by D V Wolfe
I heard Stacks swearing and then he stomped around to the front of the trailer and stopped at the bottom of the stairs, glaring around at all of us as if this was a conspiracy.
“It’s for the best,” I said to Stacks, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I hated Yolanda... And you were a terrible snake dad.”
“Yolanda was my ex’s. Krissy, remember her? I was keeping Yolanda in case she ever came back for her.”
I did remember Krissy. “Stacks, Krissy is married with four kids and lives in Arkansas now. I think it’s safe to say, she’s not coming back for Yolanda.”
“Yeah,” Stacks said. “I guess.” He stomped back up the stairs and into the trailer.
I followed him and paused next to Rosetta. Out of the side of my mouth I said, “Frankly I’m more worried that Yolanda will slither under the trailer and set off all of Stacks’ booby traps.”
“Fuck,” Rosetta whispered. I turned to look at her in surprise and saw a look of terror cross her face. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well we should all be getting along,” Rosetta started, heading down the front steps. “We’ve got driving and…” she cut her eyes to Festus. “Other things to do.”
“It’s ok,” I said to Rosetta. “You can talk about it in front of Festus. He’s the one that told me about Solomon’s Spice.”
“Soulman’s Spice,” Festus said. I decided not to start an argument with Festus about the pronunciation because a light bulb had just blinked on in my head.
“Right,” I said, putting a hand on Festus’ shoulder. “Alright, here’s the plan. Rosetta and Tags, you two head for your friend’s house and then Tags’ lab. The three of us and good ole Festus will go on a little shopping trip to crack the code on the spice and then...”
Rosetta interrupted me. “Are you sure you should be talking about all of this in front of that,” she jerked her head towards Festus, “shifty s.o.b.? I mean, why did he tell you anything in the first place?”
I shrugged. “He had some good reasons.” Rosetta opened her mouth to speak, and I held up a hand. “Put the Sunday School banner back in the closet, Rosetta. I know his reasons, I believe him, let’s move on. Ok, so you and Tags take off to get the branch and that elixir going and the four of us will stick around town and…”
Festus cleared his throat. “That’s not such a good idea.”
I looked at him. “You wanna share with the class?”
“Well, let’s just say that there are some interested parties downstairs that were curious as to how you were progressing and they beat it out of me that you might be heading towards Messina. Luckily, my mouth was so full of blood and bile that I wasn’t able to tell them about your Missouri endeavor. They probably have guessed that part though if the demon in St. Louis has called home to wish the family well while he’s away, and mentioned that he was on the radio. Regardless, they may or may not be sending their patrol unit this way.”
“Do you mean, Beri-” Noah started but then began to choke and sputter because Festus’ hand was around his throat.
“Are you suicidal?” Festus asked Noah calmly. Noah was clawing at Festus’ hand and gasping. “Because if you are, I can take care of that tendency of yours, free of charge. If you aren’t, you will keep your mouth shut.” I grabbed Festus and pulled him back by his jacket so that he would release Noah.
“Are you sure that’s who’s in St. Louis?” I asked Festus.
Festus shook his head. “They’re being very tight-lipped about it to most of us below the class of President. If it’s not him, it’s someone from his camp. Regardless, it’s someone big enough to make all the demons in the surrounding states sit up and take orders.”
I started moving around the room, throwing books in a milk crate by the door. Stacks glanced over at me. “What are you doing?”
“Grab anything you don’t want to see go up in smoke,” I said.
Stacks started sputtering again. “What the-”
I stopped and looked at him. “Stacks, they’re coming. I’ve been caught by these fuckers before. I can ‘download’ into a new body. Can you?”
He held my gaze for a minute and then turned, swearing, and heading for the hallway. “Hey Noah,” Stacks said, motioning him down the hallway after him. “Give me a hand with this.”
Noah followed him and halfway down the hall, Stacks stopped, pulled back a flap cut into the carpet and pried up a crude trap door. He disappeared down it and started handing up guns, grenades, ammo, knives, and hex boxes.
“Are you going to torch it?” Rosetta asked me.
I nodded. “It’s the only way to throw them off the trail, isn’t it?”
“Well, it takes away their edge,” Festus said. “Without your signatures on items showing the last things you touched, the last things you said that linger in rooms and on the surfaces of walls and ceilings, they’ll be stuck tracking tire marks and traffic cams like regular human investigators.”
Tags and I went and got Lucy and the Scout. In about twenty minutes, everything that Stacks had to have was packed into Lucy’s toolbox, the Scout’s backseat or Rosetta’s Cadillac. We’d let Stacks bring his framed Barbarella poster but we’d had to draw the line at his Lego model of the Death Star which took up almost the entire second bedroom.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” I finally shouted at him from the lawn. I climbed into Lucy and slammed the door shut. Stacks’ remaining lawn flamingo had been wedged behind the seat and its dead painted eyes studied me in my peripheral vision. “This is going to be a long trip,” I muttered to myself. Lucy bounced on her tires as Noah climbed into the back with the now-empty gas can. I turned to look back at Stacks who was coming out of the trailer with a final armload of possessions. He stopped when he got beside Lucy and turned to look back at the trailer.
“My Avalon,” he muttered. “My Dagoba system, Fortress of Solitude, Shaggin’ Wagon.” I couldn’t hold it in any longer. A snort of laughter escaped me and he turned to glare at me. “Shut up, Bane.” He stuffed the armload of possessions, which seemed to consist entirely of dirty laundry through the window and into my lap.
“Sorry,” I said. “I think it was the Dagoba line. I was imagining you as both Luke and Yoda and it just got kind of silly.” I held out my lighter to him. “Wanna do the honors?”
Stacks snatched the lighter out of my hands. “It’s not funny, Bane. Just because you can’t remember what having a home feels li-”
An explosion erupted from under the trailer and the force of the blast stuffed Stacks in through Lucy’s open driver’s side window. Lucy rocked to one side and I was forced flat against the seat with Stacks on top of me.
After the boom, the air was full of the sound of shattering glass, groaning hot metal and siding that was burning like paper.
I shoved Stacks off me and he rolled onto the floor on the passenger side after swearing when his boney butt hit the stick shift.
I pulled myself back up to sitting and squinted out through the smoke and ash that was drifting into Lucy through the open window.
“Well,” I rasped, getting a mouthful of cooked trailer smoke. “I don’t think we have to worry about torching it.”
The passenger side door opened, the smell of cloves filled the truck and I turned to see Festus take a final puff on his cigarette before tossing it and glaring down at Stacks in the footwell.
“Seems that snake of yours was good for something.”
“Shit,” Stacks said, clambering back up onto the seat and staring out at the fireball.
I looked around at the other trailers. Most of the occupants had come outside in boots and boxers or nightgowns and house slippers to see the fire, and somewhere in the distance I could hear sirens. I turned to see Noah was still in the back of the truck.
“Festus, get in,” I said.
“Wait, the fire isn’t to the best part-” He started. I reached for the gear shift and he quickly decided I was serious. Tags and Rosetta got the message too and started th
eir engines. Festus climbed in and slammed the door. Stacks clambered onto the seat between Festus and I and I felt the familiar jab of his boney elbow as it settled itself in my ribs. There was some movement in the grass just beyond Stacks’ trailer as something wound its way around flaming debris.
I gave the burning trailer one last look and then glanced over to where the python was moving towards the creek and stand of trees behind the trailer park.
“Thanks Yolanda!” I yelled out the window and we laid rubber.
19
“Turn here, idiot!” Stacks shouted as the sign for highway fifty-four South flashed by. “We need to go south to get to St. Louis.”
I took a deep breath and counted to ten. I wasn’t going to stuff his whole skull down his trachea like a cartoon. At least not in such tight quarters. Better to wait until we stopped.
We’d been doing a break-neck, eighty-nine miles per hour with light traffic on the highway for the last hour. I stared at the red sky through the windshield so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at Stacks.
“Stacks, we have to get the spices first,” I said.
“So if we’re not going to St. Louis, where are we going?” Festus asked, rolling down his window and trying to light a cigarette.
“Peoria,” I said. I looked around at Festus and Stacks and it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t told them. I’d formed the plan after Joel’s phone call and the list-making session the night before. I’d just forgotten to tell anyone. This team situation we were bordering on together felt strange. I’d never been part of a hunt that was more than myself and one other person. And those hunts were always the most stressful. It wasn’t just my ass I had to watch.
“Peoria,” Stacks said dully. “I’ll bet the weather there is lovely this time of year. But what the fuck does it have to do with the demon in St. Louis?”
“Sorry, I forgot to tell you all. I talked to Joel on the phone last night,” I said.
Stacks chuckled. “If this gets R-rated, please feel free to keep it to yourself.”
I tightened my grip on the wheel. “There’s a specialty spices shop in Peoria that Joel mentioned,” I said. “It’s called something Fair and we can probably get everything we need there.”
“How does Joel know about this shop?” Stacks asked.
“I think he said a girl he knew worked there,” I said.
“Oh,” Stacks said. “Want to scope out the competition while we’re at it?”
Without taking my eyes off the road I reached up and flicked Stacks on the ear as hard as I could. He howled and launched himself towards Festus, trying to get out of my range. Festus returned my serve, knocking Stacks back into me, his boney elbow digging deeper into my ribs.
“No,” I said. “Just thought that it might be nice to look for these spices where demons weren’t hanging around.” I glanced at Festus. “Well, other demons weren’t hanging around.”
“Found it,” Stacks said, scrolling on his phone. “Scarborough Faire, a specialty spices and tea shop. Take the next exit coming up on your right.”
It was just after seven am when we hit Peoria. Stacks used his phone to direct me where to turn, etc. and at seven-fifteen, we pulled into a parallel parking space on the street in front of Scarborough Faire, Fine Teas and Spices. We all leaned towards Festus to read the hours sign hanging in the front window.
“Well, they don’t open until eight,” I said. I looked at Festus and Stacks. “Planning session?”
Then I remembered Noah. I kicked Lucy’s door open and leaned over the side of Lucy’s bed to look at Noah. He’d thrown the blankets and pillows from Stacks’ queen-sized bed into Lucy’s bed and was curled up in a ball, bundled in the blankets like a cocoon. I heard Festus’ door open and he and Stacks leaned on the right side of Lucy’s bed. All three of us stared at Noah for a second.
“Should I get some warm water to dip his hand in?” Stacks asked. Festus looked confused and Stacks just shook his head at him.
“Noah, honey,” I cooed in my best mom-voice. “Time to put your shoes on, we’re almost at grandma’s house.”
Noah grumbled something and turned over. Simultaneously, Stacks and I climbed up on the runner boards on either side of Lucy’s cab and started jumping.
“Oh god, Noah!” Stacks shrieked. “It’s an earthquake! We’re all gonna die!”
Noah screamed and sat bolt upright. Stacks and I climbed back down.
“Now that we’re all with the living,” I said. “We’ve got some planning to do.” Festus turned and started walking away. “And just where do you think you’re going?” I asked.
“I thought I’d go get a fresh pack of cigarettes,” Festus said. “I really don’t want to be privy to what you’re planning. It means there will be less for them to beat out of me.”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “We need intelligence and unfortunately you’ll have to do.”
Festus snorted. “Well at least you’re honest.”
I rolled my eyes. “I mean intelligence on the demon’s movements.”
“Nope,” Festus said. “Get yourself another snitch. Do you know what they did this last time? They made copies of me. And then they disemboweled them one by one. Blood and guts were flying everywhere.” He pulled the black handkerchief back from his pocket and held it up, his color rising. “I pulled a chunk of my face out of my ear. It had eyelashes attached to it.”
“Eww,” Stacks said.
“Doesn’t even begin to touch it. And the worst was, you can feel everything they do to the copies of you. Everything.”
“Ok, Festus,” I said. “Calm down. If they catch up to us, at least you’ll have company for round two.”
“And that’s supposed to be comforting?” Festus asked.
“C’mon,” Stacks said. “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t enjoy seeing copies of Bane getting the shit kicked out of them,” Festus grunted in agreement.
“You know I can hear you two, right?” I asked.
I lifted the lid on Lucy’s toolbox and dug around until I came up with a state-by-state atlas that had maps of the larger cities. I flipped to Missouri and walked around to Lucy’s hood where I could spread it out. The other three joined me.
“Ok, so after we finish our little shopping trip and we know the goods are the goods, we need a way to sneak into St. Louis.” I traced my finger across the map from Peoria to St. Louis. “It’s about a two and a half-hour drive. Festus, do you know for sure they’ll be in St. Louis waiting for us? Or do you know if they’re planning on hanging out at the state border?”
Festus shrugged. “No ideas there.”
I glared at him. “You know that ass-whooping thing can go both ways. We could beat you to get the info we need out of you.”
Festus snorted. “Please feel free. The worst thing you could possibly do to me would be a light tickling in comparison to what the welcoming committee downstairs would do to me.”
I banged my fist down on Lucy’s hood. “Dammit Festus. Do you want to get out from under these fuckers or not?!”
Festus sighed and leaned over the map to study it. After a moment, he tapped his finger on the paper. “There. Where Interstate 55 crosses into Missouri. I know we own a weigh station right around there.”
“What do you mean, you ‘own it’?” Stacks asked.
Festus shrugged. “It’s on top of desecrated ground. And some low-level demons pose as the patrolmen there.”
I studied the roadways. “Festus, are you a hundred percent positive the weigh station is there?” I said, putting my finger right where he had tapped.