don’t think we should stay in the car. I think . . . I know the car probably won’t explode, but it’s making weird noises and I don’t like it. So if you could wake up now, that would be great. Okay? Wake up.”
I brushed my pinkie finger against the blood-tacky skin of his neck, and added, I really need you to wake up now. It’s important. Please, Artie, please.
There was no response, either verbally or mentally, only the tangled, murky thoughts of the unconscious mind. At least I knew he was alive, even if I couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt, or whether he was going to need medical attention beyond what Evie could provide in her living room. We don’t currently have a cryptid-specific hospital on the West Coast. I’d never considered what a failing that was until just now.
The car continued to click and groan around me, and I remembered abruptly that we hadn’t been the only vehicle involved in the accident: the truck that slammed into us out of nowhere must have had a driver, even if I’d been too distracted to pick up on their presence until it was too late. I reluctantly pulled my hand away from Artie and reached for the handle of my door. I needed to check on the other driver. And while I was at it, I could get the first aid kit out of the trunk and mop up some of the blood. The less there was in the cabin, the better.
The door refused to open. I winced. It had taken the brunt of the impact—it was honestly a miracle I hadn’t been killed, and that was something I wasn’t going to think about more than I absolutely had to—and something had bent inside the frame, jamming it in place.
“This is going to suck,” I said aloud, and twisted in my seat, grabbing the headrest. Glass bit into my hands and knees as I crawled into the back, careful not to kick Artie in the head. He didn’t move or make a sound, still sunk so deeply into unconsciousness that he was unaware of my borderline gymnastics. That was probably a good thing. I wasn’t exactly what I’d call “dignified,” especially not when I overbalanced and toppled onto the seat, landing in a heap of fast food wrappers, empty cans, and junk mail. I wrinkled my nose. Something back here had gone bad enough to smell sort of like death.
“Dammit, Artie,” I mumbled, feeling around in the junk until I found my phone. I held it tight in one hand as I unlocked the rear driver’s-side door with the other. This side of the frame wasn’t bent. The door opened easily, and the cold forest air rushed into the car, striking me across the face, washing everything else away.
Gingerly, I got out, focusing on my body with every movement, waiting for some sign of additional damage to make itself known. The small cuts in my hands and knees from climbing over the seat stung, and the cut on my forehead throbbed, but that seemed to be it. Artie’s old Camaro had somehow managed to absorb most of the shock, rather than passing it along to its passengers.
Good old car. This was probably the end of the road for it, at least based on what I’d been able to feel and see by the dim light of my phone. But it had done its best, and Artie had loved it since his sixteenth birthday, when the keys had fallen out of his cereal box. Maybe Aunt Rose would come and carry it onto the ghostroads, where it could keep on driving forever, a shadow among the dead. Artie would like that.
Thinking about Aunt Rose and Artie at the same time made something ache deep in my gut, a sharp, anatomically unfocused pain, like my whole body was rebelling from the natural continuation of my thoughts. I tried to focus myself, closing my eyes as I stood and allowed my mind to spread out around me, questing for signs that I wasn’t alone. If the other driver was still alive—
I found nothing sentient. The forest was alight with minds, but all of them were small, simple, the sort of thing that blended into so much background noise when I wasn’t actively looking for it. I found deer, owls, raccoons, tailypo, even a few cautious wolpertingers, but no humans, and no other sapient cryptids. I might as well have been alone