The Asphalt Doppelgänger
The thing wearing Jake's face smiled up from the hole, its teeth glistening like wet pavement. Its fingers—black and crumbling—dug into the dirt as it pulled itself up.
Rachel stumbled back, knife raised. "Don't let it touch you!"
Jake stood frozen, shovel in hand, as his own voice crawled from the thing's throat:
"You left pieces of us in every state."
Hatathli's rattle shook in a complex rhythm. "This is what the roads took. The shadow you dragged behind you."
The not-Jake tilted its head, cracks spreading across its cheeks like drying concrete. "He doesn't want to kill you. He wants to complete you." It reached out. "We could be so much stronger together."
Jake swung the shovel.
The steel edge connected with a sound like shattering windshield glass. The thing's head snapped back, black sludge spraying across the dirt—
—and screaming. Not from the creature. From the ground itself, as the droplets burned into the earth like acid.
Hatathli chanted louder, sprinkling blue cornmeal in a circle around them. "Second sacrifice must be given freely!"
Jake's breath came in ragged gasps. "How?!"
The thing in the dirt laughed, its half-shattered skull knitting back together with threads of black tar. "Remember the bridge, Jake. Remember how good it felt to command."
And suddenly, Jake did remember—the surge of power when he'd made the trucks stop. The way the highway had obeyed.
The thing smiled wider, seeing his hesitation.
Rachel's knife flashed.
She buried it in the doppelgänger's throat.
"Not freely," she snarled. "Taken."
The creature gurgled, its form dissolving into a bubbling black pool that soaked into the desert floor. The earth trembled briefly... then stilled.
Hatathli nodded. "Done. But the price comes due."
Above them, thunder rumbled from a cloudless sky.
The Last Sacrifice
Night fell like a hammer.
Inside the hogan, Hatathli painted Jake's face with ash and crushed turquoise. "The third sacrifice is always the heaviest." He wouldn't meet Rachel's eyes.
Jake's head felt clearer than it had in weeks, the voices gone silent after the doppelgänger's death. "What do we need to do?"
The old man's hands stilled. "Not we. Her."
Rachel went very still.
Hatathli continued: "First sacrifice: memory. Second: shadow-self. Third..." He held up a frayed cord woven from human hair and asphalt. "Ties that bind."
Jake's stomach dropped. "No."
Rachel reached for the cord. "Explain."
"The black road claims through connection," Hatathli said. "To break its hold, the last tether must be severed." His dark eyes flicked to Jake. "The thing you love most in this world."
The silence stretched.
Rachel's fingers tightened around the cord. "How?"
Outside, the wind rose again—this time carrying the distant sound of engines.
Too many engines.
Coming closer.
The Road's Revenge
Headlights pierced the hogan's hide walls, beams sliding like searchlights. The medicine man's herbs trembled in their bundles as the ground vibrated.
"They're here," Hatathli whispered.
Jake peered through a crack in the door. His blood turned to ice.
Eighteen semi-trucks circled the hogan, their cabs empty but engines running. Between them, figures emerged from the desert—shapes made of fused roadkill and shattered glass, moving with jerky purpose.
At their center stood Amber Langford, her chest scar pulsing like a second mouth.
"You can't outrun the veins of America," she called.
Rachel turned to Hatathli. "Now would be a good time for that third sacrifice."
The old man pressed the cord into her hands. "The cut must be true. And final."
Jake grabbed Rachel's wrist. "There's another way—"
"There isn't." Her voice broke. "You heard him. The thing keeping you alive right now? It's me. My... connection to you." She touched his face. "The Big Man doesn't want you dead. He wants you empty. So he can fill you up."
The hogan's door splintered.
Amber's laughter rang out.
Rachel kissed Jake—hard—then shoved him toward Hatathli. "Do it."
The medicine man began to chant.
Rachel raised the cord.
The trucks revved their engines.
And Jake realized, too late, what was about to happen.
The Severing
The cord wasn't for Rachel to hold.
It was for Jake to wear.
Hatathli looped it around Jake's neck as Rachel ran toward the broken door, screaming—not in fear, but in challenge.
"Come on, you bastard! I'm the one you want!"
Jake tried to move, but the cord held him like a leash. "NO—"
The last thing he saw before the world went black:
Rachel stepping into the headlights.
Amber lunging.
And the desert swallowing them both whole.