And there is the thought again, never quite disappearing. How everything he needed to survive, food, shelter, warm weather, has been provided. How these two not-guardian angels have saved him at the last minute, over and over. How he’s learned vital information just when he needed it, to take just the right steps, toward . . .
Toward what? Acceptance? Going back? Dying?
“Well,” he says, almost to himself, “we’ll know in a minute.”
“We will know what in a minute?” Tomasz asks as they approach the sinkhole, the weeds growing out of it like slowly crashing waves.
“If this is my brain telling me a story –”
“Not this again,” Regine mutters.
“If this was a movie or a book, right?” Seth says. “If this was some kind of story I was telling myself, then it’ll be waiting for us.”
Tomasz and Regine stop when they realize what Seth means by “it.”
“This is not an amusing thing to say, Mr. Seth,” Tomasz says.
“It’s dead and gone,” Regine says. “There’s no way it’ll be there.”
“All I’m saying is that’s what would happen if this was my brain trying to make sense of stuff,” Seth says. “The Driver would be there, half-burnt, insane with revenge, waiting for one last attack before we do whatever it is we’re going to do.”
“But that is okay, though,” Tomasz says, brightening. “Because in that story, there is always one last fight, and the hero always wins.”
“Hey, yeah,” Seth says. “I like that version.”
“The fighting’s over, do you hear me?” Regine says. “There’s not going to be anymore.”
“I’m just saying –”
“Well, quit just saying. You say way too much.”
Seth holds up his hands in surrender. “It was just a thought. Nothing’s going to happen. We killed it. It’s gone. The end.”
But they’re all quiet as they take the final turn into Seth’s street.
Which is empty. No van. No figure. Just the same old parked cars and weeds and mud. Regine exhales in relief, then she scowls at him. “Got us all scared,” she snaps. “Fool.”
Tomasz laughs. “For one moment there, I really thought –”
And the Driver steps out from where it was crouched between two parked cars. Its helmet is melted into a nearly unrecognizable shape, its missing leg replaced with a thinner, newer metallic lattice.
It grabs Tomasz with two melted, crackling fists, lifts him from the ground, and hurls him nearly all the way across the street, where he slams into the side of a car, tumbles to the ground, and doesn’t get back up.
77
I do not believe this, Seth thinks even as Regine is screaming Tomasz’s name, even as the Driver is grabbing her arm and forcing her down. I do not believe this is happening.
He goes in fighting anyway.
He throws himself at the Driver –
But even in his split-second leap, he can see that it doesn’t have the same effortless strength as before, that it’s struggling against Regine’s resistance –
He tackles it mid-chest, and they fall to the sidewalk. The Driver thuds beneath him, and this time, it’s like landing on a bag of metal shards. Seth doesn’t let go, though.
This isn’t happening, a part of his brain keeps telling him. This would only be happening if none of this were –
“Shut up!” he growls as if it was the Driver talking to him. He strikes it across the helmet, but his fist glances off the melted facade, sticky black tar coating his knuckles. He rears back to strike it again –
The Driver’s arm shoots up and grabs him around the neck. It jerks him to one side, thumping his head into the door of the car beside them –
But Seth anticipates the move, and the Driver isn’t as strong as it was before. He checks its arm motion before he gets the full brunt of the car door on his head.
It’s still got a hand around his throat, though, and when thumping Seth doesn’t work, it starts to squeeze –
Seth hears a call to his right and a shadowy figure blocks out the sun. Regine is bringing down an enormous rock on the Driver’s head –
The Driver sees it coming (How? Seth has a mad moment to think, With what eyes?) and moves its head to one side. The rock catches it with a glancing blow, and the Driver uses its free hand to grab Regine by her foot. She stumbles back into some weeds behind her. With a cry, Seth pulls himself away, freeing his neck from the Driver’s hand and punching again with his own –
His fists fall on hard metal sections, all sticky with the tarry substance. The Driver makes to strike him back, but Seth blocks it with his arm –
And though the Driver is obviously weakened, it’s not exactly weak. The punch feels like it nearly breaks Seth’s wrist, and his recoil from the pain is enough to let the Driver land another blow. It catches Seth on the side of his head, rolling him onto the sidewalk –
Where the Driver begins to rise –
And this time Regine is on it again. She clubs it with another rock across the back of its head. It spins around and grabs her arm, squeezing it enough for her to cry out and drop the rock. It punches her, hard, in the face, sending her back over the low stone wall of an adjacent front garden.
She stays down.
The Driver turns to Seth. There’s only the two of them now.
Seth gets to his feet.
And a terrifying but somehow true thought enters his head.
I’ll win, he thinks, dancing back as the Driver approaches. That’s how this story goes, doesn’t it? The enemy makes a surprise return just before the end, facing the hero one last time –
And the hero wins.
It takes a step toward him. Then another.
“You piece of shit!” Seth shouts. “You’re nothing! You’re just a hunk of plastic that’s got big ideas!”
The Driver swings for him again, but Seth jumps out of the way. It’s stumbling a little on its replacement leg, the thinner metal of it creaking at the knee. There’s a definite scraping as the Driver moves forward. When Seth knocked it to the ground, it must have snapped something.
Yes. Oh, yes.
“Not really fixed, are you?” Seth shouts, dodging another punch. “You’re breakable. And I’m guessing, out of warranty!”
Another punch dodged, another step.
Seth looks left and right, trying to find some ammunition, something to fight it with, but he can’t see where Regine got those rocks.