Manx- Self-Driving Car

  The Wraith didn’t slow as it approached the road but sped up, and if anything was coming from either direction, he would be T-boned at close to forty miles an hour. Of course, even if nothing was coming, the Wraith would shoot across the road, into the trees on the other side, and Nathan assumed he would be launched through the windshield on the recoil. The Wraith, like all the cars of its period, had no safety belts, not even lap belts.

  The road was empty, and when the rear tires hit the blacktop, the wheel spun in Nathan’s hands, whirring so fast it burned his palms and he had to let go. The Wraith snapped around, ninety degrees to the right, and Nathan Demeter was flipped across the front seat and into the left-hand door, bashed headfirst into the iron frame.
...

  The car was moving, had clunked down through the gears to fifth all on its own. He knew the roads around his house, felt they were moving east along Route 1638 to the Dixie Highway. Another minute and they would reach the intersection and—and what? Blow right through it, maybe catch a truck coming north and be torn apart? The thought crossed his mind as a possibility, but he couldn’t feel any urgency attached to it, didn’t think the car was on a kamikaze mission now. He had in some dazed way accepted that the Wraith was operating of its own agency. It had business and meant to do it. It had no use for him, was maybe not even really aware of him, any more than a dog might be aware of the tick stuck in its fur.
...

  After six hours in the car, he felt no panic, only a kind of numb wonder. On some level he had come to view his situation as almost natural. Sooner or later a black car came for everyone. It came and took you away from your loved ones, and you never got to go back.
...

  He blinked at tears, and the world sharpened, began to come into focus.

  A fat man in a gasmask and fatigues stared through the driver’s-side window at him, peering in past the smeared bloody handprints on the glass. It was an old gasmask, WWII era or thereabouts, a kind of mustardy green.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Nathan asked.

  The fat man seemed to be jiggling up and down. Nathan was unable to see the guy’s face but thought he was bouncing on his toes with excitement.

  The lock on the driver’s-side door shot up with a loud, steely bang.

  The fat man had something in one hand, a cylinder—it looked like an aerosol can. GINGERSNAP SPICE AIR FRESHENER, it said on the side and showed an old-fashioned painting of a cheerful mommy type pulling a pan of gingerbread men out of the oven.

- The Spirit of Ecstasy: Brandenburg, Kentucky