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“Yeah, I do.”
The glowing line going down the out-in-the-boonies road ahead of them was the kind of thing you couldn’t miss—and no, it didn’t have anything to do with the yellow stuff painted in the middle. This stripe was on their side of the divider, the phosphorescent trail continuing into the distance until it appeared to make the upcoming corner and keep going.
Eddie looked back at the Northway exit they’d just gotten off. The direction of “Great Bear Mountain” had been all well and good, but as it turned out, it was like telling someone to go find a guy named Mike in Minnesota. The mountain’s footprint covered a massive territory, and for the last however many hours, they’d just been driving around aimlessly, poking into trailheads and pit stops, diners, drive-ins, and dives, straightaways and stop signs.
No Lassiter. Nothing even vaguely Lassiter-like.
Which, considering the guy was a mushroom cloud waiting to happen, was a good thing from a public safety standpoint. Given their mission? It was just more frustration.
“I guess we follow it,” Eddie said as he tried to see around the bend. “Maybe this is the compass we need.”
Ad rocked the gearshift back and forth in neutral. Then he flipped things into first, released the clutch, and eased in the gas. The Mini crept forward, as if the car were hesitant.
“Or maybe we just quit this shit.” Ad glanced over with annoyance. “Lassiter isn’t anywhere around here.”
“And you know this how?”
“You think you’re going to get cable or Internet this far out in the fucking boondocks? No way he’s going without TV.”
“What else do we have to do? We might as well see where it takes us.”
“This is a wild goose chase—”
“The last three years have been a f—” Eddie stopped himself before he -ucked after the fff. “This whole frickin’ thing’s a goose chase. So why not bloodhound after whatever this glow is.”
“It’s fuck.” Ad gave them some more speed. “And I don’t get this clean-living act with your vocabulary.”
As they puttered around the turn in the lane, a thicket of roadside emporiums appeared, stars in the pavement’s Milky Way.
“Do you need gas?” Eddie asked as they approached a Shell station.
“We’re doin’ okay—oh, hey, it’s a McDonald’s, you want to eat?”
“No, just keep going. In case the stuff has a half-life.”
“The fries?”
“No, dummy. The glow.”
As they went by the golden arches, Ad looked across the seats with a yearning that suggested his sodium nitrate levels were low. But he continued on—and so did the weird illumination.
“Taco Bell?” the other angel said with optimism. “Come on, I need a chalupa and so do you.”
“No way. I’m immortal, but there are limits to what my digestive tract will handle.”
“Plop-plop, fizz-fizz—”
“That is not your slogan.”
Ad laughed even though they were passing the purple bell logo. “I love Carter Anderson.”
A quarter of a mile later and the brief conglomeration of fast food was over. After that, all they had was more forest, the thick tree line an arbored fence like Mother Nature didn’t want any trespassers killing her vibe. And the phosphorescent strip was still going strong—what dimmed were Eddie’s convictions. Maybe Ad was right, and what he’d thought was a sign was just like the Great Bear thing, a nothing burger—
The glow disappeared.
And not just as in ended. As in extinguished completely, nothing more ahead, nothing at all behind them.
“Well,” Ad announced, “this was really great—”
“Stop!” As the angel hit the brakes, they both jerked into their seatbelts, and Eddie pointed to the right. “There’s a dirt lane. See? Let’s go in there.”
His best friend looked through the side window, his seat groaning from the shift of position.
“I’ve always wondered whether Bigfoot is real,” the angel muttered as he spun the wheel and punched the gas. “Maybe tonight’s the night I find out.”
“You wear a size fourteen. I’d say that’s prima facie evidence right there.”
“You’re no fun.”
As the headlights swung around, the nearly imperceptible break in the lineup of trunks and branches became more visible, but only marginally so. And as they bumped off the road onto a pair of dirt grooves, the trees seemed to crowd in.
There was something else, too. About ten yards in, the forest started to not look right, the landscape indistinct in a way that wasn’t tied to fog or weather. He didn’t know what the hell the buffering was.
Ad rubbed the heel of his hand in a circle on the windshield. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
They’d gone another fifty yards or so when a cockeyed cattle gate appeared and Ad slowed them down again. The old thing connected a busted-up chain link fence that had a curlicue of rusted barbed wire as a toupee.
“Look at those video cameras.”
“Keep going,” Eddie murmured as he squinted over the little hood and willed the barrier open.
The visual blurring continued to weave through the environs as they ascended the mountain’s flank, the details of the pines and other trees smudging to the point where they just disappeared into the darkness, the headlights not penetrating very far, the lane appearing up ahead as if it were being built foot by foot as they went along.
