Less than a minute later, a rig pulled up behind him and flashed its lights.
The clock on the radio player in the big rig read 7:30pm; James would make it to Denver by nine.
He placed his bag in the back and his weapon between his legs. The katana didn’t frighten Tomahawk, and for a split-second James wondered if she was hard of seeing or something.
Here he was, scraped up, malnourished, sweaty, dirty, and above all, carrying a rather large sword (plus a pellet gun concealed in his knapsack, which she obviously wouldn’t have known about). But still, she invited him into her cab.
Maybe there is hope for humanity after all, James thought as he buckled his seatbelt.
“So, what you doin’ in these parts anyhow?” Tomahawk wore a large, plaid button up and a pair of tight black jeans. She looked tough, gritty, and had bigger arms than most bodybuilders.
“That is a very long story. What about you?”
“Well, let’s see. I drive this rig, so that’s what I am doing here. Actually, this is my last run for a while. I’ve been saving for about a month now to go home and take care of my parents.”
“Where’s home?”
“Cherokee Nation,” was her reply. “Not many jobs there, so I picked this job up about ten years back. Now I mostly do freelance work. My father got sick ‘bout a year ago and I have been working non-stop to cover his medical bills. So, I’ll usually go out for about a month, and then go back home for about two weeks.”
“What’s he sick with?” James asked, as he rubbed the top of his thighs.
“Colon cancer,” Tomahawk said. “And with all this damned medication they pump into these people, I think he might have Alzheimer’s…can’t remember anything…always asking the same questions. Oh papa…”
Tomahawk placed her hand over her eyes wiping away tears, tears that had long since disappeared.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Any kids?”
“One daughter, Lupe, she tries her best to help my mom with him while I am gone. I am so proud of her…making A’s and B’s in school…so proud…”
Tomahawk’s voice trailed off. The open road continued to pummel the front of the eighteen-wheeler, occasionally making enough turbulence to shake the cabin a little.
“So, what about you?” she asked as she fiddled with her CV radio.
“Me? Well, the reason I am in Denver is.” He swallowed hard. “It’s kind of stupid.”
“Try me.”
“A buddy and I came to Denver from Austin. We thought the attack on the city was Armageddon, decided to hightail it west, ran into some um, strange people, and we eventually got separated. Anyways, that’s the basics of the story...”
James figured he had nothing to lose by being completely honest.
“Damn, that’s quite a story.”
Silence stretched between the two, both lost in their thoughts.
“You hungry?” Tomahawk eventually asked. Before James could say ‘yes,’ she reached into the backseat of her rig. She returned with a sandwich wrapped in plastic and handed it to James, who devoured it like an animal. The food hit his stomach quickly, and soon he relaxed into the seat, mesmerized by the open road.
“You have a cigarette?” she asked after he finished. “I’m trying to quit, but then again, so is everyone who smokes.”
“Sure do.”
“So, what happen to your friend?” she asked as James lit her cigarette.
“He, well, he drove off in the middle of the night. We kind of had a falling out. I don’t know where he is now. Hopefully Denver.” James shrugged and glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
“Do you think you will ever see him again?” Tomahawk asked.
“Hell if I know. I would like to put this journey behind me once and for all. I just need to get to the Saint Joseph Children’s Hospital in downtown Denver. Or at least, that’s where I think he’s at.”
“Where who’s at?” Tomahawk gasped. “Your friend?”
“No, my son, Zane.” James looked out the window. “Last time I contacted the hospital, about two weeks ago, he was still there.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Tomahawk asked.
“He’s there in a coma. They had him at a different facility, but they transferred him back to Saint Joseph’s.”
“How horrible...” Tomahawk rolled down the window and tossed the half smoked cigarette out of the cabin. A peculiar look of motherly determination came across her face as she gripped the steering wheel tightly.
James braced himself to deal with any type of “bad parent” talk that he felt she was about to give him.
“Well, then we are going to get you there!” Tomahawk pushed the gas pedal to the floor.
“I would truly appreciate that.” James reached in his pocket and closed his hand around the diamond ring he’d stolen.
Chapter 28: Armageddon Skills
“What day is it?” James asked Tomahawk as she took the Colfax exit.
It was the first thing that either one of them had said since they had reached the city of Denver. James had been too overwhelmed by the sense of accomplishment one gets upon finally arriving at their destination to voice anything, and Tomahawk had gone into some sort of maternal overdrive fueled by silent determination.
“It’s Monday, and we’re almost there,” Tomahawk finally said.
It had taken him almost a week to get to Denver, a week dipped in blur and glazed with depravity.
It was hard to believe that it had only been one week since he and Virgil had left Austin; a week that should have never happened and a week that would forever affect him.
James sighed, dragged a cigarette to his mouth, and slowly lit the end.
He pulled the cigarette away and watched the embers sizzle. He sat like this as Tomahawk drove east on Colfax, watching as the cigarette slowly wither away.
Time had finally lost its power over James.
In some paradoxical world, he had temporarily become the burning embers, still blazing inside.
James looked out the window.
Downtown Denver was illuminated by activity and moonlight. People came and went, rode their bikes, wandered the streets aimlessly, met their friends, smiled, moved in and out of pot shops, waited for the bus.
For James time had stopped, and the moment he had been waiting so long for was closer than it had ever been. Like something was in the air, a twinkle of truth mixed with broad disruption, or a speck of distortion coupled with certainty. Everything had merged into one final moment, a splash of something genuine but still so fabricated.
This was the moment that James was experiencing as he watched the people gravitate towards their own destinies.
Suddenly, James noticed the outline of someone he barely knew.
Sitting on the bench in front of a church was Hope. She clutched her arms to her chest, staring at the ground before her. People walked past, and yet nobody noticed this strange creature sitting so quietly.
James nearly asked Tomahawk to stop.
His mouth moved, but no air escaped to pronounce his request. And that was fine by him. This was his destiny, and this was his choice; he was ready to experience his fate.
Tomahawk turned onto Franklin Street.
Within a minute they were in front of the hospital and James was opening the passenger door. He turned and looked at Tomahawk and thanked her.
“You go in there and see your son,” Tomahawk said, tears in her eyes.
“I can’t thank you enough.” James dipped his hand into his pocket and returned with the diamond ring. He told her to sell it, that it was worth a fortune, that it was his mother’s. He told Tomahawk he wanted her to spend more time with her family.
A tear fell down her face as she smiled at James’ gift.
His feet hit the pavement and he never looked back.
To the sound of Tomahawk honking her horn, James took the button up shirt out of the knapsack and quickly put it on.
He didn’t
want any trouble; he only wanted to move forward, and see his son one more time. James walked into the hospital, the sword hidden by his side and knapsack over his shoulder.
***
“I’m here to see Zane Sinclair,” James mumbled, trying hard to snap out of the anguish he was experiencing. He looked at a round clock above the receptionist’s desk, and saw that the hands had finally stopped.
“Let me see, sir...” the receptionist said without looking up at him. She seemed cold and tired. It took her about a minute typing away on her computer before she finally looked at James over her glasses. “What’s your name, again?”
“I’m his father, James Sinclair. Please…” he said with his eyes fixed on the apex of her glasses. He knew he should have lied, but his days of lying were over.
The receptionist returned to her computer and clicked around for another moment. “I’m going to have to ask you to wait here.”
“I don’t,” he cleared his throat, “I don’t want to wait here. I traveled a long way…” James glanced down at his katana. “I’m sorry for raising my voice. I’ve traveled a long way to be here. I just want to see my son.”
“I understand that, sir, but I need you to wait here for a moment. Please be patient, and take a seat over there,” she said firmly.
“Just tell me the floor, dammit!”
“Sir, please take a seat.”
A uniformed police officer appeared to the right of the nurses’ station and approached James.
As if guided by a mysterious force, James reached for the katana and pulled it out of the sheath in one swift motion. The officer raised his gun.
“Let me see my fucking son!” he bellowed as he pointed the katana at the officer.
“Sir, put the weapon down!” the officer cried.
The line between reality and illusion blurred. The officer had changed into a demon with thick saliva boiling from his mouth, sweltering eyes, and gnashing teeth.
A wild look in his eyes, James whipped his pellet gun out of his knapsack and aimed it at the police officer.
Bang!
An uncompromising sound resonated through the lobby.
James swung the katana at the desk made of fire. He fired the pellet gun as the walls began to crumble and melt into the floor of the hospital lobby.
Bang! Bang!
Adrenaline surged through every part of his body, but his body no longer belonged to him; it was no longer controlled by him.
Even as he fell, even as the police officer’s bullets pierced his chest, James kept slicing his blade at the thin air in front of him, each slice streaking the air with a long trail of color.
He hit the ground and kept on falling indefinitely.
Bang!
Chapter 29: Two Pigeons
Two pigeons, one white and one dark, stood on the floor in the center of the room arguing over a scrap of food.
Still at the mental hospital in Pueblo, Virgil had been staring at the two illusory pigeons through blurred eyes for what seemed like an hour now.
Both pigeons wanted crumbs, both chirped and stomped their feet at each other and at him.
He was strapped to a mattress in the middle of cold, sterile room. The only way he could even see the pigeons was by pressing his chin against his chest, which seemed to cut his breath short. It was a terrible position; he’d been in pain for hours.
“Why are they here?” Virgil asked Nathaniel, who sat next to him in his Elvis garb. Although this time it was loose, baggy even.
“I can’t tell you,” Nathaniel answered in Sax’s voice.
Virgil turned and look to his right, afraid to see the mime cowboy.
“Please, go the fuck away.”
“I’m here ‘cause you need me to be here,” Sax said again.
Virgil had had the same conversation a thousand times over the last twenty-four hours. His questions were passed back and forth between Sax and Nathaniel, who remained at his bedside as one entity with a blurred face and a sunken chest.
“Please…” Virgil looked back at the two pigeons in the center of his room.
The pigeon in white began flapping its wings, attempting to intimidate the pigeon in black. The pigeon in black began flapping its wings to intimidate the pigeon in white. Both twitched, screeched, puffed their chests out.
The two pigeons stopped their bickering once a strange illumination appeared towards the far corner of the room. The diaphanous illumination quickly grew a pair of legs.
“Please, go away.” Virgil closed his eye and felt the sting from fresh tears drip down his face. A zigzag pattern, full of color and transparent revolving cubes spread across his closed eyes. He’d hallucinated enough, seen enough to never want to wake up again.
A flash of light on his eyelids caused him to blink his eyes open.
Everything started moving behind the strange apparition of light.
His room spun left and was replaced by a beautiful pond, then a busy subway, then a lonely desert, an ancient temple, a tropical island, a snow tipped mountain, and so on and so forth until it finally stopped back in his room at the mental hospital in Pueblo, Colorado.
“I’m serious,” he said, shivering as he glared up at the light. “Go away.”
Reality had become a shattered kaleidoscope for Virgil, full of bizarre images, checkered backgrounds and grotesque, humanoid creatures. He felt exceedingly empty, as if he’d been drained of his life force, as if everything inside him has been sucked out.
But the light didn’t leave, it moved closer to the bed. Virgil looked back to Nathaniel, who had taken off his sunglasses, completely captivated by the radiant light.
“What is it, Nathaniel?” Virgil asked, tears again blurring his vision.
Nathanial gasped, his face turning into Sax’s makeup stained mug and back again. “Now that there’s somethin’ I haven’t seen in quite a while.”
Virgil looked back towards the light, his mouth dry, his heart about to explode.
A spidery hand broke free from the light, a wispy trail of smoke swirling around it chaotically. As the smoke swirled, a human shape took form.
The restraints melted off Virgil’s body; he was suddenly floating above his bed.
He looked down and noticed a translucent substance filtering out of his stomach. His nerves firing, Virgil glanced again at the light, staring in awe as its figure continued to take shape, as the being reached out to him with an open hand.
A musky scent reached his nostrils and a flood of emotion came over him as he recognized the man standing before him.
It was James.
The end.
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