Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

“That someone’s coming – for us.”

An instant later, light shone in the rearview mirror. She turned around to look out of the back window and saw a pair of headlights off in the distance.

“And there they are,” Edgar said.

“It could just be someone else traveling the Nightway,” Lori said.

“Could be,” Edgar said. “But it isn’t. Forget about them and keep looking for an exit. We’re going to need one sooner rather than later, I think.”

A lone beetle emerged from the corner of his mouth, as if it was concerned about what was happening and had decided to emerge and check on the situation on behalf of the others. Edgar swept it up with his tongue, brought it back into his mouth, and sealed his lips tight to keep the little bastard where it belonged. The sight nauseated Lori, and she started to thrust it from her mind, but then she stopped. She didn’t want to forget things anymore, wanted to deal with them head-on, no matter how unpleasant they might be. She owed it to Aashrita.

She did her best to focus her attention on the road ahead of them and keep watch for the rippling in the air that Edgar had said marked an exit. She couldn’t help taking a look backward now and then, and each time she did, she saw the headlights of the vehicle behind them were closer.

“Can you go any faster?” she asked Edgar, worried. “Like, even a little?”

The van’s engine was already rumbling loudly, and the vehicle shook and bounced as it flew down the Nightway.

“This is all she’s got. It’s an extermination van, not a goddamn race car!”

Edgar held the steering wheel tight, and despite his earlier advice for Lori to keep looking for an exit, his gaze kept flicking toward the rearview mirror to check how close the vehicle pursuing them had come. And it was pursuing them, she believed that now. The radio voices were practically screaming with urgency.

She turned around to look through the rear window once more. It was hard to judge distances on the Nightway, given the darkness and lack of visible landmarks. The vehicle was close, though. A couple of hundred feet, maybe closer. She couldn’t make out the shape of the vehicle yet, but the headlights were set low and far apart. A car, she thought. A big one. And who did she know traveled the Nightway in a large vehicle, one resembling a midnight-black Cadillac? It had to be the Driver. How had the eyeless fucker found them? Edgar had said the Cabal had a more difficult time locating people on the Nightway than they did in the real world. Maybe the Driver had gotten lucky, or maybe they’d stayed at the Garden of Anguish long enough for the Cabal to get a fix on them. Or maybe the Cabal had guessed where she’d go in search of the answers she needed, and the Driver hadn’t managed to reach the Garden before they departed. It didn’t matter how the Driver had found them, though. It only mattered that he had.

“There!” Edgar shouted.

Lori whipped around to face the front, expecting to see another pair of headlights barreling toward them. Instead she saw a shimmering curtain of distortion ahead, on the left side of the road. They’d found an exit. Edgar yanked the steering wheel hard to the left, and the van’s tires squealed. Lori could feel the van tilt to the right, and for an instant she thought Edgar had turned too sharply and the vehicle would tip over.

And that’s exactly what it did.

The passenger-side window’s glass shattered as the van hit the ground. The side of Lori’s head smacked the remains of the window, and she felt sharp pain from the impact, as well as from glass cutting her skin. Canisters of pesticide clanged as they bounced around in the back, striking one another. What would happen if the chemicals were released? Would she and Edgar be poisoned? Could they die?

The van slid along the slick surface of the Nightway for a dozen feet before coming to a stop. The engine died, and the voices on the radio – which were shrieking now – cut off. Lori and Edgar were both belted into their seats, a fact for which Lori was grateful; otherwise Edgar would’ve landed on her. Edgar tried his seat belt release and found it jammed.

“Get us out of here!” he said.

Lori thought he was speaking to her, but then his beetles surged forth from his mouth. Half of them scuttled onto his seat belt and began furiously chewing at the tough fabric. The other half crawled down toward her and began working on her belt. She hadn’t tried her release yet, but as fast as the beetles worked, she knew she’d be free within seconds. While the beetles chewed, Edgar tried to open the driver’s-side door, but he couldn’t get any leverage and was unsuccessful. He hit the window control, and luckily, it still worked. The window went down, and he grabbed hold of the doorframe just as the beetles finished chewing through his seat belt. He dropped some, but his grip held. Grunting with effort, he maneuvered his body around until he was able to pull himself through the open window and out onto the side of the van, which, Lori supposed, now counted as the vehicle’s roof.

The beetles working on her seat belt finished, and then they all took to the air, flying up and out of the open window, presumably to join their master. A second later, Edgar reached down for her.

“Take my hand!”

As Lori contorted herself into a position where she could do as Edgar wanted, light flooded the van’s interior. The Driver had arrived.

Lori popped open the glove box and grabbed hold of the Gravedigger Special. Then she took Edgar’s hand, and the man pulled her up. She used her feet to help propel herself upward, and a few seconds later she was outside,