If the Chariot could speak, she’d probably be scolding Fray for how tightly he’s gripping the steering wheel. He can feel the slight bumps from the pressure of his fingers, wrapped viselike around the leather. He hopes that Baj over there in the passenger seat can’t tell how white his knuckles are.
Tin says, the words all but scraping against his weird, sharp teeth, “You know, I could just grab your stupid teenage head from here and pull the whole dumbfuck plan right out of it.”
Fray keeps his eyes on the highway. A mile marker blows past. The sun turns the distant strip of blacktop into rippling lines of water.
Tin says, “I wouldn’t even eat it. That’s how stupid it fucking is. I’m literally starving and I wouldn’t eat your dogshit plan.”
Baj shifts in their seat. Fray wonders if the heat from their supernaturally heated body is going to damage the Chariot’s leather. A mile marker blows past.
Baj says, blandly, “I think it’s a bad idea, too.”
“See!” Tin says, triumphant.
“But,” Baj continues, kneading their own thigh, “I can’t really think of a better one.”
They’re both right. The plan is stupid. Fray is aware. Meet a complete stranger in Dauntridge, hours upon hours away from the Library’s dusty desert locale, and simply hope it’s not a trap? That this person really will guide them somewhere safe? Of course it’s stupid.
“It’s not like we can change the m-meeting spot now,” Fray says anyway. He has to use every ounce of self-restraint to keep the tone neutral. “If we just keep ahead of them long enough to m-meet Prince Ivan—”
“Stupid fucking name, by the way,” Tin says. Fray can see him in the rear-view mirror, lying on his back over the collection of blankets he has to hide under every time they’re somewhere someone might look into the back seat. Fray is thinking about tinted windows. He’s not sure how long those take to install. “Prince? Seriously? Calling himself James Bond would’ve been less suspicious.”
A mile marker blows past.
Two.
Baj says, “I think the name is from a ballet.”
At the same time, and louder, Tin says, “But if you want to get your family mixed up in this rancid shit on top of getting us caught quicker, I guess that’s none of my business.”
Baj is looking at him. He’d forgotten they do this, the looking. He’d forgotten that it drives him a little crazy. What are they looking for? What’s going through that head, what’s behind those glowing eyes? It feels like he used to deal with it better. Maybe it’s because Baj’s eyes used to be dark pools, wells of untold depth. You could lose yourself in them. Now they’re molten, they’re magma. It’s strange; he’s possibly the most durable person currently living, yet so many things about him feel so fragile. Baj’s stare, churning gold, fills and highlights every crack in his shell. He feels like he did back in the labs, being scrutinized and analyzed. It makes his skin prickle; it makes him want to be running.
But he can’t run anywhere. He’s driving. He’s the only one in this little huddle with any chance of acquiring the resources they’re going to need without bringing the Library and the cops and the national news down on their heads. If he fucks this up at any point—like he could be doing right now, at this instant—all three of them could be tomorrow night’s special on CNN. They need him here. He can’t let them down.
“‘Welcome to Newark,’” comes Baj’s monotone voice, reading the sign as they pass it. “They got a McDonald’s. Hey, Tin, you like Happy Meals?”
“Suck my cock, sparky.”
“Guess that’s a no,” murmurs Baj.
More like a Bastard Meal, Fray thinks, and then decides it isn’t funny enough to say. Instead he asks how far until Wellswood, their destination for tonight, and in answer Baj rustles through the huge paper atlas. Through the untinted windows, Newark comes into view building by building, as if shy. Almost immediately, he spies the golden arches that rise above the telephone poles and lesser buildings. “I’m starving and I need to piss,” he says before Baj figures out how many miles they have yet to go. “Let’s hit the McDonald’s.”
Baj answers in neither the positive nor the negative, but a neutral grunt of acknowledgement. From the back seat, he hears Tin’s bitter grumbling as he shoves himself under the blankets once again.
In truth, Fray is neither particularly hungry, nor does he have a particular need for the restroom. He just needs out of this car.
They bring Tin a Happy Meal, as a joke. It comes with a Muppet Babies toy, a little plastic figure on a little plastic trike. Tin makes a display of beheading it. “What’d Gonzo ever do to you?” Fray asks.
“What kind of cunting name is Gonzo?” Tin replies, and throws the toy at his head as hard as possible. It can’t do lasting damage, but it still hurts when it bounces off his temple.
One more leg and they’ll be able to stop, he reminds himself grimly. The Chariot trundles out of the parking lot and begins to nose its way back toward the highway. The exit is in sight when Baj perks up. “Oh,” they say, sudden. “Oh shit, they’re showing Raiders of the Lost Ark on that hill.”
“For real?” Fray asks, glancing over. Sure enough, stood on a raised platform is the broad white sheet signature to a theater; a respectable gaggle of cars are parked in neat rows in front of it.
“Mmm,” says Baj, but the tone is disheartened now. Three years since they saw a movie in theaters, Fray remembers with a pang in his chest, and poor odds that they’ll ever get to again. Even with their camouflage, the dim glow would be obvious in the dark of a theater.
He doesn’t get a chance to dwell long. Tin chimes in. “He famous or something?”
“Harrison Ford?” Baj says at once, twisting in their seat. “Are you joking? Star Wars? Apocalypse Now?”
“Blade Runner,” Fray supplies, and gets an urgent nod of acknowledgement that soothes something in him. “He’s kinda famous, yeah.”
Tin glares at him through the rear view mirror. “Those names supposed to mean something? What the fuck is a Star War?”
“Are you a heathen?” Baj demands. “Movies. Moving pictures. Film.”
“Kid, I ain’t seen a picture in twenty years,” Tin says blandly. “And if it ain’t Buster Keaton or Vincent Price, I don’t care.”
There’s a moment in which nothing is said. A mile marker blows past. The exit ramp blows past, too.
Terse and—despite his best efforts to hide it—far more nervous than Fray wishes, Tin says, “You missed the exit, Frou-Frou.”
“I know,” says Fray. “Hang on.”
The car’s occupants hang on as Fray takes a left, and blows past the other on-ramp.
“Fray?” Baj says quietly. There’s still so much fear there. Fear Fray knows he put there himself, that stupid day in the infirmary. Fray can pass for normal, Fray could still have a life, Fray has the most to lose and the most to gain by returning the Library’s most valuable CNs to it. Of course these two don’t trust him. “Where are we going?”
Fray layers his words with as much casual energy as he can muster, as much things-are-normal as possible. That’s all he wants. He wants things to go back to normal. He wants Baj to not be afraid of him. He can’t function if Baj is afraid of him. “Tin hasn’t ever seen an Indiana Jones movie, dude,” he says, hand-over-handing the steering wheel as he points the Chariot toward the hill Baj had called out. “That’s a drive-in theater. We’re going to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.”