“Whatever, I’m just saying.” Pontius reached into the glove box and pulled out a smaller paperback entitled, Games Zen masters Play.
“That’s called serendipity, Pontius.”
“What’s with everyone reading Zen?”
“As it turns out, the only ones equipped to deal with present shock are these dead guys who sat around and pontificated about the nature of reality nearly three thousand years ago. Go figure.”
Pontius squinted into the rising sun straight ahead of them. “This is poor urban planning.” He put his hand up to his eyes, refusing to believe the long straight road headed directly into the sun for as far as the eye could see.
A half hour further down the road, Rufus pulled the car over to the side. He patted Pontius, who had nodded off. Pontius trailed him out of the car.
“Have you ever seen the like?” Rufus ran through the yard chasing the chickens.
“What are they?” Pontius said.
“Chinese chickens, as colorful as peacocks and as varied as the flowers in the field. My God, they’re marvelous.”
Rufus kept grabbing them up in his hands, kissing them, and setting them back down, and running after the next one.
Fifteen minutes later, Rufus was panting, and rubbing the sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. He collapsed next to Pontius at the side of the road. “I’ve never been so happy in all my life. I’m going to retire right here, in this very spot. Promise you won’t let me forget to come back and kill this guy, after making him sign the place over to me.”
Pontius noticed the ivy crawling over the cottage, the way the low-rising stone wall was just enough to hem in the stupid chickens. “It is awfully pretty,” he said. “Like one of those picture postcards.”
***
“Where the hell are we?” Pontius asked. He coughed from the exhaust fumes of the truck in front of them carrying generic old caged chickens to slaughter.
“Daventry, Northamptonshire,” Rufus said.
“The best thing about this place is the name.”
“Actually, the best thing about this place is Stingray RV.” Rufus stepped on the accelerator to get around the chicken truck and the feathers that were gagging him. “Five’ll get you ten they’re on their way to rent a Winnebago.”
“What in hell for?”
“So they don’t have to stay in one place more than one night. If they keep moving, they’re harder to pin down. Not bad. Let’s hope they’re not out to prove three heads are better than two.”
***
“We have the largest indoor RV showroom in Europe,” the sales clerk said. He had boy-next-door good looks, hinting subliminally that, wherever his products went, the same allure would be forever associated with them. In short, the magic of attracting others just as pretty as he was could be had for a song. The fact he didn’t look too exotic kept the customers’ eyes on the showrooms, ensuring they continued to pull focus. “You can view our fleet in comfort.” He gestured expansively to the RVs lining the showroom floor to either side of them. “We have the widest range of motorhomes for sale and for hire. Any idea what you’re shopping for?”
“Insurance,” Mort said.
“We are also the only American-RV company to offer a full European warranty which covers you in all countries across Europe,” the sales clerk said. “Our rental division can cater for every requirement from a one day film shoot to a festival or motorsport weekend, or even a long-term self-drive hire.” He walked with them past the RVs, hoping one of them would catch their interest.
“Marvelous,” Mort said. “Now, more about the insurance. How are you with acts of God? Lightning strikes. Solar flares. Geomagnetic pole reversals. Crevasses in the earth opening wide to swallow you whole.”
“Good, actually,” the sales clerk said—after a couple beats.
“Bombs going off under you, next to you, over your head?” Mort said. “How are you with those?”
“Got you covered,” Bruno, the sales clerk—according to the name on his lapel—replied. He fingered his collar, and sounded parched.
“All your basic End Days scenarios covered?” Mort asked. “Are you sure? I’d hate to get hit with the small print later.”
“Europeans are very paranoid people. You yanks are usually more easygoing, though. I must admit I’m a bit surprised—”
“You can never be too prepared, I say,” Mort said.
“Out of curiosity, have any of these things actually happened to you?” Bruno asked. “Some people do seem to attract more than their share of bad luck.”
“Strictly healthy paranoia, like you say,” Mort reassured him. He patted him on the back so hard, he coughed; not unlike burping a baby.
“All the same, you don’t mind me checking your insurance, do you?” Bruno said. “Had a fella through here once was driving a freedom express from war-torn Sarajevo to the French Riviera and back. Hell on RVs to drive them through war zones, you understand? They’re just not rated for that.”
“You mean to tell me nothing’s armor plated?” Mort said.
“This generation of Airstreams would be my choice for the diehard survivalist.” They’d landed serendipitously in front of several, where they stopped.
“Now we’re talking,” Mort said. “I knew we were on the same wavelength.” Mort took his index and middle finger and traced a path from his eyes to the salesman’s and back again.
“Walk this way,” Bruno said. Mort pickpocketed the customers in Bruno’s wake, evaluated which of their credit cards might do the trick, not wanting to mess up Sister Gretchen’s credit, in all likelihood. Santini appreciated the concession to the real-world limits of their early-retirement fund.
With Mort off to handle the paperwork, Santini checked out one of the Airstreams.
As the door opened with the same sound a spaceship airlock might make, he stepped inside.
Nice. All the amenities. He wouldn’t mind retiring to one of these. Although even a used one dating back to World War II was probably out of his price range. His savings account had all of five thousand in it, which might just buy the World War II version, but wouldn’t leave anything for the monthly trailer-park fee. He was ashamed to admit, trailer trash was a few grades of human being better than he could aspire to.
The Eddie Bauer Airstream alliance was responsible for the spanking blond wood finish, other notable designer highlights for the adventurer, down to the flat screen TV on the wall, the space for stashing kayaks in back.
Santini just shook his head. “Mort’s right. Probably all get blown to shit inside a couple days. So don’t get attached,” he mumbled.
He stepped down the ramp back into the showroom to depressurize from the sensorial overload inside the trailer.
Mort walked up with the keys, dangling them in front of him like a thief, which Mort figured, wasn’t that far off.
***
Pontius pressed his palms against his pants. The underside of his hands sweated heavily when he was calm and unstressed due to a peculiarity of his nervous system. “How do you lose an RV? I mean, you can see it from outer space.”
“And yet this troubling fact lies before us.” Rufus canvassed the surroundings. He suspected foul play. Could Santini and his partner be receiving backup help he hadn’t bargained on? He looked for any signs of stealthy intruders intervening in his endgame.
Rufus swung the car around, doubled back on his course. “I don’t believe it.” Both men eyed the proprietor pushing back the doors to the enclosed alley. Painted on the doors was a lovely trellised brick-wall with blooming bougainvillea that completely concealed the alleyway. Inside the alley, the staffs of cafés and delicatessens that sold gourmet food prepared raw were setting out tables for their clientele that would start arriving within the hour.
“They turned an alley into an upscale outdoor eatery for the hoity-toity,” Pontius said. “How about that?”
Angry, Rufus set the car in gear and flew up the alley. He caused a stir of table
cloths and napkins and waitresses’ skirts, as if they were all auditioning for the role of replicating the famous shot of Marilyn Monroe standing on an air vent.
A fat restaurateur, seeing the car speeding by him, pressed himself against the wall in an effort to emulate wallpaper, not sure the car was going to get past him without taking its pound of flesh.
“Yeah, he’s thinking of going on a diet,” Pontius said. He eyed the side-view mirror on the passenger side, and the trail of debris, the splintered plastic tables and chairs in the car’s wake. “A shame to mess with their designer motif. It’s hard to come by a lot of redeeming uses for an alleyway.”
Clear of the alley, Rufus changed into third gear, drove straight into the sun. “Not good to drive blind at these speeds, boss,” Pontius said, putting his hand up to his eyes when squinting failed to suffice.
Rufus lowered the visor. “What’s with these people building roads that head straight for the rising sun?”
“I grew up dirt poor. I told you that, right?” Pontius said.
Pontius had a few other annoying quirks, like a high-excitation threshold. Even now, with death a virtual certainty, speeding recklessly through traffic half-blind, he didn’t feel the least stressed. And when Pontius wasn’t stressed, he tended to talk about himself. He was determined to build their relationship and establish a bond that would last into retirement, afraid their marvelous codependence would come to a certain end once he was no longer needed for muscle. Rufus realized, the hundred and one ways he looked down on him, no matter how he tried to hide it, just fed his insecurities. Rufus was working on that. The guy wasn’t half bad, more loyal than a lap dog, and strangely calming. Pontius was clearly learning to get in touch with his feminine side, and he owed it to him to indulge his efforts to be more well-rounded. Rufus figured he was to Pontius what Rufus’s orchids were to him.
“Most people think poor is not the way to go, but I beg to differ,” Pontius said.
Rufus swerved around the braking cars honking at him as he ran the light. He was lucky to have escaped collisions with four vehicles coming at him from four different directions in the five-way intersection.
Pontius’s cell phone went off. He retrieved the IMAX screen from his pocket with an image of a howler monkey wailing (his ringtone) and answered the device. He shut it off without saying a word. “We’re headed right, just go a little faster. They picked up the RV on satellite.”
“I love how expendable we are,” Rufus complained, barely dodging the semi-truck that had decided to back into him from the side in order to line up with its cargo dock.
“It is a Packard,” Pontius said. “It could take out a Mack truck if you just build up a little more steam.” He pocketed the cell phone. “Where was I?”
“You were telling me about the charms of growing up poor.”
“Thanks. To this day I live without TV. I just listen to the sounds coming from the other side of the wall in the apartment next door, the streets outside the window—and I put stories to them.”
“That’s pathetic, deranged, and depraved, Pontius. Though, not totally lacking in poetry.”
“It’s important to be able to sit with yourself quietly without coming unglued. Few people can do that, anymore, and it’s all on account of TV.”
“You’re like that longshoreman philosopher. What’s his name?”
“Eric Hoffer. I love that guy.”
“You read philosophy?” There it was again, the condescension. If Rufus could just get the judging part of his brain to slow down enough to let his loftier agenda take hold.
“I know I come off a little dense, but it’s on account of this defective nervous system I have. Like the sweaty palms,” he said, holding up his palms, and marveling at the sweat. “It just takes me a while to build up a really good thought. In the real world things move too fast for that, so I guess if I wasn’t doing this, I’d be working as a bouncer somewhere.”
Rufus softened; his current struggles to retrain his own mind invited empathy. “We need to focus. Something’s leading this guy down a path that makes him hard to follow, from the hidden alleyway to the roadway to the sun. I don’t think he knows this part of England, or any part for that matter, well enough to pull this off on his own.”
“Maybe we should call in for more of the satellite feed,” Pontius said.
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Rufus replied. He watched a lightning burst hit the telephone pole. It fell before the semi truck in front of them, effectively blocking their path. “Something tells me we’re heading exactly in the direction we should be going.”
Opening the driver’s side door, Rufus shouted, “Come on!”
Seconds later, Rufus tore open the door to the cab of the semi-truck. He attempted to yank out the driver, but he was a portly three hundred pounds. “Pontius, a little help here.”
Pontius pushed Rufus out of the way, and sent the truck driver sailing into the shrubbery at the side of the road.
“Make sure you pay the woman for the damage to her landscaping,” Rufus shouted at the truck driver.
Pontius laughed. “You see, that’s what I mean. I just wish I could get my mind to work fast enough to come up with stuff like that.”
He climbed into the passenger side of the cabin as Rufus put the truck in gear, and drove over the telephone poll.
“Do you believe this?” Rufus gestured as if anticipating where his swelled head was going to be in a couple seconds. “Thirty-four gears in this thing. This gear box is a bigger maze than the streets of Paris.” Finally, he shifted enough gears to get the truck up to freeway speeds, and relaxed. “Smooth sailing at last.”
No sooner had he spoken than the back of the semi-trailer dropped down, and out the back of the truck whizzed one motorcycle after another.
“Those are called crotch rockets. That’s just asking to get killed,” Pontius replied a little densely. Rufus wasn’t sure if he’d caught the fact that they were streaming out of the back of the truck as if someone had thwacked the hornet’s nest. He figured that someone was him.
The motorcyclists exhibited daredevil prowess on the crotch rockets, shooting at Rufus and Pontius all the while, cocooning them in a halo of bullets. “I love this game,” Pontius said, “Ducks in a shooting gallery.”
“Don’t look now, Pontius, but I think we’re the ducks.”
Pontius pulled down the rifle the truck driver kept hanging on a rack behind them, and started dispatching the motorcyclists. “Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a redneck.” He fired his next shot, and grimaced. “I didn’t know a shotgun could take out three cyclists at once.”
“It’s the range, Pontius,” Rufus said in as fatherly a manner as he could, proud he had squeezed ninety percent of the condescension out of his tone. “There’s a bigger pattern at work here than the spread of your shotgun blast. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the other guys have their own satellite aimed at us, and are working the smart-grid to shut us down.”
“The smart grid?” Pontius said. “You’re kidding, right? This is Europe. Don’t let the bullet trains fool ya. They have wires here that date back to before they discovered copper.”
“Smart enough, anyway.” Rufus eyed the traffic light cameras arching over the freeway despite the absence of traffic lights. “And they do have more roadway cameras than we do in America, no small feat, incidentally, considering how reliant we are on Big Brother.”
“I really don’t like it when you use that term. Makes me feel like we work for the bad guys.”
“We represent the government, Pontius. Trust me, we are the bad guys. It’s our job to squelch free will and the human spirit wherever and whenever it breaks out.”
Pontius took out two motorcyclists with his latest shotgun blast. Rufus took out two with his .44; aimed at the gas tanks, and blew them to hell.
“I really don’t think that gun suits you,” Pontius said. “You’re classier than that.”
“I admi
t, blowing people to hell is crass,” Rufus conceded. “But a man with an agenda is a scary thing.”
“There’s not much traffic out today. That’s good,” Pontius said. “It’ll keep the budget down if they ever turn our life into a movie.”
Rufus gave him the queer eye. “You sure your brain works all that slowly? Or you just have a few more detours to go down in that head of yours than the rest of us?”
Pontius’s next shotgun blast sent a motorcycle skidding over the bridge of the overpass to land on a propane truck passing below; it sent the truck up in a fireball, and created a pile up of cars for as far as the eye could see. “Shit, there goes the budget. And we were doing so well, too.”
“I’m changing your name to Non Sequitur.”
“Why? I was just getting used to Pontius Pilate.”
“I’m afraid the rationale behind that one is so convoluted, even I’ve lost track of it.”
“Looks like that’s the last of the angry hornets spilling out the nest.” Pontius cocked the shot gun just in case.
“I’ve had better news,” Rufus replied, checking his side view mirrors even more zealously than before.
“What the hell!” Pontius exclaimed, encouraging Rufus to look at the road in front of him.
Everyone driving an upscale Beamer or Mercedes was heading straight for them. They took turns crashing their vehicles into the truck and blowing up handsomely. “Shit!” Pontius exclaimed. “The only one who’ll touch this movie now is Bruckheimer.”
“It’s the computers in their cars,” Rufus explained. “They’re overriding the drivers’ wishes.”
“How?”
“Someone is really good at working the smart grid. Maybe even better than our people.”
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 110