One woman head-butted the windshield, and scraps of hairy scalp stuck in the cracks. Blood spattered the hood. Flesh smoked and smoldered between the shattered teeth of the grille.
"Stop!" Latina shrieked, shaking the back of Shadow's seat. "Make it stop!"
He kept going, strangling the wheel and cackling so hard he cried, amped up as if on crank. The suicides didn't relent. They threw themselves in front of the car, just to end it, just to end the miserable flames.
Eleven.
Mr. Blazer puked between his legs, filling the car with the humid, acidic smell of bile. Friday took Dylan's hand. He didn't want to touch her, didn't want to acknowledge that there were other people here. But he let her take it, and he squeezed back. He wished he could crawl into her palm and shut out Shadow's laughter, the crinkle of metal as bodies smashed into the hood and fender.
A roadblock loomed ahead where the freeway leveled out, a pileup of cars, trucks, and SUVs. It even blocked the shoulder. Shadow hit the brakes.
"No!" Dylan said, leaning forward. "Don't stop! It's contagious!"
Shadow nodded and darted across the freeway. The center divider had given way to a strip of grass. The car jostled as it left the road, and Shadow bounced in his seat, yeehawing as if riding a bull. Dylan knocked heads with Latina. Her black hair whipped his eye.
Past the pileup, the freeway opened for several feet, and in the right lane, an offramp ascended to an overpass. It was Exit 66: Hugo. Shadow shot across the road and took the exit, speeding up toward the stop sign.
He looked back at Dylan without slowing down. "Which way?"
"What? I don't-"
"Which way to Grants Pass?"
"What're you-"
"We're taking the back roads, dip shit. Right or left?"
"Right, right-turn right!"
The tires screeched as Shadow turned without stopping. They raced away from the bridge, past a dirt lot where trucks sometimes parked beneath the pines.
"Stop," Mr. Blazer said, holding onto the handle above his door, looking very pale. "Let me out."
Shadow flashed his knife. "Sorry," he said. "No stops." He glanced in the rearview. "You'll have to tell me how to get there, Mr. Bradley."
Dylan shifted, trying to get comfortable. "What're you talking about?"
"To your girlfriend's. 'Over the mountains and through the woods to Dylan's girl's house we go.'" He grinned, all teeth, his eyes electric and jittering.
Dylan shuddered. He didn't like that smile, couldn't fathom the motive behind it, like running into a hungry face deep in the deep, dark sea.
Twelve.
Shadow wanted to take the least traveled roads, so Dylan directed him down Three Pines to Hugo Road, toward Merlin and then Grants Pass, deciding whether to lead him astray. Latina had balled up against her door, and her eyes had glazed. Friday stared out the window at the passing houses and trees. So did Mr. Blazer, slowly caressing the top of his briefcase. The car rattled, bashed-in and bloody, the grille like a shattered smile.
No one drove the roads except them. They saw a few cars wrecked against a bank or a tree, and a few houses had caught fire. No one was trying to put them out. In one yard, Dylan thought he saw a young girl in a white dress, swinging all alone, but when he looked back a copse of oaks blocked him.
They drove on.
Every now and again, Dylan caught Shadow staring at him in the rearview, kind of a knowing, amused look, the eyes narrowed in a smirk.
Again, he considered leading them out to Colonial Valley, or to Hellsgate Canyon, well away from Minnie. But if he did that, Shadow might explode. He might stab Mr. Blazer, or stab Friday, or maybe drive everyone off a cliff.
Plus, Dylan wanted to know if Minnie was all right. He had forgotten her in the mad rush down the freeway, and now he worried she had burned with everyone else. Minnie, the girl who had coaxed him out of the coat closet on his first day in elementary school, the girl who had kissed his knee when he fell off his skateboard-such soft, cool lips-the woman who had kissed him on their graduation day, throwing off his cap to run her fingers through his hair. He should have never left her.
Something brushed Dylan's knuckles. He looked over, and Friday met his eyes. She held his hand. Her face had paled so much that her scar stood out like a jag of pink lightning.
"Silence is golden," Shadow said, leering at Dylan in the rearview. "Care to introduce yourselves?"
No one responded.
"I guess I'll start," Shadow said. He stated his name and reason for travel: he was running from several warrants, everything from rape to assault and battery. "Your turn," he said, turning to Latina.
"I'm not telling you anything."
"Your name is Lolita then? You're running from your molester, Humbert, and will die giving birth to a stillborn?"
"Go to hell," Latina said.
"How about you?" Shadow asked Mr. Blazer.
"My name's Geoffrey." That's all he would say.
"Interesting," Shadow replied. "And Friday? Well you're just looking for a good lay, aren't you, Friday?"
She blushed and looked out her window.
"And then there's Dylan, 'Knocking on Heaven's Door.' Glad you're going to see your little girlfriend, Dylan?"
He didn't respond.
"Oh, I bet you are. How about a little music to celebrate?"
Shadow switched on the radio and scrolled through the stations. Most blared static or hissed with dead air. Dylan was relieved. He didn't want to hear any more voices.
Shadow turned to him, and Friday released Dylan's hand. He was a little offended. What did she care if the punk caught them holding hands?
"What's a good station, man? Heavy metal."
Dylan shrugged. Shadow kept searching. He found a ghost voice bleeding through the dead air and honed in on it, searching through static until he found the signal.
The disc jockey was in mid rant, fevered, shaking, and inhaling deeply now and again as if smoking a cigarette: "Colorado, New Mexico, Maine, New York, Texas, California, Hawaii, Michigan-all the states, and all the countries, too-Canada, Europe, Russia, and Afghanistan-everywhere, everyone is burning up, leaving just ashes and maybe a hairy leg. Cars are crashing, planes are crashing, boats are crashing. Hell, I'm the only person left in the studio right now.
"So I did some research on the Internet-I can't believe it's still up-and I know this sounds crazy but... it seems the whole world, this whole thing is spontaneous human combustion."
Shadow laughed and turned up the volume. As much as Dylan craved silence, he listened.
"That's right, folks, spontaneous human combustion. Countess Cornelia, Mary Reeser, Krook from Charles Dickens' Bleak House-the researchers are right: they all died from spontaneous combustion. Was it their diet, an explosive mixture of foods, or was it alcoholism? And what's causing this sudden outbreak? No one really knows. No one has time to. The only thing we do know is it seems to happen at random: some people go up right away, some people take awhile. There seems to be no rhyme or reason.
"But I'll tell you what, folks: I've been swigging on my producer's Van Gogh Gin-he's dead, by the way, my producer; they're all dead, Van Gogh too-but I've drunk half the bottle and the studio's getting pretty hot."
Shadow raised the cup of Jack Daniels from the center console. "Cheers," he said, and polished it off.
"So," the DJ continued, "this is last call, this is the end, because it's closing time and I really don't think-I really don't think I'm going to make it. I'm starting to sweat now, so . . . I'll just, I'll put on one last song. This is 'Pardon Me' by Incubus. I'm sure you'll find it relevant.
"And Terry, if you're out there, I miss you, I love you.
"You're listening to The Rogue. May we all rest in peace, amen."
Thirteen.
Dylan recognized the song. He had heard it on the radio before, but had never paid attention.
Everyone stayed quiet for the first verse and chorus. Even Shadow drove in humble silence, down Hugo Road, through the cathedral of woods. Latina wept without sound, Mr. Geoffrey Blazer bowed his head, and Friday took Dylan's hand. He didn't know what to feel. His heart seemed packed in snow, muffling, numbing, and complete.
Shadow turned down the music. "I know what it is," he said. When no one responded, he continued. "I read this story once by Stephen King. 'Microsoft Word of the Gods,' or something.
"Anyway, this writer, he has a word processor and he figures out that if he types something in and erases it, the thing disappears from the real world. Like if he typed in his favorite mug and hit delete, his mug would vanish. So he deletes his wife and kid.
"I think that's what's happening now. Some writer's deleting us with Microsoft Word."
Latina chuffed. "It's terrorists, you idiot. It's germ warfare."
Dylan agreed with her. He didn't say anything though. He didn't want to poke the beehive. It was buzzing enough already.
"Sorry, sweetheart," Shadow said, "but why would terrorists infect their own country? The radio said this is happening in Afghanistan, too. I'm telling you, it's the writer. Probably the one that lives here. Stephen Crown or whatever. You know, Ghostwriter, Exit 66?"
"Not all terrorists live in Afghanistan," Latina said.
Shadow smiled. "Don't make me pull over and spank you."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, very much."
"Sick fuck."
The song ended, and dead air followed. No more DJ. Dylan imagined a pile of ashes in the radio personality's chair, an arm still smoking on the ground beside it, a birthmark on the hand.
"It's not germ warfare," Geoffrey said, quietly, politely, staring at the dashboard. "It's God. He's come to take us home."
Shadow frowned at him. "What, you mean like the rapture?"
Geoffrey said nothing. He picked at a rip in his briefcase and stared out the window.
"Well, dude, there's one problem with that theory." Shadow looked serious. "I'm still here."
For several minutes, the radio whispered oblivion. Dylan lost himself in its seashell hiss, finally able to think. After hearing the DJ, he was almost certain Minnie was gone. His mother as well. The infection, or rapture, or whatever, was too widespread.
But he had survived, and everyone in this car seemed immune. Or their time just hadn't come yet. Maybe Minnie was still alive. If she was, Dylan had to reach her. Somehow, he had to get away from Shadow.
"Well lookey here," the punk said, leaning forward.
Coming toward them, a car rounded the bank of clay, a station wagon with wood-paneling exterior. Shadow hollered and honked. He rolled down his window and waved his hand.
"Can't believe it," he said. "Maybe they've got weed. Or booze. Or both."
Dylan leaned forward and squinted. The driver wasn't waving back. He was on fire.
"Shit," Shadow said, his hand freezing in mid-wave.
The two cars collided head on.
Fourteen.
Dylan was pitched forward, and his seatbelt cut into his waist. His head snapped back. The car stopped.
"Jesus," Latina said. She must have hit her face on Shadow's seat; her nose gushed blood into the cup of her palms. She clamped a hand over it. "Jesus!"
Shadow punched the airbag as it deflated. He was laughing, the same mad cackle when he had bulled through the suicides.
Dylan's waist hurt and his ribs ached from earlier, but otherwise he felt okay. Friday had a bump on her forehead. Her eyes looked hazy, like cloudy skies, like she didn't know where she was.
Shadow threw open his door and stepped out. Latina got out too, pinching the bridge of her nose. The cleavage of her tank top began to redden, and the whole front was stained with polka dots of blood.