Sunshaker's War (38 page)

Another horn blew.

“Got it,” Alec sighed triumphantly. “Least now we won't go up in flames.”

“Not
those
flames, anyway,” Liz agreed.

“They're gone,” Alec interrupted, and there was a catch in his voice. “Now all we gotta do is hope they made it.”

“I know,” Liz replied sadly. “I saw 'em go—felt 'em, rather. Suddenly a hole in the car with nobody in it, and fresh air rushing in. Almost like a tiny thunderclap.”

“Storms in the car,” Alec chuckled half hysterically. “I like that.”

They were silent, then, as they sped through the heavy traffic of Mountain Industrial Boulevard—a patchwork of shopping centers and fast-foot joints, warehouses, and small businesses. The eagles seemed to have abandoned them, at least for the moment. A mile they covered, half-a-dozen stoplights. “I…I think they're gone,” Liz said at last, “but…Alec, I hate to ask you, but could you look out and—you know, make sure?”

“Sure thing, ma'am,” Alec replied, and craned his head out the window. “Can't tell for certain, but I don't see anything suspicious.”

“That's a relief.”

“Unless they can turn into Toyotas, or something. But there's a couple of things that still bother me.” He took a deep breath and looked at her. “We can't hide out in traffic forever, Liz. We've gotta get to the coast somehow, just in case.”

“But what can we do?”

“Nothing, maybe, but we both know we've gotta be there.”

She nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, and to get there, we gotta drive. I know.”

“Like the bird of paradise?”

“Huh?”

“Bird of paradise. The first skins they sent back to Europe from New Guinea or wherever didn't have legs attached, so the early scientists thought they never came to earth—just flew all the time.”

“Neat story. Too bad we
do
have to light.”

“Yeah. I keep thinking of that song about the guy doomed to ride the train forever.”

“What? Oh, the MTA.”

“Yeah.”

“You know what we're doing, don't you?”

“What?”

“Talking about nothing to keep from going crazy.”

“Yeah.”

Another silence, then: “Did we do the right thing, Liz? It was so quick, but all I could think of was poor Finno cooking alive. And Lord knows I've never seen anybody look as bad as he did. One thing, though,” he added slowly.

“I'm listening.”

Alec's eyes filled with tears, and he almost broke down. “I hurt, Liz; oh God Almighty, I hurt.”

Liz glanced sideways. What she saw almost brought tears from her own eyes. How could she have been so insensitive, so damned
unaware
?
Alec was sitting in the other bucket, staring at his hands. They were blistered, red; parts were even blackened. He was simply looking at them and crying uncontrollably.

“Good God, boy!” she cried. “What hap—” but then she knew. Alec had stuck the ulunsuti into the fire with his bare hands. He'd had to, to get it seated right, and she bet anything it had something to do with the magic: the magic had to cost the wielder pain. Calvin had mentioned something like that when he'd told them a bit about the ritual used to prepare the scales to teleport. Blood too was involved, but she wasn't certain how. Nothing was ever free, though; that was a basic tenet of magic; and Alec had paid a high price without complaint. Worse, he'd stuck his hands back into the fire when he'd tried to put it out, and then used them to carry Fionchadd cross country, and to light another fire in the car, and then grabbed the burning papers to throw them out the window. How much pain could one man endure?

“I'm sorry,” Alec sniffed, trying to regain control. “I shouldn't have said anything. A little burn salve, some bandages, and I'll be fine.”

“No you
won't
!”
Liz told him firmly. “You've got second-degree burns all over your hands. I've gotta get you to a hospital.”

“No, Liz,
we've
gotta get to the coast!”

Liz braked suddenly, swung the car into the parking lot of a convenient McDonald's. She stuffed the car in neutral and turned to stare at him.

“I'll be
okay
,”
he repeated. “I'll put some ice on 'em.”

“Alec!”

“No, listen. It's only pain. I can live with it. God knows if I hadn't been so wimpy earlier, when David wanted me to use the ulunsuti and I wouldn't, maybe we could have avoided this. Certainly we'd have had more time to plan, 'stead of making it up on the fly. But we've got to be on the coast as quick as we can—tomorrow morning at the latest. I can stand it till then. It'll hurt like hell, maybe I'll get sick—but I'll be okay.”

“You could get an infection, Alec. You could lose the use of your hands!”

“I nearly lost 'em last year, trying to impress David; but he saved me from something much worse. Can I do any less for him?”

“Oh, Christ, McLean, don't ask me to do this. I can't help David right now, but I
can
help you, and to do that I've gotta get you to a doctor.”

Alec shook his head. “There's no time. Just think. David's gone. Calvin's gone. Finno's gone. It's you and me, now. We're the only ones 'cept Dale and Sandy that have any idea what's up. And we're the
only
ones with access to magic. And that's what David may need to get him back. I can't be in the hospital when I need to be down on the coast with the ulunsuti.”

“The ulunsuti? Why?”

“To open another gate, if we have to. I mean, hasn't that occurred to you yet? I may have to open another gate.”

“It could cripple you for life.”

He shrugged. “That's a risk. So is driving in rush-hour traffic.”

A glance at the steady stream of cars told Liz the truth of that. “Touché.”

“Besides,” he added, “if we don't move, we're never gonna get outta here. I'll look for the first-aid kit. Now, let's travel.”

“Which way?”

“East,” he said. “And south. Now what did we do with that ?”

She sighed and pulled back into the traffic, heading against the heaviest flow. Almost she relaxed—until she heard the distant cry of an eagle, then heard it echoed twice more.

* * *

An hour and a half later they were running on straight caffeine and adrenalin—the former from the last of the two six-packs of Jolt Cola they'd bought at the same Winder convenience store as they'd got their morning candy bars; the latter from tension that would not go away. God knew they should be absolutely fried, given that only Alec had had a reasonable night's sleep in the last two, but Liz was wide awake: perhaps
too
wide awake, since she was so wired she was about to scream. She kept finding herself scrooching up under the steering wheel, peering forward with feverish intensity, straining her back as if that tension would grant the Mustang extra speed beyond the seventy-five she'd been averaging since they'd finally escaped Atlanta's urban sprawl somewhere around Monroe. They'd taken Georgia 11 south to 1-20, and were still heading east, coming up on the thriving metropolis of Crawfordville—all 594 souls, according to Rand McNally.

A bump in the road, not major, but Liz started, almost cried out. Every sound she heard seemed to herald pursuit: death from above in some form she dared not even imagine. Worse, every sound the car made hinted at imminent disaster. She'd never realized how many sounds a car—especially an old one like David's—could make: squeaks, rattles, howls from the tires, the rear end, the transmission. Suppose something happened to the car: suppose they found themselves stranded in the wilds of Taliaferro County with a dead '66 Mustang?

One more thing to fret over.

Another thing was gas. It was one thing to get by on caffeine and adrenalin herself, but the car was something else again. The gauge had dipped past the last mark just beyond Madison, and now they were running on what David liked to call “air and imagination.”

“I'm gonna have to stop,” Liz told Alec, who'd been leaning against the passenger door with his head half out the window and his eyes closed, rousing only when he delicately fumbled with the radio every now and then. At least his hands looked a little better. He'd found burn ointment in one of the surviving packs and had slathered the damage with it, resisting the temptation to bandage them as well, since what burns needed most was air, not confinement.

“Alec?” Liz prompted, somewhat louder. “I've
gotta
stop. We've gotta get gas.”

A slow nod. “Got any money?”

Got twenty bucks, that be enough?”

“To get us there, probably. To get us back? Who knows?”

“Another thing,” Liz added. “I think we need to find a phone, we've gotta let some folks know where we are. I know Mom's probably going crazy about now. Shoot, she's probably already called the cops.”

“Damn!” Alec exclaimed suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Your exams! Don't you have a big one coming up?”

She nodded sadly. “Yeah, gotta killer chemistry on Wednesday, but—well, some things are just more important.”

A sign caught Liz's attention up ahead: not the expected Crawfordville, but simply a Chevron logo on a neat blue background, with the legend: NEXT EXIT.

She slipped into the right hand lane and followed the arrow up into the oil-stained forecourt of a small self-service station that seemed to be standing guard at the intersection of the interstate and some nameless secondary road. Woods grew close around. A sign pointed south to Orton Carlton State Park.

“I'll fill 'er,” Alec volunteered, as Liz eased in between the pumps. “You be ready to fly if anything happens.”

“I'll go look for a phone.”

“Good idea, but stay close if you can.”

“I've, uh, also gotta go to the restroom.”

“Me too, soon as I get done here, but we'll go in shifts, never desert the car.”

“Okay.”

Alec patted her arm awkwardly and almost as awkwardly got out of the car and trotted around back to void the previous sale and stick the gas nozzle into the filler between taillights. Liz could see him there, keeping a wary eye out. She also saw his face blanch every time he manipulated the equipment.

She wished she hadn't said that about the restroom, too, because all of a sudden she really did have to go about as bad as she ever had in her life. If Alec would only hurry…she squirmed around in place, stared out the window. Alec was still vigilant, she could see his eyes shifting back and forth as the numbers slowly rolled up.

Eventually the dollar amount reached fifteen, though the gauge didn't seem to be registering, probably due to the car's recent abuse. She saw Alec fish into his pocket and pull out a twenty. He held it delicately between his fingertips. Probably the only way it didn't hurt.

A scraping sound was the gas cap being resecured, and then Alec was trotting into the station.

Suddenly she couldn't wait any longer. She didn't
want
to leave the car, but Alec was taking his own sweet time, and she wondered if he'd decided to take advantage of being out to do a little freshening up while he was at it. She doubted he meant any harm, but
Jesus,
why now, when she
really
had to go?

There was no helping it. She simply had to risk it. A quick dash out back would probably be okay.

She got out of the car and trotted as quickly as she could without being obvious around the side of the station, hoping the sign she saw was accurate.

As she walked in, she glimpsed Alec coming out again. Good, that meant the car wouldn't be unguarded.

Five minutes later she felt remarkably better, though mostly because of the water she'd splashed on her face (she was still in warpaint, she realized), and the quick toweling-down she'd given herself.

After the gloom of the restroom, the sunlight outside made her blink, and she spared a glance toward Alec, who was waiting patiently beside the car, then started toward the pay phone she'd noticed at the edge of the parking lot. She pointed; he nodded. She brandished a handful of change, and he nodded again and made shooing motions.

She went in, shut the glass door behind her. The receiver was working—fortunately. She listened for the dial tone, got it, punched up the operator and asked her to dial Uncle Dale, figuring he was the one person most adept at the various levels of diplomacy needed to bring half a dozen people of varying degrees of interest or involvement up to date on what was happening.

Behind her she saw Alec slowly walking toward her. He'd probably thought of something he needed to say.