“There are websites about everything.”
“Yeah, I suppose. But it was a seventies muscle car he drove, I remember that much. Black, too. I think it was a Charger. Or a Challenger. So cool. Is this a Charger?”
Amber’s gaze drifted to the window again. “Yeah,” she said, hoping he’d shut the hell up now.
“There were a few survivors because he didn’t, like, get out of the car to finish them off, or anything. All he was interested in was bashing them off the road. Though he did run a few down, but, if you ask me, anyone who thinks they’re gonna sprint faster than a car kind of deserves to be run down, am I right? Ever since I heard about the Ghost of the Highway, I’ve wanted a car like that. And now I’m in one!”
“A dream come true,” Amber muttered.
“Just to drive in something that cool … We don’t have anything this awesome in Ireland. There are a few petrolheads who’ll import the odd Mustang or whatever, but you wouldn’t be able to drive around without people going, Who does your man think he is? – you know? But here you can drive a car like this and people won’t automatically think you’re a tool. People are more accepting here, y’know? But those police reports, in the victims’ own words, describing what it was like to be chased down by this terrifying black beast of a car … One moment they’re driving along fine, the road pitch-black behind them, the next these red headlights suddenly open up in their rear-view mirror …”
Amber stopped gazing out of the window, and looked at Milo out of the corner of her eye. His expression remained calm, but his hands gripped the wheel with such force that his knuckles had turned white. She suddenly had a knot in her belly.
“It was things like that, y’know?” Glen continued, oblivious. “Things like that that made me fall in love with America. A country so big you can do something as crazy as that as a hobby and never get caught … wow. I’m not saying I want to do something like that, but I appreciate the fact that I could. Land of the free, right? Home of the brave.”
Glen settled back, lost in his own overwhelming sense of wonder, and Milo didn’t speak again for another two hours.
By the time they stopped off at a Budget Inn in Jasper, Georgia, Milo looked a lot paler than he should have. His face was gaunt, his eyes distant. He got out of the Charger slowly, almost like it didn’t want him to leave, and only when they had left it behind them in the parking lot did he regain a little of his spirit. He told Glen to shut up three times as they checked in.
For his own reasons, Glen attempted an American accent that sounded like a cross between John Wayne and John Wayne’s idiot brother. Amber thought that the woman behind the desk would ask her for proof of age, but the woman seemingly couldn’t have cared less. Amber went to her room with a small bag containing necessities, a vending-machine sandwich, and a lukewarm can of Coke. The water in her shower took forever to heat up, but eventually she stood under the spray and closed her eyes. She worked a full mini-bottle of shampoo and conditioner into her hair, which had dried out in knots and tangles following her dip in the river, and when she was done she stood in front of the bathroom mirror naked.
Unimpressed with what she saw, she resisted the urge to shift. She didn’t see the point of feeling even worse about herself.
She turned on the TV. Every second channel had a preacher in an expensive suit talking about God and the Devil. She watched for a bit, hoping in vain to hear some words of comfort, but all she got was fear and greed. She flicked over to a horror movie, but that failed to distract her, so she turned the TV off, and all the lights, and climbed into bed. The mattress was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. The pillows were simultaneously too thin and too soft. She lay in the darkness. Voices came through the walls. TV sets played. Toilets flushed.
She thought about Milo and Glen and Imelda, and the trucker and Brandon. She thought about the Ghost of the Highway, and she thought of her parents, and how they were probably coming after her even as she lay there.
She got up, dragged a chair in front of the door, and jammed it up against the handle like she’d seen people do in movies.
She went back to bed. Sleep was a long time coming.
THEY SET OFF EARLY the next morning. Milo looked healthy and strong again, and he must have been up for a while because the Charger was gleaming when they got in. Glen told them all about his night. It wasn’t very interesting.
When he realised nobody was answering him, Glen dozed for an hour in the back seat before checking on their location on his phone. “Ooh!” he said. “We’re going to be passing Nashville! Can we stop?”
“No,” Amber and Milo both said.
Glen looked hurt. “But … but this might be my last chance to see it. I’m dying, remember?”
“You haven’t mentioned it,” Milo said, making it the second joke he’d told since Amber had met him.
“Can’t we even just drive through?” Glen asked. “You don’t even have to go slow. Come on, please? Elvis started out in Nashville – it’s where he recorded his first record. Elvis!”
“He did that in Memphis,” Milo said.
Glen frowned. “Isn’t Nashville in Memphis?”
“Nashville and Memphis are both in Tennessee. Which is where we are.”
“Oh. Are we going to be passing through Memphis?”
“No.”
“But I’m dying. Why are you in such a rush, anyway? Isn’t it time you told me what’s really going on? We’re friends. We’re on this trip together. That bonds people, y’know. We’re bonded now. We’re inseparable. We should have no secrets from each other. I’ve got no secrets from you. I told you all about the monster who attacked me and gave me the Deathmark and my quest to find The Dark Stair. What’s your quest?”
“Don’t call it a quest.”
“But what is it?”
Amber turned to him. “We’re dropping you off in Wisconsin. That’s as far as you’re going with us. Believe me, it’s safer for you not to know anything beyond that.”
He blinked at her. “But … but we’re inseparable.”
Amber turned back. “Not nearly as inseparable as you think.”
Glen went quiet. A few minutes later, he was tapping away at his phone again.
He chuckled. “They have a Toledo in Ohio,” he said. “Hey, do you think that’s where the phrase Holy Toledo comes from? Do you? Hello?”
“There’s also a Toledo in Spain,” said Milo with dull exasperation. “It’s a holy city.”
“So that’s where it came from?”
“I don’t know, Glen.”
“Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it?”
“I guess.”
Glen nodded, went back to tapping.
They found a Walmart in Knoxville and pulled in.
“What’re we doing here?” Glen asked.
“Need to buy some clothes,” said Amber.
“Need help?”
She frowned at him. “No.”
She ignored his look of disappointment, and got out. She pulled her cap down lower and turned