The Voice of the Night

Twelve.

Then it ran off the corrugated track; its wheels bit into the dry earth; and it would not move. If they had been pushing from both sides, if the force had been applied evenly, the truck would not have deviated from the twin ribbons of metal. But because all the effort was being exerted on the left side, the Ford turned inexorably to the right, and Roy didn’t use the steering wheel fast enough to correct the truck’s course.

Colin clutched the door handle of a dilapidated Dodge beside him and drew himself to his feet. His legs were shaky.

The thunderous clatter of the rails filled the night: a cacophonous roar like an orchestra of machinery tuning itself.

Roy ran to the edge of the hill. He looked down at the train that Colin couldn’t see.

In less than a minute, the sound of the passenger express diminished. The last car was around the curve; it was speeding away, toward San Francisco.

The small noises of the oncoming night crept back across the hilltop. For a while, Colin was too stunned to hear anything at all. Gradually, he began once more to perceive the crickets, the toads, the breeze in the trees, and the pounding of his own heart.

Roy screamed. He looked down at the tracks that were now empty, and he raised his fists toward the sky, and he cried out like an animal in agony. He turned and started toward Colin.

Only thirty feet of open ground separated them.

“Roy, I had to do it.”

“I hate you.”

“You don’t really.”

“You’re like all the rest.”

“Roy, you’d have gone to jail.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“But Roy-”

“You fucking traitor!”

Colin ran.

23

As Colin ran for his life, he was acutely aware that he had never won a race. His legs were thin; Roy’s legs were muscular. His reserves of strength were pathetically shallow; Roy’s energy and power were awesome. Colin did not dare look back.

The automobile graveyard was an elaborate maze. He ran in a crouch through the twisting, crisscrossing passages, taking full advantage of the cover provided by the junkers. He turned right, between the gutted shells of two Buicks. He ran past huge stacks of tires, past bent and rusted Plymouths, past smashed and corroded Fords, Dodges, Toyotas, Olds-mobiles, and Volkswagens. He jumped over a disconnected transmission, did broken-field running through scattered tires, darted east toward Hermit Hobson’s shack, which lay impossibly far away, at least six hundred feet, and then he swung sharply south through a narrow alley dotted with mufflers and headlamp assemblies that were like land mines in the tall grass. Ten yards farther along, he turned west, expecting to be tackled from behind at any second, but nevertheless determined to put walls of wreckage between himself and Roy.

After what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than two minutes, Colin realized that he could not keep running forever, and that he might quickly become confused about directions and dash headlong into Roy at a turn or an intersection. In fact, Colin was no longer certain whether he was rushing toward or away from the point at which the chase had begun. He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that he was miraculously alone. He stopped at a crumpled Cadillac and huddled in the darkness along its ruined flank.

The last few minutes of murky copper-colored sunlight did little to illuminate the open spaces between the cars. Purple-black velvet shadows lay everywhere; and as he watched they grew with incredible speed, like a nightmare fungus intent upon blanketing the entire planet. Colin was terrified of being trapped in the dark with Roy. But he was equally frightened of the threatening creatures that might lurk in the junkyard at night: strange beasts; monsters; blood-sucking things; perhaps even the ghosts of people who had died in those broken cars.

Stop it! he thought angrily. That’s stupid. It’s childish.

He had to concentrate on the danger he knew was out there. Roy. He had to save himself from Roy. Then he could worry about the other things.

Think, damnit!

He became aware of his noisy breathing. His panting would carry quite a distance in the crisp night air, and Roy would be able to home in on it. In view of his precarious position, Colin could not be calm, but with a bit of effort he managed to breathe quietly.

He listened for Roy.

Nothing.

Colin began to notice the minutiae of the little world in which he cowered. The Cadillac was hard and warm against his back. The grass was dry and stiff and smelled like hay. Heat radiated upward as the earth gave off its stored sun to the cooler night. As the final light seeped out of the sky, the shadows on the land appeared to sway and shiver like dark masses of kelp at the bottom of the sea. There were noises, too: the shrill cry of a bird; the furtive scampering of a field mouse; the omnipresent toads; and the wind soughing through the eucalyptus trees that lined three sides of the property.

But Roy didn’t make a sound.

Was he still out there?

Had he gone home in a rage?

Too nervous to keep still for long, Colin rose up far enough to look through the Cadillac’s dirty windows, at the wreckage-strewn field beyond. There was not much to be seen. The cars were fading rapidly into the spreading stain of night.

Suddenly his attention was diverted as he sensed rather than heard movement behind him. He whirled, heart pounding. Roy loomed over him, grinning, demonic. He was holding a tire iron as if it were a baseball bat.

For a moment neither of them moved. They were totally immobilized by a web of memories, by pleasant recollections that were like countless strands of spider silk. They had been friends, but now they were enemies. The change had been too abrupt, the motivation too bizarre for either of them to puzzle out the meaning of it. At least that’s what Colin felt. And as they stared at each other, he began to hope Roy would see how crazy this was and would regain his senses.

“I’m your blood brother,” Colin said softly.

Roy swung the tire iron. Colin fell to avoid the blow, and the iron smashed through the side of the Cadillac.

In one swift graceful movement, screaming all the while like a banshee, Roy pulled the tire iron out of the window, raised it high, as if he were chopping wood, and brought it down with all his strength. Colin rolled away from the Cadillac, tumbled over and over, through the crackling grass, as the club descended. He heard it strike the earth with incredible force where he had been just a second ago, and he knew it would have shattered his skull if he had not gotten out from under it.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Roy said.

Colin rolled five or six yards and scrambled to his feet. As he got up, Roy rushed him and struck with the tire iron again. It cut the air-whoosh! — and missed him by only a few inches. Gasping, Colin stumbled backward, trying to stay out of Roy’s reach, and he came up against another car.

“Trapped,” Roy said. “Got you trapped, you little bastard.”

Roy swung the club so fast that Colin almost didn’t see it coming. He ducked at the last possible instant, and the iron bar whistled over his head; it rang off the automobile behind him. The loud, sharp sound was like a rifle shot striking a huge unmelodious bell, and it echoed through the junkyard. The iron hit the car so hard that it leaped from Roy’s grasp, spun up into the night, and fell back to the grass a few yards from him.