The Demon Road Trilogy: The Complete Collection: Demon Road; Desolation; American Monsters

“THIS IS REALLY COOL OF YOU,” said Glen from the back seat for the fourth time.

Milo nodded, and Amber felt him glance sideways at her. She didn’t respond. She kept her eyes on the road as they drove past endless fields of white cotton pods, bursting like tiny puffs of cloud from all that green.

“So Amber tells me you’re her guide,” Glen continued. “You’ve travelled the Demon Road before, then?”

“We try not to talk about it,” said Milo.

“Talk about what?”

Milo sighed. “When you’re on the Demon Road, you don’t really talk about the Demon Road. It’s considered … crass. You can mention it, explain it, all that’s fine … but just don’t talk about it. And don’t call it that, either.”

“What, Demon Road?”

“Yeah. Try to be, you know … a little cooler about it.”

“Oh,” said Glen. “Yeah, sure. Blasé, like? Yeah, no problem. Kind of a nudge nudge, wink wink kind of thing, right? If you have to ask, you’ll never know. First rule of Fight Club, that sort of vibe? Yeah, that’s cool. I can do that.”

“Good.”

“So how long have you been on it?”

Amber turned in her seat. “He just said we don’t talk about it.”

“But how am I supposed to ask questions if I’m not allowed to talk about it?”

“Don’t ask questions, then.”

“But how am I supposed to learn?”

Amber went back to glaring out of the window.

Milo sighed again. “I haven’t travelled these roads in years.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Do you know them well?” Glen asked.

“I did. Once upon a time.”

“So what are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Amber can transform into this beautiful demon girl, I’m dying of some monster’s creepy Deathmark … how come you’re here? What did you do or what was done to you?”

Milo didn’t answer.

Glen leaned forward. “Could you not hear me?”

“He’s ignoring you,” said Amber.

“Why? What’d I say?”

“You’re asking a whole lot of questions,” said Milo. “I like to drive in silence.”

“So do I,” said Amber.

“You do?” said Glen. “I hate driving in silence. I always have to have the radio on, even if it’s country music or something horrible like that. God, I hate country music. And I don’t mean the country music you have here in America, I mean the stuff we have in Ireland. Country singers here sound like they’ve been in a few bar-room brawls, you know? Back home they’re just blokes who walk around in woolly jumpers.”

“Woolly what?”

“Sweaters,” Milo said.

“Oh,” said Amber.

“My dad was a country-music fan,” said Glen. “At his funeral, they played all his favourite songs. It was awful. I wanted to walk out, y’know? Only I didn’t because, well, I’ve never been one to walk out of places. Well, no, I mean, I walk out of places all the time, obviously, or else I’d never leave anywhere, but I’ve never walked out of somewhere on principle. I can’t even walk out of a bad movie. My dad used to say I was just too polite for my own good. Suppose he was right.” He quietened down for a moment, his cheerfulness dimming, then looked up again, smile renewed. “So, Milo, how’d you get to be a guide? What qualifies you? Do you have, like, a dark and tormented history or something? Are you a demon, too? What’s your angle?”

“You writing a book?” Milo asked.

“Uh no. Just making conversation.”

They lapsed into a short-lived silence.

“You know what this car reminds me of?” Glen asked. “You ever hear of the Ghost of the Highway?”

Milo was done talking, so Amber took up the reins. “No,” she said. “Never have.”

“It was this guy who drove around, years ago, with his headlights off,” Glen said. “He’d drive up and down all these dark American roads at night, looking for his next victim.”

“That’s an urban legend,” Amber said. “When someone passes the other way and flicks their lights at him, he runs them off the road. We’ve all heard it.”

“No, but this is real,” said Glen. “Or, well, okay, maybe sort of real, but he did kill a few people back in the nineties. I looked it up. There are a load of websites about him.”

“There are websites about everything.”

“Yeah, I suppose. But it was a seventies muscle car he drove, I remember that much. Black, too. I think it was a Charger. Or a Challenger. So cool. Is this a Charger?”

Amber’s gaze drifted to the window again. “Yeah,” she said, hoping he’d shut the hell up now.

“There were a few survivors because he didn’t, like, get out of the car to finish them off, or anything. All he was interested in was bashing them off the road. Though he did run a few down, but, if you ask me, anyone who thinks they’re gonna sprint faster than a car kind of deserves to be run down, am I right? Ever since I heard about the Ghost of the Highway, I’ve wanted a car like that. And now I’m in one!”

“A dream come true,” Amber muttered.

“Just to drive in something that cool … We don’t have anything this awesome in Ireland. There are a few petrolheads who’ll import the odd Mustang or whatever, but you wouldn’t be able to drive around without people going, Who does your man think he is? – you know? But here you can drive a car like this and people won’t automatically think you’re a tool. People are more accepting here, y’know? But those police reports, in the victims’ own words, describing what it was like to be chased down by this terrifying black beast of a car … One moment they’re driving along fine, the road pitch-black behind them, the next these red headlights suddenly open up in their rear-view mirror …”

Amber stopped gazing out of the window, and looked at Milo out of the corner of her eye. His expression remained calm, but his hands gripped the wheel with such force that his knuckles had turned white. She suddenly had a knot in her belly.