In the Wheels Read online

  In the Wheels

  Daryl Gregory

  My first sale, a rollicking post-apocalyptic tale of drag racing and demons.

  In the Wheels by Daryl Gregory

  This is my first sale, which appeared in the August 1990 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I wrote the story in the summer of 1988, during the first couple weeks of the Clarion Writer's Workshop. The first draft was a third shorter, and it was Samuel R. Delany, the teacher that week, who pointed out that the story wasn't complete: the narrator had to return home and face the music.

  And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of the amber, out of the midst of the fire… and this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man…. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

  —Ezekiel 1:4-5, 20

  It was just a car.

  “No!” said Zeke from underneath it, “it’s more than that, Joey. It’s fucking perfect.”

  We were fifteen. Zeke had found a huge underground vault, a crypt of old cars in the City, and he had dragged me out there to hold the lantern while he checked it out. I was supposed to be on the way to my Uncle Peter’s farm to help bring in the hay.

  “Zeke, don’t be crazy. Let’s get out of here.” The City was death, everybody knew that. I could feel the germs and the rads crawling across my skin. We were going to be dead in three days with huge welts all over our skin. Superstitious, I know.

  Zeke could always get me to do stuff I never would have done on my own. He would say something like, why don’t we go up and sit on the white highways; and even though I thought it was a completely stupid idea, I would go. Or he would say, let’s go into Dead City and look for a car, and even though nobody’d lived in The City since before the Cold, I would say all right, and we’d go.

  And here I was.

  The car looked to me like a crumbling wreck. It was a big Chevy, which Zeke pronounced “Shev-ee” like his father Frank. The tires were flat and rotted out, the paint job was webbed with cracks, and the stuff on the inside was all split and pitted.

  Zeke rolled out from beneath the car and grinned. “Don’t be such a little girl. The block’s intact. It’ll work.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. The car looked nothing like the chariots they raced on the white highways, and I told him so. “Besides, how are you going to get it out of here?” We’d had to dig our way through rubble ourselves, and I saw no way to get this heap up to the surface.

  “Leave that to me,” he said. I should have known then that he was serious. There was no natural way to move that much rock out of the way, much less carry the car up.

  * * *

  Two weeks later Zeke caught me as I was walking home from the schoolhouse. The palms of his hands were wrapped in rags. “Joey, boy. Tonight we should take a little trip.”

  “What did you do to your hands?”

  “Nothing. Hurt ’em working on the car. Will you be there?”

  “I can’t sneak out again without getting caught. Why can’t we wait til Saturday?”

  My sisters raced past us. “We’re gonna tell Firstmother you’re talking to Zeke!”

  “Oh Lord Jesus,” I said. I would catch heck later.

  “Don’t worry about it. Tonight, all right? And bring paint.”

  “Paint? Where am I going to get paint?”

  “Check your barn, stupid.”

  Zeke was right, as usual. There was paint in the barn, some old cans of red that Grampa had mixed years ago. But I couldn’t take off with it until nightfall.

  * * *

  The fire is always the center of the home. Father had built the chimney first, stone by stone, and the kitchen around it. As the children were born he had added small rooms that sprang off from the kitchen at odd angles, and after I’d gotten big enough to help him we built the porch around the front door.

  Firstmother started her prayer that evening with the usual, “Thank you Jesus for the Summer Sun,” while Sara, my pop’s new young wife (barely older than me), passed potatoes and a little mashed corn around the table. Pop took a potato and bit into it. Firstmother went through the entire list of crops we were hoping for, plus all of the sins me, my sisters, Pop, and most of all Sara had committed that week. She kept going until she saw that Sara was almost finished setting the table, and then Firstmother finished off the whole thing by saying, “and especially watch over our young Joseph, and protect him from the temptations that so beset a young man.” My sisters giggled; then we all said “Amen.” Sara sat down gratefully.

  Firstmother eyed the table. “I don’t see no salt here.”

  Sara jumped up and vanished into the kitchen, and Firstmother said, “I been hearing that you were running around with Zeke again after Schoolhouse.” My sisters giggled again.

  “No ma’am, I wasn’t ‘running around,’ I just….”

  “Don’t talk back to me, boy.” Sara came back into the room carrying the salt bowl. My father was chewing intently, silently, as always. And Sara was worse than no help, a liability.

  It was time. I either had to stand up for Zeke or listen forever to everything Firstmother said. I looked her in the eye. “What’s the matter with Zeke, anyways?”

  She stared back. “You know what’s the matter with Zeke. His father’s a drunk, a black magician, a road racer, a no-good consorter with demons—”

  “Enough, Rachel.”

  Firstmother stopped in mid sentence. Sara and us kids dropped our eyes instantly to our plates. Pop never spoke at the dinner table.

  “What did you say, Samuel?” Firstmother said icily.

  Pop looked up. He kept chewing as he talked, red potatoes mashing between his teeth. His voice was quiet, like when he was explaining why he was going to hit you for not feeding the horses on time. “I said, Rachel, that enough was enough. Frank Landers has had his troubles. I don’t want any wife of mine continuing to add to them.”

  Firstmother was almost sputtering. “I will not have my son hanging around with the son of a demoner!” She picked up her plate and stalked to the kitchen.

  Pop picked up another potato. My sisters stared moodily at their food. And even with her head bowed and her hair falling across her eyes, I could see the barest beginnings of a smile on Sara’s face.

  * * *

  Just after ten that night I was banging around in the dark with two cans of red paint. I’d stuffed my blankets with pillows and climbed out the window, hoping that Firstmother wouldn’t think to check on me—she did that sometimes.

  I was circling Zeke’s house to knock on his bedroom window when I saw lamplight seeping through the cracks of the old shed set away from the house. The door, usually chained shut, was busted open. Zeke was there, his back to me as he rummaged through some cabinets at the back of the shed. And there was something else.

  It was a Pontiac—one of the big cars they race down in Mexicana. It was painted almost all black, but in the flicker I could make out a spiderweb of silver lines. The tires were low, and there was some rust along the bottom of the driver’s side door, but overall it looked real good.

  “You’re late,” Zeke said when he turned around. “Here. Grab these.” He was holding up three dusty books, two cans of paint and a bucket of brushes in his bandaged hands.

  “Lord Jesus, Zeke! Where did this thing come from?”

  “Nowhere.” He dropped the paint at my feet and circled the room, blowing out lanterns.

  “C’mon, whose car is this? Is this your dad’s?” There’d been rumors about Zeke’
s dad, Frank, ever since I was a kid. Everybody knew he was a drunk now, but every once in a while you’d hear an adult say something about the magic, or a pro driver.

  Zeke pushed me and the buckets outside. He wound the chain up around the door handle and said, “Forget it. That car ain’t there, you understand?” He turned to me, and in the moonlight I could barely make out a smile. The smile was always the end of the argument with Zeke. “Ready for a little hike?”

  We took the short-cuts and made it into the city in under two hours. For the entire trip, Zeke wouldn’t talk about the Pontiac, but the subject was still cars.

  “Joey,” he said, “I’m gonna race on the white highways. I’m gonna win. Then I’m going to Mexicana and I’m gonna race the Brujo.”

  “The Brujo? Phil Mendez? You’re crazy, Zeke.”

  “You know I’m crazy. That’s why I’m gonna win.”

  “That’s why you’re going to die. Messing with the demons and magic is serious stuff. I don’t even know why I’m helping you.”

  He nudged me. “You haven’t figured that out, Joey? Because you love this shit. You love being bad, breaking the rules, messing with magic. And if anything goes wrong, you can blame it on mean old Zeke.”

  “You’re full of it,” I said. But I knew he was right.

  * * *

  The Chevy was sitting in an alley that had been cleared of rubble.

  “Christ in the tomb,” I whispered.

  Zeke started lighting lamps that had been placed in a circle around the car. I was conscious of Dead City surrounding us on all sides. I set my buckets on the ground and walked forward.

  “Christ in the tomb,” I said again, louder. “How did you get it up here?”

  “An angel pushed the boulders out of the way. What do you think?” Zeke opened one of the books and began flipping through its pages.

  “Zeke! You already did it? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened.” He studied a diagram on one page of the book. “Now get those cans of red over here. I want to prime it in red.”

  “Jesus Lord, I should have known it when I saw your hands.” I followed him around the circle. “What was it like? Did it have wings? Did it look like the Devil?”

  “How the hell would I know what the Devil looks like?” Zeke snapped the book shut and handed me a big brush. “Smooth, slow strokes, all over the hood. Don’t mess it up.” He set the books off to the side carefully.

  “Zeke, why do we have to work on it out here, in the City?”

  “Can’t you feel it?” His voice sounded like he was speaking from under the ground. “There’s a lot of death here. A lot of power.” Death. Power. I was out of my depth.

  I didn’t ask any more questions. We worked silently for almost three hours. Two hours before dawn we put the cans and brushes beneath the car, doused the lamps, and walked home. Zeke whistled the whole way.

  * * *

  One or two days a week for almost two months I made the trek out to the city with or for Zeke. He had stopped going to schoolhouse. He would stay awake for days, working on the car, talking about how he was going to take it on the circuit and blow everybody else away. I’d bring him some food from home and he’d barely look at it.

  Looking back, I know I could have done something to stop him. I could have hid the tools, or sabotaged the paint, or told my folks what we were doing. But Zeke was Zeke. And I couldn’t imagine any situation that Zeke couldn’t handle.

  Me, I was a different story. I was petrified Firstmother or Father would find out what I was up to. I would tell Zeke that I was absolutely never coming back out to the City. But Zeke would tell me he needed me to bring something out; and, sure enough, that night I would climb out my window and head toward Dead City. Considering my nervousness and lack of confidence, I had amazing luck. Of all the times I sneaked out of the house to go help him, I was only caught once.

  It was mid-June and I was late coming back from the City. The sun was just starting to come up behind me. I was about to boost myself over the window ledge and start pretending to be asleep when Sara walked around the corner. What was she doing up this early? She stared at me and I slowly dropped back to the ground. If she told Firstmother (which she wouldn’t) or Father (which she probably would) I was in big trouble.

  “Sara, listen…” I began. She shushed me with a finger to her lips. She grinned like a little kid.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said. “I’m Secondmother now.”

  “That’s great,” I said. We stood there in silence for a while, me nervously watching the sun get bigger and brighter every minute. Finally she reached up and touched the top of my head.

  “You’d better get inside now, Joseph.” She turned her back to me and walked around the corner again. I scrambled up the wall and dove into bed. A few minutes later Father came in to wake me up for the morning chores.

  * * *

  The night we were to call the Engine, I walked into the City early, just before dusk. I wanted to look at the car alone, in daylight.

  I took almost as much pride in it as Zeke did.

  At that time I’d only seen one race on the white highways, between two cars on the pro circuit from Nevada. I’d thought the cars were the most beautiful, terrible things in the world. But Zeke’s car, our car, surpassed them.

  Not in beauty. Even by lamplight, the lines on the Chevy did not look delicate; the interior did not look padded and luxurious; the wheels were not trimmed in gold like the circuit cars were. But for sheer terribleness, you couldn’t match Zeke’s Chevy.

  It was red, but a red shot through with yellow and white lines that, by lamplight, flickered and burned. I’d asked Zeke how he did it. How did he know what design was needed, what pattern of lines and circles and rectangles was called for. Zeke said that every pattern on every car was exactly the same, but I said that was horse-hockey—I’d seen the pro cars, and each design was as different from the other as strangers.

  As I entered the alley I could see that the Chevy was no less terrible by daylight. I could make out each line and shape, and as I looked I began to grasp the logic of their relationships. Each line bound one shape to another; each shape froze the line in its path. There was no way to look past that design to the base red, and there was no path from the red out.

  The pattern was bars to a cage, and the cage was the car.

  Suddenly I realized that there was someone in the car behind the wheel; nearly as quick I knew it was Frank. The door opened and he heaved himself out. He stumbled forward, then leaned against the hood. As I walked toward him he drew a flask and swallowed hard.

  “Who are you?”

  “Joseph Peterson,” I said. I was ready to break and run if he got crazy. I’d seen Frank drunk, but I’d always stayed out of his way. So did Zeke.

  His eyes narrowed. “Sam’s boy?”

  “That’s right.” He shook his head as if to clear it. He looked at the car beneath his hand.

  “What the hell are you boys trying to do out here?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Nothing? C’mere, boy. Look at this.” Cautiously I walked over. He traced one of the lines with his finger. The finger, and now I noticed the entire hand as well, was covered with pink scars. I looked at where he pointed. There was a small break in the paint. “That’s sloppy, boy, sloppy that could get you killed. That line’s useless, and if your Engine finds that break it’s gonna try to pop right out of there.” He pulled me around to the open driver’s door. “Look at that steerin’ wheel.”

  I looked. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

  Frank made a sound like a man trying to push a mule uphill, and he shoved me into the seat. “Put your hands on the wheel.”

  I did as I was told, but I was also trying to see if I could scoot over to the other door and get out before he could grab me again. “No no no. Look where your hands are. Put ‘em at two o’clock and ten. Now, see where the pattern stops to either sides of your hands? Those are your channels,
and if your hand’s not completely covering those blank spots when the blood’s flowing, the Engine’s gonna climb up into your lap and bite your head off. Then you go zombi.”

  “Zeke’s hands are bigger,” I said defensively.

  “Nobody races with channels that big. Don’t you understand, boy? It’s a two way street. You reach in, and it reaches you.”

  “But Zeke says with bigger channels you get more speed, more fuel out of the Engine…”

  “Boy, speed’s not everything.”

  Suddenly a big bandaged hand reached in and hauled Frank out of the door. Zeke held him by the shirt collar and shouted at him. “What are doing here, old man? What are you doing here!” Zeke pushed Frank away from him. Frank stumbled backwards and fell to the ground.

  Zeke stalked off to the other side of the car. I was left looking at Frank. He wasn’t getting up. After half a minute I got out of the car and went to see if he was all right.

  His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing me. It was like he was caught up in a memory, or a dream that he couldn’t shake.

  “Can I give you a hand?” I asked. His eyes focused on me. He shook his head and slowly levered himself up into a sitting position. After a while he eased himself up and walked stiff-leggedly out of the alley.

  “That was kind of rough, don’t you think?” I told Zeke.

  He didn’t answer, or even look at me. He was flipping through one of his books again. And if I hadn’t known Zeke as well as I did, I would have sworn he looked like a boy about to cry. He slammed the book shut, picked up a brush, and began filling in the breaks in the lines of the pattern with quick, angry strokes. He left the channels on the steering wheel untouched.

  An hour or so later Zeke began to talk again as he worked, but it was only about the Circuit, and how fast this car was going to be, and taking on Brujo Mendez in Mexicana.

  “What’s the big deal with Mendez?” I asked.

  “He’s the best,” Zeke said, “no one’s ever beaten him.”