Shades of Blood #5: Black Lane



  Copyright 2014 Peter Ackers

  All right reserved

  BLACK LANE

  Earlier the open countryside and the tiny villages had had a surreal pleasantness, but now the sun was going down and the people in the van were getting anxious.

  In the van were four people with wild blue hair, black eye make-up and facial piercings. Two males, two females. Three of them wore sleeveless denim jackets with ANARCHY'S DAUGHTER spray-painted on the back. The other wore a purple dress with a short hemline because she sang vocals for the band, she was the figurehead, she was the one everybody was supposed to think was the daughter of anarchy.

  Their destination was still eighty miles away. The gig was four hours away. Plenty of time, but they had to soon abandon this scenic jaunt and get back on track. The driver, their drummer, a muscular young man with a bar piercing his nose right between his eyes, was starting to take the turns without slowing: he was getting bored of the endless nothingness like the rest of them.

  "I need to eat," said the other male, who played guitar. He had thick arms and a protruding belly and looked like he'd had a lot of practice at eating. They'd finished the last of their packed lunches an hour ago, sitting in a pub's beer garden. "Stop at the next shop, eh?"

  "Sure," said Drums.

  The van rolled on. The fields changed colour now and then and sometimes way off there was the glint of a river, but otherwise the world remained the same. Beautiful, but repetitive. Drums watched the white lines in the road fly under the van; everyone else stared out at nothing. Conversation had waned. The van had been nice and warm earlier, when the sun was high, but now the yellow dwarf was slipping down behind the horizon and the air was cooler, turning cold. Patience was dissolving.

  The next village arrived. It was a vast change from all the others, which looked like little retreats for the rich. Quaint little Victorian houses with a flash car or two out front. A post office, a general store, a community notice board. The sort of place where you didn't lock your car, where everyone knew your business. But this one was all crumbling houses and old cars and grotty stores, more like an American ghost town than a sleepy English village. As the van passed through, residents emerged from behind rotten cars and peeling front doors to watch, as if they had never seen strangers before, or a vehicle that worked. Anarchy's Daughter stared back. In fifteen seconds the van was through. The town's end was marked with high chain-link fences, and an open field gate. A gate this end, but not the other.

  There was a sign either side of the gate, on the fence. Left side: 30 M.P.H. Right side: PASSING POINT 8 MILES. The road beyond was narrow and cut a line as straight as a laser.

  Nobody noticed the fog arrive. It was just there. The passengers had fallen into their own heads, their eyes not really seeing as they glared out the windows. The van rolled on. Guitar stretched, yawned, came back to the world, and noticed what was wrong with the view.

  "Christ, where did the world go?" he said.

  "Oh yeah," said Vocals. She rubbed at the window, put her forehead on it, cupped her hands around her eyes. "Can't see a bloody meter." She looked at Drums. "Can you see the road?" she called to him.

  Drums had been watching the road ahead, a spot about twenty feet in front of the van. The white lines had gone. The road was single-lane now, hence the need for passing places. He hadn't noticed the fog. He perked up now and took a good look to each side. Thick and grey and impenetrable. The fields could have given way to sprawling cities and they wouldn't know. The fog had swallowed the word.

  Except the road penetrated it, cut through like a knife. The road was straight and spiked off into the distance, and he realised he could see it all. Clear as day. No fog. Visibility to the sides was zero, but the way ahead was free and clear.

  "Check out the road," he said. "How weird."

  Everybody moved closer to the front. It was weird indeed. The fog pressed up against the road but didn't intrude, almost as if it were behind gargantuan panes of glass.

  "Where the hell are we, though?" Keyboard said. She was a slight girl, sweet and cute, despite the punk look. The sort you wanted to just squeeze, like a cute pet. She had a mouth that spat venom sometimes.

  "Weird," Drums said again, lower this time. Then, loud: "Shit." And he pointed out the front windscreen.

  Everybody looked, but they didn't see what he was seeing, and they said so. He pointed again. By now, seconds later, the thing he'd seen was bigger. Three seconds later, it unveiled itself. Another vehicle, coming at them. A bigger one. The dying sunlight glinted off its big front windscreen. A truck, coming their way. It almost filled the thin lane. Half a mile, then just a few hundred metres, then closer. Its headlights came on, and Drums realised just how dim the sky was now. He put his own lights on and slowed the van.

  "Where's the passing place?" Vocals said. Everybody crowded the front of the van, leaning over the seats, trying to see. A hand went on Drums' shoulder for stability and he shrugged it off.

  The truck was a tractor unit pulling a big semitrailer. The trailer was shiny and new metal, but the tractor unit was old, grimy, caked with mud. In the centre of the big grille was a teddy bear, lashed in place by string and turned black by exhaust fumes from a trillion vehicles on a billion roads over a million years.

  The truck stopped just metres ahead. Fog and vehicles created four walls. Both sets of headlights clashed between the vehicles, creating a big ball of brightness that lit a portion of the road the size of a boxing ring. But the light didn't penetrate the fog at all.

  "The town's five miles back," Drums said in answer to Vocals' question. "The passing place is still three miles ahead. So we're not backing up. Not that far. This guy can move left and we'll move left and slip by like that."

  "That means going in the fog, off the road," Guitar said. "There might be a drop. Bust this van, my dad will kill us all, twice."

  "I doubt there's a cliff there, mate. There'd be a fence."

  The truck driver leaned out his window. Big guy in a baseball cap. He was waving frantically at them. Drums let his own window down. Cold air sneaked in. With the window down, they could now hear the guy shouting over the noise of two big idling engines.

  "Back up, now! Minimum thirty. Get back!"

  "Minimum of thirty?" Drums said. "How mad is that?" Drums leaned out his own window. "Hey, pal, you go back. Three miles for you, five for us."

  The trucker leaned on his horn, as if trying to scare them. It almost worked. The blare was eerie in the darkening landscape, like something prehistoric. They heard an echo return two seconds later, off a hill or mountain out there beyond the thick fog. No sprawling city, then. Just more emptiness.

  "We're in the middle of effing nowhere," Vocals said. "Let's just go back before this guy kills us."

  "He's old and fat," Drums said. He wound his window up. Put the van in gear. "We'll just go round." He moved the van forward, to the left. The trucker ducked back inside his cab. The truck's engine belched a roar, and then the big rig was moving slowly forwards, too. But not to its left. To its right. Towards the van. Two feet of spare tarmac that side of the truck, eaten up now.

  "He's trying to force us off some drop!" Guitar bellowed. "Back up, man. He's insane."

  Drums hit the brakes, then reverse. Backed up four feet, until the van was in the centre of the lane again. Down went his window. Both drivers stuck out their heads at the same time.

  "What's your fucking problem?" Drums shouted.

  "Just back up, you lunatic," the trucker shouted back.

  "We're not going back five bloody miles in reverse!"

  "There should be more passing places," Vocals said.

  The trucker disappeared ba
ck inside his cab. Now the band members could see he wasn't alone. There was a younger guy in the cab with him, also bearded, but hatless. And between them a dog. Pig-faced thing, muscular shoulders visible above the bottom of the windscreen. The guys were talking. Trucker was making hand movements like he was trying to convince his mate to get out and sort this.

  The truck's passenger door opened.

  "Back up," Guitar said, "that guy's coming."

  The passenger got out, jumped lithely down to the ground. He carried a rounders bat with its handle wrapped in duct tape.

  Drums sat in silence as his colleagues freaked out. He was told to lock the doors, reverse, drive into the fog, run, all of those. Instead he told Guitar to pass him a guitar. He wanted the electric one, the thin one with sharp edges, but Guitar handed him the acoustic, the big, clunky one that would probably break on a man's head rather than break a head. Too late now, though, no time to switch. Drums flung his door open and climbed out, and cracked the clunky guitar a good four times on the doorframe as he did so. No elegance. He waited for the guy to laugh.

  The square of road created by the walls of fog and the vehicles: like a boxing ring. The two men met in the middle, three feet between them, bathed in the ball of light where opposing sets of bright headlights clashed and fused. The space between them was dim because each man blocked his own headlights. They each cast long shadows. They stood like warriors about to fight. The idling engines were like a crowd's low chanting.

  For the first time, Drums noticed the trailer. And the noise coming from it. Tall, oblong. From this angle he could barely make out slats along its length. Ventilation slats, four long tiers, he realised, as he saw snouts poking out. Pigs. Pig transportation. He could barely hear their noise above the engine. A lot of pigs, probably off to some slaughterhouse.

  The trucker's passenger was a good looking guy above the thick beard. He was young, maybe early twenties. Cover the top half of his face, he would look twice that age. The beard and dirty blond hair looked unwashed. But he had young eyes. Drums eyed him up and down. Worn boots, ripped jeans, T-shirt, lots of Chinese tattoos on his forearms. He looked like the trucker's son. Both looked like they'd Googled redneck truckers to get their inspiration for a look. But the trucker's son was looking at Drums with even more surprise. Drums didn't think the punk look was well-known down here in the back o' beyond. Both men stood in silence for a few seconds.

  The trucker's son went first. "You some kind of weird band?"

  Drums nodded. "Synthpunk. We're late for a gig."

  The trucker's son didn't look impressed. "We don't want no trouble. Just want you to back on up. Can't reverse a rig with a trailer on a road like this."

  "We'll go round," Drums said back. "No big deal. There's room. Van reverses slowly. You'd be waiting ages."

  The guy looked into the fog, his right side. Where the van would go. He looked round at the truck. Gauged distances, measurements. "No room. Back up." He slapped the bat into his fist. "Don't make me hit you a home run."

  Drums hefted the guitar like a weapon. "Don't make me tune you up," he said, and frowned inside at how cheesy it sounded. But he wasn't scared. Bar fights aplenty when he started out with the band. The others always got out first, but he owned all the equipment and had to stay to defend it.

  Behind him he heard doors opening. Didn't have to look back to know his colleagues were exiting, forming up behind him. The trucker got out, too. Climbed down, dog scampering behind him. Seven of them now in the square.

  The trucker put his hand on his son's shoulder. "There's no need for this," he said to Drums. "You're from out of town, you don't know this place."

  Keyboard piped up from her safe spot four feet behind Drums: "What are you saying? We're strangers, we should do as you say?"

  "I'm saying you don't know what's out there," the trucker said, flicking his head to indicate the fields, the sea, the chasm, or whatever was out there in the fog. Or he was talking about the fog itself.

  "Sod them, let them go the fuck round, uncle," the younger guy said, sounding angry. Nephew, then, not son.

  The trucker ignored him. "The fog is dangerous."

  Drums frowned again. Behind him, Guitar said, "How?"

  "You can't go in the fog," the trucker said.

  "Let's just back up," Keyboard said. "I'm cold. We've got plenty of time."

  "Okay," Drums said. Quickly he went back and climbed in. Door was shut and engine in gear even before his colleagues had gotten in. "Hurry," he said. By the time the last of them was in and the sliding side door was shut, both truckers were at their own doors, about to climb up. The dog was waiting in the road, watching Drums through the windscreen.

  Vocals was at the back window, staring out. The road was straight and clear. The fog hugged its edges and rose as high into the darkening sky. In the distance the road and the walls of fog slipped into blackness. "Five bloody miles," she moaned. "How fast can we go in reverse?"

  "We'll never know," Drums said, and gunned the accelerator. He threw the wheel left, hard, and the van shot forward. He heard the trucker shout a warning, and then the van was passing the front of the truck. The wall of fog hit the windscreen and he could see nothing. But then he did. Darker grey shapes in the grey world, flitting, bouncing, rolling, moving. Something hit the grille, or the grille hit something. A thick thud, then another. A dozen thuds even before the truck was half submerged.

  Then something hit the windscreen and he jammed on the brakes. The van shuddered. Metal screeching noises. Something else hit the windscreen and what he saw made him jam the van in reverse and back up, hard and fast. Something fleshy, it had been. In the air, like some bird. But not a bird. Not a fucking bird like anything he'd ever seen.

  The van slipped out of the fog backwards, at an angle. Drums threw the wheel to the left again to straighten up in the road and the front slewed round. Everything happened in reverse. The truck appeared, and the older trucker standing there. He saw the dog, but it had moved. He saw it out of his side window, but the van was still slewing and the dog vanished from sight beneath the window. There was a thump. He had hit the dog. He hit the brakes. Everything froze. Except the dog.

  The van had smacked it hard, a home run, a tune up. The animal squealed as it was punched across the road, rolling, limbs flailing. It vanished into the fog to an almighty roar of grief from the trucker. And then all was silent.

  The trucker ran into the square of light. He stood facing the fog. "Beano!" the guy screamed. He stared into the fog, but kept his distance. Drums thought of the thing, the bloated flying creature that had hit his windscreen.

  The dog came back. Most of it. It came out at a point about four feet off the ground, sailed a short arc, and landed right in front of its owner. Lay still and dead. Clearly dead. A bloody skeleton hung with tatters of flesh. Drums thought of flying piranhas. Then he thought about getting the hell out of there.

  Backwards, fast. The truck shrank in the windscreen. The van's engine whined as reverse gear's top speed was reached. Drums didn't use the rear-view mirror. He used the van's headlights on the road. When they veered right, he turned the wheel to the right softly, correcting their angle. Left, he turned left. kept the headlights in the middle of the road. The gap between the vehicles grew wide quickly.

  Then it shrank. The truck, coming at them. Some wannabe redneck trucker, coming after them for killing his dog. In the rear of the van, the others were moaning, shouting, panicking. Five miles, Vocals kept saying. Never make it. He's coming. We're dead.

  Come it did. Fast, hard. It filled the windscreen quickly. The van's engine was a high squeal, like terror, the truck's a mighty roar, like anger.

  "Hold something!" Drums shouted.

  The truck hit, hard. The van's rear wheels lifted for a moment. Musical instruments and musicians went tumbling. Drums hit the steering wheel with his chest. He lost his grip for a second. Ahead, just feet away, through two sheets of glass, he saw the truckers. The dr
iver was grinning and snarling at the same time.

  The van slipped into the fog at a shallow angle, like a submarine diving. All four wheels, churning grass. Immediately things battered the sides of the van, and the back door, and the roof, and even the underside.

  Drums corrected his steering, pulling the wheel left. The van slipped out of the fog again, back left corner first, front right corner last. Like a submarine surfacing. The van put all four wheels on the road again. Drums was watching the rear-view mirror. He saw the fog slip away and then a great metal door filled the mirror. The truck, right behind them. The deceleration caused by the traction of the grass had allowed the truck to overtake.

  Drums hit the brakes. Wheels locked with a screech of rubber. The big metal door pulled away, revealing the truck's long trailer. And pigs' snouts poking out the ventilation slats along the sides, seeking escape. The trailer began to shrink in the mirror as the van slowed and the truck didn't.

  Drums stiffened when the truck was far enough away that he could see its door mirrors - meaning the driver could now see him. And sure enough, on flashed the brake lights, their red flare in the dusk lighting portions of fog the same colour. He heard the great screech of its brakes as the trucker jammed his foot down. The van had hit a stop now, so he rammed the gearstick in first and took off. No way the truck would catch him now. Not facing the other way.

  Drums took a quick look at the road ahead, then went back to staring at the rear-view mirror. Exact opposite of the rules of the road: watch the road but glance at the rear-view.

  He saw the truck stop and its reverse light come on. He breathed a sigh of relief. No way such a great monster of a vehicle could catch him in reverse, and his van was racing along in the right direction now.

  Then he saw that the trucker wasn't planning to chase him in reverse at all. The tractor unit had started to curve to its right, and that forced trailer to begin a shallow curve to its left. The whole unit bent into a V. He was turning. Or losing control. Either way, it was going to be a while before the guy could continue his chase, and the van was going to be elsewhere by then.

  Drums smiled, relaxed some more, and lifted his foot slightly from the accelerator to begin a more pleasant ride.