by Bryan Way
I get that smile again. He stares back for too long, his tongue gliding back and forth over the one tooth. His hand comes off the M-16 so he can unzip his jacket. My fists clench as he reaches inside… and produces a receipt book. I feel my jaw loosen as he pulls a pen out of the spiral binding at the top and writes on the pad. A moment later, he rips the receipt free and hands it to me. The word BARTLEBY is scrawled across it along with an inventory of our transaction. “We have a deal.” He says finally. I nod and take the receipt.
“When you’re ready, pull up, flash your high beams. Supplies in the bus?”
“Yes.” I reply.
“Unload up there…”
He starts to turn, but I stop him.
“Do we shake on it?” I ask.
“No.”
“…you sure?”
“You don’t wanna shake my hand.”
With that, he turns and walks back toward the northbound opening. I turn slowly, my back tensing as I trudge toward the Humvee, preparing to duck and run if I hear a gunshot. You don’t wanna shake my hand. What the hell is that supposed to mean? To my immense relief, I make it back to the Humvee and sit in the driver’s seat without incident, immediately picking up the CB.
“Rich, still with me?”
“Go ahead. Over.”
“Two M-16s with full mags, two cases of canned food, and a case of water. Over.”
“We negotiating? Over.”
“Nope. We’re done. Round trip. Have the guys get it ready at the front and bring it out. Just you… do you understand? Over.”
“I read you. Over.”
“Let me know when you’re set, over and out.”
And we wait. I glance at the needle on the fuel gauge and consider that it might be wise to refuel once we’ve made it a safe distance from the tunnel. If we survive it. I replay what I told the negotiator in my mind; he has to assume I have more weapons than the ones I’m giving him, or there’d be no point to haggling about bullets, and I mentioned there’s a soldier in my group. I revealed these things willingly with the intent of giving him doubts about the strength of our group. If Mel and Ally blanketed the windows, we don’t have anything to worry about, unless they have a thermal scope.
“Ready. Over.” Rich calls out over the CB.
“Okay… nice and slow. Over.”
“Copy… over and out.”
I flash my high beams as instructed and pull forward. I pinch my .45 between my thighs with the barrel facing the ground, flapping my trench coat over my legs as we advance. As I pull between a highway divider and a guardrail, I know I’m at the point where we truly become vulnerable. Another guy, wearing jeans and a bright blue winter coat, steps out in front of the car carrying an automatic weapon with which I am unfamiliar. I slow to a stop, smile, and wave just as I pull beneath the shadow of the tunnel. He nods back at me.
Behind me, the bus crawls up slowly until it finally stops. I watch in the rearview mirror, staying mindful of whatever’s happening on my left side. Three men approach the side door of the bus, stop, and wait for it to open. I can’t hear the conversation over the engines, but I can see the negotiator’s mouth moving. One of the men steps forward and Rich hands him a case of food with the water on top, then returns to the bus. A moment later, he hands off another food case with both M-16s on top.
The men walk away, but the negotiator remains. He points to the rear of the bus with his M-16 as if to illustrate a point and silently nods. I’m waiting for him to lift his weapon and start shooting, at which point this tunnel will be the stage for a reenactment of the last half hour of the film Heat. The negotiator points inside the bus and takes a step back. Not taking his hand off the grip of his M-16, he unzips his jacket again and produces a walkie-talkie. He says a few words and Rich extends his hand from the opening.
The negotiator takes another step back and seems to repeat himself. Rich’s hand wavers sideways, and then disappears through the door. The negotiator walks in front of the bus and steps over the guardrail to get to the lot between the two tunnels, Rich closes the door, and the guy in front of me gets out of the way, motioning for me to pass.
The northbound tunnel is merely two walls lined with dull tungsten lights and a ceiling of decrepit white tiling. After about a thousand feet, the tungsten lights end, replaced by fluorescents. In the midst of this lighting change, I wonder where the emergency exits are. Having travelled this tunnel frequently, I thought there were doors in the wall every few hundred feet. Somehow, I completely missed the security cameras posted with frequency.
I get a lump in my throat as we approach the middle. There’s definitely a door ahead to the left. Staying in the right lane, I take one hand off the wheel and clutch my Colt. If there were any place to do it, it’d be here: cut the lights, blow out the tires, and watch us scatter like roaches. I pass the door and nothing happens. I let go of the pistol and prepare myself for the possibility of a car or obstruction greeting us at the other end of the tunnel. We pass another door on the left, and as we approach the exit, nothing stirs.
Once I am reintroduced to the sun, I look back as the bus escapes the shadow. There are four men loitering between the lanes on this side, but they appear to be sitting around smoking, allowing us to drive freely away from the Lehigh Tunnel. The radio remains clear, and every inch taking us further makes me feel immeasurably better. A mile up the road we hit the first overpass, so I pull the Humvee off to the side and wait for Rich to do the same.
Once he’s stopped, I leap out of the Humvee, run back to the bus, and leap into the open doors, finding Ally and Mel beyond ecstatic. Both of them embrace me as soon as I get up the steps, while Rich extends his arm for a semi-sarcastic handshake. “So…” I start. “He said you wouldn’t want to shake his hand too?” Rich shakes his head, developing a coy smile. “What else we gotta do for that piece of shit?” He asks. I wasn’t expecting his reaction to be this antagonistic.
“When we come back…” I reply. “…two more cases of water, food, and 90 some rounds of 5.56.”
“You just… gave him that?”
“Yeah. Compared to him killing us, or… alternative… services… it was a bargain.”
“Alternative… what…?” Ally asks.
“Don’t worry about it.” I interrupt. “We prepared for this.”
“Who says he doesn’t renege?”
“Why bother to give me this?”
I produce the receipt. Rich looks at it for a long time, then holds it up and raises his eyebrows.
“You told him we’re coming back.” Rich states. “Did you tell him we were bringing people?”
“Yes…”
“Maybe he wants to wait until he’s got everyone in one place.”
“Maybe you’re overthinking it.”
I can’t believe we’re staring each other down over this.
“Guys…” Mel starts.
“Maybe you should’ve let me handle it…” Rich interrupts.
“Aw, fuck you…” I respond. “There are about a billion ways that could’ve gone, not many end with us on the other side alive, unharmed, and well-supplied.”
Rich stares hard at me, eventually smiling as he shakes his head.
“You little prick. Alright Bartleby, what’s the next move?”
“We’re about 30 minutes from the 80 interchange, that’s roughly the halfway point. We catch a breather, try to refuel… does it make sense to wait for them?”
“We don’t know when they left…” Mel offers. “So we have no idea when they’d show up.”
“7:00am, right?” Ally asks. “You agreed on that? If that’s the halfway point…”
“It’s not exact… if I read the map right we go about a hundred miles, right?”
“Right.” Rich replies. “And they go 130.”
“But we don’t know what’s in the way…”
“So you propose we wait for them?” Ally asks.
“No…” Mel continues. “Like Jeff said… chill
for a minute, listen to the radio, then get moving.”
“Okay…” Ally acknowledges, looking to me. “And you tried your friend on a landline?”
No I fucking didn’t.
“Shit.” I manage.
“Then we do that too…” Mel says quickly. “Whatever, it’s not like we’re going to the moon…”
“…mmm, yeah, it’s a lot like that.” Ally offers. “We know where we’re going… but we have no idea what’s going to happen on the way or what’s going to be there when we arrive. We have limited supplies and no safety net. Just because we know where we are doesn’t mean we’re safe. Every mile we put between us and Massey is another one we have to take back. Don’t forget that. We might as well be in space until the moment we park in front of the school.”
“There a problem with that?” Mel asks. “I mean… I could be remembering this wrong, but we made it back from the moon every time. But oh, this is more dangerous. I’m not here to bitch… I’m here because it’s worth doing. I’m okay with you guys being the smart ones…” She motions to Rich and Ally, and then looks back at me. “But we’ve got the balls to get you there.”
Rich widens his eyes and plops his hands on his knees, exhaling as he stands up. “Okay, if we’re done with this dick measuring contest… let’s move out.” I chuckle as I stand up and start down the steps. Halfway down, I look back at Rich. “This is my stop, do you mind?” He rolls his eyes as he works the lever to open the door. Just before Mel and I get back to the Humvee, she points out a Zombie tumbling down the hill to our right. “Almost a novelty at this point, huh?” I say. Mel smiles as she gets in, and I follow suit. I start up the Humvee and rev forward; the plow is already oriented to the right, so it’s no surprise when we catch the crawler’s upper torso and watch him get sucked under the passenger side tires before getting blown apart with a concussive explosion of blood.
The proceeding drive is uneventful; we spot only a few scattered corpses along the highway until we pass over a river, at which point I get distracted enough to draw us within inches of the k-rails, watching several corpses in the water below as they struggle against the current toward a goal I can’t divine. Shortly after the river, Mel spots a potential jam ahead, so we pull off at the Mahoning exit. We try to merge back on the onramp, but the jam extends beyond that, so we cross over 476 to go North in the southbound lane.
This works for about three miles until the southbound lane is jammed up. I can say without a doubt that the Humvee could make it around on the grass beyond the shoulder, but the bus would be stuck. Mel’s solution is surprisingly simple; get the Humvee parallel to the lanes and push the dividers until they’re clear. This proves slightly more difficult than we’d imagined, but we manage to push two of them far enough to accommodate the Humvee as well as the bus.
Rich radios to inform me that he’s going to make a note of this particular detour, and though I first wonder why he’d bother, it eventually becomes clear that we’d be better off returning in the northbound lanes, barring some additional distractions. After he signals the end of his transmission, I get the feeling that we’re driving through deeper snow than the miles before the tunnel. I can’t tell if I’m imagining this or not, but eventually I err on the side of caution and leave the plow deployed. I glance back toward Rich and gauge that the bus is slightly wider than the Humvee, but as he lodges no objections to the plow, I assume he’d rather travel with it than without.
Minutes later, we’re treated to the sight of snow-dusted trees bunched on the gently rolling mountains that obscure the Penn Forest Reservoir. While much of the drive is a valley of blacktop sandwiched between sharply declining hills lined with trees, this section is one of only a few where the highway rises above the foliage, turning the forest below into a nebulous sea of wide brush strokes. When driving to my cabin, these vistas were a welcome distraction from an otherwise mundane voyage. Now, they provide a touchstone that removes some of the solemnity attached to Ally’s assessment that we might as well be travelling through space. At worst, it’s a familiar landscape with new dangers, though just because we survived the tunnel doesn’t mean we’ve eliminated the possibility of something worse awaiting us.
Soon thereafter, the thirty-foot high trees return and I know that we’re plowing through the middle of Hickory Run State Park, which means that route I-80, the Keystone Shortway, is only a few miles ahead. After passing the proper exit sign, I see a massive post sprouting golden arches next to another pole advertising a hotel chain. One mile later, I can see light pylons jutting up from a clearing with sparse single-story buildings and a conical salt storage dome poking out of an undisturbed sheen of snow. We corkscrew around the off-ramp, pass the toll plaza, and end up in an intersection near a series of chain restaurants, a hotel, and a Wawa gas station. We’ve made it halfway.
I lead the charge to Wawa, and though I expected to find it ransacked, I did not anticipate that it would still have power. Mel enters the building to use the facilities as I follow Ally’s suggestion and attempt to reach Alan through the landline. He does not answer. Once finished with the phone, I join Rich as he systematically tests the gas pumps with a credit card taken from a corpse in Newtown Square. One by one, each dispenser proves empty until he arrives at the diesel pump. Fortunately, we are able to squeeze a few precious gallons out before the nozzle begins to sputter.
Following Mel’s lead, Ally steps into the building as Rich and I review our fuel intake. As Rich finishes checking the tires on both vehicles, I step on a snow mound outside the parking lot to get a look at the hotel perched precariously close to this massive junction in the middle of nowhere; despite the relative absence of cars on roadways, the lot for the hotel is nearly full, and many of the cars are curiously free of snow. Rich joins me after a moment, surveying the snow-swept mountains and the tranquility of the abandoned interchange.
“Whaddya suppose that’s about?”
“What?” I reply.
“The hotel…”
“Got me. Can’t be a terrible place to hold up.”
“Should we stop in?”
“Nah…” I continue. “No need for that kinda trouble.”
“Yeah… we’re in enough as it is.”
I know that tone. I thought he and I were supposed to be on pleasant terms after we voted to become a hermit kingdom, but he’s been steadily eroding my good will over the last week. I don’t give him the satisfaction of engaging him, waiting for him to continue.
“You remember when we brought Helen in?”
“Of course.”
“Even if we’d had the time… I couldn’t have talked you into it. Two months later, you win the debate over staying isolated… but here we are.”
“…this is a little different.” I reply.
“Because it’s your friends.”
“Because they’re in trouble. You wouldn’t refuse help to a dying man.”
“No… I wouldn’t.” Rich insists. “Everyone wants to protect their families… but you led the charge to stop that.”
“Rich…” I sigh. “Can you just shoot up a flare when you get to the point?”
“This is a rescue…” He grunts. “It’s the first time we’ve done this for someone outside the group… and it’s your friends.”
“So, ah… Jesus, Rich… do you wanna just turn back?”
“No. I wanna see this through, and that’s my point. Doesn’t matter to me who we save. But it matters to you.”
He walks away, as I knew he would. What an impregnable dick. It’d be one thing if he’d essayed these concerns before he left, but now we’re a hundred miles from home and he’s telling me we should’ve done this months ago. What’s the point now? It’s not as though we can change the past. And I dare say this situation is unique; we’ve never been in direct contact with someone who needed our help and had the chance to grant or deny it. Except for Tracy Dantis.
I look back as Rich continues toward the bus and wish I could shout that out t
o him, but I know it’d be too late. We didn’t even know her, but I made the executive decision to include her. Yes, she ended up killing herself and sidling us with another kid, but I can’t imagine arguing that we made the wrong choice.
Once Mel and Ally have made their way out of the Wawa, we retreat to the bus and reconnoiter the radio. Static hisses on each channel, giving us little hope that our westbound compatriots are close enough for us to stay put. Twenty minutes pass on the cold bus before Rich suggests we get moving along 80. When Mel and I hop off to restart the Humvee, I get a sinking feeling that we’ll reach a point in the second leg of the journey where we have to call it quits. How close will we get to Penn State before I’m finally willing to give up on them? What if we somehow manage to pass them and return to discover they beat us back? What if they beat us back because we never return?
When we merge on I-80, I realize it’s been years since I’ve been on this road, as opposed to the mere months that have passed since I traveled further north on 476. A gasp I hadn’t expected fills my lungs as I recall the last summer voyage to my cabin. Alan and Jack were there, along with Drew, Mursak, and my brother, among others. I remember taking shots around the fire, blissfully staring up at the stars, eating a BBQ pulled pork sandwich I’d heated up in our unreliable oven after purchasing it cold at the nearby country store. I’ve retained the affectations of sitting on the couch listening to a mix CD in those dingy environs, loving every ecstatically intoxicated moment, never once imagining that I would never experience it again.
Mel asks what I’m thinking, but I passively demur. Those moments are mine. I notice the first bead of snow lilting from the slate-gray sky above as we pass one of the many truck stops on the way; how is it that the clouds moved in without me noticing? I hear Rich’s voice tick in on the radio, and though I might have ignored this outreach before, I now impose a measure of urgency upon it; on his behalf, I feel increasingly terrified that there will be no response.