“Customers,” she said. “Got to keep the operation running.”
“No winning allowed down there,” I said, indicating the tables frozen below us in the cavern.
She smiled again, and for the first time the smile reached her dark eyes. “Never.”
Right at that moment I knew I had her. Just like I did in any tournament before making an all-in bet, I went quickly back over what had gone on before.
She’d been pulling a scam on the first hand after sitting down, and had gotten impatient to take the table down into her own world. And I’m sure there was a reason she was impatient.
Then I realized why. If we had reached the floor of the cavern in hell, I’m sure I would have lost the hand we were playing. She would have been able to change her cards into pocket fours, giving her quad fours, the only cards that would beat my kings-full in this hand. That’s why she was in a hurry to get the table down. She wasn’t used to losing and she was going to lose the first hand.
But we hadn’t reached the floor of the cavern yet. And I could still see the Mirage poker room outlined around us. That meant, I was sure, that real world rules played. That Laverne and Stan were still with me in spirit.
I leaned forward. “Any of these men actually due to arrive in your world today?”
She glanced around at the frozen faces staring at her chest. “No.”
“So then you’re basically after me. Right?”
She said nothing, but I could tell from her eyes that I was right. I also knew without a doubt I wasn’t ever destined to go in this direction after I died. Besides, from what I understood, superheroes lived a long time, so I had no idea how long in the future any question about this issue was going to be.
“Why go after a superhero?” I asked.
She smiled. “Challenge.”
“It must be getting dull in Gambling Hell.”
She only shrugged and smiled.
I had played her right into my hand and there was no point in rubbing salt into a wound any more, even if the person was from Gambling Hell and didn’t know they were even wounded yet. So instead I smiled at her for a few moments longer, just to get her squirming.
Then I said, “Well, if you like a challenge, how about we finish this hand to see which direction this table is going? I win the hand we go up, back to the Mirage and you go somewhere else to play. You win, we go down, and I’ll go with you for a while. Play your game.”
The moment I put it back on the cards I caught a slight, very slight hint of panic cross her face. She hid it well, but I still saw it. I knew I had her. She had a good hand, but she didn’t have the nut hand.
“Well, let us go so the dealer can call the hand,” she said.
“No,” I said, not wanting this table to get any closer to that cavern floor. “Right here, right now. No more bets. We roll the cards and see who wins. Otherwise I call in Stan and he puts this table back where it belongs and you lose the chance of getting these players and me as your toys.”
Heidi stared at me, taking her turn trying to read me. She was good, of that I had no doubt. But the best players in the world had tried to put reads on me for years without luck. No chance a simple Denizen from Gambling Hell could do it.
Finally she nodded. “You have a bet.”
“I win,” I said, making the bet clear, “the table goes back to the Mirage and you leave. You win, I release the table and we play in your world for a while.”
“Those are the stakes,” she said.
With that she flipped over pocket aces.
“Nice hand,” I said.
And then I did something I never do in real life because it just annoys me and every other player. I hesitated in turning over my cards. It’s called slow-rolling and it is the worst thing any player can do. But I did it anyway, just to get under Heidi’s skin, just to give her a brief moment when she thought she had won. Sort of a little taste of her own hell is the way I figured it.
“Pocket kings,” I said, flipping my cards onto the table face up in front of me. “Kings-full.”
For a moment I thought I caught a glimpse of what Heidi really looked like under all that fake skin and large breasts. And let me tell you, she was one ugly human being. Nightmare ugly.
She stood, pushing her chair back and I let us go back to normal time at the same moment.
Suddenly the noise from the Mirage poker room pounded in around us. The men at the table were suddenly very surprised that Heidi was standing, and that our cards were showing without a final round of betting.
“Nice playing with you,” she said, staring at me. Then without her false smile, she bent over and picked up her chips, giving a number of the men at the table a real show before turning and stamping off.
“What just happened there?” the dealer asked as he slid the pile of chips in the middle of the table toward me.
I shrugged. “Sore loser.”
One of the men who had gotten the best show from her picking up her chips laughed. “She bends over like that a few more times and she can take all my money.”
“Always be careful what you ask for,” I said. “You never know where you might end up.”
Everyone around the table laughed and the mood shifted back to a fun game of serious poker, playing for money instead of souls.
Elliot knew the world would not end in 2012.
But his wife thought it would, so on the morning of December 21st, 2012, Elliot went out for a drive to avoid her.
And found himself in the Twilight Zone.
“Dead Post Bumper” was first published in the More Stories from the Twilight Zone, edited by Carol Serling and published by Tor in 2010.
DEAD POST BUMPER
ONE
Elliot Leiferman: Summer 2016 near Death Valley
The dust and light sand swirled along the edge of the ancient road like a runner fleeing a threat, twisting in streamers on the dry desert wind, vanishing, then appearing a step or two later.
The sagebrush whipped back and forth making only a faint rustling sound quickly snapped away by the force of the hot wind and the empty nothingness of the desert. A fence of rusted wire and old wood paced along beside the road, sometimes upright, other times nothing more than a remnant of splinters mostly covered in sand.
The road, gray with age, vanished under sand drifts and piles of dry sagebrush as it stretched into the distance. Nothing but dust and sand and waves of heat had traveled the road in a very long time.
The rusting hulk of an old automobile rested on four flat tires, tipped slightly in a shallow ditch. One of its two doors hung open and the hood of the car was tucked against a still-upright fence post. The picture of a wildcat adorned the hood and the word Jaguar in metal script rusted on faded blue paint.
A man’s body sat behind the steering wheel, the skin mummified in the heat and dry air and constant wind, the old seat belt still holding the body in position. Dead eyes stared at the fence post against the hood of the car as if it was an insult even to the living.
Dust swirled inside the car for a moment and then settled into the thick layer on the seats and floor.
Sand was building a dune against one side of the car, already up to the bottom of the windows. In ten more years the car and man inside would be nothing more than a large pile of sand and the highway would be covered completely.
TWO
Elliot Leiferman: December 20th, 2012, Malibu, California
Elliot watched in disgust as his wife, Casandra Leiferman, Candy to her few remaining friends, grunted as she lowered her large bulk into a chair beside the bed. She had a chocolate-covered maple bar in one hand and a large vodka-tonic in the other, three limes of course, more vodka in the tumbler than tonic by a factor of two.
Nothing he could say, no amount of pleading, begging, threatening, had helped Candy to either stop her drinking problem or go on a diet. His thin bride of eighteen years had ballooned in just the last three years to over 350 pounds and she now regularly downed ten
vodka-tonics in tumblers before dinner. He gave up counting how many she had every night after her huge dinner. She just passed out in her bedroom, eating and drinking while watching television.
He had moved into his own bedroom almost two years ago now.
Something had gone horribly wrong in both of their lives and their marriage, and he had no real idea what. He had remained thin, actually five pounds under their marriage weight, and he seldom drank anymore. His work took him around the world on business trips and for years Candy went with him on many of the trips.
But then, three years ago, it all changed and changed suddenly. She started drinking and eating and quickly grew tired of the traveling as well, deciding instead to simply stay at home and indulge herself.
At one point, a year ago, he had begged her to go to counseling with him and she had shrugged and gone along. But in the sessions it quickly became clear she was never going to stop either overeating or drinking. She just didn’t seem to see why she should.
When the counselor finally got her to tell him why, clearly, so that she, the counselor, could understand her, she had simply said, “Why not.”
“I still don’t understand,” the counselor had said.
Candy had looked at her with disgust, then said simply, “You haven’t heard? The world is ending December 21st, 2012. So why shouldn’t I enjoy this last year?”
Since that point, Elliot and Candy had argued many, many times over her belief. He had kept asking her what if she was wrong, what then? She had flatly said time and time again that she wasn’t wrong.
He had demanded over and over for her to explain how could she be so certain.
The Mayan calendar is ending on that date,” she had said, as if that explained everything. “I just know my life, your life, will end that day. I can feel it.”
Now, as he unpacked from his last trip, she sat in his bedroom on his dressing chair.
“Tomorrow’s the big day,” Candy said between bites of the maple bar and sips of the vodka-tonic. A large smear of chocolate streaked her cheek but she didn’t seem to care. She hadn’t been out of her bathrobe in weeks and he doubted from her sour smell that she had even taken a shower in that amount of time either. He had been in Europe the last two weeks and had only gotten home a few hours before.
“So,” Elliot asked, repeating a question he had asked every time she said something about her insanity, “what happens if the world doesn’t end tomorrow?”
“Oh, it will,” she said before taking a huge bite of the maple bar, chewing twice, then washing it down with a large gulp of vodka.
Elliot just shook his head. How could a woman he had loved so deeply, still loved, actually, gone so far off track? He had read a dozen books about insanity and nothing about Candy seemed to even fit a pattern. He could even remember the night it had started. Back in 2009 she had come to bed late after watching a History Channel special on how the world was supposed to end on December 21st, 2012, the last day of the Mayan calendar. She was both excited and agitated at the idea, and he had listened only half-heartedly at what she had said that night.
Over the next few weeks after that, she never stopped talking about the topic, even on a trip together to London, one of her favorite cities. At one point on that trip she stood looking up at Big Ben and said, “Isn’t it a shame that all of this will be gone in three years?”
He had changed the subject, hating even talking about predictions of any future. That was for those crazies who believed in that mumbo-jumbo. He was a believer in right now. The present. Today. The future would be what the future would be. And Candy, up until that point, had been as down-to-earth as he was.
Not any more. She was as crazy as they came.
He turned from his unpacking and looked at the mess of a human being his wife had become. “I guess tomorrow we shall see, won’t we?”
“That we will,” she said, smiling. “I plan on spending the day on the deck, watching the world end over the ocean. Would you like to join me?”
“Thank you, dear,” he said, turning back to his now almost empty suitcase on the bed so that she wouldn’t notice how disgusted at her he felt. “I’ll do my best to make it back from the office in time.”
“With the world ending, why bother to go into the office at all?”
He shrugged, keeping his back to her. “I just like the routine is all. It’s comforting.”
“Well do hurry home,” she said. Then grunting, she hefted herself out of the chair and waddled down the hall toward the kitchen.
He had no intention of being home tomorrow, end of the world or not. He’d deal with her the following day, after her fixation had been proven wrong.
Then maybe he could help her, find her the help she needed.
THREE
Elliot Leiferman: December 21st, 2012, near Death Valley
The car hit ninety easily as he took the Jaguar down the straightaway out onto the desert road headed toward Death Valley. The old highway was almost never used anymore, and to even get on it he had had to move a road-closed sign, but he loved the freedom of the straight pavement and the speed he could safely drive without worrying about any patrols stopping him.
Thunderclouds threatened in the low hills in the distance, but the cab of the Jaguar kept him comfortable from the intense heat and safe from the blowing sand. This morning Candy had been like a schoolgirl in her excitement. How anyone could be excited about the end of the world was beyond him, but for weeks the news reports had gone on and on about the Mayan Calendar coming to an end today, and this morning’s headlines were “End of the World?”
The entire thing just annoyed him.
It was not only stupid, but it had cost him the woman he loved. He wanted this past, he wanted to help Candy get healthy again, stop drinking, lose weight, become the woman he had married.
But that wasn’t going to happen until he got home tonight and the world hadn’t ended. Then he could start helping her recover for real and maybe even get to the root cause of why she had believed the end was coming anyway.
The smooth ride of the Jaguar ate up mile after mile of the old road, taking him deeper and deeper into the desert. Even at this time of the year, the temperature outside his car was a warm ninety degrees and he had the air conditioning holding him in comfort. He had come to learn that there were real advantages to having large amounts of money, the beautiful home in Malibu was one, this car was another.
He loved this car, and lately had taken more and more long drives in it when home just to get away from Candy.
He looked out over the expanse of desert around him, letting himself relax into the drive. Wouldn’t it be funny if the world actually did end today while he was in the desert? He snorted to himself and snapped on the radio, letting it search for a radio station.
Normal music playing, no alarms, nothing different.
Nothing was ending today.
He let the miles drift by as he thought about all the wonderful times he and Candy used to have and the hope that starting tomorrow, they could rebuild that old life once again.
The sun was starting to touch the horizon; the day was nearing an end. Candy was going to need him later tonight. He had no doubt she would pass out from all the drinking, but at least he could be there to take care of her. For the first time in a year, he felt he wanted to. Something that she had believed in deeply was about to not happen and she would need help getting through that.
He let the car slow down to under sixty and glanced around at the vast expanse of nothingness. Amazing that in such a crowded place as California, there could be so many thousands of square miles of nothingness.
At that moment he noticed a faint light on the dashboard. He slammed on the brakes and came to a stop in the middle of the old road.
The gas warning light was on.
Oh, God, no. He had no idea how long it had been on, but it was unlikely he had enough gas to make it back to the roadblock he had moved, gone around, and then replaced.
That had to be seventy or more miles back at least.
It had never occurred to him to get gas before he left. His thoughts had been on Candy and the end of the world, not his wonderful car.
He swung the Jaguar into a quick three-point turn on the narrow old road, and started back west into the glowing orange of the sun as it set over the Pacific in the far distance.
He had to stay calm, think this through.
At that moment the finely tuned car that had run so smoothly for so long sputtered, caught again, then sputtered and shut down.
He was out of gas.
On a closed old highway near Death Valley.
Oh, God, oh God, oh God, what had he done?
The steering was heavy in his hands as he took the car out of drive and coasted to a stop.
At the last moment he eased the car off to the side of the road, letting the Jaguar come to rest in a very shallow ditch, its front bumper resting lightly against an old wooden post of a long gone fence. No point in taking a chance that someone else out speeding on this old road would plow into his car in the middle of the night. He just hoped that bumping the old fence post hadn’t scratched the bumper.
He snapped out his cell phone and looked at the signal.
Nothing.
And he had never bothered to have a tracking satellite system installed, even though the dealer had suggested it. He had never figured it would be needed in his drives around Malibu.
He glanced around.
Death Valley.
A closed road with no traffic.
Nothing within seventy or more miles from him.
God, oh God. What could he do? His stomach twisted like he was about to be sick.
He couldn’t let himself panic. He had to think this through. If he panicked, he was as good as dead.
He pushed open the door and let the hot wind of the early evening blow dust into his just cleaned car. In front of him, the sun had set.
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