All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  Keeley recoiled, raising her hand to slow things down. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m not judging your plan. I’m just … worried.” She wiped away some tears with her sleeve. “Terrified, actually.”

  Linda came in and sat beside her on the sofa. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry I snapped. We’re all terrified, I think. But it may be the only chance we have. Guy’s brother works for the CBC. He can put me on live.”

  “I can’t wait to see dat, eh?” said Pooch with a grin. Keeley looked away.

  Pooch shrugged and turned to Cole. “We go get you some clothes now,” he said. The two of them headed down the hall toward the bedroom.

  Keeley listened as they pulled out drawers and opened the squeaky closet door. Pooch’s cheerful patter and Cole’s eager responses filled the house with normalcy. These two could have been good friends, she thought. In another time. Another universe. But all they had, all they would ever have, were these few moments. Pooch used them wisely, giving this man what gifts of courage he could, this man whom the Cosmos had chosen for this journey. Soon Linda and Cole would step through her front door and into the night, and Keeley had no idea where their path would take them. That knowledge had not been given to her. And the foresight that Spud had given her would soon run out, leaving her stranded on the dark and lonely trail that would take her through her own coming days. She did not wish to walk that path.

  Keeley stood and pulled Linda to her feet. “C’mon, Cornfed,” she said. “Let’s get you made up.”

  9.3

  “You can be so fucking stubborn!” shouted Linda.

  Keeley stood her ground. “It has to be done.”

  “Like hell it does. You said it yourself. You don’t know how it all plays out from here!”

  Keeley reeled back as if slapped, then stormed across the room and yanked her jacket from the closet by the front door. She whirled to face them. “We have to assume they know everything, Mrs. President. Who you’re with. What kind of car you’re driving. Everything. If I can draw them away, if I can keep them in Maine longer, I will. I am not just going to sit here while you three go off and get yourselves—” She stopped, turned away, fished for her hat on the closet shelf, as if she was done arguing.

  “Vermont’s a fucking state-wide Subaru dealership, Keeley,” said Linda coldly. “You don’t have to drive Cole’s car to fucking Portland. If they’re checking out white Foresters, it’s gonna take them a while to get here!”

  The phone rang in the kitchen and Keeley went to get it, stepping quickly past Cole and her husband as if ready to knock them over if they got in her way. She grabbed the handset and barked. “Hello!”

  The three of them listened as she took the call. Pooch put on his jacket. Cole, dressed in jeans and a blue flannel shirt and one of Pooch’s raincoats, lifted a duffel bag filled with extra clothes to his shoulder. Linda sighed impatiently, standing near the woodstove. She was dressed full out in what Keeley had termed “nouveau glam hippie-chick,” long skirts and layers and dangling earrings and lots of eyeliner. She felt stupid and vulnerable, but Cole had said he liked it. She sure as hell didn’t look like the President.

  “Fuck you!” Keeley shouted from the kitchen, slamming the handset into its cradle. She stormed into the room.

  “Anyt’ing we should know about dere?” asked Pooch.

  Keeley cast a withering glare at her husband and marched back to the closet to grab her boots. She sat on the floor. “Just some dipshit wrong number from Duluth,” she said, pulling on a boot. She looked up at her husband and her face softened. “Said his name was Obie. Got mad at me because he said I called him!”

  Both boots on, Keeley stood. She put on her hat and pulled the hood of her raincoat over it. Checking to make sure she had her keys, she crossed the room to her husband. She started to speak, stopped, shook her head, and pulled his face to hers for a quick kiss. “I’ll see you again one day, my Pooch,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

  “Hep!” she called. Both dogs sprang to their feet. Turning, almost running, Keeley headed out the front door, Betty and Chapin close to heel. She ran into the rain. And the night. And the uncertain days that lay just beyond the future she already knew.

  The three of them watched as she departed, speechless. They heard the Forester start and watched as the car lights swung around and headed up the drive. Pooch sighed but said nothing.

  Cole cleared his throat. “I have a brother called Obie in Duluth,” he said.

  9.4

  “I don’t even know who the bad guys are anymore,” said Linda, watching out the side window of Pooch’s van, an old recycled ice cream truck now used for transporting motorcycles. The lights of oncoming cars and the heavy rain made it hard to see the road, and Pooch drove slowly.

  “I know what you mean, eh?” said Pooch from the driver’s seat. Cole sat beside him up front. Behind them, in the cargo area, Pooch had created a makeshift “tent” out of two old Honda street bikes. The idea was that Linda would wedge in between them, under a pile of tarps, when they neared the border. “De whole worl’ is become insane,” he added.

  Pooch followed 114 and headed southeast into Canaan, picking up speed as he veered past 141 on the left. Keeley had argued that they should take 141 up to the Hereford Road crossing. Closer and smaller, little more than an old gas station and some orange traffic cones, she thought Hereford Road was their best point at which to skip over the border. But Pooch was determined to go through Canaan and skim the New Hampshire line, crossing into Canada on 253. Even though the Beecher Falls station was brand new and more fully staffed, having been rebuilt in 2012 as part of the ever-tightening dictates of Homeland Security, Pooch felt like he was better known there. He’d fixed the station chief’s old Harley more than once, and he’d crossed there many times, picking up and dropping off. New or not, it was still a very small station, and this was still a sparsely populated corner of the planet.

  Linda sat on a milk crate and watched the road as they slowed into Canaan. Her guts were twisted tight with fear and anger and uncertainty. Too many questions had gone unasked, let alone unanswered. There had not been time. The dogs’ agitated barking had spooked them. And Cole’s falling asleep. Everything had changed after that. They’d been gripped with an urgency they hadn’t felt before, as if they could hear Rice coming down the drive, as if they were being watched by unseen demons. Keeley had dragged Linda into the bathroom to cut and dye her hair, and Pooch woke Cole to share what plans he and Keeley had made to get them into Canada, and to pack some supplies. Then Keeley ran off into the night with her scheme to hide Cole’s car. Why had she been so angry? And that phone call. They’d run through the rain and into Pooch’s van and they were now less than five miles from the choke point for the whole endeavor. The country’s borderline had become her own. She was crossing into her greatest test. She was coming around that oft-dreamt corner, right here in the real world. And she did not have a map.

  Linda reached forward and put a hand on Cole’s shoulder. Cole turned to face her, his expression distant and distracted. He was as terrified as she. “Tell me about your brother,” she said. They had to think about it sometime.

  Cole grimaced. “It couldn’t have been Obie,” he said. “Obie doesn’t have a phone. It must have been the aliens. Like those strange calls at my house.”

  Linda nodded. “Possible. We shouldn’t assume anything.”

  The van lurched as Pooch crossed the New Hampshire line and turned left onto Route 3. Linda braced herself on Pooch’s shoulder. He reached up to pat her hand. “We be dere soon, eh?” he said.

  Linda breathed deeply in an attempt to calm her pounding heart. She thought back with confusion to Keeley’s departure, how she’d stormed out the door. Her old friend hadn’t even said goodbye. It didn’t make sense. “Did you guys have it all worked out?” she asked. Linda caught Pooch’s eye in the rearview mirror. “About Keeley ditching Cole’s car, I mean.”

  Pooch shrugged. “She
come up wit dat at the last minute,” he replied. He rolled the steering wheel to the left, taking them back into Vermont on 253. “You’d better go under de tarps now,” he advised. The van pushed slowly northward, past a row of sleeping houses and the vast remnants of some old manufacturing plant. There were no other cars. Linda started to move back.

  “Fuck,” spat Cole.

  Linda stopped and peered through the rain-spattered windshield. The Canadian crossing was less than half a mile ahead, lit up like a box store. Parked right next to the station were two police cars, gleaming under the blazing lights. Their lightbars, though not activated, reflected the van’s headlights like possum’s eyes. Linda ducked down as quickly as she could, sliding under the cold canvas and wedging herself between the motorcycles.

  “Looks like maybe somebody tell dem we are coming,” Pooch said. He didn’t slow the van for a moment, as if he knew that to do so would only draw suspicion. Cole looked on in amazement as Pooch grabbed another beer from a bag beside his seat and opened it. He leaned back for a big gulp, then winked at Cole. “La pisse des dieux!” he shouted out in defiance.

  Cole looked ahead to the border crossing, noting the customs signs in both English and French. A thought struck him and he turned to Pooch in panic. “What about passports?” he asked.

  Pooch nodded, patting his shirt pocket. “We tink of dat too,” he said with a grin.

  The station’s canopy, studded with high-pressure sodium vapor lamps, loomed over them like the entrance to hell: glowing orange, with nothing but blackness beyond, and raindrops falling through the light. Pooch brought the van to a stop. Apart from the provincial cruisers and an old Saturn in an employee space, their van looked to be the only vehicle there. The place felt deserted.

  “Eh, fuck dis,” said Pooch, pulling back again on his beer. He honked his horn. “C’mon, you fuckers!” he shouted again.

  Cole shrunk into his seat. “Christ, Pooch,” he said. It was all he could get out past the terror.

  Pooch started rolling down his window, ready to shout again, when the station door opened. Out came a uniformed officer, the golden maple-leaf arm patch declaring him a border services agent. Pooch smiled and waved. It was Luc … Pomerleau, if he remembered correctly. Not one of the regulars, but he knew Luc from a poker game he’d sat in on a year or so ago. Luc walked stiffly around the front of the van.

  “You run dis crossing like you play cards, Luc,” he said with a grin. He held up his beer. “I gotta piss.”

  Luc smiled briefly. “Seems like I remember winning, though, eh?” he said. “Pooch, right?” Luc kept his hand on the leather holster at his belt. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. He was barely twenty-one. A kid.

  Pooch nodded. “Dis is my friend Doug,” he said, motioning toward Cole with his beer. He reached up to dig the passports from his shirt pocket. Cole, his heart pounding, nodded slightly and stared.

  Luc glanced at Cole for a second, then back at Pooch. He ignored the proffered documents. “Where you headed, Pooch?” As he spoke, three more officers, two from the Sûreté du Québec and another from Border Services, slipped out of the station and walked toward the van. The CBSA officer stopped about eight feet from Cole’s window, far enough ahead that he and Luc had a clear line of sight between them. The two provincial policemen stepped around to the back. All three wore full riot gear and hard, tense faces.

  Not even glancing at the troopers, Pooch took another swig of his beer and gestured with this thumb to the back of the van. “Gotta couple of bikes for Louis up in Cookshire, eh? You know Louis? He run de dépanneur dere.” Pooch looked over at Cole. “De convenient store,” he explained.

  Luc glanced nervously at the trooper across from him.

  Pooch followed his gaze. He’d never seen this fellow before. Looked really angry. He smiled at the man and turned back to Luc. “You guys must be all riled up like bees, eh? What wit de President gone missing.” Luc frowned but did not respond. The trooper shifted his stance, flipped open the strap on his holster. Pooch finished his beer and tossed the bottle over his shoulder. “You gonna pass us t’rough, Luc, or do I piss right here, eh?” Pooch grabbed the handle and started to open his door.

  “Stop!” shouted the trooper in front, gun suddenly drawn and aimed. Cole flinched, raising his arm as if to ward off a blow. The station door flew open with a bang, revealing a tall, thin, red-haired man in a gray suit and hat. In his outstretched hand was something small and black, a cube or tiny box the size of a golf ball. Cole could barely make him out through the raindrops, but he knew instinctively who this man was.

  “Punch it!” Cole shouted to Pooch. Pooch complied without hesitation, slamming his door shut as he hit the gas. The van pitched forward, the engine much more lively than Cole would have guessed. Cole watched in the side mirror as the patrolman to his right turned, took a stance and popped off a pistol shot that grazed the side of the van as they sped away. Two more shots sounded, no doubt coming from the provincial troopers behind them. Cole ducked, but nothing seemed to hit the van. “That was fucking Rice back there!” he shouted.

  Pooch looked over and grinned. “I guess so, eh?” he said. He weaved back and forth in his lane a bit, trying to confound the troopers’ aim. The station lights jiggled and shrank in his rear-view mirror. Ahead lay straight black road, steady rain, and the dark of night. He floored the accelerator and finished his beer.

  “Cole?” came Linda’s voice from behind.

  “Elly’s just a mile ahead, mon trésor,” said Pooch. “We make it!” He laughed wildly and rolled up his window.

  “We’re okay, Linda,” added Cole. He turned to watch the road as Pooch pushed them onward. The wipers could barely keep up with the rain. The road was too black to be seen. There was no other traffic. Cole looked back through the van’s rear windows. The station lights were sinking into the distance. There was no sign of pursuit.

  “Ah,” said Pooch. “So dis is it, eh?”

  Cole faced forward and peered into the darkness. “Oh, no,” he muttered. A blot of light reflected faintly in the headlights. Was that…? Rice again! The van punched through the rain. Rice grew larger in their field of view. Pooch did not slow. Rice raised both arms. A huge black gun. A blinding flash of green at the barrel. A hole the size of an orange punched through the windshield. Cole turned to his friend. A hole the size of an orange had been punched through Pooch’s chest. The blunt nose of the van smacked into Rice with a sickening thud, slinging his head against the windshield with a vicious crack before dragging him under. The van veered to the right and tipped to the left, sliding and sparking on its side along the pavement before plunging over the gravel shoulder and into the ditch. It came to rest just short of the tree line.

  Cole yelped for breath against the seatbelts that held him hanging.

  The rain continued to fall.

  9.5

  Is that my blood? Linda pulled her hand out and reached for her forehead. Not blood. How could it be my blood? It’s dripping on me from above. Another drop hit her fingers. Cold. Not blood. Not blood. Water. Rain. Cold. She could hear rain. She could hear wind. No, not wind. Breath. Breathing. Hard and labored. Cole. Fuck. “Cole?” No sound. “Pooch?” Who’s Pooch? She thought she was speaking but she didn’t hear the words. She focused on her mouth, her lungs, her throat, her lips. She tried again. “Cole?” She heard that, but it did not sound like her voice that said it.

  She listened. There was a distant flapping sound like hands and handles and panic and pain. A shout of rage and effort filled the darkness, followed by a loud click and a zip and a thud and a huge intake of breath.

  “Linda?”

  Linda opened her mouth and spoke again, hoping her words would make it up and out of the deep well into which she had fallen. Everything felt so far away. And what was this sticking into her back? She’d fallen onto a pile of bones. “I’m here!”

  “Oh my God,” said a voice.

  It was Cole. He must have fallen in
too. Into the well. No. Not a well. Nobody had fallen. They’d been driving. In a van. Cole. Pooch. There was movement overhead. The rustling of bats. She raised her hand in defense. Bats. No. Not bats. It was Cole. He was coming. Another drop hit her forehead and she flinched. “I’m here,” she said again. She didn’t know if Cole could hear her. Everything was so far away. “Are you okay?”

  A hand reached down under the canvas and found hers, grabbing and squeezing. “Linda. It’s Cole. I’m okay. Are you alright?”

  She checked her body, testing her extremities with her mind. No bad pain. That thing in her back. She felt trapped, her legs wedged in tightly, wrapped in something cold. She moved her head. It moved. “Cole?” she said again.

  “I’m right here, sweetie. Are you okay? Can you move?”

  Hands pulled at the canvas, drawing it back and away. The cold air swept in. She shivered. But she could move her leg a bit more easily. “I’m here.”

  “Can you move?”

  “I can move.” She raised her right knee, freeing her foot. Cole’s hands worked in under her shoulders and lifted her up. “Where’s Pooch?”

  “Does that hurt?” he asked. “Can you move?”

  “I can move.” She felt around in the darkness, her hands questing for something real. There was cold metal and oil. There was Cole’s neck, warm and alive. The rain continued to fall outside, the patter on metal reminding her of summer nights at her grandparent’s house. Did he call me “sweetie”? Where’s Pooch?

  “We’ve gotta get out of here,” said Cole in the dark. He pulled her to a sitting position. “Can you walk?”

  She wrapped an arm around his bare neck, using his warmth to guide her when there was no light. She could feel his heart pulsing and she buried her face against his throat. The warmth melted her tears and she started to sob. The raindrops hovered in mid-fall. The world hushed. Time itself stopped in sacred observance. There were her tears. There was Cole’s beating heart and warm, wet neck. There was breath and grief and darkness. That was the whole of reality.