Final Destination: End of the Line Read online

  She did know. It was eighty, as he'd frequently reminded her, but he didn't wait for a response and she was forced to carry on trotting at his heels. Taken up with worries about whether things would ever be right between her and Brad again, she didn't notice that the lights had flicked to red in front of her and only woke out of her daze when the background hum of traffic hooting rose to a crescendo and a yellow cab almost clipped her as its brakes shrieked it to a halt.

  Brad jerked her arm, pulling her back to the sidewalk. "Be careful!”

  For an instant, her eyes locked with those of the driver. He was dark-skinned with a shock of spiky black hair-Indian, she guessed, or maybe Bangladeshi, but the bird he flipped her was pure New York. She looked away, embarrassed, but as she did the glitter of something bright and wavering caught her eye. At first she thought that the driver had lit up a cigarette, that the flames she could see dancing around his head were nothing more than the product of tobacco. But the fire seemed far too intense for that. And the flames weren't coming from his mouth.

  The driver's face, his whole head, was an orange bloom of fire.

  Brad had pulled her away from the curb by then and he was saying something to her but she couldn't hear it because she couldn't tear her eyes away from the taxi driver and his unnaturally flaming head.

  At first it was surreal, almost funny, until the flames began to scorch his flesh and she saw the fat underneath bubble, letting out a horrible thick dark smoke as the skin on his cheeks melted and flaked. Even from this distance, she could smell the overcooked meat scent of it. But the worst was when his eyes popped with a wet squelch.

  She looked away, gagging and found Brad staring into her eyes with equal parts concern and annoyance. "Kate! Kate, what is it?”

  "It's..." she began, helplessly looking back at the driver only to see him still staring at her through annoyed brown eyes, his face utterly unblemished. She shook her head, trying to clear it, wondering if she really could be going mad.

  "Well, come on then," Brad snapped. "We're late enough already."

  The lights had changed to green but the taxi driver, his attention still fixed on Kate, hadn't noticed. Watching her and not the traffic, he floored the pedal and the car heaved then jerked off. Brad jumped back, pushing out an arm to keep Kate from crossing. The taxi veered into the junction, just as the other line of traffic had picked up speed.

  As Kate watched, mesmerized, the two-ton truck at the head of the column smashed straight into the taxi at what must have been a good thirty miles per hour. There was a deafening screech of metal twisted in ways its maker didn't intend. The taxi flew end over end to land, trunk down, in the center of the road. As the fuel trunk split, spraying gas in every direction, the impact sparked a flame from the pavement that caught the whole concoction and turned it-and the taxi-into a pyre.

  For a very brief moment, Kate saw the driver, trapped inside his cab, flaming and screaming like a living torch. Then Brad pulled her away and into the protective circle of his arms. "Don't look, babe,” he said. "You don't need to see that.”

  Sobbing into his chest, Kate didn't know how to tell him that she already had.

  ***

  Copenhagen airport was one of Bodil's least favorite places. All through her childhood she had memories of coming here, brought by one of the ten or so nannies who drifted through her life and waving goodbye to the parents she hardly knew as they embarked on yet another business trip to a country they'd always promised to take her to but never seemed to find the time.

  This time, they were here to wave her off, but other than that not much seemed to have changed. Her flight had been announced and she was near the front of the line for the gate, but her father wasn't anywhere in sight; he'd noticed a shop selling some of his competitor's product range and spotting a business opportunity where he pulled aside the manager and asked whether he might consider changing brands. Her mother was with her, but only in body. A call had come through five minutes ago and with a grimaced "Sorry darling, I have to take this” she'd answered and had been spouting some kind of shit about shares and hedge funds ever since.

  Bodil sighed, but it wasn't like she particularly wanted to talk to her parents anyway. She'd been out late last night, at a goodbye party her friends had thrown, and her head was feeling deeply delicate this morning. She caught a glimpse of herself in the polished steel surface of one of the pillars and saw that her blue eyes were underscored with deep shadows. Her honey-colored hair, obnoxiously curly, was its usual sorry mess but at least she'd remembered to wear her favorite good-luck charm, a turquoise shape that the shopkeeper had assured her was Native American in origin but which she suspected was native Danish via some factory in Taiwan.

  There were only five people in front of her in the line when she rested her hand in her back pocket and felt a suspicious lump under her fingers. At about the same time she became aware that there was a herbal smell hanging around her that didn't have anything to do with the expensive perfume her mother's secretary had bought on her behalf as a going-away present. It was the unmistakable smell of weed.

  "Oh shit!” she said.

  Her mother frowned at her, covering the mouthpiece of her phone with one elegantly manicured hand. "What?" she mouthed.

  "I have to take a piss,” Bodil told her. “Keep my place." She ducked away before her mother could object to either the language or the request.

  As soon as she'd realized she was walking around one of the most heavily policed places in the country with a piece of hash in her back pocket, she became acutely aware of the eyes of everyone around her. They suddenly all seemed to be following her, scrutinizing her every move and she could swear she heard the huddles of travelers she passed whispering about her as soon as her back was turned.

  It's just paranoia, she told herself, but she was still relieved when she finally made it to the nearest restroom and locked herself into a cubicle. Checking to see that there was no hidden camera peering at her from a dark corner-these days, you couldn't be sure and the security staff had to get their kicks somehow-she pulled the lump out of her pocket.

  It was a big one, enough to keep her going for a good three days. The greasy-green smell instantly strengthened as she unwrapped the hash from its foil packet and she jumped as a toilet flushed two cubicles down. She wondered if the smell could reach that far. Better get rid of it quick.

  Her hand poised over the toilet bowel, ready to drop. But somehow she just couldn't. It seemed such a waste. Damn it, it was a long flight, twelve hours including the changeover in London and she'd checked which movies were on and she'd seen all of them already.

  Shrugging, she popped the lump of hash into her mouth and swallowed, wincing as it grazed her throat. Then she carefully flushed the wrapper down the bowl, brushed the crumbs from her hands and strode back out into the airport. The smell was still lingering about her, but the evidence was gone and it wasn't like her parents would know what it was. They'd smelled it emanating from her room for the last seven years and all they'd ever asked was where she got those incense sticks from and why did she have to be into all that hippy nonsense anyway?

  She returned to the queue to find her father was back and that she was the next in line. She grabbed her bags, slung them over her shoulder and gave each of her parents a quick peck on the cheek, then hurried through passport control. Suddenly, she was looking forward to this trip a lot more than she had been.

  ***

  James was disgusted with how filthy the plane was. He'd cleaned the pull-down table with the hygienic wipes he always kept with him and he'd laid one of his perfectly pressed white handkerchiefs on the seat before he let his bottom go anywhere near it, but he still felt horribly grubby. And now the food!

  He looked at the plate in front of him with barely disguised loathing. They could hardly have made it any less appetizing if they'd tried and maybe they had. The flight attendant caught his expression. "Is there something the matter,
sir?" she asked with thinly veiled impatience.

  "Is this the only option?" he said, nodding at the watery chicken concoction in front of him.

  "Well, there's the vegetarian," she said.

  "And is that actually edible as opposed to merely organic?"

  The flight attendant smiled the well-practiced smile of a woman whose entire job consisted of dealing with sleep-deprived assholes. "It's feta salad—”

  "All right, I'll take that," he told her.

  "But I'm afraid that's only available to people who've pre-ordered it." She moved off before he had the chance to say anything else, looking smug.

  James grimaced, pushing the limp vegetables around the plastic tray with a plastic fork and reminding himself that the body could survive perfectly well for three weeks without food.

  "Don't eat it. It's dangerous," the girl beside him said in a lilting Scandinavian accent. They were the first words she'd spoken since they got on the plane.

  "Dangerous?" he asked, subtly edging away from her as far as the narrow seat would allow. Her eyes were bloodshot, her blond curls were plastered to her head, and the expression on her face didn't look entirely sane.

  "It's running away from you, can't you see?"

  "Right," James nodded, edging even further away and staring resolutely forward in the vain hope that she'd get the message and stop talking to him. Obviously, it didn't work.

  “The people behind have been talking about it the whole time. They're trying to poison me, you know."

  Desperate, James rooted around in his bag for the copy of New Scientist he'd brought with him. As he pulled it out, it caught on the edge of something and a gift-wrapped package fell out onto the floor. James realized that it was his mother's parting present--to keep him safe while he was away, she'd said-which he'd entirely forgotten to open. He pulled it into his lap, carefully peeling off the strips of tape and folding back the wrapping paper so that it didn't tear.

  Then he looked down at the strange round feathery contraption in front of him and sighed.

  "What's that?" the Scandinavian girl asked.

  "It's a Native American dream catcher," James told her neutrally. "It's supposed to catch bad dreams before they reach you so you can get a good night's sleep."

  "Does it work?"

  James broke his own rule and turned to face her. "Yes, yes it does," he said with heavy sarcasm. "Somehow it magically enters your mind, interacts with your REM cycle and prevents certain neurons from triggering the dormant links to buried memories. And it achieves all this despite being made of...” He examined the object carefully. “Bamboo, feathers and plastic beads."

  The girl smiled. “Cool. Maybe I can get one for myself in America. I'm going on a cultural exchange trip, you know. Students from all over the world.”

  James hadn't thought his heart could sink any further, but obviously he was wrong. And he'd thought the point of this trip was that the best and brightest from three continents would get together to exchange ideas and learn from each other. The flight attendant walked past with the food trolley and he casually tossed the dream catcher into the garbage compartment. Well, so much for that idea.

  ***

  The farmland of Philadelphia was flicking past in Louise's peripheral vision like the background in a top-of-the-range racing game as she gunned the bike into top gear and took a ninety degree curve at a forty-five degree angle. It was all, she couldn't help thinking, a little bit hokey. The early summer fields were like a patchwork quilt sown by one of the Amish whose washing she could see on a line in front of a house up ahead. There were three pairs of black pants, three white shirts and three black jackets, from little to big, flapping in the breeze like Goldilocks's washing.

  A second later and they were out of sight. Louise was doing eighty now, well above the limit, but she hadn't seen any state troopers for a while and she doubted the Amish would phone and complain. Besides, she had to pick up the pace, or she'd lose the race and losing wasn't in her vocabulary.

  Her brother had been visibly ahead of her a few miles back, but however fast she went now she couldn't seem to catch up with him. She suspected that he'd found some backwoods short cut and snuck into it while he was out of sight. She couldn't believe they'd raced all the way here from SoCal neck-and-neck only for him to take the lead in the home stretch. He'd be unbearable for the whole trip if he beat her.

  The engine between her thighs was humming pleasantly, comfortable with the pace she was setting, and she could smell the oily exhaust that always made her pulse race faster. Any faster and the bike might not be so happy. Still-caution was for losers.

  Grinning into the wind that flattened her lips against her teeth, she put the pedal to the metal, accelerating hard into the next bend-

  -then braking just as hard as she saw the Amish cart blocking the road ahead of her. But she already knew it was too late. Stopping distance at this speed had to be a good hundred yards and the cart was barely twenty ahead of her.

  The bike veered and skidded, like a wild horse trying to shake a new rider. But she was wise to its ways and clung on. She let out a whoop of exhilaration. This was what it was all about.

  There was a ditch paralleling the road, but it only looked to be five feet wide and she reckoned she could take it. She pulled the handlebars hard to the side before the bike lost too much speed, sped straight at the curb-then launched herself into the air at the very last possible moment, jerking the front wheel up as she did.

  It barely lifted. The bike was a thousand cc, far too heavy for a small girl like her, Danny always said, but she always told him she could handle it and she proved herself right when the front wheel came down clear of the ditch in the cornfield on the other side. The back wheels didn't do so well, landing in the hollow of the ditch two feet below the field. For a horrible moment she could feel the bike dragging backwards into the ground, but the forward momentum was just enough and after a second the back wheel cleared the ditch and the bike slid to a halt, cutting a wide swathe through the head-high corn.

  She took a moment to enjoy the move, gasping for breath and laughing at the same time with sheer exhilaration. Shit, why couldn't Danny have seen that?

  After a moment, though, she realized that the Amish in the cart had stopped to stare at her stunt and were now pointing at her with expressions of Biblical disapproval. It occurred to her that it might actually be their field of corn she'd just cut a new road through. Oh well-better that than cutting a path through them and their little tinker-toy cart. Still, they looked pissed off, and while she'd heard they were into non-violence and all that crap everyone had their breaking point.

  Grinning, she blew them a little kiss, throttled the bike, let the wheel churn a groove in the mud of the field, then accelerated forward so hard she could feel the Gs. She leapt back over the ditch behind the cart with no difficulty at all this time.

  Half an hour later and a good forty miles between her and the Amish, she was confident they hadn't set the police on her. She was also certain that Danny had got away. She'd made the best possible time to this point and hadn't seen so much as a glimpse of him. She'd even stopped to ask a man at a roadside stall selling vegetables if he'd seen another motorcyclist going by, and he'd said no.

  Well, she needed a pit stop anyway, so she swerved into the forecourt of the next garage she saw. This being the boondocks, there was an actual man to fill her up with gas, a gap-toothed yokel type with mean, squinty eyes, so she left him to it and went to take the kind of epic piss you can only manage after seven hours of holding it in on a bike.

  While she was on the can she dug out her cell and flicked through numbers till she found the GPS positioning service she and Danny had signed up to after they'd gone climbing in the Appalachians that one time and taken a wrong turn and nearly ended up getting in a "squeal-like-a-piggy" situation with some locals.

  After a second, a bored-sounding woman told her that the precise coordinates
of the phone she was on.

  Louise schooled her voice to sound hesitant and slightly nervous. "Yeah, thanks, but actually it was another phone I needed to know about."

  "Oh, I'm sorry," the woman said. "We're not allowed to release information on other users."

  "But it's my brother, my twin brother," Louise said. She reeled off the number from memory. "You can check your database if you like, we've got the same surname. It's just, we've been traveling cross-country on our bikes. You know, doing the coast-to-coast thing. Only we got separated this morning and he's not answering his phone."

  "Well...” the woman said, but Louise could tell she was softening.

  She made her voice even more desperate. "Please, I'm really worried about him. Mom and dad would never forgive me if something... if something happened...” her voice trailed off on a theatrical sob that she'd had long years of parent-blackmail to perfect.

  It worked. The woman gave her the coordinates and also offered to call the police and ambulance for her. Trying not to laugh, Louise told her that wouldn't be necessary.

  Outside, under the red light of the setting sun, she took a look at the map. As soon as she did, she could see what Danny had done. He must have cut cross-country to take a bridge a few miles west of the one she'd used. It led to a far straighter road towards the interstate and he must have managed to cut a good thirty miles off the journey. But, she realized, looking at the map, that meant he'd now be committed to the interstate, and what he obviously didn't know but she did, having checked the traffic news the same time she'd checked the GPS service, was that there was a huge pile-up on the Philadelphia/New York border. Danny was likely to be tied up in traffic for hours.

  Smiling, she headed back outside. The yokel had clearly grown bored of waiting for her and was squatting on his haunches beside the bike, examining the engine. “Big thing for a little girl," he said when he saw her approach.