Mad—and, against my will, a bit worried—I threw the car back into gear and pulled back onto the road. So far I’d been lucky and I’d hardly seen another vehicle; but I couldn’t trust that luck to hold. I couldn’t reasonably hope that no one would be coming or going between the river and the hospital, so I had to choose a strategy.
I could poke along with the windows open, hissing Malachi’s name to the forest; or I could pretend that I was minding my own business and zipping along at the speed limit like a perfectly innocent person on a perfectly ordinary errand. I didn’t know which approach would work better, and I didn’t know what I’d do if I actually reached the hospital. Would I be able to turn around? Would I have to pass some kind of checkpoint?
I tried to think up a story to hand to any potential guards, but I was having trouble coming up with anything plausible, and I kept forgetting to hiss out the window.
“Come out, come out wherever you are, you jackass,” I mumbled, just in time to catch a speed bump entirely too fast.
I nearly drew to a complete halt out of pure surprise.
Who puts a speed bump in the middle of a straight shot? The Bend people, apparently. And they didn’t quit with one, oh no. They spaced them out every fifty yards, so every time I got up to third gear I’d have to slow right back down again.
With every yellow-painted hump I became that much angrier at Malachi, and that much closer to the hospital—the point of no return.
Before long I could see it at the end of the road. The place was lit up like an old gas station, bright but not warm. From a distance everything looked square and sharp. It was all straight lines and right angles. Efficient and unfriendly.
Even as I dreaded getting closer I strained to see it better, but that only meant that I wasn’t watching the road when Malachi lunged in front of me.
Someone had given him a haircut to tame that blond haystack of a head, but he wasn’t dressing any better and he hadn’t gained an ounce. His lanky, clumsy frame stepped into my headlights with arms waving. He thrust himself in front of me far too late for me to avoid hitting him.
I swerved left across the opposing lane, but not before I winged him hard enough to make him yelp.
The car began to slide. Around I spun in a badly drawn circle, my headlights casting a swiveling carnival glare at the trees, the signs, and the knee-high grass. I came to a stop with a neck-whipping jerk when my front right fender knocked itself still against a trunk. Some precious part of the Death Nugget crumpled, and something plastic shattered.
And for a few seconds, everything was quiet.
I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the door. A pinging chime sounded to remind me that my lights were on. I turned them off, then stepped out of the car one shaky leg at a time.
Malachi came limping up, clutching his thigh and panting.
“Are you okay?” he asked—using his “outdoor voice,” as a grade-school teacher would have put it.
I slapped his arm hard enough to smart. “What the hell is wrong with you? Shut up!”
“Sorry! I’m sorry.”
“Not half as sorry as you’re going to be,” I grumbled, closing the car door so the dome light would extinguish itself. “What do you think you’re doing? Christ, my car. Holy shit, Malachi, look at what you’ve done to my car.”
“Technically, I think it’s the tree that did the damage—unless you’ve got a dent in your bumper from where you struck me.” He sulked a feeble defense, but if he thought he could make me feel guilty he was barking up a very wrong tree.
“My front bumper is fine and I barely nicked you. But this?” I ran my hands along the damaged panel. “This is not fine. This is not fine at all.”
“You can’t even see it. Come on, let’s get out of here. You can check it out when it’s light. Look, your headlight isn’t even broken—just the blinker on the side.”
Off in the distance I thought I heard a car’s engine. I waved him quiet and listened. The last thing we needed was a good Samaritan.
“Eden,” he whined my name, making the “E” too long.
“Shut up. I think someone’s coming.” But even as I said it, the rumble faded and I knew I was mistaken.
“We have to get out of here.”
“I know. But first I need to make sure my car is in one piece enough to drive. What were you thinking? I mean seriously? I thought you were supposed to be over at the signs.” I opened my car door again, kneeling on the front seat to reach into the glove compartment for my flashlight.
“I couldn’t make it. I tried, I swear. But I couldn’t do it. I got scared. Kitty was talking about a man wandering around outside near the river, and I thought I saw him. Except…”
“Except what?” I kicked my door closed again and snapped the light on.
This time he actually whispered. “Except I think maybe it wasn’t a man. I think it was something else.”
“Really?” I asked, more out of conversational habit than real curiosity. I was preoccupied with examining the damage. “Oh, my poor little Nugget,” I breathed, running my hands along the battered metal.
“Really. I don’t think he saw me, though. Or maybe he did, I don’t know. If he did see me, he didn’t care that I was there. He freaked me out, Eden. I started running, but I got turned around in the dark, and I slid down the bank into the river. That’s when I got bitten by the snake.”
I glanced up at him and pointed the light at his torso. Only then did I notice that his pants were wet, and one of his arms was black with mud. “The world’s most harmless copperhead?”
“It might’ve been a copperhead. You don’t know.”
“Where did it bite you?”
He held out his muddy elbow and pointed at a spot just below it. I saw some scraping and a bit of dirty blood, but nothing that cried out to me, “festering snakebite.”
“I think you’ll live,” I told him. “But that’s only in the event that I decide not to kill you. Look at this!”
I aimed the light at my front tire. Though the car’s frame appeared, in my limited inspection, to be all right, the rim of the wheel-well was bent sharply inward. “If we try to leave with it like this, we’re going to have a blowout.”
Malachi rubbed his wounded arm, then rubbed at his thigh too. “What do we do?”
Again I thought I heard an engine, or voices, or some indication that we weren’t alone. I flipped the light off and grabbed his unhurt arm, pulling him back behind the car. As the moments passed, I began to feel stupid. No cars came along, and no inquisitive neighbors came out to investigate our crash.
Surely someone had heard us; but then again we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. The closest sign of human habitation was the hospital, and we were half a mile away from it yet.
“Do you hear that?” I asked him, bringing my voice as low and soft as I could and still be heard.
“No?”
“Me neither.”
I didn’t hear anything. Not a sound. No traffic, but no insects or birds, either. I fancied I could maybe hear the river if I listened hard enough, or maybe it was a different rushing hum and I was only mistaking it for water.
Whatever it was or was not, I didn’t like it.
“Malachi, you said your car broke down. What car are you talking about, and where is it?”
“I bought it. For five hundred bucks, cash. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but I hoped it would get me as far as here. And it did, so I guess I can’t complain.”
“Fine. I’ll complain for the both of us. Where is it?”
“Around on the other side of the hospital. I pushed it off the road and into the trees so no one would hear me coming. When I tried to leave, it wouldn’t start. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. But I’m not going back to it,” he added quickly. “I’m not walking back up there. No way. That’s where he was. He was wandering around, talking to himself. No way. They can have the thing and sell it for scrap. I’ll eat the loss. But I’m not going back there.”
“Yeah, yeah. I heard you. Not going back. But I don’t suppose you had a crowbar or anything in that car, did you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You’re not just saying that because you’re afraid to go back there?”
“No! Eden—”
“Okay, fine. Of course not. That would be too easy. Okay. Then this is what we’re going to do: You and I are going to find a branch, or a sturdy stick, or something like that. It can’t be too big, but it has to be solid enough to lever that rim away from the tire. Got it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. Now stay close,” I ordered, implying that I didn’t want him going all girly on me, but the truth was less noble. I was getting nervous too. That rushing, rumbling sound that was neither engine nor water was getting louder in my ears, and I didn’t like it. It made my head feel stuffy, and almost sleepy despite the adrenaline that I knew must be coursing through my heart.
“You don’t hear anything?” I asked him again.
He shook his head. “Just the river. It’s right on the other side of these trees.”
“The river,” I repeated. I didn’t believe him, but there was no sense in both of us acting panicky, so I kept my concerns to myself, swallowing them back with a sigh. “This sucks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. Be quiet.”
“Okay.”
“Stay close,” I told him again. I pointed the light at the ground and let him grip the back hem of my shirt. “All we need is one good stick, and then we’re out of here.”
“I think we just missed the shift change.”
“What?”
“The shift change. At the hospital. Everyone who’s coming or going has probably done so by now,” he said, twisting his fist in my shirt. “Unless they’re late.”
