Orson Luz. Within the shared skull, Luz was being reimagined into a ball of squirming larvae that Orson rolled into a basketball, and Orson was popping it, slamming it against asphalt. A vision of Hank helped him.
It was distracting. If Orson hadn’t been in the passenger seat, all too capable of grabbing the wheel, Luz would have abandoned his body right then.
“Should have left you in the trunk,” the Carmella Luz said. Carmella’s mantra remained GET OUT. No matter that Luz rolled down the windows and turned up the radio—she only got louder.
“We’re really far from home,” the Orson Luz said.
“That wasn’t home.”
“Either way, I think we’re lost.”
“We’re on the freeway.”
“But we’re lost.”
“We’re stuck with ourselves, no matter what,” Luz echoed, as elsewhere, someone said those precise words to his other self.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, the abandoning of Orson—Orson had mentally set fire to the termite ball and the screeching was horrendous, and it paralleled the screeching of Carmella’s leg locking up on the brake, the car behind them honking like mad and zipping past as they rolled onto the shoulder, aimed directly at a speed limit sign …
“We’re way over that speed limit,” Orson Luz informed Carmella Luz.
The car slammed into the signpost.
Both air bags deployed. Clouds of white smacked into Carmella’s golden face and Orson’s tan one, an impact like no other that coincided with the popping of the termite ball in Orson’s mind and a final GET OUT from Carmella’s.
Luz dissipated before smoke started rising from Carmella’s smashed Fiat engine, before determining if either Carmella or Orson had a pulse left to them, and was gone.