by P. J. Kelley
“Cujo didn’t,” David observed, but was ignored. In the bus he quips had been more tolerable since they defused some tension, but here they were regarded as a distraction.
“Excuse me,” said a couple of teenage girls who had walked up to the table. “Are you The Celtics, from the reality show, On the Road to Recovery?” Astoundingly, they had little pads and pencils and were asking for their autographs.
“What you did just now out the Water Gap tollbooth took a lot of guts. We’ve been watching your show online here for hours,” a girl wearing a Pink concert shirt said to Jerry. “And the way you smashed all the trucks out of the way with your semi was beyond clutch,” she cooed to Sammy. “What drugs are you all addicted to?”
“The non-sequitor surprise is always the greatest surprise.” David said. This time no one evinced any response to his sarcasm.
“What are you talking about?” Gregor burst out, genuinely confused.
“Your reality show. Are you Gregor? I can’t believe I’m talking to The Celtics. Wow, Dan, you are cute in real life too!” said the girl, who was wearing an Oklahoma Sooners T-Shirt. “You guys are the best thing on the Net. The Drudge Report and TMZ are linking to your feed. Your show has like twenty million fans on Facebook.”
“Yeah, that’s right. At first we thought it was going to be some dumb fake show about rehab. All those long therapy sessions were boring, and nobody was that into it, but your show went viral fast once that minibus filled with patients got attacked by Psychos. No way they faked that,” she said. “It was just too gruesome.”
In fact, the group suddenly seemed to have attained celebrity status. People were craning their heads to look at them, some holding hand-held computer devices and waving.
“Yeah, it’s a live feed. We’ve been watching it while we ate and all of a sudden, we realized that you were sitting in the very same diner we were in.”
“Show me,” Dante said simply. The girl handed him an I-Phone. Sure enough, there was a fairly decent video image of the group. You could click on any individual patient’s name in a menu and see from the perspective of that individual. Dante clicked on himself, and after a moment, he slowly waved his hand over the front of his jacket. What he saw appeared to startle him. He handed the phone to Gregor, who performed the same experiment. All the patients requested to see the phone, except Al, who appeared to be apathetic about the whole thing.
“I must admit, this is fascinating,” David said. “There seems to be a camera and a mike concealed in the buttons of our clothes. Oh the wonders of digital nanotechnology.”
“Who was in the bus where everybody died, do you remember?” Bridget asked suddenly.
“I’m not sure. One of them was Charlene. I remember her because she had bandages all over her face.”
“Are you thinking of Marie?” Gregor asked. “She had some bandages on her nose.”
“She was on that bus too, the girl named Marie, now that you mention it. She flipped out when their bus conked out before they even got out of the gate. No, Charlene, was black, er, I mean African American. Marie was that really angry girl whose father’s girlfriend beat her up in a parking lot. “
“How do you know that?” Gregor wondered.
“They posted her sessions with her intake therapist. That girl had issues,” she said. Her friend concurred. “I felt sorry for the people on The Cowboys. They had no way of knowing how pissed off Marie was.”
“I would be too if my father had done all that stuff to me when I was a kid,” said the Oklahoma Sooner fan.
This seemed to annoy the Pink fan. “From what I saw, Marie was some kind of police character. Her own friends are saying she is lying about all of that stuff, and that she attacked her father’s employee for no reason. She sounded nuts. I mean, I felt bad for her and all that, but still.”
“How much for your I-Phone?” Keisha wanted to know.
“It’s totally not for sale. This place is totally boring and this is about all there is to do. Besides, there’s a guy out there with a whole rig filled with them. You could probably trade something for one. He’s that guy over there with the lumber jacket on.”
“What’ll he take in trade?” Keisha asked.
“He’s a huge fan of the show. You might get one for an autographed picture. It would be bound to be a collector’s item. We have to get going. Thanks for the autographs and sorry for disturbing your meal. Could we have our phone back?”
“One more thing,” Gregor asked. “What are the other teams doing?”
“The Angels just stripped all their monitoring equipment off and took off. The Steelers had theirs too badly damaged to be much use right from the beginning, but they are going to New York pretty fast. The Cowboys I just told you about,” the pretty blond girl looked sad. “You know, it didn’t even seem real to me until I met you. What a crazy thing to have happen to you.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s just so like, unfair,” her friend echoed. “They should have called your field trip off when the Psychos started attacking.”
Bridget grudgingly handed the girls back their phone. As a final gesture of good will, the two Midwestern teenagers went to the I-Phone dealer they knew and brokered an exchange of three phones still in their boxes for 40 bucks, fifty 12 gauge shotgun shells, a case of beer donated by Sammy, and sure enough, a quick cell phone picture of himself with the group.
“He gave you a good deal,” the girls said. “These things are very valuable right now.”
“I just hope we don’t regret the shells,” Jerry said. “Still, it’ll be nice to know what’s going on.”
“I had no idea I was dining with celebrities. What drugs are you addicted to Jerry?” Sammy said, smiling.
“I sort of fell in with the group. I just joined the field trip,” Jerry explained, laughing a little. “After that meal, though, I wish I could have gotten a little of my reefer before the Psychos changed my plans.”
The group giggled. “What do you say we get going so the next customers can come in,” Sammy was looking at the waiting line. “I’ll feel better with my guns back anyway; I don’t care how safe this place is.”
Everyone agreed. It had been a most productive meal. Soon, they were yawning and stretching in the parking lot, standing in the early morning chill of the early Fall.
“Take your bus over to the gas station there and fill it up,” Sammy said handing Dante a hand written receipt. “I already talked to management about it. They got the pumps working but electronic credits are down. I don’t know what you all are planning on doing, but if you do want to proceed I just want you to have enough gas for your trip. Plus, you’ll want to run your bus for a while so you can run the heater for a bit. Even I can’t swing a room at the motor lodge, and I been coming here for years. We are sleeping in our vehicles tonight.”
“We have some empty seats in the bus if you want to crash there. The five of you is going to be crowded,” Bridget said.
“Thanks, but there is a shelter set up for families over yonder. I know the lady in charge, and she has set aside a couple of bunks for my Indiana compadres. The kids will be more comfortable there.”
The tired Celtics and their camp followers, having resolved as much of the day’s problems as possible, got gas, pulled back alongside Sammy’s rig, and ran the motor until the bus was pleasantly warm before shutting down. Keisha used the time to put at least a partial charge on the new phone by plugging into the cigarette lighter. Sammy was also charging the other phone for them in his truck.
“Does anybody have anything to say to the viewers at home?” David said, as the exhausted group wrapped themselves up in their jackets and prepared to crash on their foam bus seats. “How about some Gladiator stuff, like Are you not entertained?”
“This is all too weird. Let’s just get some sleep,” Bridget replied sullenly.
Incredibly, sleep came for all of them, as the trucks wheeled in from the road and the carnage, and as jeeps with their machine gun crews slow
ly circled the parking lot. Only Al seemed afflicted by insomnia. He paced the parking lot a bit and acquired a carton of Lucky Strikes from a guy selling them out of the trunk of his car, the only kind still available. Al had to part with the last of his credits. In addition, he had to autograph his signature a few times and submit to some photos. Apparently, he had achieved some measure of stardom on this reality show as well. The vendor complimented him on his driving when they had retrieved Jerry from the rifle range. Al supposed the show had its good points, if it enabled him to score some cigarettes, which are traditionally gold in a society in flux.
He stood for hours, as the others slept, smoking and staring at the mist in a patient vigil. In his pockets were both snub nosed revolvers, and as he smoked and stared, more than once he patted them, as if to make sure they were still there.
Chapter Eight: Marie Loads Up
“Pull over,” Marie commanded. Joe looked up, surprised. Throughout this trip, Marie had seemed the most intent of all to get to New York. True, this abandoned and wrecked vehicles looked bad, but no worse than any others they had driven by.
“It’s not safe,” vacillated Joe, halting, but not opening the door.
“I thought I saw someone alive waving by that cop car,” Marie improvised. “I’ll check myself, nobody else gets out.” Nobody else wanted to.
Marie strode out alone into the night, her satchel swinging from her hand. She actually pretended to check the few relatively intact bodies, and then crouched down by the dead cop, obstructing the view from the bus with her body. Without any humor, she pried the cop’s gun from his cold dead fingers, and quickly removed his other available equipment-handcuffs, pepper spray, and extra bullets, which she speedily stuffed into her satchel. She looked up quickly, when she heard a rustling noise, but it was only the wind playing with some debris. Hurrying, she rose and grabbed a set of keys out of the police car’s ignition, and used one to pop open the trunk, finding what she’d been hoping for-a police shotgun and a couple of boxes of shells and a few boxes of bullets for the revolver. The cop must not have had time to grab this, since it was a much more formidable weapon than the pistol. She shucked in five shells, and stuffed the rest into her satchel as well.
There was a mangled heap of meat with the remnants of a blue coat and a badge affixed to it. Fighting back her revulsion, she kicked another gun away from the pile, which must have been the other cop’s partner. She swiftly wiped the revolver down.
Some instinct warned her she had been there long enough. The wind sighing through the wreckage and the dead bodies got to her and she had that unmistakable feeling of being watched. Whether she was justifiably cautious, or whether a lifetime of danger had made her overly so was academic, really.
Returning to the minibus, she announced, “Everybody was dead. I figured grab this while I was out there. It might come in handy.” She plopped down on the bus seat, poker faced, holding the shotgun over her knees. Joe gave her a strange look as he shut the bus door, but said nothing. The others were also silent. Marie had the calculated cold bloodedness of a cobra, and she inspired respect in the way a cobra is respected. When alone with a cobra, it is best to stay very still until the cobra decides what to do. Marie felt Charlie’s eyes on her, but when she glanced at him, he looked away. His self-assurance seemed to have fallen away as the early morning progressed. Joe peeled out. Looking through the window, Marie could still see no sign of life, but was glad to be getting away from there.
After a moment’s thought, Marie quietly handed the second revolver to Gwen.
“Watch out. There’s no safety. Here’s an extra box of bullets.”
Gwen took the gun as if Marie had just handed her a live snake. She quickly stuffed it into her satchel and continued to stare straight ahead.
Marie was actually sorry to have made them more uncomfortable. She didn’t mean it personally. She had nothing in particular against them, and she actually like Joe’s driving style. She was fortunate, she thought, that Joe was as desperate to get to New York as she was. She assumed he had some ulterior motives for this.
The conditions of this game were thoroughly ridiculous, and she believed none of them would actually be foolish enough to try to complete them. In fact, she believed that the whole game was a typical Homeland Security snafu. The Psycho problem had escalated so rapidly that it seemed incredible they were actually expected to contend with them during what could best be described as a combination A.A. field trip and scavenger hunt. Gerard had even mentioned some kind of TV show they might be in, which seemed preposterous now. The original premise, she reasoned, was the shrinks at the rehab decided to see what would happen if the patients were given enough rope to hang themselves. The ones who didn’t seize the opportunity to go and use whatever substances they were in for would then be separated from the hopeless cases. That sounded close, she reasoned. Insurance companies were getting a lot more brutal about paying for drug and alcohol treatment, especially for repeaters.
America was also having serious systemic problems. When Iran had been mired in a war with Iraq back in the 1980s, The Ayatollah had supposedly used drug addicts to sweep mine fields before regular troops went through, Marie remembered reading in a history book. Whether this was true or just wartime propaganda because the USA had been backing Saddam back then, she didn’t know, but it did underscore that certain social elements become more expendable than others at times of great social stress.
Marie had never been to rehab before, and was confident she would never be back. She didn’t feel like she was violating anyone’s trust, since she had not exactly been voluntarily committed. Unconsciously, she rubbed her nose with a grim expression. The bandage from a recent surgery obstructed her vision, so she peeled it off. Her left eye was still a little swollen, but her face had come a long way towards returning to normalcy in the last few months. The only sign of a real injury on her face now was one small bandage left on her nose, which would forever be slightly crooked. Joe continued his frantic driving. Whatever Joe’s agenda was, his driving was fine by her, as long as he got her within striking distance of New York in one piece.
The chance to grab those guns had been a lucky card. She was actually a pretty good shot, after spending many hours blasting cans with Donnie and his brother in an old strip mine. Naturally small boned and petite, she had been practical enough to realize her martial art studies were never going to make her truly formidable at self-defense, and she had rounded off her training with both traditional and Western weapons. Naturally a quick study, her interests had served to prepare her for this journey, which she always knew must come, but had always prayed would not. Just six months ago, she might have said that perhaps this trip could be avoided.
Joe was a lucky card too, she thought. He could drive like a bat out of Hell. This may be why we’ve had so few problems thus far. Maybe Fortune does smile on the bold. How ironic. Everyone else had been so upset at being forced to go to New York for this crazy scheme, while I might have carjacked somebody to accomplish this same end.
She’d been successfully set up by someone who knew her and understood her weaknesses, but Marie understood some things about The Creep, too. In this time of national crisis, The Creep would never impetuously leave his little fortress of solitude in Lower Manhattan. It was too well fortified with panic rooms and supplies for a year. If things got too dicey, he had a private helicopter pad on the roof, but he would not play that card until the end. If there was a crisis, he would ride it out with his coke dealer and pimp friends’ numbers on speed dial and within delivery distance. If something really catastrophic was pending, he had plenty of high up contacts who would warn him when to get out of town well beforehand.
Marie knew nobody was warning him about her though. Her small blip was off the radar and moving fast. Thirty more miles of watching Joe veer around scenes of destruction, and she would be close to the heliport. The Creep’s rooftop chopper pad was supposed to be his golden exit ticket, but Marie was go
ing to use that perceived strength as a real weakness. She patted her shotgun like patting the shoulder of a friend.
“Joe, if we drive by a hardware store or something like that, could you pull over so I could run in?” Marie asked into the silence.
Charlie was surly now. “What, are you planning on doing some home repairs?”
Marie smiled, but her smile did not inspire warmth, but rather uncomfortability. “No, I just wanted to grab a saw.”
Chapter Nine: Arty And Phil
Marie was spared having to risk her fellow patients driving off without her while she ran into a store when they chanced upon a work truck loaded with the sort of metal pipes she associated with Donnie, who had taught her how to saw off a shotgun. The vehicle looked like it had been abandoned in a hurry, and the keys were still in the ignition. There was a telltale blood signature, as if someone had been wounded before fleeing. Marie plucked out the keys, and sorted through them until she found a small one that seemed likely to unlock the small metal compartments on the body of the truck. Her association with Donny, who owned a similar truck, taught her where to look. The first compartment contained a suitable file, and the third held exactly the type of metal saw she required. Spying some old rope and a rubber hose, she grabbed them as well. Highway 10 was desolate and terrifying, but the minibus was only stopped for a total of three minutes before roaring back onto the road.
Marie sat and cheerfully sawed and filed away at the shotgun until it was short and stocky, and could easily be concealed in her long coat. Charlie watched her impassively as she worked. When she finished, and began tidying up the metal shavings, he asked “What is the rubber hose for?”
“That’s a present for you guys. You might have to siphon some gas on your return trip. I think you can make New York on what you have, though.”
“I thought you were coming with us?” Charlie said, sounding surprised.