This was a strange statement. "But what if –“
“What happens, happens,” he repeated, cutting off my words.
I opened my mouth again, but closed it. These people are out to lunch, I decided. I sat down by my stuff and contemplated sleep. I lay down but sleep did not come for a while.
I heard Mel come back and looked up. She smiled at me strangely. Then she climbed up the rocks and put her arms around Isaac. He turned and kissed her, more than a quick peck, but less than something with passion. She gave him a final hug, then climbed down and went to bed. Within a minute he did the same.
When I awoke in the morning, they had already gathered up all their stuff. I was groggy, but they waved a quick and perfunctory goodbye before they left. I checked to make sure I still had all my possessions, which I did. They didn’t ask me to come with them, they just up and left.
I still have no clue what happened or should have happened that night. When a strange woman drops her pants in front of you with her boyfriend fifty yards away, is it a signal? Or is she just crazy? What does the kiss that come after really mean and why did it not feel right to me? Was I missing some cues, some ritual that I fouled up? Was it very clear I was supposed to do something? Or were they just kind of crazy?
Personally, I lean towards crazy.
Adventures in Truck and Space
August, 1994 - In a Truck and Elsewhere
My final leg of the journey home was done by truck.
I had gotten better about knowing where to stick out my thumb. First rule: avoid cops at all times. Hitchhiking is technically illegal, and the closer you get to cities, particularly the eastern seaboard, the less often a cop will take a blind eye to your ragged form on the side of the road. And the lift the police officer will give you never leads to someplace you want to go.
The trick I learned was finding truck stops. No, I didn't solicit rides at the truck stop. The truck stop owners hated that and most drivers didn't want to be accosted there where they were trying to rest and refuel. No, I would go maybe half a mile down the road from the truck stop, then try to hitch a ride there. This got the drivers leaving the truck stop, rested and their bellies full of happiness-inducing food. Better to get someone sated than an irritable hungry person.
I was standing on a particular stretch of road, thumb firmly extended. I actually wondered if that was needed. At the distance a car or truck would see you, they probably couldn't see your thumb at all. Did I even need to thumb a ride? I would think that any person standing at the side of the road not carrying a bloody axe would reasonably expected to be asking for a ride. But just in case I was wrong, I had my thumb cocked and ready.
A large truck slowed to a stop with a long screech, making me wonder if it was going to miss me and I would have to run a mile down the road to where it actually stopped. Somehow, it stopped right in front of me. The door opened and I looked up at the driver. I was shocked to discover I knew him. He didn't recognize me, but he gave me a ride anyway.
I had last seen him in Audrey's diner, back in Nevada, a few states away. It was Bill, the humongous mountain of a trucker I had sat next to at the diner, and admittedly thought some unkind things about[19]. He was a few hundred pounds of pure trucker, decked out in a flannel shirt and a hat emblazoned with his name, "Bill". He had a thick beard that concealed his neck. I had not noticed it at the diner, but his eyes were bright and kind.
I had never noticed how big the front seat of a truck was. I'm sure I had seen one somewhere, but until you've sat in it, you don't quite realize the enormity of it. It's like a small room with two chairs, a massive windshield, and then a gearshift console that could probably launch nuclear warheads. I marveled both at the size of the console and the massive collection of knobs, levers, gearshifts, and buttons. I didn't realize so many different things were needed to drive a truck, but maybe he had an augmented version with ejector seats and surface-to-air missiles. Y'know, for that kind of emergency. I know if I drove a truck, I'd have that model.
“Ready?” he uttered briefly, smiling as he showed off and revved the engine, causing the entire truck to shudder as if the roar of a monster.
I wondered what this trip was going to be like. I had never met a real trucker and already knew I had some unkind preconceived notions about him. Sheepishly I gave him a smile and a thumbs up. He kicked the truck into gear.
In minutes were rolling down the highway at seventy five miles per hour, the roar of a massive diesel fuel combustion engine and the vibration of the truck the only things I could feel. The scenery rushed by, but I wouldn’t dare open the window. I’m sure poisonous diesel fumes would be sucked back in.
We sat in silence for the first half hour. Bill finally grunted something. He asked where I had been so far. I was vague, since I wanted to avoid weird stuff which might have him stop the truck and kick me out; he seemed too straight edged for my usual weird bullshit. When I mentioned I travelled some of Route 66, he latched onto that. “Sometimes Route 66 is called the Mother Road.” He paused before continuing. “It was John Steinbeck that first called it that.” Then there was silence.
I smiled appreciatively at that, but had no real comment. I had no real opinion on the Mother Road or on Steinbeck, other than if Bill wanted me to be George to his Lennie, I was willing to dive out of the moving truck at any point. I had no desire to live off the fat of the land on a rabbit farm, and there’d be nothing but trouble when he tried to stroke some chick’s hair.
There was a long silence, then Bill had another fact about Route 66. “The whole original Route 66 isn’t drivable. Some of it is closed, and some of it you can’t fit a truck on it. Interstates have taken the place of Route 66, so no one needs to drive it. People have to make an effort to drive it.” He paused again. “I try to drive it as much as I can. I make up the time on other roads. It’s just sad it’s not used. A lonely, unused part of America.”
Then he lapsed into silence again.
"I do like empty roads, though," he said. "Empty roads allow me to go faster."
I looked at the speedometer and noticed that we were still going seventy five. "How much faster would you go?"
"Faster," he said simply.
Silence.
"The Guinness book of world records recognizes the fastest land speed by Andy Green. He drove the Thrust Supersonic Car. It had two jet engines attached. In the Nevada desert, it achieved a speed of 763 miles per hour and was the first car to break the sound barrier."
Shorter pause.
"I could break the speed barrier," he said.
I looked over to him, but he was still focused on the road. "What, like right now?" I asked, somewhat amused. I continued somewhat sarcastically: "I would think with a supersonic car, we'd all be able to break the barrier."
"So you agree with me," he said.
Now I paused and tried to figure out what he was asking. I was still at a loss, so I shrugged. "Well, yes, I guess. If you had a supersonic car. Then you could totally break the sound barrier."
I was unprepared for his next statement: "Good, let's try."
He flipped a switch on his monolithic dashboard. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it, but the dashboard console somehow became even bigger and produced even more buttons. The top lifted up, the sides opened like doors, and the bottom of the dash extended. Countless buttons lined the console, full of readouts and blinking lights. It looked strangely similar to the cockpit technology I had seen on Lincoln and the Patriot down in the bunker, except Bill's tech was more modern. However, I noticed that some of the text on the readouts and buttons was not English. In fact, it looked like no language I recognized.
"What the hell is this?" I asked in awe.
"I've made some modifications to my truck," he said, his eyes glassy and his voice distant. "There are some things I've always wanted. Some things always denied to me. But I've decided that I will not let that stop me. They can't stop me. I can break the sound barrier. I can break every record
."
"Wait, hold on there, I'm not sure -"
"Buckle your seat belt," he said, flipping a switch which caused the truck to fill with the sounds of Seventies heavy metal.
"You need to think this through. Fancy console aside, you need real engines to go fast. Like Ferrari or jet engines. Or the jet equivalent of Ferrari engines," I said, trying to be the voice of reason for once in my life. "We're in a truck."
"Look out the window at the back," he said.
I opened the window and braved the wind outside the truck. I noticed that the back of the truck had opened up. I saw not two jet engines, but four. One on the left and right, then one above and below. And in front of them was a strange device I couldn't see well and could describe even less well. It looked like a large clear egg maybe the size of a breadbox encased in wires. Within the sphere was a succession of various colors of light. Purple sparks arced from the ends of the device.
"What the hell is that?" I said frantically, as I pulled my head back in and closed the window.
"Four rocket engines, taken from intercontinental ballistic missiles," he said, as he flipped the switch to warm those up.
"And the blinking device?" I said, wondering if I was going to leave this truck alive, or if they'd find me later, pancaked against the side of a mountain in a mass of twisted metal and flattened human.
"That's experimental," he said, punching in codes to the dashboard. I heard a high pitched whine erupt from the back of the truck. "A transdimensional computational.... something. Dunno, man. Experimental. It should calibrate the engines to keep them in sync and go far beyond their normal stuff. Or that's what he said they'd do in theory. They work, though."
In theory? This was all sounding way too familiar. "Do you know a kid named Victor?"
"Oh, you know him too? Yeah, he was the one who hooked this all up for me."
"Oh shit," I said, buckling my seatbelt and trying to brace myself as much as I could.
"Are you ready?" he said, hovering his hand over a big red flashing button.
"Would you stop if I said no?" I asked, gritting my teeth.
"Nope," he said and pressed the button.
If you've ever been on a rollercoaster or driven with a crazy person, you know that feeling when the acceleration hits you with massive force and you're pushed back in your seat. But that's never the part that I personally remember the most. I remember the feeling of momentum in my balls, the same way when the rollercoaster falls, or there's a big dip in a road[20]. Well, in this case, it was that same testicular sensation, but multiplied times one hundred. And that was just the initial acceleration from the rockets. The flashing device hadn't even kicked in yet. If my balls had mouths, they'd have been puking up in my boxers.
It was about the time the device started doing its thing that reality ripped away from us.
There was a flash of lights, kind of like a kaleidoscope, if that kaleidoscope had been jammed into your eyeballs and began shooting lasers. My eyes hurt and my brain reeled as it felt like the world exploded and the truck broke on through to the other side.
The other side was very red.
Imagine being up in outer space, seeing the blackest void full of stars. Okay, now imagine that instead of the blackest void it was actually the reddest void. And it was very active for space. I saw comets shooting across the sky, stars large and flashing purple, planets as big as a full moon, large sparkly nebulas in every direction I looked. I saw some wreckage of weird alien ships. Our truck, no, our rocket truck cruised through this space.
Let me say this: every prog rock album cover lied to me. They all wanted to depict this and they all failed miserably.
The pulsing of one large purple star flashed brightly and my eyes hurt, especially after the transition. I covered my eyes and looked away. Bill, who I noticed had sunglasses on, handed me a second pair of sunglasses.
"The Quasars of Alta Aleria are very bright. Here, try these," he said coolly, staring out the windshield.
The sunglasses did help, lowering the eye stabbing brightness of this fantastic, multicolored universe to something far more bearable. They were large, thick wraparound sunglasses. Clearly not the type you just have hanging around. He had been prepared.
"Have you done this before?" I said, raising my voice a little to speak over the continued Seventies heavy metal he was playing.
He turned to me, his oversized sunglasses somehow giving him black bug eyes. He smiled serenely. "A few times."
With that, he yanked the wheel to the right, and we zoomed down to a planet, soaring through the green skies over seas of purple. We went down low enough to skim the sea.
As the purple liquid splashed the sides of the truck, Bill said: "This is the planet where Princess Aria-Zintia gave me a medal for defeating the mutant king of Kragonog."
Then he pulled the truck up and we zoomed up out of the atmosphere, narrowly missing some barbarian woman riding a pterodactyl. I can't tell you how much Seventies heavy metal sounded awesome while we did this. I mean, after all these years, I finally got what they were talking about. I just needed to appreciate them in another dimension.
"This is unbelievable!" I said.
"This is metal," he replied.
"What?" I said.
"The soul of metal is not power chords, not screaming into the mic," he said, still in his soft voice. "It's not about heroin, it's not about records. It's about travelling to new worlds, it's about epic struggles, it's about science fiction and science fantasy, it's about chicks with big boobs. The soul of metal allows you to bend space. To travel to any point in the universe while rocking. It allows you the power to move in your dreams and visit places that don't yet exist. To see hot chicks with tits far bigger than the laws of science would allow and to go on adventures where swords still matter. That's truly the soul of metal."
"Ronnie James Dio was right!" I shouted, feeling like I should testify.
Bill just nodded with a smile. He turned the wheel to the left so we just missed colliding with a long snake like dragon that winked at us as its scaled body went by.
We cruised longer, through stars and quasars, through nebulas and around black holes, seeing the most fantastic things I had ever seen. But eventually the sheer excitement of it all caught up to me and my eyelids began to droop. It was just another Saturn-ringed planet or two later when I drifted off to sleep to the comforting tunes of Seventies metal.
I awoke as Bill shook me awake. The truck had pulled into a rest stop in New Jersey as the sun began its descent from the sky. Bill never went into any of the five boroughs of New York City, as it was way too cramped and cluttered for him. But from Jersey I could take a train into Manhattan, and then home.
“This is your stop, little buddy,” said Bill.
For a moment I had a strange flashback of Gilligan’s Island, but it mercifully passed quickly. I rubbed my tired eyes and gathered my backpack.
"If you should ever need me..." he said, and then taught me a little rhyme. He said no matter where he was, he'd hear that. I wasn't sure I believed him, but I repeated it just the same.
I opened the door and stepped out. I turned and waved to him through the open door. "Thanks, Bill."
He nodded to me, then put those sunglasses on. Seventies heavy metal started playing again and he pulled the door shut. As I turned to the rest stop to look for train signs, behind me there was a flash of light and the thundering sound of a sonic boom.
I smiled to myself.
I walked into the New Jersey rest stop. I was almost home. I dreamed of a real bed and a triumphant homecoming.
But coming home was not as easy as leaving was.
Since You've Been Gone
August, 1994 - Long Island, New York
It was a dark and stormy night. The type of dark and stormy night that authors love and cinematographers shake their heads in annoyance of when said books are finally made into movies. The rain was coming down in sheets and lightning whipped across the sky, p
eriodically illuminating the darkness.
A lone figure walked up the driveway, then to the front door, trampling some of the flowerbed. The figured knocked on the door. The doorbell was ignored.
Bruce opened the door, his horror movie and mid-movie snack disturbed by the visitor. He opened only the main door, the storm door remained closed. He looked at the figure standing before the door. It was not easy to recognize in the rain. A dark figure, drenched and beaten by the weather, standing in silence.
Bruce gnawed at a sourdough pretzel rod and turned around. “Hey Victor, did one of your monsters escape again?”
“No,” replied the faint voice of his brother from elsewhere in the house. “They’re all accounted for.”
Bruce turned back to the door, gnawing his pretzel rod down to a nub. After a long silence, he said, “I guess it’s you then.”
The lightning illuminated my face. I was not amused.
“Are you going to let me in or not?” I said.
"I'm still thinking," he said.
"Bruce, you're my goddamn best friend!" I said.
He sighed. “As long as you come in and immediately get into the shower,” he said. “You smell like a wet dog or worse. If it wasn't raining, I'd hose you off with the garden hose in the back.”
"You're too kind," I said.
He opened the door and I stepped inside, shaking off the rain.
“Scratch that," he said, wrinkling his nose. "You smell like a wet dog who has been stuffed inside of a tauntaun.”
One shower later I was sitting at the kitchen table eating a cold chicken leg. Bruce and Victor's parents were once again travelling, leaving them with another fridge full of pre-made meals they were never excited about. Of course, that never stopped me, the eternal food scavenger, from picking at whatever I could find in the fridge when I visited. Bruce and Victor sat at the table with me, their hot sister was over at her boyfriend's place.
“So my trip took longer than I anticipated,” I said with a mouthful of chicken. “But I’m back now. What have I missed?”
Damned Lies! Page 22