Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

66

I moved like a wavering drunk through the bending beach grass, crumpling finally across the hood of the rusting Impala, winded, stonewalling the pain.

The day had dawned cloudy and freezing, pellets of sleet tinkling on the metal, the sootcolored sound writhing in chop beyond the house of stone.

I climbed behind the wheel of the car, started shoving keys into the ignition. The fourth one turned and the engine hiccupped and revived to a stammering idle.

Shifting into drive, I stepped on the accelerator, the back tires slinging weeds and sand as the car surged between the elegiac live oaks and sped down the dirt road into thicket gloom.

Curtains of dying Spanish moss swept across the windshield, the Impala bumping along through puddles, over washboards that threatened to rattle the car apart.

When I reached the pavement of Kill Devil Road, I followed it east toward the ocean, past slumbering beach houses nestled among live oaks and yaupon.

I stopped at the intersection of Old Beach Road and Highway 12.

My insides quivered with nausea.

Night thawing in the eastern sky.

I knew the Kites were leaving Ocracoke by ferry.

That left me two choices.

They could either take the one departing from Silver Lake Harbor, or the ferry that embarked from the north end of the island. The ferries that left Silver Lake for Swan Quarter and Cedar Island ran less frequently and required reservations to insure passage. The ferry from Ocracoke to Hatteras was free and ran on the hour, beginning at 5:00 a.m.

The dashboard clock showed 4:49.

I scoped Highway 12, vacant at this hour, lights from the Pony Island Motel twinkling nearby.

Hatteras.

I punched the gas, accelerating through the northern outskirts of Ocracoke Village, past Jason’s Restaurant, the post office, Café Atlantic, and Howard’s Pub.

It was twelve lonely miles to the north end of Ocracoke and the ferry to Hatteras. I had eleven minutes to get there, in a shitty car, on the verge of losing consciousness.

The speedometer passed eighty, the engine screaming as the Ocracoke Light waned in the rearview mirror.

Gray dawnsky, dunes, and marsh blurring by.

The wild dog sea rabid and foaming.

Sleet ticking dryly on the windshield.

Pavement streamed under the car, the road reaching north into the dullblue nothingness of daybreak.

4:56.

I pushed the engine past eighty-five, the stench of hot metal seeping through the floorboards.

4:57.

For the first time I noticed my clothes—the fleece pants melted, my undershirt pocked with quarter-size, black-rimmed holes where the electricity had eaten the polyester.

4:58.

The world dimmed.

My head went light.

I slumped into the steering wheel, swerved into the other lane, tires dipping over the shoulder.

My vision sharpened.

I swung back into the road.

It ended.

Taillights ahead.

I stomped the brake, tires screeching.

In the immediate distance five cars waited in the boarding lane at one of the docks. As I steered the Impala to the back of the line, a crewman started waving vehicles onto a ferry vessel called the Kinnakeet.

First to board was a dilapidated old pickup truck, its puttering engine expelling gouts of smoke into the stonegray dawn.