Shadowbahn(64)

“I don’t want to stop,” says Parker, continuing on.

“We ought to,” she argues halfheartedly.

Stopping in the middle of the small highway, Parker turns in his seat and looks back at the truck’s lights in the pitch black. “Do you think he’s okay?” he asks.

“We shouldn’t stop in the middle of the road,” she answers, “someone could hit us.”

“You just told me to stop. There’s no one else out here.”

“That person is out here.”

“Fuck, all right,” Parker says somewhat angrily.

“Don’t make this like it’s my idea.”

“It is your idea,” he says, circling the Camry around. Returning to the truck, the brother and sister pull up alongside it. The lights of the truck’s cabin are on and its driver glances around in apparent confusion. “See, he’s okay,” says Parker, and Zema doesn’t answer. Parker sighs and gets out, leaves the Camry running. He stops a few feet from the truck. The truck’s driver sees him and rolls down his window and for a moment the two men just look at each other. “Are you okay?” Parker finally asks.

“I fell asleep at the wheel,” comes from the truck. “Only for a second, but . . .” He pushes open the door and tries to dislodge himself from his front seat.

Parker moves as if to catch him but doesn’t. “You need help?”

Aaron tumbles groggily to the ground. “I don’t know,” he says, but reaches out and Parker pulls him up. Aaron leans against the truck, holding his head. “I think I’m okay,” he concludes without conviction.

Parker studies him. “Do you have a phone? Want to call someone?”

“Cell phones don’t work out here, at least mine doesn’t. Now and then I can get something on the radio. Of course there hasn’t been any music lately—I don’t have a disc player, but I guess even they don’t play anything anymore.” Aaron says, “A song finishes, I have no idea what I just heard. But at least it keeps me awake.”

“Do you know if this is Interstate 90? I have a feeling we took a wrong turn.”

“This is Highway 44. It goes where 90 goes.”

“Can you drive?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t know if I can just leave my truck here, either.” Trying to move, Aaron seizes his ribs; catching his breath, he says, “Well, I think I cracked something.”

Parker looks back at Zema and the Camry, exhales deeply. “We can try to take you somewhere, if you need,” he says. “You want to lock it up?”

Wincing, Aaron slowly surveys the truck’s cabin. “Don’t see my keys.”

“They’re not in the ignition?”

“No.”

Parker goes around to the passenger’s side of the truck and opens the door. “Well,” he finally says, “they didn’t just disappear into thin air.”

The other man stares at him, suddenly more alert than he’s been since Parker met him. “You still believe that?”

? ? ?

Aaron has been in the backseat of the Camry for ten minutes when he says, “You hear that?”

Parker and Zema in the front don’t answer. In the rearview mirror, Parker can see Aaron painfully readjust himself upright, holding his side and listening; traffic is starting to pick up on the small highway, all of it coming from the other direction. “All the cars are coming from where we’re going,” says Zema.

“Do you hear that?” their passenger repeats. “It’s . . .”

“Music,” she says.

“Just bits, snatches . . . so you do hear it,” and when neither the brother nor sister responds, Parker can see in the rearview mirror the realization come over Aaron’s face. “You’re her,” says Aaron, “you’re them. Supersonik.”

“It cuts in and out,” says Parker.

“All the traffic is in the other direction,” says Zema again, watching the cars pass.

“It’s not like a vital sign or anything,” Parker explains to Aaron, “it’s not like an irregular heartbeat. She’s okay.”

Aaron looks from one to the other. “So you’re . . .”

“Brother and sister,” says the sister.

“Absolutely,” promises the brother.

“They’re leaving,” Aaron says to the window, nodding at the cars. “There’s nothing there anymore, if that’s where you’re going.”

“The Towers aren’t there anymore?” says Zema.

“I was the first one,” says Aaron.

“You were the first one what?”

“First to see them,” he says as matter-of-factly as he can. “I’m not just saying it. It was on the news.”

“You were first to see the Towers?”

“I’m not saying it was anything special about me. I just happened to be there when they appeared. If I hadn’t got into an argument with Cilla Ann back on the other side of the Missouri—I can’t even remember what about—I would have driven by the spot five minutes earlier, when they weren’t there.”

“How do you know they weren’t there?” says Zema.