Cars passed him. Shadow wished that there was a sidewalk. He tripped on something that he could not see in the dark and sprawled into the ditch on the side of the road, his right hand sinking into several inches of cold mud. He climbed to his feet and wiped his hands on the leg of his pants. He stood there, awkwardly. He had only enough time to observe that there was someone beside him before something wet was forced over his nose and mouth, and he tasted harsh, chemical fumes.
This time the ditch seemed warm and comforting.
Shadow's temples felt as if they had been reattached to the rest of his skull with roofing nails. His hands were bound behind his back with what felt like some kind of straps. He was in a car, sitting on leather upholstery. For a moment he wondered if there was something wrong with his depth perception and then he understood that, no, the other seat really was that far away.
There were people sitting beside him, but he could not turn to look at them.
The fat young man at the other end of the stretch limo took a can of diet Coke from the cocktail bar and popped it open. He wore a long black coat, made of some silky material, and he appeared barely out of his teens: a spattering of acne glistened on one cheek. He smiled when he saw that Shadow was awake.
"Hello, Shadow," he said. "Don't f**k with me."
"Okay," said Shadow. "I won't. Can you drop me off at the Motel America, up by the interstate?"
"Hit him," said the young man to the person on Shadow's left. A punch was delivered to Shadow's solar plexus, knocking the breath from him, doubling him over. He straightened up, slowly.
"I said don't f**k with me. That was f**king with me. Keep your answers short and to the point or I'll f**king kill you. Or maybe I won't kill you. Maybe I'll have the children break every bone in your f**king body. There are two hundred and six of them. So don't f**k with me."
"Got it," said Shadow.
The ceiling lights in the limo changed color from violet to blue, then to green and to yellow.
"You're working for Wednesday," said the young man.
"Yes," said Shadow.
"What the f**k is he after? I mean, what's he doing here? He must have a plan. What's the game plan?"
"I started working for Mister Wednesday this morning," said Shadow. "I'm an errand boy."
"You're saying you don't know?"
"I'm saying I don't know,"
The boy opened his jacket and took out a silver cigarette case from an inside pocket. He opened it, and offered a cigarette to Shadow. "Smoke?"
Shadow thought about asking for his hands to be untied, out decided against it. "No, thank you," he said.
The cigarette appeared to have been hand-rolled, and when the boy lit it, with a matte black Zippo lighter, it smelled a little like burning electrical parts.
The boy inhaled deeply, then held his breath. He let the smoke trickle out from his mouth, pulled it back into his nostrils. Shadow suspected that he had practiced that in front of a mirror for a while before doing it in public. "If you've lied to me," said the boy, as if from a long way away, "I'll f**king kill you. You know that."
"So you said."
The boy took another long drag on his cigarette. "You say you're staying at the Motel America?" He tapped on the driver's window, behind him. The glass window lowered. "Hey. Motel America, up by the interstate. We need to drop off our guest."
The driver nodded, and the glass rose up again.
The glinting fiber-optic lights inside the limo continued to change, cycling through their set of dim colors. It seemed to Shadow that the boy's eyes were glinting too, the green of an antique computer monitor.
"You tell Wednesday this, man. You tell him he's history. He's forgotten. He's old. Tell him that we are the future and we don't give a f**k about him or anyone like him. He has been consigned to the Dumpster of history while people like me ride our limos down the superhighway of tomorrow."
"I'll tell him," said Shadow. He was beginning to feel lightheaded. He hoped that he was not going to be sick.
"Tell him that we have f**king reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much f**king spam. Tell him that or I'll f**king kill you," said the young man mildly, from the smoke.
"Got it," said Shadow. "You can let me out here. I can walk the rest of the way."
The young man nodded. "Good talking to you," he said. The smoke had mellowed him. "You should know that if we do f**king kill you, then we'll just delete you. You got that? One click and you're overwritten with random ones and zeros. Undelete is not an option." He tapped on the window behind him. "He's getting off here," he said. Then he turned back to Shadow, pointed to his cigarette. "Synthetic toad skins," he said. "You know they can synthesize bufotenin now?"
The car stopped, and the door was opened. Shadow climbed out awkwardly. His bonds were cut. Shadow turned around. The inside of the car had become one writhing cloud of smoke in which two lights glinted, now copper-colored, like the beautiful eyes of a toad. "It's all about the dominant f**king paradigm, Shadow. Nothing else is important. And hey, sorry to hear about your old lady."
The door closed, and the stretch limo drove off, quietly. Shadow was a couple of hundred yards away from his motel, and he walked there, breathing the cold air, past red and yellow and blue lights advertising every kind of fast food a man could imagine, as long as it was a hamburger; and he reached the Motel America without incident.