– – –
Kris took a shower while JD cleaned out the minivan. His mom loaned her a red velour track suit with white piping.
“It’s mostly clean and it’s in your size,” she said.
She gave them a bag of sandwiches while JD got on the phone and arranged for his nephew to check in on his mom while they were gone.
“It’ll be a week,” he said. “At most.”
It was already the end of August. Kris realized her family must think she was dead. Little Charles had probably filed a missing person’s report by now. JD threw his duffel bag into the back of the minivan and seemed to hear her thoughts.
“You don’t have a home anymore,” he said. “You can never return to the Wheel. An album only plays in one direction: forward. But I’ll be with you. Every step.”
When she used to go on tour, Kris loved the feeling of being on the road, because she knew that every tour was a circle and you always wound up back home. Not this time. She didn’t belong anywhere. It felt terrifying.
Finally, they stood in the driveway. JD tied a red-and-black Manowar bandana around his head, which made him look more like a pirate than a Viking.
“You take care of each other,” Mrs. Davis said, giving Kris a surprisingly wet kiss on the cheek. “And don’t worry about me. Gunnar will be over in half an hour. You two go have fun at your concert.”
They climbed into the white Ford minivan.
“Seatbelts,” JD said.
They strapped in. Then he turned the ignition and paused for a minute.
“Kris,” he said. “Let us go into a battle from which we may never return. But I have sworn Odin’s Oath to keep you safe, and I believe in our victory. For our hearts are pure, Troglodyte is with us, and I just gave the van its annual emissions inspection.”
With that, he dropped the minivan into drive.
“Until Valhalla!” he shouted.
And they took off on their final ride.
DR. LONDON: …over two thousand respondents, and from that we established a link between belief in conspiracy theories and negative psychological traits.
RENA TATE: In other words, people who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to have serious mental health issues?
DR. LONDON: If you believe that the government is hiding aliens in Area 51, or the CIA is trying to control your mind through radio waves, you will almost inevitably demonstrate extremely low self-esteem, and, counterintuitively, very high degrees of narcissism.
—88.1 WDIY, “Health Check”
August 28, 2019
hey drove around the corner and pulled into the parking lot of a stand-up MRI.
“We have to keep moving,” Kris said.
JD didn’t answer. Instead he opened his door, took out a bottle of pills and dumped them onto the asphalt, stomping them into dust with one of his wide, flat feet.
“Paxator,” he told Kris. “I’m off that shit starting now. It makes everything feel like it’s wrapped in cotton. Fuck that!”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Kris said.
“We’re on Moscow rules,” JD said, ignoring her. He tossed his phone to the asphalt and brought his foot down, shattering its screen.
He slammed his door, pulled out, and Kris bit back her worry. She remembered how in tenth grade JD had dumped a fruit cup in a bottle of Gatorade and carried it around in his backpack for three months because he thought it would turn into wine. One morning, in home room, he drank the entire bottle and puked so far up the walls they had to evacuate the building. They’d been on the road for fifteen minutes and he’d already ditched his prescription. Maybe there was a reason he was still living in his mom’s basement.
JD pulled back into traffic. “We have to stay unpredictable!” he said.
His fingers fumbled with the boom box on the console until he found the button he wanted and punched PLAY. A scream tore out of the speakers. It was Bathory’s “A Fine Day to Die.” Of course, Kris thought, he already had it cued up past the minute-long intro.
“So where are we going?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard over the music.
“Hold on,” JD said, holding out a hand to shush her. “I love this part.”
Quorthon unleashed a gravel-throated scream as the guitars began tremolo-picking up a scale. Then the song settled back into its thrashy groove.
“I am a seiðmaðr,” he said. “I reach out my hand and the universe provides. The less we plan, the better. Then our movements cannot be predicted by the Hundred Handed Eye.”
“Then how are we getting to Vegas?” Kris asked.
“A seiðmaðr is a wizard,” JD said. “I read the signs, follow the omens, I look for gaps in their net, and slip through, my passing but a shadow on the grass.”
Kris began to realize that this might have been a bad idea. She felt out of control, pulled forward by forces she could not comprehend, let alone control. She wanted out. As if he read her mind, JD reached across the seat and grabbed her arm.
“I know you think I’m a joke,” he said. “No one ever took me seriously—not in the band, not at Vector Print, not at Quiznos. But I’ve been preparing for this for ten years. You need me to get you to Terry. I’m the only one who can do it. I really can do magic, Kris.”
And then she remembered Bobbie Gilroy, the board tech shaped like a washing machine, who always wore suspenders and tiny black bow ties. Bobbie worked all over the northeast, but one month in 1996 Dürt Würk played Robot House in Philly, Swizzles in York, Unisound in Reading, and Bobbie ran the board at every single show. Their next show was at Old Miami in Detroit, over five hundred miles away, and when they walked into the club, Kris stopped cold. Bobbie stood onstage, bent over, her plumber’s butt hanging out, adjusting wedges.
“How the hell?” Kris had asked.
“It’s a holy coincidence,” Bobbie had told her. “The universe puts you where you need to be.”
Holy coincidence, Viking magic, Troglodyte—maybe these were the forces that worked against Black Iron Mountain, subtly pulling strings, getting them where they needed to go, keeping them out of sight of the Hundred Handed Eye.
“Okay,” she said. “I believe you.”
“Good,” JD smiled. “We ride!”
As they merged onto the highway, “A Fine Day to Die” entered its breakdown in a sheen of shimmering strings and screaming horses, and JD punched STOP and started fiddling with the radio. He jabbed the scan button again and again, finally stopping on K105. Drive-time radio hurt Kris’s ears with its fake attitudes and corporate-controlled playlists, but JD batted her hand away when she reached for the dashboard.
“We need to test the air,” he said. “See which way the wind is blowing.”
Some girly-sounding boy gasped his feelings through the speaker, voice auto-tuned to an androgynous whine, the electronic beat precision-engineered for optimum BPM. When did music get so safe? Kris wondered. Back in Dürt Würk, they wore their hearts on their sleeves. They may not have been the best band in the world, but they left everything on the floor when they played. This crap was all market-researched lyrics, lab-tested signature changes. She could almost understand how Terry’s brand of carefully calculated shock rock would feel like a breath of fresh air after this mall music.
The song ended and JD turned up the radio for the Rush Hour Tower of Power with Cowgirl Carol and the Reject Ranch.
“—got in the studio with us this afternoon a real legend,” Cowgirl Carol crooned. “In a minute we’re going to Jack Hoff in the field for ‘Where’s My Monkey?’, but right now, he’s the man who made Koffin the biggest act on the planet—producer, promoter, manager, and musical mastermind Robert Anthony.”
A complicated sound effect ensued that began with the Reject Ranch cheering ironically, someone blowing a warble on a slide whistle and a Wayne’s
World riff on an electric guitar, and it ended with a bike horn being honked.
“Hey, Rob,” a sultry woman’s voice said, “what are you up to after the show?”
“Hanging out with you,” Rob said in his California voice.
“OOOooooo,” went everyone in the studio.
Everything disappeared except the radio voices. Kris saw Rob, sitting in the studio, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, a shimmering heat mirage of dark blue eyes, blinding white teeth, tousled blond hair. Hearing his voice in the car felt too close, it made her skin feel greasy.
“I don’t want to listen to this,” she said, reaching for the radio.
JD put his hand over the buttons, angling the wheel with his other hand as they merged onto Route 75.
“I love a man with a tan,” the woman said.
“Back, slut,” Cowgirl Carol said. “We’re here to talk serious business. Rob, we’ve known each other for a long time.”
“Since 2003,” he purred.
“I didn’t know you were from the Stone Age,” a sidekick snickered, followed by a prerecorded clown laugh.
“We met at the Marconi awards, and even back then, I knew you were ahead of your time,” Cowgirl Carol said. “You were dedicated one hundred percent to Koffin, and I thought—I still think—single artist representation is the wave of the future.”
“I just feel,” Rob said, moving closer to the mic and using his sincere voice, “that focusing on one artist gives you a longer career. You take a journey together, you reap the rewards together. It’s like watching a caterpillar turn into a butterfly.”
Kris put her fingers in her ears.
“Listen!” JD said, raising his voice, startling Kris into dropping her hands. “Every word is information we need.”
“And you face dangerous times together,” Cowgirl Carol prompted.
“And, yes, these are dangerous times,” Rob said. “I wish that wasn’t true.”
“So I want our listeners to know that you’re here for a very serious reason today,” Cowgirl Carol said. “Koffin’s got Hellstock ’19 coming up in Las Vegas, and you’ve had to hire extra security. Which is crazy.”
“What we have,” Rob said, “is a very sad story. A lot of people know that before Koffin was formed, Terry was in a metal band from Pennsylvania called Dürt Würk. They were basically a bar band, and Terry was the real creative talent. And now that he’s looking back on all the songs and all the years and celebrating a life in music, one of his old bandmates is very bitter, very jealous, and she’s stalking him.”
“Oh my God,” Cowgirl Carol gasped.
“She’s c-c-c-crazy,” the sidekick said.
“We live in a country where there’s a second amendment, and that’s part of our constitution,” Rob said. “But it also allows unbalanced people to become a danger to themselves and, as is sadly true in this case, to Terry. This individual, her name is Kris Pulaski, and we know she escaped from a substance abuse treatment facility where her family had placed her for very good reasons. From what we’ve heard, she is armed, and has threatened to murder Terry.”
“That’s terrifying,” Cowgirl Carol said.
Kris’s hands became fists in her lap as she listened to them lie.
“The police are taking it very seriously,” Rob said. “Our number one concern is the safety of our fans.”
“So what can our listeners do?” Cowgirl Carol said. “Because rock and roll is about having a good time, and when these…fanatics take it too far, it destroys the scene for everyone.”
“I don’t want anyone to do anything dangerous,” Rob said, and Kris could hear his forehead wrinkle with concern as his voice dropped to an earnest pitch. “But if you see Kris Pulaski, do not approach her, do not speak to her, but alert the police right away. And I would also like to say, that in all my years of working in the music industry, this is the most serious threat to an artist I have ever witnessed. And there’s another tragic footnote to this whole story: she may have also killed one of her other bandmates and his entire family. We don’t have any hard evidence of that yet, but…well, I’ll let your listeners draw their own conclusions.”
Kris could not move.
“Okay,” Cowgirl Carol said. “We’ve got a picture of this person up on the website, and like Rob said, do not do anything dangerous. At the same time, keep your eyes peeled, and if you see this sicko—and there is no other word for her—call the police immediately. In times like these we have to protect our artists who give us so much great entertainment.”
“Thank you very much, Carol,” Rob breathed. “And I know Terry thanks you, too.”
Kris’s fists were clenched so tight her palms bled. JD punched off the radio.
A brown hatchback passed on the right, and in the back window was a sticker of Calvin peeing on a Nike logo tucked next to a Gothic K. The truck in front of them had a Koffin K etched into the dirt on its rear doors.
JD’s paranoia didn’t seem so crazy anymore. The Hundred Handed Eye was looking for them.
MALE ANNOUNCER: …three exciting stages, fifty of the hottest bands, at the most extreme musical experience in the history of man.
KENDALL JENNER (prerecord): Avenged Sevenfold, Slipknot, Slayer, Trivium, Kamelot, Cannibal Corpse, Pallbearer…
MALE ANNOUNCER: Hellstock 2019, in Strawberry Valley, Nevada, with bungee-jumping platforms, fire sculptures, and X-treme intensity.
KENDALL JENNER (prerecord): …Purple Hill Witch, Earth-less, Wolves in the Throne Room, Molotov, and me, Kendall Jenner.
MALE ANNOUNCER: Hellstock 2019. Brought to you by Bud Light, the World’s Favorite Light Beer.
—Hellstock 2019 Radio Promo Spot
August 20, 2019
or almost seven days, the Hundred Handed Eye blocked them at every turn. They tried I-70, but before it bent onto I-15, which would take them to Las Vegas, highway construction pushed them onto 191, which turned south toward Mexico, away from Vegas. Every alternate route they tried was clogged with accidents, ICE checkpoints, toll roads covered with cameras, and DUI roadblocks.
JD looked for blind spots in the Hundred Handed Eye where they could slip through the gaps, but there were precious few. Meanwhile, NPR cranked out subliminal tones that induced complacency. Clear Channel encoded messages encouraging despair on low frequencies. Billboards lining the highway featured arrangements of colors that numbed drivers with choice paralysis.
Black Iron Mountain loomed over everything. There were no accidents. Coincidence didn’t exist. The world was thick with meaning, and they were both targeted.
JD distracted himself from the hunt closing in around them by investing more and more faith in Troglodyte.
“In ‘Sailing the Seas of Blood’ there are five verses and six repeats of the chorus,” he said. “We need to take Highway 56.”
Kris found it on the map.
“But that’s way north,” she said. “And then we have to head back down to McPherson? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“ ‘Sentinels stride crimson waves,’ ” JD quoted. “ ‘Their searchlight eyes seeking escaped slaves.’ ”
He quoted “Sailing the Seas of Blood” at her until she stopped arguing.
“You know, Terry probably has a copy of that album, too,” Kris said. “It might not be the best idea to base our route on it.”
“Troglodyte guides us,” JD said.
When he wasn’t talking about Troglodyte he talked about killing Terry. Eventually Kris gave up reminding him that it wasn’t going to happen. For now, she needed him to keep them unpredictable, to keep them moving, to keep them out of sight of the Hundred Handed Eye. And mostly it worked. As JD said, he reached out his hand and the universe provided.
Every few hours, JD stole a car. They pulled into an airport parking lot and drove out twenty minutes later in a rust-red Do
dge Caliber. They pulled over in front of an abandoned Ford F-350 with its hazard lights blinking on the shoulder of the highway, took the note off its windshield that read “Gone to get water,” and drove it fifty miles before the engine overheated. They swapped it in a mall parking lot for a lime-green Mitsubishi Eclipse. He always found the keys, the cars always started, no one ever spotted them.
“By the time the cops are looking for the car we stole in Provo, we’re already in the car from Cherry Creek,” he said.
The only thing that stayed constant between cars was JD’s boom box, blasting out an endless stream of Viking metal when he wasn’t scanning the airwaves for news about the Great Hunt.
A sad banjo played the familiar “All Things Considered” theme, and then one of those professors with a complicated name was speaking.
“…a tragic story of greed, and envy,” the reporter said. “Onetime bandmate of Terry Hunt, the heavy-metal legend who performs under the name Koffin—that’s Koffin with a ‘K’…”
WABC News Hour Radio.
“…Kris Pulaski apparently bears a grudge, and police are taking this very seriously…”
Clear Channel Wire Service News.
“…Hunt embarks next week on Hellstock ’19, an epic concert in the desert outside Las Vegas with almost half a million tickets sold…”
News, traffic, and weather kept them informed of where they’d been spotted at the top of every hour.
“…learning that the would-be assassin is traveling with another of Hunt’s former bandmates, Jefferson Davis, who goes by the nickname JD. Listeners are advised…”
“…last spotted near Omaha, Nebraska, driving a white Chevrolet van. Authorities speculate…”
“…conspiracy? This guy, he plays heavy metal, and we all know they’re Satanists, and suddenly after Shillary loses the election his old cult mates want to kill him? This makes Pizzagate look like…”
Rob gave interviews and spurred on the Hunt.
“I’m sure the murderer of the Borzek family was Scott Borzek,” he said. “But you also have to look at the facts. A member of this band has died while Kris Pulaski was in his house and her therapist at a rehab facility was brutally beaten. She has threatened Terry’s life. We’re taking this very seriously.”
We Sold Our Souls Page 16