Hope And Undead Elvis Part 6

Hope s.h.i.+vered. "What if there isn't any more?"

"Then we'll walk."

Hope sighed. One thing she already understood about the change to the world was that questioning Undead Elvis was about as effective as shaking up a Magic Eight Ball. Sometimes it infuriated her how vague he could be, even though he was giving her the best answer he had.

To stop thinking about gas and mileage, she said, "So if I'm Mother Mary, does that make you Joseph?"

Undead Elvis shrugged. "I don't know, Li'l lady."

"Because we're not, you know, married. I never understood that part of the story, anyway. Why get married to someone and then not consummate it?"

"Maybe Joseph was undead, like me."

Hope brayed unexpected laughter. Undead Elvis's deadpan delivery had caught her like the best standup comics. She wiped tears of amus.e.m.e.nt away. "If you weren't already dead, you might go to h.e.l.l for saying something so sacrilegious."

Undead Elvis looked down at his boots. "I shouldn't have joked about it. My momma raised me better than that."

Hope smiled. "It's all right. If anybody's going to h.e.l.l here, it's me."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because it's true. I haven't lived a very good life. I'm a stripper. That's maybe one step up from being a wh.o.r.e. I've done things with men, things I'm not proud of. Things a girl sometimes has to do to survive in this world. Or at least, as it used to be."

"But you never slept with any of them."

"No."

"Why not?"

Hope didn't answer right away. She let the hot desert air lick the moisture from her skin and whip her hair through the open window as The Way ate up the road. "I don't know, exactly," she said at last. "It's like I was saving myself for someone important. Maybe I was saving myself for this and just didn't know it. It's not like I never had any opportunities to put out. Strippers get propositioned all the time. And there were other men when I wasn't working, and boys before them. I just never felt like going all the way with any of them." She sighed. "I came close a few times, though. And I've sucked more c.o.c.ks than I care to think about."

Undead Elvis s.h.i.+fted in his seat and she wondered if she'd made him uncomfortable. On the heels of that thought, she wondered how an undead person could even be uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. You're a good listener. Easy to talk to."

"My pleasure, Li'l lady."

The Way rolled on down the highway as it followed the lay of the land. On occasion the road would wind around a dune of exceptional size or dip between them, but for the most part their course remained straight. Hope drove in silence, letting the drone of the engine drive uncomfortable thoughts about motherhood and the state of the world from her mind. The sand to either side of the road became less distinct as The Way covered mile after mile. Hope couldn't tell how far they'd traveled, for the odometer was frozen at 65,536 miles.

She jerked awake in sudden fear. She'd been asleep at the wheel!

Undead Elvis sat beside her, a calming paragon, one hand on the steering wheel.

"You let me fall asleep!"

"You looked like you needed it."

"I do! G.o.d, I'm tired enough to sleep for a week, but you let me fall asleep while I was driving!"

"I'd have awakened you if something came up. You were doing just fine. I just had to nudge it left or right once in awhile."

"Don't ever do that again! I've got a b-" Hope's eyes widened as she realized what she'd been about to blurt. I've got a baby to think about!

So there it was. Maybe her biological time card got punched after all. She was pregnant, and she felt protective of the little cl.u.s.ter of cells embedded somewhere within her uterus. She took one white-knuckled hand from the wheel to touch her tummy, wondering what it would be like to be a mother.

"I'm sorry, Li'l lady."

"It's okay. You meant well. Scared me half to death, though." Then Hope really looked at the world beyond the road and realized it had changed.

Red rocks poked up through the sand. As they drove, the rocks became more prevalent until they'd replaced the sand as the predominant landscape feature. The Way's engine took on a more plaintive note. Hope's ears popped and she swallowed hard and then yawned to try to clear them. She let up on the accelerator for a moment and The Way slowed. "Feel that? I think we're going uphill."

"Sure seems like it."

"What do you think we'll find?"

"The top."

Hope rolled her eyes. "Funny man."

What they found, it turned out, was a bridge.

Chapter Nine.

Hope and the Bridge At one point, the bridge would have crossed a canyon lined by rocks in a thousand shades of red from pale salmon to dark cherry. The central span had collapsed, leaving only the steel ramps and miscellaneous torn support structure on either side of the chasm.

Hope shut off The Way and got out. Undead Elvis followed her to the cliff edge and they looked into the canyon in silence. The air was cooler than it had been amid the sands, but as still as ever. The unmoving sun beating down upon them was tolerable instead of miserable. The myriad colors in the rocks felt like a vacation for Hope's eyes after the unending golden blur of the desert below.

A pale stripe along the canyon floor, hundreds of feet below, suggested whatever river had carved such a gash in the world had dried up to leave only more sand behind. Hope toed a small rock over the edge. It clattered down the face, dislodging a few pebbles along the way. She watched it fall until she lost sight of it.

Hope said, "When I was a kid, my mom took me to the Grand Canyon. I remember standing with my face pressed against a guard rail, looking down into it, and thinking that giants must have made it because nothing else could make such a deep hole. It might have been ten times as deep and wide as this. It was beautiful. This one here just breaks my heart." She looked over at the broken bridge. "What do we do now?"

"Things fall apart. The center cannot hold."

"What does that mean?"

"Just a line from a poem. Seemed like an apt metaphor for our situation, Li'l lady."

"I don't need a metaphor, Elvis, I need a bridge. What do we do now? We can't go along the edge looking for another way across. This could go on for hundreds of miles, and The Way can't drive along that edge." She motioned to the jagged rocks that made up the landscape to either side of the road.

"We could go back and try to find another way."

"What if there isn't one?"

"What if there is?"

Hope stamped her foot. "You're not helping. We were lucky to find this road at all. Which way is Graceland?"

Undead Elvis pointed toward the far side of the canyon.

"Then that's the way we need to go. Somehow." She yawned so hard she thought she might split her head in two. "G.o.d, I'm so tired, I can't think. Will you watch me, Elvis? Watch me while I sleep?"

"Of course."

They found a protruding rock behind which lay a narrow strip of shade. Hope didn't mind the rough ground in the least as she flung herself down into the shadow. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, taking comfort from the fetal position. She fell asleep in between the inhalation and exhalation of her first deep breath.

Some time later, Hope opened her eyes. She had a terrible kink in her neck from the odd angle she'd held it in her sleep. Her back likewise felt like it had been remade from shattered gla.s.s. Nausea tickled in the pit of her stomach, and if she hadn't pa.s.sed out before eating, she'd have vomited. She suffered through a couple of retches and spat against the rock before she felt human enough to move herself into a seated position.

Undead Elvis sat with his back to her, legs crossed in front of him and wrists wresting upon his knees. He almost looked like he was meditating.

"Hey." Hope brushed sleep-stiffened hair from her face. "What are you doing?"

"I wish I had a guitar," he said. "I can think better when I've got one in my hands."

"Maybe we'll find one."

"Maybe."

"What are you thinking about?"

"Graceland."

"What's it like?"

"It's beautiful. Green gra.s.s. Tall trees. Lush gardens. Fieldstone walls and fences, wrought iron, and white columns. It's as close a place to Heaven as there may ever be in this world."

"It sounds lovely."

"It is."

The oppressive silence settled upon the two travelers, offset only by the faint moan of displaced air that circled slow and heavy through the canyon below. No hiss of river or whisper of sand broke the flatline of the world, no buzz of fly or song of cicada. Hope picked up a small stone and flung it out into the void between the cliff walls. They listened to its clattering journey downward into silence.

"How long did I sleep?"

"Awhile."

"I guess it doesn't really matter, does it?" Hope shaded her eyes to look up at the sun, still frozen in s.p.a.ce and time like a derailed locomotive.

"Not really, no. Did you sleep well, Li'l lady?"

Hope nodded. "I feel much better. Let's eat something and then maybe we can figure out what to do about this bridge."

It didn't seem like there was as much fruit as they'd saved from the paradise oasis. Hope wondered if some of it might have disappeared anyway. She ate an apple and a pear and a handful of cherries. She chased them with a few swallows of tepid water from the gallon jug, still afraid that they might not find anymore. She'd been almost dead from dehydration once already and wasn't anxious to repeat the experience on the next leg of the journey. Undead Elvis ate nothing.

"Have you decided what to do next?" asked Undead Elvis after Hope tossed the apple core and cherry pits into the canyon. She thought that if water ever again flowed through it, they might someday sprout into an orchard. If it did, and she was still around, she'd come visit it.

"Not really." Hope walked to the edge of the bridge, where the center spans had broken away. The opposite end, broken at a similar angle, sat maybe a hundred feet away. A hundred feet might as well have been a hundred miles, but Hope had dreamed, and awakened with a number on the tip of her tongue.

105.

She'd rolled it around for awhile, trying to decipher its meaning. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see it imprinted on the back of her eyelids, white on black. It was surrounded by other numbers, but the only one which stood out for her was that mysterious 105. It meant something important, if she could only think what it was. It had to be a message of some kind, didn't it? She didn't often remember dreams, and when she did they were fleeting, quick to disappear without a trace. Never did she remember something as clearly as that number.

She went to sit in The Way, for sometimes she could think better behind the wheel. After slipping into the driver's seat, and putting her hands up on the plastic wheel, she saw it: her magic number, sandwiched between 85 and 125 in white numbers on the black face of the speedometer. It looked exactly like her dream. One hundred and five miles per hour.

Frightening realization dawned, and Hope's breath caught as she looked up through the winds.h.i.+eld. Where she'd stopped the car, she was looking right across the chasm at the far end of the bridge. Was this her test? Her hands gripped the steering wheel tight enough to cramp and she swallowed the nervous lump in her throat.

"E-Elvis?"

"Yes, Li'l lady?" He bent down to look in the window, his blue countenance as dry as the surrounding landscape.

"I think... I think maybe we're supposed to j-jump across it."

Undead Elvis looked across the gap and whistled. "That's a long ways. Uh-huh."

"I just think that it's the direction we need to go, so we might as well try it."

"I don't think try is the right word there. Either we make it, or we don't. If we don't make it-"

"If we don't make it, then the world is f.u.c.ked anyway, right?" Hope made herself let go of the wheel. Her knuckles throbbed in pace to her heart. "I don't see any other alternative. I don't want to just stay here, waiting to starve or be killed by those bird man things."

"You ever jump a car before?"

"N-no."

"Me either. I wonder how fast you'd need to go to clear that distance."

"A hundred and five."

"Are you sure?"

Hope pressed her hands together and touched her fingertips to her lips, as if in prayer. She didn't look away from the bridge. She couldn't. "Yes," she whispered. "I have to be."

"Well all right." Undead Elvis went through the bed of The Way, tying down and bracing everything he could. He took what fruit remained and secreted it in the cab, either in the glove compartment, door panels, or beneath the seat. Soon, he decided he'd done all he could to prepare the car for a rough landing.

Hope made an awkward five-point turn to face the car back the direction they'd come. She didn't know how much time The Way would need to get up to speed, but wanted as much cus.h.i.+on as she could give it. After a couple of minutes, she slowed and turned around again. Both she and Undead Elvis stepped out to look up the road toward the bridge.

"You think that's enough room?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," he said. "Though if you change your mind, you ain't gonna have enough time to stop and try again."

"I know." Hope s.h.i.+vered despite the hot sun overhead. She turned to him. "Hold me."