32

IT’S JUST TOO damn easy, that’s what Fisher thinks as he eases the cab out across the snow, steering it clumsily with his frozen hands, down the driveway so fast it bounces and the wheel jerks, nearly out of his hands. He forces himself to brake. The whole time his eyes are tugged back to the mirror because someone—surely—is going to come after him. The road’s narrow and turns sharp left. Snow sprays into the air as the right fender cuts into the bank and he can’t think, can’t tell where he is.

He drives downhill, always downhill, and too fast. He sends the cab lurching around a beaten-up car climbing the road toward him, sees the panic on the face of the old guy driving. Then just past a stand of birches there’s the scarlet eye of a stop sign, and beyond it, like a miracle, the highway back to town.

 

 

Here are the things Fisher discovers about suddenly being free from death: that his thoughts are scattered like a bomb’s gone off in their midst, that he’s more afraid now than he was before, and that—where’s the thrill of having survived?—his hands throb horribly where the cold’s scorched them. In fact, where doesn’t he hurt? There’s his thigh, his ribs, his jaw, plus his head, inside and out.

As he belts along the highway, he runs a hand over his scalp and touches the swollen mass where the broom hit him, as though he can soothe away the pain. An old pain really, considering what else he’s just been through, and he’s surprised by how it still hurts. Of course he can’t think: everywhere he aches is a reminder of what just happened and nearly happened, and what will happen if Lyle and his militia buddies catch up with him again.

Three times he reaches out for the cab’s radio, sees as his hand gropes empty air those wires hanging loose like the roots of an upended plant. He thinks: I’ve got to hide. He thinks: I’ve got to find Bree. He thinks: how the fuck am I going to do that?

He’s gone miles before the minivan’s warm enough for his hands to really thaw. Eventually the feeling that his blood’s boiling through his skin gives way to a more insistent ache deep in his bones. He holds on tight to the steering wheel and doesn’t slow down. He can’t. He’s so scared that he’s sitting hunched low, and every vehicle that overtakes him makes him jerk his head for a look at the driver. A blonde in a sleek red coupe smoking a cigarette. An old guy with a hat pulled down to his eyes. Not Lyle, then. Not that guy with the strange egg face either.

Soon he’s so close to town the route’s marked by the glare of streetlights, and the late afternoon traffic surges toward him with lights ablaze. The sun’s fallen away below the hills and is dragging in darkness behind it. At least the night will hide him, but hell, he’s driving a minivan with a bear painted on it. How inconspicuous is that?

He needs to get across town and pick up his car. He switches lanes, brakes, is about to rush an orange light when the phone in his pocket rings. Grisby’s phone.

He holds it to his ear. “Yes?”

“You come—yes? Right now.” A woman’s voice, hushed as though she’s afraid. The foreign woman from Grisby’s apartment.

“What’s happened? Christ! Is it Grisby? Did he make it back?”

“You come . . . please.”

Fisher shifts his fingers on the phone. “Not now. I can’t. I have to find my daughter.”

“Daughter?”

“My daughter.”

Her words barely make it through the phone. They’re little more than disturbances on the air, but he’s sure he hears, “Bree-yan, yes? You come,” and she hangs up.