by Chris McCoy
The tired worker manning the drive-through window poked his head out and looked at me standing there.
“Sorry, man, no more food,” he said. “We’re closing up.”
“What do you mean, no more food? It’s In-N-Out.”
“There’s nothing left,” said the worker. “No more burgers, no more buns, no more potatoes. That weird bus cleaned us out. They’ve been here for an hour. I’m surprised you waited in line—all the other cars got annoyed and left.”
“Can’t you go into your storage locker and get more?”
“We did go into the storage locker. These guys rolled up and spent thirty grand. I’m telling you, we’re out.”
“I can’t get one cheeseburger?”
“If you want a burger, you ask the guys on the party bus. They have a hundred cows’ worth of them. They’re eating a barnyard. We’re closed.”
The worker slammed the drive-through window shut.
I watched the bus shake in the parking lot. Not only was it not leaving, it sounded like the travelers inside had turned the music up.
BOOMbabawahBOOMbabawah
Weird laughter—rargh rargh rargh—was followed by bowling-ball-sized wads of paper cups and hamburger wrappers being tossed out the windows. I had never seen such flagrant littering.
It seemed impossible that the people on the bus needed all the food in the In-N-Out, so I decided I was going to try to buy something off them. I had nothing to lose.
I walked over to the bus and knocked on the door. It made a sound unlike any metal I had ever heard before—hollow, but with a high-pitched clanging noise.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Open up!”
I heard footsteps. The door swung open, and suddenly I was face to face with the driver—or rather, I was face to face with the face the driver had decided to wear, because he was in disguise.
From a distance, you might have thought the driver was human—he had eyes, ears, a nose, he was about six feet tall and maybe three hundred pounds, so the proportions were right—but up close it was clear that his skin wasn’t skin at all, but a rubbery peach-colored mask. His lumpy torso was jammed into a ripped T-shirt, and his legs were bursting from a pair of stonewashed jeans.
His figure resembled those of the messed-up Vikings who had taken Sophie, which gave me chills. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a great idea trying to get her abductors to come back.
“Rargh garh ragh,” he said, though his mouth didn’t move because of the mask. “Rargh grargh gargh.”
“I’m sorry…,” I said, suddenly very aware that I had made the Wrong Decision by coming to this bus. “I must have knocked on the wrong door.”
“Ragh garf raghr,” said the driver. “Ragha arghag rafg.”
“I’m truly sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”
The driver shoved a bottle of wine into my hands.
“No thank you…,” I said. “I don’t want any wine.”
“Raghag fargh…wine…ragh,” the driver insisted, grabbing my shoulder and slamming the wine against my stomach. He spoke at least one word of English. Wine. I guess in some cultures, that’s all you really need to get by.
“Fine. I’ll have a sip, but then I’m going.”
The wine tasted bitter and slightly nutty, but I gulped it down and handed back the bottle.
“Thank you,” said the driver, sounding remarkably civil, with a lilting, almost Scandinavian accent. He took off the mask, and underneath he looked exactly like the aliens who had abducted Sophie. I froze.
“You know, when somebody offers you a drink, it’s bad form not to accept,” he said. “Now we can talk like gentlemen. What brings you to our door?”
I was too stunned to speak.
“Do you still not understand? Let me try again, more slowly this time. Hello. Stranger. What brings you to our door?”
“I don’t know….”
“You must have had some reason. You were pounding hard. And at this time of night, that can be construed as rude. This may be a bus, but look at the size of it—it’s our home away from home, and nobody likes unexpected evening callers to their home. It makes everybody assume the worst.”
“I wanted a cheeseburger,” I said. “And the guy at the window said you had bought them all.”
A voice cut in from inside the bus: “Driver, what’s going on with this open door? The temperature in here was unbelievably pleasant, and now you’re letting in the dry desert air. Do you know what this heat does to my voice?”
“A gentleman up here wants to buy a cheeseburger off us,” said the driver.
“Good Lord, the cheeseburgers are almost gone,” said the voice. “Perhaps you should send him on his way, Driver. I can’t bear to see disappointment on the faces of humans, though it seems like they wear such expressions all the time. Probably why nobody wants to visit this planet—no offense to you, Cad.”
“None taken,” said another voice from somewhere in the bus, this one with what seemed to be a New York or New Jersey accent. “I don’t like visiting here either.”
“I don’t know if we should turn the stranger down—he looks angry,” said the driver, examining my face. I could tell he was messing with me. “I think he made a gesture like he’s going to slit our throats unless he gets what he wants.”
“A murderer darkening our doorway,” said the first voice. “How wonderfully romantic.”
“I didn’t make any gesture,” I said. “I’m just a high school student. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I’m sorry for coming over here. I’ll leave….”
“Wait wait, hold on, and pause,” said the first voice. “I’m reconsidering what I said about having no cheeseburgers for this wretched straggler, Driver. It’s not in my blood to let a man go hungry. He can share my meal. We will sup as brothers, he and I.”
The driver—who, from the way the people on the bus were referring to him, appeared to actually be named Driver—stepped out of the way and gestured to the stairs.
“The band is requesting your company,” said Driver. “Lucky boy.”
The band?
“Come on, come on,” said Driver. “Let’s go, up with you.”
Driver put his meaty palm on the back of my neck and unhelpfully shoved me up the stairs. Suddenly I was standing in the middle of what appeared to be a seventeenth-century French brothel.
The interior of the bus had been hollowed out, giving it the appearance of a long studio apartment, and was covered in purple pillows. Every few feet there were tables holding decanters of a glowing, ominous red liquid and towering brass hookahs sprouting tentacles like burnished metal octopi, wisps of smoke wafting above them. A pyramid-shaped disco ball hung from the cabin’s ceiling, and piles of what seemed to be male fashion magazines were stacked haphazardly all over the place.
I stared into the shadows of the dim room, but all I saw was silhouettes.
“Cad wasn’t kidding when he said humans who lived in the desert were unattractive,” said the first voice. “Look at how thin this one is. I can’t say that I’m not a little threatened. Only I can have such an elegant waistline, so eat, intruder, eat. The fatter you get, the better I look.”
A cheeseburger flew through the air and splattered against my shirt. Driver laughed behind me—wah ha ha ha ha.
“I suppose I’ll now have to give him something from my personal wardrobe, though I’m not sure he has the attitude to pull it off. Bring him closer so I can take a look.”
Driver gave me another heave in my back, prompting me toward the darkest corner of the bus. There I saw the dim outline of a lanky man, along with the flash of a glittery sleeve and the tip of a snow-white leather platform boot.
“Closer…closer…don’t be scared, I don’t bite, though I have been known to stab. Never can be too careful, and it’s best to strike first, particularly when you have an advantageous reach like mine.”
The figure leaned closer. “My goodness, your pores look terrible. If you used a skin-tightening mask at least once
a week, it would help with those zits. I just want to grab your face and pop them. Or maybe pop your whole head. How hideous.”
Driver nudged my shoulder, and I took another step forward.
“Apologies for sending mixed signals, but that’s quite close enough for the moment,” said the figure. He reached underneath the gold-tasseled shade of an antique parlor lamp, and I heard his bracelets jangling as he gracefully twisted his wrist.
The lamp snapped on, and light ricocheted off the heavily sequined jacket the man was wearing and up to the disco ball above. It was like having a cluster bomb going off around me. I recoiled.
“Oh, stop squinting and get used to it,” he said. “If you’re going to be spending any time at all around here, you’ll learn to love cutting-edge fashion. I like to make sure I’m seen, which is the nature of my profession, as you might imagine.”
I tried to look back at the man, holding my hands in front of my face to cut down on the glare.
“I told you to stop making such a show of how uncomfortable you are,” said the man. “I can’t stand theatrics unless they’re my own. But for the sake of adjustment, here, let me help you out, if you’re going to be such a demonstrative hobgoblin.”
The figure pressed a button on his sleeve, and the sequins on his jacket flipped over and clipped into place, as if he was instantly changing clothes. A moment later, he was in a white jacket made of scaly leather.
For the first time, I looked into the face of the person who I would soon come to learn is the lead singer of the one billion sixteenth most popular musical group in the universe.
“Good evening,” he said, bowing slightly, but without a trace of humility. “I’m Skark Zelirium. But I’m sure you knew that already.”
He searched for recognition in my eyes, but found none. He frowned.
“Hmm. I understand. In dim light, it is sometimes difficult to recognize your heroes. But get on with it—introduce yourself, who are you?”
“I’m Bennett Bardo,” I said.
“What a dull name. We’ll have to fix that if you end up hanging around. I could see you being a Chester, but certainly not a Bennett. Though Chester isn’t terribly provocative either. Hmm. I’ll have to think about this a bit. Maybe something sexy like Zaza.”
Skark didn’t look like anyone I had ever seen, though the dimensions of his body were such that at night, from a distance, he might pass for an emaciated man with an overconfident sense of style. He was wearing a tight white jumpsuit under his jacket, and his boots came over his knees. His fingers had rings with stones that changed color mercurially, flickering from sapphire blue to a splendid opal to charcoal black.
But where Skark looked truly otherworldly was from the neck up. His chin was pointed, coming to a dimpled tip that jutted out an inch beyond the rest of his face. His top and bottom lips were the same thickness. He was clean-shaven—either that or he didn’t grow facial hair at all. He was wearing makeup—orange blush on his cheeks and green shadow under his eyes, which were speckled like the shell of a sparrow’s egg—and yellow curls sprouted from his scalp and cascaded over his face and shoulders. His complexion was a subtle off-pinkish color, which gave an overall effect of sickly paleness, like a patient in a pre-industrial tuberculosis ward.
He presented me with another cheeseburger, this time handing it to me instead of whipping it at my chest.
“You’re lucky I only ate a couple hundred,” he said. “I’m dieting, you see.”
“A couple hundred?”
“My metabolism is extraordinary. One needs such a prodigious number of calories when one performs onstage at the level I do. But right now I’m trying to fit into a Gucci suit I picked up when we flew over Italy. It’s a beautiful thing. Kingfisher-blue charmeuse. You’ll die when you see it.”
My body stiffened.
“Ah, my band’s reputation precedes us, I see,” said Skark. “I didn’t mean you’re literally going to die when you see it, though if you did die, I assure you, you would go with a smile on your face and you’d be in very good company. Look for yourself.”
Skark gestured with a gold-tipped cane to a row of close-up photographs of alien smiles—some fanged, some drooling blue spittle, some double-tongued—which were hanging on the wall of the bus.
“Are those all pictures of creatures who died smiling in here?” I said.
“Some individuals can’t keep up with the lifestyle, I’m afraid,” said Skark.
“Are you going to keep talking down there, or are you going to introduce me?” said a voice above me.
I looked up. Dangling inches from my head was a guy in his late twenties or early thirties who was doing pull-ups on a bar bolted to an apparatus that looked a bit like an air conditioner. He was obviously human, and he was wearing a brown knit hat and a white tank top printed with the Statue of Liberty, which showed off his defined biceps. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his cheeks were smeared with brown and black whiskers.
“Bennett, I give you the second member of my band and our only thoroughbred human…bassist Cad Charleston.”
Cad dropped to the floor and shook my hand.
“Good to meet you,” said Cad. “Sorry about how much of a pain it was to get a burger. We don’t come here often, and you know how singers and drummers have appetites.”
“Who’s the drummer?” I said.
“I am the drummer,” said Driver. “And the driver, and the band’s manager, ever since we ran into financial—”
“I will not talk about money with new friends,” said Skark. “It is the pinnacle of impoliteness. I’m sure such a young fan has questions he is burning to ask the band, so let us hear them.”
Skark, Driver, and Cad looked at me.
“Well?” said Skark.
“What…band is this?” I said.
Skark’s eyes went wide, and he lifted himself to his feet. He was easily eight feet tall, and he towered over me, which had become increasingly uncommon for anyone to be able to do in the wake of my growth spurt.
“What band is it? You snuck onto this bus, and now you’re pretending you don’t know the name of the band?”
“He came on the bus for a cheeseburger, not to ask the band questions,” said Driver.
“I don’t care why he got on, I’m insulted,” said Skark. “Bennett—you are standing on the tour bus of one of the musical treasures of the universe. The band whose music forged peace between the Bluebranch Lantern Galaxy and the Mosaic Mauna Cluster. The band whose tight clothing caused a sexual revolution in Poochicana Nebula B-67. The band who with one slow jam created the building blocks of life on the barren Spindlefan Asteroid. We are the Perfectly Reasonable.”
I chuckled.
“I’m so tired of people laughing whenever they hear the name of our band…,” said Driver.
“The Perfectly Reasonable is a wonderful name,” said Skark. “It captures our good looks and our judicious minds in three small words.”
“Reasonable isn’t that small a word,” said Driver.
“We’re not one of the musical treasures of the universe,” said Cad. “Universal Beat magazine just ranked us out of the top billion.”
“We’re one billion sixteenth,” said Skark. “Let’s not blow it out of proportion. Nobody reads past the first fifty or so anyway.”
“We used to have our own space station, with swimming pools,” said Cad.
“I miss our private chef,” said Driver.
“I miss our menagerie of exotic animals,” said Cad.
“Would you please stop bitching,” said Skark. “We are playing the Dondoozle Festival in less than a week, and when we do, our comeback will be complete.”
Skark turned to me.
“Forgive me if it sounds like we’re speaking in code here,” he said. “Dondoozle is a bit like Lollapalooza or Coachella that you have here on Earth. I don’t know why these festivals always seem to end in vowels. There’s one in the Nardo Cluster that’s just called A
uooooaouuuo. It’s almost impossible to order tickets for.”
Skark turned back to the band.
“One performance and we’ll once more be on top,” he said. “Plus, those rankings aren’t scientifically accurate—they’re used more to provoke discussions among critics, who aren’t our core audience now.”
“Who is our core audience now?” said Cad.
“Fans who remember when we were good,” said Driver.
“We are a brilliant three-piece,” said Skark. “We are fiery coral in an ocean of mediocrity. We are an amplified earthquake in the fault line of recycled melody. We are—”
WHOOP
A police siren exploded behind the bus.
“Cops!” yelled Driver, running toward the front seat.
“Hide everything,” said Cad.
“Relax, please,” said Skark. “The more you panic, the more suspicious you look. This is a moment that calls for calmness and clarity of thought, as all moments of great seriousness do.”
Skark opened the ottoman and hid several bottles of wine inside. From the way the band members were scooping up bottles and powders and pills and hiding them in the nooks and crannies of the bus, it was obvious they were carrying a significant amount of illegal contraband on board.
WHOOP WHOOP
The voice of Officer Welker erupted through a megaphone.
“I told you to go home, kid. I told you I didn’t want to see you again tonight. If you’re not in your truck, I know you’re on that bus. It’s the only other vehicle in the lot.”
Through the window, I saw Officer Welker get out of his cruiser and walk over to my truck with a pad in his hand, writing me a ticket.
“If he’s telling us to go, I suggest we listen,” said Cad. “It’s a bad idea to mess with bored cops who live in the wastelands.”
“I think he’s talking to me…,” I said, but nobody was listening.
“I’m getting us out of here right now,” said Driver, whacking a rainbow of buttons on the dashboard. Without his disguise, it was clear he was definitely of the same tweaked Viking pedigree as the individuals who had abducted Sophie.