Then last night, as this dream literally ground to a halt with his skull exploding into blackness, he should have awakened—as he had the night before, and the night before that—but again some perverse hand punched the Great Cosmic TV Remote and his consciousness was switched into a new dream. A brand-new dream, not a rerun. Mike was always aware that he was dreaming even when he was in the deepest part of his sleep. Part of him—he was never sure if it was his essential self or some alien part—was always watching as things happened. This had always been the case with him, even during the adventure dreams of Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, and that part of him knew that it was not he who was controlling the Great Cosmic TV Remote. If it had been, he’d have channel surfed away from the burning forest and out from under the wheels of the Wrecker and back into an adventure dream in which he was the buff hero with a big sword rescuing a scantily clad heroine who would look suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson.
This new dream was, in its way, stranger than all the others, and in its way it was part of all the others. A blend. The burning forest was there, though instead of staggering through the forest looking at all the twisted dead, Mike rode down a long hill toward it. The hill started out as Route A-32, and the Wrecker was hot on his tail, the grille snapping at his back tire, but then Mike got a weird kind of second wind and it gave him the grit to amp it up. His legs became a blur and the thin rubber of his tires send up a high keening wail as he shot forward, moving faster and faster, pulling ahead of the Wrecker. Behind him the horn screamed in frustrated protest, but Mike was flying forward now, the wind moving across his cheeks so fast it felt like cold water. His red hair snapped behind his skull like the streamers of a torn flag.
The black flatness of A-32 changed under him and he looked down to see that asphalt had become hard-packed dirt and then a rutted road, but still he rode on. Several times he would surge his weight upward so high that the bike would lift under him and they would sail right over a deep pothole or a fallen branch. Nothing could stop him. As the tires thumped back down on the dirt the shock would go through him, but there was no pain in it. The jolt felt good because his muscles were hard and yet loose, tensed only where they needed to be, like a top athlete’s would be in the heat of the championship race. His lungs worked, but there was no burn in his throat. This was a pace that would kill anyone else, but it couldn’t kill him because it was
As the bike jolted back down he felt something bump hard against his back. Something long and comfortably heavy was slung across his back. He could not see it, but he knew what it was. His sword. His
His bike followed the path as it began to plunge down away from the highway, down into the shadows of Dark Hollow. The shadows cast by the mountains and the tall trees closed in around him, but Mike did not lose sight of the road. In this dream Mike could
Down and down he rode, the path smoothing out as it neared the bottom. Ahead Mike could see the first of the burning trees and shrubs, and he knew he was reaching the place where the dead would be. Where the creature would be. Where the killing would be. The farther down he went the more of the forest was ablaze and he could feel the heat on his skin. It was leaning into a picture of hell, because the fire was filled with screams and bodies that twisted and writhed as they shrieked. Mike loved the fire, loved what it was doing, though he didn’t understand why he loved it. The slope bottomed out and broadened into a clearing and this field was packed with hundreds of people—some burning, some not. Those that were not aflame spun toward him, hissing like snakes, glaring at him with crimson eyes, snarling with mouths filled with yellow fangs.
These monsters clustered around a small knot of people—Crow, Val, Dr. Weinstock, a few others he didn’t know—and had been closing in on them as Mike swept down and skidded to a stop, swinging the back end of his bike around so that a plume of dust was kicked up into the air. Bits of twig and leaf in that plume caught fire, and for a second Mike was hidden behind a veil of that fire, then he leapt through the curtain, drawing his sword and howling with a bloodlust that was a match for any monster in any of his dreams. He felt older, bigger, powerful, insanely confident.
