The Meridians(75)

He saw Mr. Gray. Flipping out of the side window in a jumble of loose skin and bone, flying out of the car just as Scott had worried that Kevin would do.

Mr. Gray was flying, flying, flying through space, tumbling through the air like a rag doll.

Scott finished braking, and the car halted. Mr. Gray was still flying through the air.

Scott could hear a thin scream, a cry of pain and terror. And he smiled.

Good, he thought, it's over.

But then in the next instant, he felt that strange feeling that he had felt before, that feeling of the world twisting around him, as though a giant musical string had been plucked so hard that the entire universe resonated with its frequencies.

And in that instant, Mr. Gray disappeared.

Scott's car continued its self-destructive flight, and finally came to rest in several large pieces about a hundred feet from where Scott had finally battled Lynette's car to a stop. The car was dead; there was no doubt about that.

But, once again, their futures were still uncertain. Danger still lurked. Because Mr. Gray had managed to do the impossible. He had again cheated death, and had disappeared before he smashed into the ground and died.

Scott did not know where Mr. Gray was now, but he knew that the assassin would not rest - would never rest - until he had killed Kevin, Lynette, and Scott.

He put the car back into drive. The car strained and screeched, but Scott knew he couldn't listen to the vehicle's protestations. He knew that they had to get moving.

Because the gray man was still alive.

And that meant that they were still on the run for their lives.





***





35.

***

"How exactly are we supposed to stop a guy who can disappear and reappear at will?" said Scott.

They were driving along in Lynette's embattled car, trying to keep moving on the basic premise that a moving target was one that was slightly harder to catch. But Scott knew that merely moving was no guarantee against destruction. Not when the enemy was Mr. Gray.

"I don't know," whispered Lynette. She was still sitting in the back of the car, clutching Kevin tightly to her. Kevin was staring to the side again, as though by looking out the window where all appeared normal he might perhaps will normalcy into being for all of them once again.

"Me neither," said Scott. "Kevin?" he added. "You're the boy genius, you have any ideas?"

But though Kevin might have been a person of extraordinary ability when it came to string theory and mathematical formulations of how the world worked, and though he may have some connection to another version of himself in some other dimension, a place where he was not autistic at all, for now he was nothing more nor less than a silent passenger.

Scott turned the wheel. It wobbled beneath his hands and he knew that they couldn't drive the car much longer. If nothing else, police would be on the lookout for a car with the same color paint once they found the wreck that was all that was left of Scott's car, and analyzed the paint scrapings that would have rubbed off on it when Mr. Gray slammed into them repeatedly. More than that, though, he was fairly certain that the car was on the verge of falling apart beneath them.

"What do you think we should do?" asked Lynette.

Scott sighed. That was the million-dollar question, he knew. And it was also one that he was completely unprepared and unqualified to answer. He just didn't know.

"What about John Doe?" asked Lynette.

"What about him?"

"Well, he seems to be helping, doesn't he? Maybe he'll show up."

"Maybe," agreed Scott, though he did not feel at all sanguine about the possibility. "But even if he did show up, what do you think he could do?"

"I don't know," admitted Lynette. "But he saved you once before, didn't he?"

Scott thought about it. He thought back to the first day that he had met Mr. Gray after the assassination of his family eight years before. Mr. Gray had been about to kill him, there was no doubt of that, but instead of dying that day with a bullet in his head, John Doe had appeared and - to all appearances - somehow taken the bullet that was intended for Scott.

"Maybe," he finally said. "But even if he did, I don't feel comfortable putting my hopes in some guy who swoops in like a karate-kicking angel when we least expect it." He grimaced at Lynette in the rearview mirror. "If nothing else, angels aren't famous for showing up when you need them so much as when they want to."

Lynette whispered something then, hushed words that issued forth from the darkness of the back seat like some kind of prayer.

"What was that?" asked Scott, though he knew full well what she had said.

"You're so angry," she repeated. "Why are you so angry?"

Scott thought about any of the dozen answers he could have given her: because they were on the run from a homicidal maniac, because their predator had some serious mojo that allowed him to escape certain death, because he had just seen his only set of wheels turn into something that roughly resembled a lump of Play-Doh, and on and on and on. But instead he said something that surprised him: he told her the truth.

"Because God sucks," he muttered, "and I don't want anything to do with Him or with any guardian angel that He may have sent."

Lynette sat forward in the seat as though a shock had just gone through her from toe to head.