Mortality Bridge by Steven R. Boyett Page A

wants more speed of course but as he sees and hears the milling and averting shapes go past he’s grateful for what speed he has.
    Sudden purple splats across the windshield. The cab jerks right and they thump off of the rails. The cabbie yanks the wheel and steel rims scream along the iron. She switches on the wipers and they smear fan shapes across the windshield and stutter back. In the wavering headlights Niko sees a creature pale and cratered as the moon and then the left front fender slams it with a solid sickening crunch of bone. A hairy clot lands on the left rear window and crawls sluglike and dripping in the slipstream.
    The cab bounces over the righthand rail. The fender grazes brick and plows a furrow of moist matter that streaks the headlight and tints it like a gel spotlamp. From behind them comes a pop and then a slowing rumble fills the tunnel as the Checker Cab jounces to a stop.
    “Tire.” The cabbie zips the emergency brake and cuts the engine and kills the lights and gets out and trudges to the back of the cab, leaving Niko in the dark.
    Slick patches covering the tunnel walls give off faint algae phosphorescence.
    Niko hurries from the cab. It feels like days have passed since he first climbed in, though it can’t be more than an hour. Far ahead the Franklin’s taillights dwindle. Damn it.
    The cabbie pulls the spare tire from the trunk and leans it on the bumper. Niko asks if he can help. The cabbie bends into the trunk again. “You might wanna see what you can do to keep the lookieloos away.” She straightens holding a two ton hydraulic service jack and an old red plastic twelve volt lantern with a rubber nipple over the switch.
    Niko glances back up the tunnel. “What’ll they do?”
    She pulls the jack past him and it squeaks and jounces like a nervous little yipyap dog. “I don’t know.” She squats and rolls the jack beneath the cab. “Never stopped to find out.”
    “Okay.” Niko leans into the cab and turns the headlights on. Exposed shapes scurry or hump or flow or limp a startled retreat. Slime on the headlamp tints the tunnel’s right side seasick green. Niko goes to the front to examine the damage. The left bumper is pushed inward and sports a large fresh lumpy splotch. Wiry black hair sprouts from a clot sizzling on the radiator grille with an awful smell of burning pork.
    While the cabbie jacks up the cab Niko gropes around the large and lightless trunk to find a rag to wipe the headlight clean. Boxes, jumper cables, gascan. Did he just hear something behind him? He finds a bag of rags. He straightens and turns and gapes up at the slick hide of a greateyed thing hunched in front of him.
    “Candybar?” it says in a guttural hopeful voice. It shifts toward him and raises a ropy glistening arm from which small things fall to writhe upon the wet ground.
    “Uhh,” says Niko.
    “Jeremy love candybar.” It clenches its clubfingered fist and lumbers forward. “Jeremy Hershey bar.” It looks like a great gray-green shag carpet grown slimy in the rain. It may once have been a man the way a hippopotamus may once have been a horse. Pale owlish eyes with pinpoint pupils. Floppy-tongued shoes dimly recognizable as Converse Hi-tops. “Butterfinger Pay Day Almond Joy.” It steps again with a great heaving sucking sound. Niko smells something like weekold diapers and dumpster cabbage. He backs away from the cab and steps on something hard and round. A pry-bar. Hellyeh. He picks it up and holds it high and feels ridiculous and afraid.
    A flashlight beam strikes Jeremy’s undifferentiated face and Jeremy leans back and covers the cartoon ovals of his lidless eyes with splayed wet hands.
    The cabbie scrambles to her feet and stands beside Niko with the lantern trained on Jeremy. With surprising speed and grace the creature leans forward and bats the lantern from her hand.
    Niko lunges like a fencer and the prybar strikes resistant flesh. He pushes and feels a small pop as the prybar