by Owen Egerton
“No!” screamed Milton. “Don’t!”
The folksinger was just kneeling when another stone knocked him to all fours. He looked to the porch with crazy, pain-filled eyes. Roy jumped toward him an instant before a black ice chunk the size of an oven slammed into the folksinger. Milton yanked Roy back under the porch.
Cannonballs of ice fired from the clouds, the sky declaring war on the earth. Down the block a piece of hail sliced a power line in a shower of sparks. The line fell to the sidewalk, flailing like an injured snake.
Rica couldn’t take her eyes from the unmoving bodies in the yard. The fist-size hail that was landing in the soft mud around them. Bubble tea, Rica thought. Black pearls and bubble tea.
“We have to go,” said Milton.
“What?!” Jeppy yelled.
“This house won’t stand.” Milton turned to the others. “Roy, get the bus.”
Without hesitation, Roy dashed from the porch to the bus parked against the curb.
“Rica, Jeppy,” Milton said, “We’re going to run on the count of three.”
“I’m not running anywhere,” Jeppy said.
Rica only stared at the bodies.
Roy had reached the bus uninjured and swung the side door open. He had replaced the backseats with a used mattress years before. He sat on the mattress now, waving the others in.
A black ice rock, the size of a refrigerator, smashed into the middle of the street just feet from the bus, shattering into countless pieces and shaking the ground.
“See!” screamed Jeppy. “It’s safer here!”
From inside the house came an enormous crash. Looking back through the door, Rica could see a massive boulder sitting where the kitchen once had been.
“Monster-ass hail,” Rica almost whispered. Milton reached out and took her hand. She looked into his eyes and nodded.
“One, two, three!” Milton said, and pulled Rica into a run toward the bus.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!”Jeppy yelled as she ran, Carl in her arms, toward the open bus.
Before the door closed, Roy was driving.
Rica stared back at what had been her home for the last two years. A tree branch from an ancient live oak snapped above the porch and crumpled the front section of the roof.
Roy wove the bus through the debris-strewn street as hail continued to rain down around them.
“Give me a phone! Does anyone have a phone?” Jeppy yelled, squeezing Carl to her chest. Roy and Milton exchanged glances and Milton shook his head. “Fucking hippies!” Jeppy yelped.
Roy swerved onto Lamar and headed south. Cars and trucks filled the sides of the roads, some parked beneath trees, other crumpled into each other, clogging the street. Red and orange flames darted out of a pizza parlor and a bar.
“Just make your way west as best you can,” Milton said.
“I want to fucking call my boyfriend!” Jeppy yelled.
Roy turned right off Lamar and zigzagged through blocks of residential houses. The downpour of hail was lighter now. The occasional oversize hunk smashed to the street and shattered like black glass, but the heart of the storm had passed, leaving a wet drizzle.
Keeping just west of Lamar, Roy avoided the jammed roads and made it as far south as Highway 71. The whole time Rica sat in the back, staring out at the damaged homes and cars. Loose branches dangled from trees and the gutters rushed like tiny whitewater rapids. Car alarms wailed from miles around. Sparks sprayed out from loose power lines in random spurts.
Roy was cutting through a mall parking lot when Jeppy ordered him to stop.
“I’m getting out here. Right here!” She pointed to a restaurant. “I’m going in there and I’m calling Todd.”
“Fuddruckers?” Rica asked. “You’re vegan.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m getting out of this bus now.” Jeppy pulled at the sliding back door, but it stuck halfway open. Milton climbed out and yanked it the rest of the way. Jeppy, eyeing Milton with suspicion, crawled out holding Carl. She turned to Rica.
“Come with me.”
Rica climbed out and stood beside Milton. “I’m going with him.”
“Why, because the turtles said so?”
“Only one of them spoke,” Milton said.
“I trust him, Jeppy,” Rica said. She reached out and touched Carl’s wet face. “Be careful, okay?”
Jeppy nodded. “You be even more careful.”
Skiing and ice wine
HAYDEN BROCK BROWSED the sunglasses rack and watched Jim Edwards flirt with the teenage girl behind the counter of the Gas ’n’ Go.
“I tell you what.” Jim leaned against the counter. “We’ll trade. I’ll take your little pink hat and you can have mine.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, smacking her gum between each word.
“It’s a Stetson.”
“Do you want a bag for the beer?”
Hayden sighed. Jim was not that talented of a flirt. The trick to seduction, Hayden knew, was to say very little. Just smile and nod. It had worked for him almost every time. Didn’t help his marriage much. It only lasted eight months.
His wife at the time, Winter Hass, was a successful model turned failed screenplay writer who was devoting her days to completing a bio-epic script based on the life of Deepak Chopra.
The wedding of Hayden and Winter had been a small affair in Vail, Colorado. People magazine had purchased the pictures for over half a million dollars.
The first month of marriage went fine. Skiing and ice wine.
The second month was a breeze. Windsurfing and piña coladas.
In the third month the momentum slowed. Television and skim milk.
It was the fourth month when Hayden came home and Winter noticed he was wearing his wedding band on his right hand. He wasn’t trying to fool anyone into thinking he wasn’t married. Everyone had seen the pictures in People. He wore the ring on the wrong hand to announce that he was both married and available. Chicks dug it. Winter understood this immediately. The tantrum was fantastic, Winter yelling and throwing whatever her hands could find. Hayden was smacked between the eyes with Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Hardback edition. He was taken to the emergency room and given five stitches. People ran the story three days later.
In month five Hayden discovered Winter and the seventeen-year-old star of Beach Life snorting cocaine in the house sauna. Winter swore it was only a maternal friendship and that the kid had brought his own coke.
Month six was remodeling. The romance rallied. Small talk and red wine.
Month seven was sexy. Afternoon bedroom bouts and tequila. Hayden had high hopes for the future.
In month eight, Hayden found the seventeen-year-old in the sauna again, this time snorting cocaine from Winter’s sweaty nipples while in the corner, holding a camcorder, stood Deepak Chopra wearing nothing but an impressive erection.
That was the end.
Hayden Brock and Jim Edwards sat drinking Old Milwaukee beer at a New Mexico rest stop. They watched a wild orange sun sink into the flat sands.
“I’ve never seen the sun so large,” Hayden said, sipping his warm beer.
“Global warming,” said Jim.
“This spot is beautiful. You’ve been here before?”
“Plenty of times. I’ve slept at every rest stop on this road. Been living on I-10 for six years now. Back and forth between Arizona and Texas. It’s good. You meet folks. You see friends, like Pete over there. He’s been the custodian here for two years. Good man. Hell of a ladies’ man. Ladies stop here, he lays on the charms, and bam! They’re in his mop closet poking away.”
“You had many lovers, Jim?”
“Is three many?”
“No.”
“Then no,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “To be honest, it’s more like two and half lovers. The first was a spinster friend of my mother’s. I was thirteen. The last was my wife. Met her two days after getting out of the army. Married her within a month. I was faithful
to her for thirty-seven years of marriage and six years of widowness, so far.”
“What about the half?”
“A dwarf hooker in Korea.” Jim dragged on his cigarette.
“A dwarf?”
“All I could afford. But I tell you, she gave me the most passionate night of my life.”
“Wow.”
“And gonorrhea.”
“Oh.” Hayden opened another beer. “Aren’t you going to ask me how many lovers I’ve had?”
“No.”
“Three hundred and eight. No, wait. Three hundred and nine.”
Jim whistled.
“But the best of my life . . . ” Hayden shook his head. “Being with her is like, I don’t know, like having your penis in a freshly baked loaf of bread.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I’m just looking for the best image.”
“Well, leave food out of it,” Jim said. “What’s her name?”
“Don’t know. Only see her in my dreams.” Hayden leaned his chin on his palm. He watched the sky mellow, watched the glow of Jim’s cigarette, watched stars pop into view. “She has almond skin,” he said.
Two hours later Hayden Brock lay down to sleep on top of a picnic table. All night a train of traffic rumbled by. All those journeys, Hayden thought. His mind was warm with sleepiness and beer, thoughts floating like smoke twirls. Sweet world. Safe world. He felt very good about all things.
A table over, Jim Edwards slept, his hand under his shirt gripping his pistol.
Night-black skin
THE WORLD WAS dark and close. Click had often buried himself in soft sand and felt cool and safe. But Suga Smax did not possess the comforts of sand. The puffs were clunky and clumsy. Sand moves like thick water; Smax move like sticky boulders.
The world held one hint of light, below him, or above him if he was upside down. The light was a pinprick, so slight that Click wondered if it existed at all. Still, Click was drawn to it. He burrowed through the Smax, maneuvering over and around each puff toward the light. It was a slow, painful crawl. Every inch or so Click would have to stop and remove a piece of Smax that had wedged into his shell. To make things more difficult, often everything would shake and rumble. With nothing unmoving to grip, Click would be rattled to some far corner of his new world. Sometimes he’d land near the edge of the world, where the puffs end and an invisible skin crinkled. Past the skin was a gray, flat sky.
After each shake, Click would shift to reorient himself and search until he again found the one point of light. Then he’d once more begin the slow climb. For a while the world held still. He crawled and crawled, but the light seemed no closer. He became convinced he was only pushing puffs behind him without moving forward at all. Still he crawled. What else could he do? Finally a puff slipped aside and the light shone before him, particles of sugar floating in the pinhole’s single ray.
The light changed the world. He could see the puffs of wheat in detail, see his own sugar-coated claws, and something else. He was not alone. A face, black, white, and red, buried in the puffs. It was a small red-lipped seal. He could only see part of her, but she seemed as lost and alone as Click himself. She wasn’t moving. Perhaps she was stuck.
Click carefully removed some Smax from her face. She was beautiful. Night-black skin; wide, thought-filled eyes; and the cutest little whiskers. Click reached out a hesitant claw and touched her whiskers. She didn’t retreat from his touch. She locked Click’s gaze with an unblinking stare so rich that Click had to look away. His heart pounded like the crashing ocean waves he could no longer fully remember.
The world rumbled again and the seal dove into his embrace. Click gently stroked her, comforting her. She smelled clean and sweet. So close. So alone. Her fear birthed a new courage in his soul. Click squeezed his two claws around her. The seal squeaked. Click melted.
Don’t be silly, Rica
POP!
The arrow slams into FBI agent Chip Bradley’s chest. He falls back against a tree, his face wrought with pain.
Pop! Pop!
Two more arrows slam into his body, which is now naked. He calls out in pain. He moans.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
“No,” Rica yells, and reloads her crossbow.
Rica opened her eyes. It was night-dark and the air smelled of motor oil and cotton. A tinny voice was passionately lecturing from a radio. “But satellites don’t just fall. Not half a dozen at once. No. The big story tonight is what the government is not telling us! We’re under attack, and I say the French are behind it!”
The floating voice, confident, almost jovial only added to Rica’s waking confusion. Where was she? And why?
“Did the muffler wake you?” Roy whispered from the driver’s seat. “It’s got some rust holes and the inclines are hell.” He glanced back with a smile, his mahogany pipe sticking out from his mouth.
The where was easy. She was lying on the mattress in the back of Roy’s Microbus. They were heading west through the hill country of Texas. But even as she sat up and shook off the sleep, the why eluded her. Beside her Milton snored softly in his sleep.
In the front, Roy pressed another button on his radio and a woman’s voice came through the speakers. “How do you expect animals to react? We’ve been encroaching on their habitat, polluting their waters, heating their climate.”
“You’re saying this was an organized attack?” another voice asked.
“I’m saying we’re getting what we deserve.”
Rica watched Milton, still sleeping, snort once and smack his lips. She was traveling west, following a man who thought space aliens wanted him to meet up with television star Hayden Brock before the world ended on Sunday.
What was she doing? She tried to retrace the path that had led her to this moment. Not just the black ice, not just the wild nutria. How had her life become so entangled with the gangly, off-kilter Milton Post?
“Any news?” Rica asked.
“Plenty,” Roy glanced back. “Death toll in Austin is above fifty. Most of the city has no power or water. And Austin’s not alone. Mudslides in Egypt. Goat stampedes in New Zealand. It’s nuts!”
“Jesus.”
“And Milton’s not the only one talking about the end of the world.”
Roy switched to another station and turned up the volume. A friendly voice with a slight Southern twang spoke. “Listen, friends! I’m not doing this for profit. It’s not like I’m selling airtime by telling my sponsor there won’t be air for much longer. And there won’t be. We’re close! Praise Jesus, we are so close!”
The VW jerked a little as Roy downshifted. Milton rolled onto his side. Rica stared at him for a long minute.
She felt sick.
And knowing Milton, especially with Roy helping, they really would find Hayden Brock. She’d be face-to-face with Hayden Brock after all these years, after all those dreams, all those fantasies. Would he really smell like mountain air? Would his arms have that soft-stone feel? Would the sweat on his stomach taste like sea salt?
Milton rolled onto his back. Still asleep, he attempted to run his hand though his hair. It only made it halfway before getting snagged.
“The only thing I’m selling is truth, and I’m not selling it, I’m giving it away. Because you can’t buy it! Come on! This, all of this, had been foretold in the scriptures . . . ”
There was Milton. The father of her child. This is the man she’d stay with. She would never know the real taste of Hayden’s stomach sweat. In fact, she now felt pretty shitty for even wondering.
It was a familiar guilt. More than once while making love to Milton she had imagined she was actually with Hayden. In those dark moving moments, she pictured another life in which she had not vomited on the teenage Hayden Brock, had not slunk back to Texas in humiliation, had, instead, touched lips in that cramped closet, connected with the young star, began a written correspondence filled with wit and poetry, met up in each other’s homes for holidays and school breaks until they b
oth felt at ease in the presence of either set of parents, planned clandestine weekends in Vegas throughout her college career, broken up at the beginning of her grad school studies when a delicious med student courted her with mix CDs and promises of endless security, swept her off her feet when Hayden proposed while accepting an Emmy on national television, married in a discreet ceremony in Rome, and were now making love with the intimacy of lifetime lovers and the recklessness of strangers.
Then she’d remember she was in bed with Milton.
She was not proud of these fantasies and often fought against them. But when her guard was down, as it often was in lovemaking, the visions crept back in.
In fact, the night of Nutella and the Nibbler, the night the baby was conceived, Rica had closed her eyes and for a few brief moments felt Hayden’s body in Milton’s place. She had quickly shoved the apparition away and refocused on Milton. But the sensation had been intense enough for Rica, in her most honest thoughts, to consider Hayden Brock as the child’s other father, the lust-father.
Milton snorted in his sleep.
“The signs are so clear you’d have to work to ignore them. And that’s what most of the world does! They work to ignore the truth burning before their eyes! And they’ve got plenty of burning in their future . . . ”
How could she so clearly love and not love the same person? How do so many vague and random moments lead to something as concrete as the present? Why the hell had she vomited in that closet?
Milton tried to move his hand from his hair, but his thick mane put up more resistance than his hand was willing to overcome and Milton’s hand fell back to his scalp. Rica thought it might be nice to die. The baby squirmed inside her. I’m sorry, she told her baby. Shhh, now.
The baby. She held more weight than all Rica’s doubts and fears.
“That sound, listeners, that sound you hear is the very sweet intern Ami handing me a Red Bull and a Slim Jim. You know why? I’m not sleeping tonight. Stay awake, Jesus told us. Because he is coming! Soon! And I’m staying on the air until it happens! Right here on KRST 88.6 or online at HarvestChurchTruth. com and now on XFM. We’ll keep sharing the truth until that trumpet blares!”