No Other Story

by Dr. Cuthbert Soup

  “Could you put the sandwich down for one minute?” said Aitch Dee, his knuckles pale white on the wheel as he pulled up behind Mr. 5’s black sedan. “I need you to keep your eyes on that station wagon in case I lose it.”

  “Why can’t I can keep my eyes on the car and my mouth on the sandwich at the same time?” whined El Kyoo.

  “Just put it away, would you?”

  Like Romeo bidding a sad farewell to Juliet, El Kyoo lowered the three pounds of sandwich that still remained outside his bowling-pin-shaped body. He seemed to whimper slightly as he wrapped it in a napkin and placed it lovingly in the glove box, which had never been used to hold gloves, but was a frequent home to El Kyoo’s excessively large lunches.

  The station wagon squealed around a sharp corner and down Musgrave Street, startling the Baldersons’ vicious fourteen-year-old schnauzer. The black sedan followed closely with the dull gray car carrying the dull gray men pulling up close behind it.

  “We’ve got to get to them before Plexiwave does,” said Aitch Dee.

  “Or that little weasel Pavel Dushenko,” said El Kyoo.

  “Pavel Dushenko? That moron? Trust me, he’s got no idea the LVR even exists.”

  Contrary to the opinion of Agent Aitch Dee, Pavel Dushenko and his loyal sidekick, Leon, knew very well of the LVR’s existence, and of the importance of taking it.

  The little brown car rounded the corner with the others, causing Leon’s fish to slosh about in their tank like three mismatched socks in a washing machine on full swirl. Leon voiced his displeasure by screaming and slapping himself on the head, a gesture Pavel mistook for a childlike enthusiasm.

  “Yes, Leon,” shouted Pavel over the racing of the little car’s overworked engine. “I agree. Getting LVR will be very happy thing to do, and also not sad.”

  “They’re right behind us,” said Catherine, checking the side view mirror from her position in the front passenger seat. The best thing about her brother having a girlfriend was that she got to sit up front for a change, because, of course, Jason just couldn’t bear to be more than three feet away from Big at any time. In fact, it must have been true love, because not only did Jason volunteer to sit in the backseat, he offered to sit in the middle, on the dreaded hump.

  “This is just what I hoped would happen,” said Ethan. “The farther we can lure them from the house, the longer the others will have to get away. Hold on!”

  Ethan turned the wheel with such force that the station wagon nearly rolled onto its side as it skidded around a corner, heading for the highway out of town.

  For the Cheesemans the ride was frightening and intense, but for Big it was her first opportunity to see the twenty-first century in daylight hours, and everything was downright fascinating.

  “The future is a very different place,” she said, mesmerized as they passed logging trucks hauling enormous, branchless trees, superstores the size of the entire settlement of Shattuckton, and a man dressed as an ice-cream cone standing on the corner and waving at passing cars.

  Simon waved back. “Hey Dad, can we stop for ice cream?”

  “I want bubble-gum ice cream,” said Gravy-Face Roy.

  “Sorry, guys,” said Ethan. “When we get to where we’re going, you can have as much ice cream as you like. Right now, though, we can’t stop for anything.”

  But as they veered onto the highway, it became apparent that they might have no choice but to stop when a red light on the dashboard popped on, informing Ethan that the station wagon was low on gas.

  “Darn it,” he said, his fist meeting the steering wheel with a sharp thwack. “In all the excitement I didn’t even think to check the fuel level.” Ethan looked in the rearview mirror to confirm that the parade of cars was still there. “I think it’s time we lightened our load, if you know what I mean.”

  Cutting the ropes that held the furniture to the roof would be a very simple task were the car parked in the driveway and not careening down the freeway at eighty-five miles per hour. “Jason, can you do it?” asked Ethan.

  “I can do it,” Jason confirmed.

  “Good. Now take Big’s hunting knife and cut the ropes.”

  “No,” said Big. “I’ll do it.” She unbuckled her seat belt and removed her hunting knife from its scabbard.

  “Hand me that knife,” said Jason. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’s no more dangerous for me than it is for you.” Big looked at the window with no idea how to open it. “Please,” she said.

  “Okay,” Jason relented. “But be careful.” He lowered the automatic window and held tightly to Big’s ankles as the girl leaned out of the speeding car, the wind tossing her braids violently about. In a matter of seconds, her blue baseball cap was ripped from her head and sent bouncing along the road.

  “Look!” shouted Mr. 207. “There’s a kid climbing out of the car.”

  “She’s got a knife,” screamed Mr. 29. “Get down!”

  “Get down?” scoffed Mr. 5. “It’s a knife, not a hand grenade. What harm could a knife do?”

  With the razor-sharp implement, Big sliced through the rope that held the tarp to the roof. Once untethered, the tarp took to the air like a large blue kite. Its flight was shortlived, and it quickly came to rest on the windshield of the long black car.

  “I can’t see!” yelled Mr. 88 as the black sedan raced blindly down the highway.

  “Then pull over!” ordered Mr. 5.

  Horns honked and tires screeched as Mr. 88 spun the wheel to the right, crossed two lanes of traffic, and drove over the shoulder, off the road, and directly toward a shopping complex. The blue tarp took to the air once more just in time for Mr. 88 and his fellow Misters to see that they were only seconds from crashing into a supermarket. Suddenly, the car was filled with a four-part harmony of terrified screams.

  “Aaahhh!”

  “Yiiiieeee!”

  “Nooooo!”

  “Whaaaaa!”

  Mr. 88 stiffened his leg against the brake pedal, and the car went into a wild skid. A horrified shopper abandoned her cart just as the car slammed into it, sending the cart, and her hard-earned purchases, high into the air.

  The car jerked to a halt, and a full ten seconds passed before it was showered with falling groceries, including: several cans of soup, a dozen eggs, a gallon of bubble-gum ice cream, and a very large chunk of wood, which smashed through the windshield and landed, amid a shower of broken glass, directly in Mr. 5’s lap.

  “This,” said Mr. 5, when the barrage was over, “is a Yule log.”

  While the blue tarp had gotten rid of one of the pursuers, three still remained. And now they all knew the Cheesemans weren’t carrying the LVR, but a bunch of old furniture. Well, most of them knew.

  “That’s the darndest-looking time machine I’ve ever seen,” said El Kyoo. “It looks like a bunch of furniture.”

  “That’s because it is a bunch of furniture,” said Aitch Dee.

  “Well,” said El Kyoo, “if I had known it was that easy to make a time machine, I would’ve built one myself.”

  Big sliced through the rope holding the couch to the roof rack, but it failed to budge. She tried reaching up and shoving it, but the couch was just too heavy.

  “It refuses to fall!” shouted Big.

  “Okay,” said Ethan. “Hang on!”

  Many of our nation’s highways and byways are equipped with a handy little feature known as a rumble strip—raised bumps at the edge of a lane designed to alert drivers that they have drifted too far to one side. This was one of those highways. Ethan veered over until the tires on the left side of the car came in contact with the strips. At eighty-five miles per hour, they created quite a vibration; certainly enough to cause the couch to begin inching its way toward the edge of the roof.

  “Look out!” yelled El Kyoo when the couch slipped off the back of the station wagon and onto the road directly in front of the dull gray car. The car slammed into the couch and drove up onto it, leaving its front wheels
off the ground but its rear wheels still in contact with the road.

  The back of the car spun around and crossed the centerline. It narrowly missed being T-boned by an eighteen-wheeler full of cymbals, xylophones, and banjos. It jumped the shoulder, screamed through a parking lot, and smashed through the window of a sandwich shop, sending traumatized patrons running for cover and finally coming to a stop directly in front of the counter.

  “Wow,” said Aitch Dee, trying to catch his breath, his fingers fused to the steering wheel. “Unbelievable.”

  “No kidding,” said El Kyoo. “Eight bucks for a meatball sandwich? Ridiculous.”

  As Aitch Dee waited for his fingers to unclench and El Kyoo waited for the price of meatball sandwiches to come down, Ethan Cheeseman and his passengers were celebrating like a submarine crew that has just scored a direct hit on an aircraft carrier. “Nice shot, Big,” yelled Catherine.

  But Big couldn’t hear a thing with the wind thundering past her eardrums. And besides, she was just getting started. Jason struggled to keep hold of her as she gripped the roof rack and inched out farther. If she were to slip and fall at this point, there wasn’t much Jason could do to save her. She sliced through the rope holding the recliner.

  “Leon, I am big worry,” said Pavel. “I don’t see LVR. Only big, comfortable chair.”

  Pavel’s myrrh-covered sidekick responded by screaming and jumping up and down on the backseat in an effort to correct Pavel, for it was not just a big, comfortable chair, but a big, comfortable flying chair, and it was flying right toward the little brown car.

  The chair hit the asphalt and splintered into pieces as Pavel swerved just in time to miss the bulk of it.

  “Ha ha!” he yelled. “You are not so easy to have rid of the great Pavel Dushenko!”

  He turned to high-five Leon and, in doing so, failed to see a living-room lamp roll off the roof rack and smash through his car’s windshield. Then the lamp, perhaps deciding it rather enjoyed breaking glass, continued into the backseat, where it struck the fish tank and shattered it into hundreds of tiny pieces.

  Leon gripped his head tightly at the temples and let out a primal scream as his beloved fish flopped about helplessly on the backseat. He motioned for Pavel to pull over, doing everything in his power to impress upon him the need for water, but Pavel’s and Leon’s priorities were, at that moment, not exactly in sync.

  “No, Leon. If we stop for water, we will fail, and also not succeed. Your feeshes must make ultimate sacrifice for good of country.”

  Leon scooped up the feeshes, held them lovingly in his hands, and prepared to say good-bye.

  Just then the kitchen table flew off the station wagon, landing directly beneath the little brown car. As the car dragged it along the pavement at ninety miles per hour, sparks began to shoot up from the road. Leon sniffed and made a face.

  “That was not me,” said Pavel.

  The burning smell grew in intensity until finally, with an enormous bang, the hood flew off the car and flames shot up from the engine six feet into the air and blew back in through the missing windshield. The flames danced perilously close to Pavel’s petrified face. As he let go of the wheel to try to fend off the fire, the flaming brown car swerved out of control, flying off the side of the road, through a chain-link fence, across a city park, and into a pond.

  With a sharp hiss the car hit the water, instantly dousing the flames. Then, as Leon breathed a sigh of relief, the car slowly began to sink until pond water poured in through the empty space where the windshield once resided. Leon rejoiced. He lowered his goldfish into the cold, slimy water and watched happily as they swam about the backseat of the car. He then watched somewhat less happily as the fish swam out through the broken windshield and into the pond, where they lived happily ever after, until two days later when they were eaten by ducks.

  With Pavel and Leon sitting up to their necks in slimy pond water and lamenting their failure to get the LVR, Big dropped back into the station wagon and placed her knife into its scabbard.

  “Great job,” said Jason, bursting with pride.

  “Now that was fun,” said Big, who had never smiled quite so broadly.

  She had single-handedly gotten rid of three of the four cars, but one persistent pest remained, and the Cheesemans’ four-wheeled submarine was all out of torpedoes.

  “There’s still one car following us,” said Jason.

  “Who is it?” asked Simon.

  The mysterious blue sedan kept its distance, which, along with its tinted windshield, made it impossible to get a good look at the driver. “I don’t know,” said Jason.

  “We’ve got to lose it somehow,” said Ethan. “We’re almost out of gas.” He took another look at the fuel gauge. There was a service station up ahead on the right, but he didn’t dare pull over now. He increased his speed, pushing the rattly old station wagon to its very limits, but the blue car stayed right with them. He passed another gas station. The needle on the fuel gauge had long ago stopped moving, having dropped as far as it could go.

  Ethan knew he had one shot at losing the mysterious blue car and one shot only. He looked ahead and saw they were about to enter a long, dark tunnel. A sign at the entrance advised motorists to make sure their headlights were on. Ethan ignored the sign. He sped up to widen his lead on the blue car before entering the tunnel.

  He took a deep breath, gripped the wheel tightly, and hoped what he was about to attempt would not be the last thing he would ever do. Pinky sensed something was up and let out her patented portent of doom, a low, steady growl.

  The station wagon was halfway through the tunnel before Ethan got up the nerve to make his move. “Hold on,” he said. Then he hit the brakes and spun the wheel hard to the left, sending the car into a violent spin. The children’s screams perfectly complemented the screeching tires. When the station wagon finally came to a rest, it was facing in the exact opposite direction.

  Seconds later, the blue car flew by, and Ethan gunned the engine, driving through the tunnel directly toward oncoming traffic.

  “Dad, look out!” shouted Catherine.

  Horns blared as Ethan swerved right, then left, then right again, narrowly avoiding several head-on collisions. The moment he cleared the tunnel he swerved off the road, across the center divider, and back onto the highway, where he continued to drive back the way they had come.

  “Sorry about that, everybody,” said Ethan.

  His passengers were far too traumatized to speak as he pulled off the road and into a gas station just as the car’s engine sputtered and died. He coasted the final thirty feet to the pump, then slumped forward, resting his forehead on the steering wheel. “We made it,” he said.

  “We sure did, Dad,” said Jason. “Great driving.”

  “Thanks,” said Ethan. “Now all we have to do is travel twelve hundred miles and hope that the LVR is still there, and that Catherine’s theory is more than just a theory.”

  Advice for Motorists

  Driving a car can be a very dangerous business. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about, because I was once involved in a hit-and-run accident, and let me just say, it’s a good thing I got the heck out of there.

  One way to help avoid mishaps on the road is to be sure to keep your car’s equipment in proper working order. Just last week I found myself driving behind a very inconsiderate motorist whose car had no brake lights, if you can believe such a thing. This angered me to the point that I considered honking at him, until I recalled that my horn has been broken for years. And, as I would discover, honking at someone without the use of a horn will get you some very strange looks indeed, particularly from any nearby geese.

  Another perilous aspect to the driving experience is road rage, of which I have been a victim on several occasions. One such incident began when someone thought it would be humorous to sneak over to my house and write the words Wash me with his finger on my car’s dust-caked surface.

  Thanks to this incompetent criminal le
aving both his fingerprints and a handwriting sample at the scene, I was able to determine that it was my cousin, Gilbert Soup, and I did not find his little joke the least bit funny, though I did think it quite hysterical when I sneaked over to his house and wrote on his car. With a nail. Paint me.

  This harmless little prank resulted in a serious case of road rage as I ran down the road, just steps ahead of my raging cousin, then got into my dusty car and sped away.

  And though I would always advise you to drive your car with the utmost caution, sometimes it is absolutely necessary to go as fast as you can, throwing caution to the wind and furniture off the roof.

  Chapter 19

  Twelve hours into their journey back to where they had left the LVR, the children, the animals, and Gravy-Face Roy slept while Ethan fought the urge to join them. After all they’d been through, to have it all end by falling asleep at the wheel and driving off the road would be tragic beyond belief. Ethan shook his head and slapped himself in the face. He cracked the window, hoping some cold air might help snap him out of his stupor.

  The sound of the night air rushing in caused Jason to stir. “Dad?” he said. “You want me to drive for a while?”

  Long ago, when Ethan and his children first went on the run, he made the decision to teach Jason how to operate a motor vehicle so that if anything were to happen to him, there would be someone who could drive the rest of the family to safety.

  “I think I’ll be okay,” said Ethan. “I could use someone to talk to, though.”

  “Sure,” said Jason. He sat up and leaned forward, resting his arms across the back of the front passenger seat. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Oh, nothing in particular,” said Ethan unconvincingly. “Just a little small talk to help me stay awake.”

  “Oh, okay. Who do you think’s gonna win the Super Bowl this year?”

  “I’m very worried,” said Ethan.