In the van, someone was screaming in a long, continuous lash of sound. Eric saw the van bounce and begin to rock up and down, up and—
No, no! “Stop moving, don’t move, don’t move!” Ripping off his helmet, Eric swarmed to his feet and began to run, bawling over his shoulder, “Casey! Get your headlight on the van!”
As light flooded over the vehicle, the driver—the girl he’d seen spin by—leapt into being, framed in a rectangle of iced glass, frozen in an instant out of time. In the glare of the headlight, her hair was dark, and her skin, a cold bone-white. For a bizarre moment, Eric thought she looked dead already.
“Listen!” he bellowed over the wind. “The van’s jumped the barrier. The front end’s left the road. Do you understand?” When she nodded, he said, “Okay, unlock the doors, but don’t do anything else. Don’t move!”
There came the thunk of locks being disengaged, and then all the windows buzzed down, and he thought, okay, that was pretty smart. Lowering the windows would allow the wind to flow through the van instead of push against it. She’d already popped her shoulder harness, too, but wasn’t moving otherwise. Very smart.
“Hi.” Her voice was shaky, but she wasn’t going to pieces on him either. Smart, cool in a crisis—and she seemed familiar somehow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. What’s your name?” His drill sergeant said if you called the wounded by name, they wouldn’t die. Probably Marine voodoo, but it couldn’t hurt.
“Emma.”
“I’m Eric.” He saw something flit through her face—surprise?—but then he was arming snow from his face and eyeing the back door on her side. The handle was within reach and tempting, but his angle was off, and he was afraid of unbalancing the van. “Who else is in there?”
“Just Lily.” Emma opened her mouth to say something else, but then a sudden shock of wind grabbed the Dodge, and her eyes went wide.
“Easy.” His heart was jammed into the back of his throat. “It’ll be okay. Take it easy.”
“I’m … I’m trying,” she said in a breathless wheeze. The van creaked, and then it began to rock: up, then down, then up.
“Eric,” Casey said from somewhere behind. His voice rose: “Eric, Eric, the van; the van’s going to …”
There came a scream, short and sharp as a stiletto, and then the other girl was turning around, trying to scramble over the front seat: “What are you waiting for? Get us out, get us out, get us out!”
“Lily!” Emma shouted, and Eric could see from that tight grimace that it took all her self-control not to look around. “Don’t move, Lily, don’t—” There was a loud squall, and Lily screamed again as the van dipped and slipped another inch and then two.
Eric didn’t even think about it. His right hand pistoned out to wrap around the handle on the driver’s side back door. As the van tipped in a drunken sway, Eric backpedaled, but the vehicle outweighed him by nearly two tons, and his heels only scoured troughs from the snow.
“Eric!” Casey shouted. “Eric, let go, let go!”
The van lurched. There came a long grind of metal, a high screech as something tore, and then Eric was choking against the stink of gasoline blooming from the ruptured fuel line. The van’s headlights swung down, the arc lengthening with a rending, gnashing clash of metal against metal.
Inside, Lily was shrieking: “Do something do something do something!”
All of a sudden, the back tipped, and Eric’s feet left the ground. No, no, no! For one dizzying, horrifying instant, Eric saw himself hurtling over the barrier, his arms and legs pin-wheeling through the dark all the way down. Then Eric’s knees banged into the ruined guardrail; a jagged edge ripped through his jeans to slice meat, and he grunted with sudden pain.
“Emma, come on!” Stretching his left hand, Eric leaned so far forward that there was nothing but air beneath his chest, and still he couldn’t bridge the gap. Emma’s hand was maybe four inches away, but those inches might as well have been miles. “Give me your hand, Emma,” he pleaded, desperately. “Give me your hand!”
She tried. He felt her fingers brush his, and he grabbed, fumbled to hang on—and for an instant, he had her, he had her …
Then the van tilted. The front fender chopped air … and Eric slipped. Blame the snow; blame that he was off-balance or the sudden list of the van. Whatever. He just couldn’t hold on. His hand slid away and he thudded to the snow in a heap.
No, no, no, don’t you screw this up! Rolling, he got his boots planted, swarmed back to his feet. Save her, save her, save—
3
THE VAN BELLOWED, loud and long, in a tired, grinding groan. Held up by nothing more than twisted metal hooked under the rear axle, the overbalanced undercarriage hitched, skipping out another sudden, violent half-foot before the rear axle finally snapped.
The van slid away: there one moment and then not. It plunged into the dark, and Emma vanished.
But he heard Lily—all the way down.
RIMA
So Never Digging Around a Goodwill Ghost-Bin
1
IN THE HOUR before dark, the storm came on fast. They spotted just one other vehicle: a truck, judging by those taillights. The truck was perhaps an eighth of a mile ahead, visible only as an intermittent flicker of red, although every now and again, Rima spotted a faint drift of black. Truck was burning oil, probably.
“Man,” Tony said, “I hope this guy knows where he’s going. Otherwise, we are completely screwed.”
“Why?” Rima asked.
“Well, we ought’ve gotten to Merit by now.” Tony said Merit was a dinky little town, which had to be right, because she couldn’t find it, not even in the road atlas. “But the valley’s wrong. This part of Wisconsin’s pretty flat. And those mountains we saw just before dark? They’re not right either.”
Oh, perfect. Rima didn’t want to say, You got us lost? All the umpteen trillion counselors she and Anita had seen said that negative statements weren’t helpful. The problem was the only positive things Rima could think of were along the lines of, Wow, Anita, you only sucked down three pipes instead of four? You go, girl! So she said, “Have we passed any place you recognize?”
“No,” Tony said, after a long moment. “Can’t say we have.”