Another sign of sanity.
They were coming to a small town, one of hundreds of identical little communities dotting central and southern Wisconsin. It was large enough to rate a signal in the center of town, at the main intersection. As they approached, the light shifted from green to yellow.
“Stoplight,” she told him.
“Stoplight.” Another echo. She decided on an experiment.
Instead of slowing down, she floored the accelerator. Her passenger didn’t react, didn’t yell for her to stop, didn’t so much as blink. Just sat quietly and stared as she raced the light. It went to red before she reached the intersection. She held her breath as the Mustang ran the signal, but theirs was the only vehicle in sight.
The town was big enough to warrant the stoplight, but if there was a cop around he was conspicuous by his absence. She didn’t slow down again until they had passed the last house and were back among the trees. Repeated glances into the rearview mirror revealed only empty road behind them. There was no sign of hoped-for flashing red lights, no sound of a closing siren.
And still he continued to ignore her. Did he know what she’d been trying to do back there and had he simply decided not to pay any attention, or was he so foreign, so ignorant of local customs that he didn’t know the difference between a yellow light and a red one? She wasn’t sure which to believe.
Maybe she ought to give in and listen to some news. The clock on the dash said it was almost six. If her abductor was some kind of dangerous foreign agent or escaped madman or something, maybe there’d be something on the news about him. The continued not-knowing was worse than anything the broadcaster might say. She found herself wishing he was nothing more than a Russian spy on the run, or some scientist who’d gone over the edge and maybe shot a couple of his colleagues.
That much at least she could make sense of.
The music segued into a station signature tune, then to the sound of a rooster crowing, and finally a voice. Still no reaction from her passenger.
“Up and at ’em, folks,” said the cheery voice of the DJ. “This is station WDUL, Duluth, Minnesota, bringing you the six A.M. news. World news, commodity index and farm prices following the weather. But first, what’s been happening in our neck o’ the woods.
“No folks, those of you who saw that flash in the sky last night, you weren’t imagining things. It wasn’t the end of the world, neither, and it wasn’t a burning airliner. No sir.”
Jenny found her eyes edging away from the road and back over toward her silent companion. Words continued to pour from the speaker. She was looking at him differently now, and her expression began to alter as the DJ’s voice rambled on.
“Nope,” he continued in his folksy, bucolic fashion, “according to the AP wire, one of the biggest meteors to strike our little old planet Earth in the past eighty years hit last night right here in our own backyard, near Ashland and not far from Chequamegon Bay, right over the border. So for you folks who called in to say that you saw a flying saucer land over there, this ought to take care of . . .”
Jenny didn’t want to hear any more. She reached out and turned the radio off. The road bent sharply to the left. Between her need to shut off the flow of reportage and simultaneously keep an eye on her passenger she nearly drove off the pavement. The car’s wild gyrations didn’t faze him in the least. Why should they, she thought? She stifled the laughter that was building inside her because she recognized it as the incipient hysteria it was.
Foreign? Oh, that was funny, that was! He was a foreigner all right. It didn’t explain what he was doing with Scott’s face and body, but it explained a helluva lot of other things. Like his silence, and that unnaturally direct stare, and his ignorance of things as commonplace as red lights and windshield wipers. It explained what she’d seen
They were coming to a small town, one of hundreds of identical little communities dotting central and southern Wisconsin. It was large enough to rate a signal in the center of town, at the main intersection. As they approached, the light shifted from green to yellow.
“Stoplight,” she told him.
“Stoplight.” Another echo. She decided on an experiment.
Instead of slowing down, she floored the accelerator. Her passenger didn’t react, didn’t yell for her to stop, didn’t so much as blink. Just sat quietly and stared as she raced the light. It went to red before she reached the intersection. She held her breath as the Mustang ran the signal, but theirs was the only vehicle in sight.
The town was big enough to warrant the stoplight, but if there was a cop around he was conspicuous by his absence. She didn’t slow down again until they had passed the last house and were back among the trees. Repeated glances into the rearview mirror revealed only empty road behind them. There was no sign of hoped-for flashing red lights, no sound of a closing siren.
And still he continued to ignore her. Did he know what she’d been trying to do back there and had he simply decided not to pay any attention, or was he so foreign, so ignorant of local customs that he didn’t know the difference between a yellow light and a red one? She wasn’t sure which to believe.
Maybe she ought to give in and listen to some news. The clock on the dash said it was almost six. If her abductor was some kind of dangerous foreign agent or escaped madman or something, maybe there’d be something on the news about him. The continued not-knowing was worse than anything the broadcaster might say. She found herself wishing he was nothing more than a Russian spy on the run, or some scientist who’d gone over the edge and maybe shot a couple of his colleagues.
That much at least she could make sense of.
The music segued into a station signature tune, then to the sound of a rooster crowing, and finally a voice. Still no reaction from her passenger.
“Up and at ’em, folks,” said the cheery voice of the DJ. “This is station WDUL, Duluth, Minnesota, bringing you the six A.M. news. World news, commodity index and farm prices following the weather. But first, what’s been happening in our neck o’ the woods.
“No folks, those of you who saw that flash in the sky last night, you weren’t imagining things. It wasn’t the end of the world, neither, and it wasn’t a burning airliner. No sir.”
Jenny found her eyes edging away from the road and back over toward her silent companion. Words continued to pour from the speaker. She was looking at him differently now, and her expression began to alter as the DJ’s voice rambled on.
“Nope,” he continued in his folksy, bucolic fashion, “according to the AP wire, one of the biggest meteors to strike our little old planet Earth in the past eighty years hit last night right here in our own backyard, near Ashland and not far from Chequamegon Bay, right over the border. So for you folks who called in to say that you saw a flying saucer land over there, this ought to take care of . . .”
Jenny didn’t want to hear any more. She reached out and turned the radio off. The road bent sharply to the left. Between her need to shut off the flow of reportage and simultaneously keep an eye on her passenger she nearly drove off the pavement. The car’s wild gyrations didn’t faze him in the least. Why should they, she thought? She stifled the laughter that was building inside her because she recognized it as the incipient hysteria it was.
Foreign? Oh, that was funny, that was! He was a foreigner all right. It didn’t explain what he was doing with Scott’s face and body, but it explained a helluva lot of other things. Like his silence, and that unnaturally direct stare, and his ignorance of things as commonplace as red lights and windshield wipers. It explained what she’d seen
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