But maybe there’s a way to at least stop it. And if he can stop it, then –
I’ll beat it, Seth thinks again. That’s what happens. That’s the end of this story.
The Driver swings again, and Seth moves out of the way once more.
But he sees the way forward now.
“You,” he says, dodging one more blow, timing what he’s about to do, “are nothing more” – dodge, step – “than an obsolete” – dodge, step – “malfunctioning” – dodge, step – “JANITOR!”
He leaps toward the Driver’s punches –
Putting all his weight behind his right foot –
Aiming for the Driver’s creaking knee –
He hits it, full-on.
The leg snaps in two.
The Driver falls into the car next to it, shattering its window, but not reacting in time to catch itself before falling to the pavement. Seth leaps past it, swerving out of its reach. He picks up Regine’s first rock, the larger one, staggering under its weight. Jesus, that girl is strong.
He turns back to the Driver, which is struggling to rise, the broken half of its leg lying uselessly in front of it. Seth gives a grunt and lifts the rock up high, above his head. He starts to yell, growing louder as he races toward the Driver –
Who looks up at him, the melted helmet facing Seth, as blank and unknowable as ever –
“I win!” Seth shouts. “This story is finished!”
He surges forward –
Heaves the stone back to throw it –
The Driver’s arm moves in a flash, faster than any living thing possibly could –
And Seth feels cold steel plunge deep into his front –
The stone clatters down in front of him, dropping harmlessly to the pavement –
Because the broken-off leg of the Driver is now sticking out of Seth’s stomach.
78
Seth collapses to the sidewalk, lying on his side, gasping, the steel both cold and somehow also burning all the way through his body. He grabs it instinctively, and his hands come away drenched with his own blood, which spills onto the mud and weeds. He twists his neck and sees that the metal shaft has gone all the way through him. The end of it is sticking out his back.
He glances up the sidewalk in shock.
The Driver has pulled itself upright on its one leg.
It balances with a hand on the parked cars lining the pavement.
It half hops, half drags itself forward.
It’s coming for Seth.
It had seemed so clear. The Driver was right where it was supposed to be, right where Seth half expected it to be.
And if that was true, then everything else had to be true, too.
He would defeat the Driver after it came back from the dead one last time. He would beat it, and then he’d go triumphantly into . . .
What?
He doesn’t know. The certainty’s gone.
Because here he is, the Driver’s latticed metal leg protruding from just below his rib cage, sticking out his back in a nightmare of pain and impossibility that his brain can’t even process, except to focus on the fact that he’s bleeding everywhere.
That he’s dying.
And that, at last, he desperately doesn’t want to.
“Please,” he hears himself whispering, trying to push himself back along the sidewalk. “Please.”
The horrible wrongness of the metal through his body is too much to contemplate. Because it means there’s no getting out of this one. No last-minute heroics. No Tomasz or Regine leaping to the rescue. It doesn’t matter if anyone stops the Driver; there’s nothing they can do before he bleeds to death.
It’s too late.
He coughs, and there’s blood in his mouth.
And the Driver pulls itself closer.
“Please,” he says again, but his strength is deserting him rapidly. And the pain. There’s no way he can move to lessen it, and for a moment, for a terrifying moment, he feels himself blacking out.
The world goes inky and dark –
– and there is Gudmund, taking Seth’s hand, in a world that’s just the two of them, and they’re watching TV, something unimportant and forgettable, but Gudmund has reached over and taken Seth’s hand for no other reason than that he wants to, and there they sit, together –
But the pain returns.
And precious seconds have passed.
He’s still on the pavement.
Still with the metal shard stabbed all the way through him.
Still bleeding.
Still dying.
And the Driver only needs one last scraping hop to reach him.
It stands over him, looking down.
And Seth hears nothing, no sound of Regine or Tomasz stirring, no last-minute roar of an engine, no calls of his name or cries of victory.
There’s just him and the Driver.
At the end.
“Who are you?” he gasps.
But the Driver, of course, makes no answer, just raises a cracked and melted hand to end Seth’s story once and for all.
It doesn’t punch him, though. It does something much worse. It grabs the end of the leg sticking out of Seth’s stomach.
Seth cries out in an agony so overwhelming, he wonders if he’s going to black out again, hopes for it, thinks he can hear himself begging for it –
The Driver twists the leg, and impossibly, the pain increases. Seth’s whole torso feels like it’s being dunked in burning acid, like every muscle is snapping from the bone in metal cords.
“STOP!” he screams. “PLEASE! STOP!”
The Driver does not stop. It twists the leg once more in the other direction, as if testing the best way to cause Seth the most pain –
And just like the first time Seth saw it, hiding in the burnt-out neighborhood with Tomasz and Regine, there is nothing to appeal to there, nothing human, no mercy to be asked for or given –
The Driver changes its grip on the leg, fixes a hard fist around it –
“No,” Seth says, sensing what’s coming. “NO! PLEASE!”
It yanks the leg out of him in one terrible, final movement, and Seth loses his mind for a bit, the horror of just the motion of it passing through his back and out his stomach, the terror that all his guts must be spilling out onto the sidewalk (though when he looks there only seems to just be blood, blood and more blood), the utter certainty that his death is really here, that this really is it, that there will never be anything more –
And then the Driver is pushing him over onto his back. He can no longer really breathe, the blood he’s coughing up choking him just like the seawater did.
He’s drowning in it –