Damned Lies!

by Dennis Liggio

  That happened to be just about the moment when I swung my axe backwards for my epic cleave. I don't think either of us realized how close our respective battles were. As I backed off, I probably had nearly walked right on top of Nancy. I was close enough that my axe swung backwards and the blunt head of the axe slammed right into the vampire's chest. No cutting, just a dull force.

  This shouldn't have killed the vampire. They wouldn't have become the alpha predator of the undead world if they couldn't shrug off a blunt hit like that. Well, Dear Reader, remember how the vampire had a stake driven halfway into his chest? No? It turns out that the vampire didn't remember it either. Or, if he did, in all his hopping amongst the rafters, he hadn't taken the time to pull the stake out. Perhaps there was a positive result to all those missed crossbow shots. It was that imbedded stake that my axe struck. Even with my weak muscles, the momentum was enough to strike that stake hard, particularly since it was half in. The stake was driven all the way through, piercing the vampire's heart.

  I realized I had hit something when I swung back, but I didn't know what. I froze and winced, wondering if I had just screwed up. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if I had just knocked out Nancy. Meekly I turned around, not yet noticing that the zombies had frozen in place.

  The vampire clutched at his chest, his face twisted into the most anguished grimace I had ever seen. I looked at the stake then looked at the axe in my hand, realization finally dawning on me. The vampire fell backwards, disintegrating into dust before he reached the floor. The vampire gone, Sister Nancy hit the floor, still unconscious. Around me, decayed corpses fell to the ground.

  I stood in the middle of the abandoned church, lit only by a weakening flare, surrounded by bodies, and holding an axe.

  Sister Nancy was still alive. One tough nun. I bandaged her neck and carried her to the station wagon. I drove as fast as I could to civilization. Since I didn't quite know where I was, once we got back to the main road, I just drove until I hit a town, then got directions to the hospital, resulting in a manic drive to the emergency room. I tried whispering to her as I drove so that she'd hold on, but she was unconscious the whole way. I pulled into the hospital and as gently as I could, carried her into the ER. Paramedics swarmed around me and took her away on a gurney. She was still alive then. I hope she still is.

  I did not stay at the hospital. Let's be honest. While her arm was broken, the real reason she was there was that she was bitten by a vampire. Even with everyone believing them fictional, it really did look like she had been bitten by a vampire. Worse, she was a nun bitten by a vampire. If they didn't immediately arrest me as the crazy person who did that to her, there would be lots of questions. The kind of questions where "Oh, she's just a nun who picked me up hitchhiking and wanted help killing a vampire and hacking apart zombies with an axe" is not an acceptable response. Even if she woke up, it was a crazy story. And if she didn't make it... well, I was kinda screwed.

  I snuck out of the ER and made my way away from the hospital as fast as I could.

  You may wonder what I whispered to her as I drove, pleading with her to hold on. This shouldn't surprise you.

  "Everything's going to be okay."

  Cinnabar and Sulfur

  August, 1994 - On the Road

  No travelogue of a cross-country trip hitchhiking across this great America would be complete with the very depiction that puts the current travelogue into perspective: other hitchhikers.

  I met a few on my trip across our vast nation, but they all seemed to fall within two main categories: those hitchhiking by choice and those doing it by accident. And by accident, I mean out of unfortunate necessity. I had started my journey in the former category, but after my crash landing in Nevada, I was firmly planted in the second category. I wanted to go home. And I wanted to do it in the shortest, least risky, least permanently damaging way possible.

  Those other hitchhikers who walked the roads out of sheer misfortune were unsurprisingly much like what you'd expect. Twitchy, tired, depressed souls just trying to get somewhere. Well, the best ones of them had somewhere to go. Many didn't have a home or a destination. Those were the saddest type. Luckily, they are fewer. Most had a place to aim for, even if it was vague or with a relative they hadn't seen in years. Just the hope of that was important. Just envisioning a place, a possible place, where they could hang up their shoes and know a friendly face or two was something. It was a hope you could rest your dreams on. It was a direction. It was a destination. And sometimes that's all that's holding off despair.

  Those other hitchhikers who had decided to make the journey consciously - carless and avoiding public transportation for whatever reason - were trickier beasts. They did not travel on a hope and a dream, well, not usually. These were the ones who actively decided to leave somewhere stable and depend on the kindness of strangers to get them to their destination. We could sit here for hours suggesting why they decided to do this. Maybe they read Kerouac’s On The Road just a few too many times. Visions of Fifties hitchhiking mixed with benny tubes turned into an idealized wanderlust, a fantasy that would soon be shattered by the real world. Maybe they were short on cash but high on pluck, wanting to see America and willing to exist on their wits alone. Hitchhiking seems much more dangerous than it used to be. In Kerouac’s time, there were no serial killers – or none reported in newspapers. I don’t recall the part in On The Road where Neal Cassidy determined whether a given person was an axe murderer or not. Maybe that was in one of the alternate versions of the novel.

  The relationship between hitchhikers can be a strange one out on the open road. Trust is very important. I've spoken to a few non-hitchhikers who think on the road everyone would be all Pollyanna, that it'd be peace, love, and granola between travelers. That's a great ideal, but it's far from the truth. Hitchhikers are at their essence transients. No matter where they are now, no matter what they're doing, no matter the kindness of current strangers, the places and people will be out of their lives in a short while. If their impetus for being a good person derives from social pressure and consequences, those restraints fall away on the road. Not everyone has that reason for being good, but some do. So some hitchhikers will lie, cheat, and steal if they had to or want to. They're not going to see you tomorrow, they're not going to see you next week. They may be nicer when in someone's car, at a rest stop, or to the owner of a restaurant. But there's no reason they need to be nice to another hitchhiker if they don't want to. The sad fact is you don't have anything they want.

  As I said, not everyone is like this, but how do you know who is who?

  The other reason for hitchhiker distrust is simple rules of economy. There are only so many cars, so every other hitchhiker going your way is a threat to you getting that one ride you really need. In general, teaming up isn’t worth it. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a car driving by might take a risk on one sketchy person, but two is suddenly a bigger threat and perhaps something to avoid. Three looks like a gang. Some of the “professional” hitchhikers will talk about an established protocol about hitching from the same location. The hitchhiker who got their first will stand in the prime spot, thumb out. The second will thumb from a farther along and less prime location. When the first is picked up, the second moves into the prime spot. I think this is bullshit, personally. If I were in my car and saw two hitchhikers thumbing from the same location, even if properly spaced, I would wonder how I got in such a bad area that everyone’s hitchhiking out of it, and instead of stopping I’d lean on the gas a little harder to get past it quicker.

  For all the distrust, sometimes it gets washed away with everything else. When things are bad, distrust is forgotten. When there's no hope of any cars and you're huddling together in the coldest rain you've ever felt in your whole goddamn life, you open up and ditch your distrust. You need to be close for warmth, you need to share what you have, in case together you have something to get you out of the rain. There's no threat of ride theft, they
can't rip you off when you're looking at them, and maybe they're willing to share half their granola bar. The milk of human kindness comes out when hope is gone. But only when things get pretty damn miserable.

  I'm going to tell you about a couple of hitchhikers who violated everything I just talked about. They were kind to me even without needing to. I wonder if they had never gotten ripped off. Maybe they had and they didn’t care. All I know is they were nice to me, even if things got weird. Okay, even when things got extremely weird and made me question their sanity.

  I had been just dropped off at the crossroads of a country road. The driver needed to turn out into the country, but I needed to hit the highway, only a few miles away. He dropped me off with a good luck, and I breathed a deep breath while he sped off. His car had smelled strongly of cheese. And not the tasty kind of cheese. The bad B.O.-who-farted kind of cheese.

  The sun was going down. I looked around and found there was nothing around besides some razor wire fences. I shrugged and just started walking in the direction of the highway. I'm not sure the figures on day vs night hitchhiking, but I had better luck at night. Maybe it's because at night they couldn't see me as well until I was in their car.

  After a half an hour I hadn't quite hit the highway yet, but it was getting dark. There were no lights on this road. That's when I noticed two people going through their backpacks. I knew they were hitchhikers immediately. On the side of the road in the middle of nowhere going through their backpacks? Either hitchhikers or very, very lost mountaineers.

  The guy was tall, his long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. He had a full beard and mustache. His facial hair was only slightly scragglier than his head hair. He was dressed in a dark grey coat that had seen mud and rain more than a few times. The girl was shorter. She had wavy red hair that somehow reminded me of a flapper haircut. She wore a black motorcycle jacket, probably one of the lighter knockoffs not intended for actual motorcycle riding. They both were maybe in their twenties.

  “Hey man,” the guy said as I walked near. I was fully prepared to walk right on by, respecting their right to hitch from that spot. But he greeted me as he squatted with his pack.

  “Uh, hi,” I responded.

  “You a hitchhiker too?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You almost home?” she asked. “Or got nowhere to go but to catch a ride?”

  It was weird to ask, but I responded anyway. “No, just need to catch a ride.”

  “We were told cars barely drive this road at night,” she continued. “It’s nearly dark. We got permission from the guy who owns this land to camp overnight. Do you want to join us?”

  I looked down the road, squinting to see if I could see the lights of the highway. I couldn't. It was my turn to wonder if they were axe murderers. I noticed no axes, but I guess his coat could have been long enough to hide a good hatchet. I decided to take the risk. “Sure, why not?” I said.

  We walked across the barren, parched grass so that we weren’t too close to the road. The sound of cars whipping down the road, as unlikely as we thought that was, might be jarring while we slept. We found a nice level spot next to a bunch of large rocks that the owner had once piled up. We dropped our stuff and started a fire.

  They were nice enough to share their food, because I had none left. They had just two cans of ravioli, but that's more than enough for three hungry people on the road and tastes like a feast when you are starving. It's when I'm home in civilization that I will say derisive things about canned pasta. We had small talk over the food. After dinner was when things got weird.

  The guy, Isaac, climbed up onto the rocks and settled down in a cross legged position, looking away from the camping spot, staring into the dark distance. I expected him to say something profound, like proclaiming America the great spirit world or dispensing prophecy, but he just sat there.

  “Isaac is an alchemist,” the girl, Mel, said.

  “Eh?” was my only response.

  “He’s meditating. That’s how he restores his power,” she said. I turned and looked at her. She was serious, but she wasn’t saying it as gravely as you would think. She was saying it like: “John always enjoys a nice coffee and a cigar after dinner.” Clearly not joking, but not really investing any weight into it. Not the weight you’d expect for talking about restoring power.

  I simply shrugged. I had no desire to keep on that subject. The last thing I needed was a young version of Mestigus, the old man in the wasteland. I had no interest in talking about power and related tomfoolery.

  “Let’s take a walk,” she said.

  I shrugged and followed her as we tromped across the barren grass away from the road. There was an almost full moon and the sky was clear, so we had some light. Not enough that I didn’t trip on a random root, but enough that I didn't fall over and skin my knee.

  She asked about me and how long I was on the road. When she heard this was my first trip, she began giving me tips. She told me to always carry a jar of peanut butter. Even if things get really bad, I can have one spoonful of peanut butter a day, and that would be enough to survive without other food. I shrugged. I’ve heard since then that the same can be done with Guinness Extra Stout. One pint a day is enough to sustain a man. A drunken man, but one who was staving off starvation.

  She mentioned Isaac in a few of her stories and advice, just an odd comment here and there. A few times she called him her boyfriend, which is about what I expected their relationship to be. Which is why I was equally confused when she dropped her pants in front of me.

  She had been talking about how cold a night it was getting, which I agreed with. Even though it was summer, the nights still got very chilly. She put down her backpack and got out another pair of pants. She said that she was going to change. I nodded, expecting her to go behind a bush or something. Nothing of the sort. She simply unbuttoned her pants and dropped trou right in front of me.

  I was completely shocked. She was standing there in her jacket and pink panties. I remember seeing the sheen of the moon on the curves of her legs. She stood there looking at me, not stepping out of her pants. I couldn't read her expression at all.

  I awkwardly turned around, averting my eyes. I heard her chuckle behind me. I was confused. We hadn’t really been talking in any way that signified attraction, though she seemed very interested in talking to me. Sure I had accepted a pretty girl’s offer to walk away from camp in the middle of the night, but her boyfriend was like fifty yards away, so I didn’t think she meant it as a come on. Yet she dropped her pants and stared at me. What did she mean? My face was kind of red. So maybe I was a shyer teen than I have let on.

  When she was done she put her hand on my shoulder. I jumped, not realizing I was tense and also surprised at how warm her hand felt. She used her hand to “suggest” I turn around. She had a strange sort of smile, kind of sheepish, kind of not.

  “Are you okay?” Mel asked.

  “Well, I, umm. I guess. Y’know. Yeah.”

  She laughed again. “Do you want to continue walking?” It was strange she almost acted like nothing happened. "It's a nice night and there's more I could show you."

  Was that I come on? What else was she going to show me? I turned back towards camp, wondering if I could see Isaac on his rock, recharging his batteries.

  "But..." I started but stopped.

  She placed an arm on my should and her fingers delicately traced the curve of my ear. "There are other ways to restore power," she said.

  That tensed me up. Mestigus was a power-seeker, and his girl was a ghost whose bones he kept with him. Was Mel a ghost? Was she going to drain the vitality from me or something? I wished I had seen more of those erotic ghost story movies so I had more of a context of what to do.

  "You don't have to hold onto such tension," she said. "It's okay, nothing's going to hurt you."

  "But Isaac..." I said.

  "What about Isaac? He is free as I am free, though we are bound intimately in the
creation of the universe. I am cinnabar and he is sulfur. He knows that whatever I do, I will always return to him and our perfect union. You and I would be joy and wisdom, without even the hint of distrust to sully the mixture."

  "What?"

  "It's all alchemy, silly," she said, leaning in for a one sided kiss. Her lips were soft, but I wasn't comfortable. She pulled her head back and searched my eyes, trying to find my reaction.

  I gently pulled her hand from my head and took a step back from her. She felt uncomfortably close.

  “I think I want to head back,” I said. “My ankle hurts a bit from where that root tripped me.”

  “Okay. I think I’ll keep walking then,” she said. She didn’t seem offended or put off. I still had no clue what had happened.

  She turned and walked off one way while I turned and wandered the other direction, back towards the camp. When I got back, I picked at my backpack vaguely, reorganizing the same two items inside it. Isaac was still sitting on the rocks. I looked over to his back. Somehow I felt guilty, for his girlfriend doing... well, I wasn't sure what she had been trying to do. I felt guilty for her kissing me, even though I did not return the kiss. I was still confused. I wondered what he was looking at. I wandered over near the rocks, squinting my eyes to see whatever might be in the darkness.

  “How was it?” Isaac asked like he was asking about the weather.

  I looked up and saw his eyes still staring into the unknown – his meditation, I guess.

  “How was what?” I responded.

  “Your walk.”

  “It was okay,” I said, kind of wincing as I said it. Did he know something? I felt like the only one not invited to the party.

  “Sure, it could be that.” He said flatly.

  “Is there something….” I trailed off.

  “What happens, happens,” he said.