Expiration Date (28 page)

Clay ran his eyes back along the ditch. Through the thickening darkness, he could make out the kid’s head above the weeds.

“No, no-o,
no-o-o
!”

He tapped his brakes, spun the wheel, yanked on the emergency brake. The Duster slid, wobbled, and rocked, then squealed around so that it faced the way he had come. He pressed the gas, but the engine had cut out. He fired the ignition, sped back toward the Taurus. He’d ram the thing off the road if he had to, but he could not let that man reach Kenny.

The train was screaming now in warning. Lights blinked. Klaxons jangled.

Clay saw the man drop into the ditch, and his heart punched into his throat. He threw his car into Park, clawed his six-foot-three-inch body from the seat, clipped his head on the frame.

“Dang it!”

He vaulted after the man. Landed hard on the rocks—twisting. A pain shot through his ankle—burning. He ran on. No time for delays.

Kenny Preston. He’s all that matters now
.

Ahead, the husky man’s elbows churned. In the darkness he was no more than a bisected torso and head floating over the weeds. Why did he want Kenny?

Far ahead, the boy was climbing from the ditch, feet kicking up gravel. He crested the embankment. Disappeared for a few seconds behind a concrete bunker of some sort, then shot into view near the tracks.

The train’s whistle was the diving shriek of a thousand birds of prey.

Kenny was the hunted.

The kid hesitated at the railway ties that were thick as his waist, then stepped over the first track. What was he doing? This was no time for fooling around.

“Kenny! Get off there!
Run!
”

Clay wasn’t sure if his voice was heard over the blaring dissonance. Did Kenny even see him down here? Was he aware of his other pursuer? The kid remained frozen on the tracks, his face turned into the night train’s blinding light.

7.1.1.0.4 …

The digits carved and burned along Clay’s nerves.

“Don’t mess around, Kenny!
Go!
”

The train powered onward, painting Kenny’s face in an unnatural light so that it appeared to be floating in place, preternaturally pale, blurred at the edges. His hair lay limp over his head. His eyes were mesmerized orbs absorbing the glare.

The high-speed train had killed others here in JC and in Harrisburg. Most victims were homeless or inebriated; on occasion, fools tried to beat the train across, toying with tons of hurtling metal and steel. During high school
Clay had lost a pair of classmates to such an event. Their funerals were closed-casket ordeals.

“Kennny! Kennnny!”

He yelled the name until he was hoarse. He understood the kid’s strategy—trying to lose his pursuer, staying on the tracks until the last moment—but this had reached the point of insanity. The ground shook with the train’s sheer weight and velocity. The crossing lights threw shifting shades of color across rock, grass, and pavement.

Was Kenny finally moving? The husky man’s nearing shape seemed to stir activity, but Kenny remained in the train’s path.

An image of those trailing white laces crossed Clay’s mind. Was the kid stuck?

Clay clambered onward. Tears streaked his cheeks. Or maybe it was the rushing wind causing him to tear up, maybe high pollen count. His shoes stumbled over garbage and pebbles. The distance was too great. He was useless.

A final glance provided images that would never go away …

Hollowed by dread, Kenny’s eyes turned dark.

Ghostlike, his mouth gaped wide.

The train, unable to stop, blasted through the space where the boy stood as though he was nothing more than air. There was no cry of anguish. No sign of tattered clothes or torn limbs. Nothing. In a moment that came and went, the metal swallowed every last bit of evidence of a child named Kenny Preston.

Asgoth reveled in the moment.

The kid had played right into his hands, racing through the ditch, dragging Clay Ryker in his wake. On the railroad ties, Asgoth had sprung his trap—with a finishing touch from Mr. Monde.

Now from the other side of the tracks, through the moving frame of the train’s rushing wheels, he observed the gray white pallor that permeated Clay’s face, as though a bucket of paint had been dumped into his skull. He saw eyes of horror blink with tears, saw trembling arms tighten in a self-preserving embrace.

See now, Mr. Ryker. It’d be so much easier to do as I suggest …

Sacrifice yourself so others might live
.

“You are appalling,” Monde said.

“Why, thank you.”

Asgoth wished the Consortium’s other members were present, but with Monde as his partner and witness, they would receive a full report. How could they deny his influence in this town? He was on a roll.

He’d made one mistake, though, which he hoped would go undetected.

“You’re certain it’ll work, A.G.?”

“What? Now you’re questioning my abilities? Look. Clay is devastated.”

Once again Clay stood at a calamitous scene, unaware of all that was involved. In some cases ignorance was bliss. In Clay’s case it was torture.

“Truthfully,” Monde said to A.G., “that ranks as the most horrific scene in which I’ve seen you play a part.”

They stood in darkness, pressed against a factory’s corrugated siding. The heat of the day still resided in the metal, comforting, familiar. Storm clouds continued to coil and rumble, as though this summer night was developing a case of indigestion.

On the tracks the night train had finished its transit through town.
Searching in its wake, the large man who’d pursued Kenny picked at stones and dirt, ran his eyes along the street.

“Are you aware,” Monde asked, “of this man’s identity?”

“The one from the Brotherhood?”

“Dmitri Derevenko, a fourth generation acolyte. He arrived earlier today. Or didn’t you see him?”

“He’s come for one thing, hasn’t he?” Asgoth said.

Mr. Monde nodded. “But after your repulsive display, he’ll fear the object is gone forever. Torn from the heart of one train. Cut off by the passage of another.”

Clay’s legs were sodden tree stumps that he dragged back through the ditch. Breathing heavily, he reached his car—his parents’ car, technically. Ha. See, this just proved it. The junkyard car served as evidence that his life was a pathetic joke. “Ha!” he said aloud.

He brushed dirt and weeds from his pants, smirked at the husky guy who was pacing the railway on a hunt for things he would not find. The man was in obvious denial. Well, there was no denying what had taken place up there.

Clay’s quivering fingers snatched the keys from the ignition, shoved them into his pocket—next to the oak tube. Was this the object of the man’s search? Was it worth driving a helpless kid into the path of a train?

With a finger he wrote in the dust on the back windshield:
Steal this car!

Come on
, he dared the man on the tracks.
Search the car. Steal it, for all I care. But you’re not getting this! It belongs … uh, it belonged to Kenny
.

He walked back along the street. Avoided the crossing arm. Stepped gingerly over the rails, eyes fixed on a lighted sign a block ahead. His foot stumbled against uneven concrete. He tripped. Laughed out loud.

Okaaay now, Claymeister. Get a grip
.

A pay phone caught his eye. Not that it’d do any good, but he dialed 911.

With that superfluous little formality aside, he plugged on to his destination. Just a bit further. He could make it. He’d done his duty, done his best. He was done.

Down for the count … Over and out … Never again … Enough is enough …

A simple little word, so rich with meaning and devoid of confusion.

“I’m done,” he called out into the night, convinced for the first time in his life that no one was listening.

Ahead, a sign with a blackbird indicated he had arrived at his destination.

“Ryker? Well, of all people.”

“Figured I’d drop by.”

“What brings you here? You don’t look so hot.”

“There a rule somewhere says I can’t stop for a drink?”

Wendy’s laugh was carefree. “Of course not, silly guy. Just didn’t expect to see you in this place. Thought you steered clear of the Raven.” Free of her Glenleaf Monument garb, Wendy was a different person. Beneath the tavern’s haze of smoke, her teeth were radiant, and her hair was pulled up into a bouquet of feminine curls.

“Hey,” he said, “I do have a life, you know?”

She cupped a hand to her ear. “What?”

“I said, I do have a life.”

“Relax, stud muffin. Wife or no wife, we’re just two adults talking at the bar.”

“A life!” he corrected.

She winked. “Heard you the first time. Here, belly up.”

He threw a leg over a stool. On the Raven’s karaoke stage, an overweight woman in skintight jeans and a red Aerosmith shirt belted out a tune. He wasn’t sure if her voice was off key or if the low ceiling’s acoustics were bad.

Either way, he needed help. He ordered Jack on the rocks.

“Nicely done.” Wendy nudged his shoulder with glossy fingernails.

He looked down, worried by the thought of skin-to-skin contact. But, hey, what was one more expiration date? Here a death, there a death, everywhere a …

He accepted the first drink and tossed it back like an alky falling off the
wagon. Not that he’d know. The trick, he told himself, was to drink lots of water with a couple of Tylenol before he collapsed into bed tonight. Least that way he’d wake up half alive. Half human.

“Another one just like it,” he told the bartender.

The man complied without a glance and left out the whiskey bottle. Clay sipped once, swirled the ice, then swigged down another fiery jolt, courtesy of Mr. Daniel. His throat burned, his insides warmed up, and his tongue probed the space around his teeth.

“Want nachos to go with it?” the bartender offered. “Jalapeño cheese sticks?”

Clay declined. He spotted gray strands woven through the man’s slicked-back hair, guessed that each one represented a sob story he’d endured while behind the counter. Clay had no plan of dumping his own woes—not here, not now. He needed sleep. An alcohol-assisted, no-tossing-no-turning, twelve-hour shot of nighty-night.

“Listen, Ryker,” Wendy said. “I’ve worked with you, what, two or three weeks? You’re standoffish. That’s your business. Got a lot on your mind—that’s clear to see. But I can tell there’s something else bugging you tonight.”

He tapped the bar for another drink. He looked at the lights above the mirrored shelves. Man, was it just him, or was it warm in here?

“Is it just me?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind.” He snickered. “I interrupted you.”

“No, go ahead. Seems like something’s worrying you, that’s all.”

“Me?” A choking laugh. “I got nothing left to worry about.”

“What?” Wendy tipped her ear closer, and her hair tickled his cheek.

He said, “There’s nothing left to—”

A fist of grief clamped around his neck. He swiveled away toward the stage.

At a pool table, a tattooed man in a dazzling white cowboy hat threw his hands together as his girlfriend took her turn in front of the karaoke monitor. She curtsied, blew him a sassy kiss, then swayed her hips to a Shania Twain hit.

Clay swallowed the remainder of his third drink. Like liquid Drano, it burned a hole through the clogged emotion in his throat. He liked that. He wanted nothing more than a reprieve from his guilt. It’d haunted him all these
years, eaten away at his personal confidence and business intuition. In this last hour an even more heart-stopping scenario had flooded over his memories of the river.

See how easy that was? Out with the old, in with the new.

He was d-o-n-e. Time for someone else to shoulder this awful gift.

You hear me, God? Don’t need it, don’t want it, gonna make a mess of it anyway. Why give me something I can’t control?

No answer.

“Whaddya think, Wendy? You think I can control it?” He turned on the stool, and the room stutter stepped to keep up. “Whoa.” He snickered again.