Three Weeks on the Road Ch. 07

Thursday

7/16/20

Authors' note: This chapter starts a thread that runs through a few chapters, a brief divergence into science-fiction/horror. There is a short scene of threat and terror (though no violence) which may be unsettling to some viewers.

There is a small town in eastern Wyoming, one or two bedraggled houses, lots of ruins of others, an ancient gas station, and a long, dark train that doesn't seem to move. The interior of the gas station is crowded, and the people inside wear weather-inappropriate clothing and watch your every move like you're not supposed to be there, like you're not even supposed to have found this place.

I stopped there. I would recommend that you do not.

Keannadiid came for me first, as he always did in my dreams. Maybe that's because I'd seen him around school, interacted with him. Maybe that's because we'd been fighting face to face when I shot him.

Of all the attackers at the cabin three years ago, his was the only face I remembered, the other men I'd killed were nameless, faceless silhouettes in my mind. But the security guard, Nina's cousin, the man with the access to cameras and computers and the desire to use them against me, he stood out.

And he always came for me first in my nightmares.

Jessie was sitting at the table in the downtown Milwaukee bar where we'd shared our first meal all those years ago, and my arm was still in a sling, aching from the cold and multiple surgeries. "You're dead," she said, her usually bright and excited voice as dull and gray as a monotone. "So either I drank myself to death or into hallucinations. Either way, good to see you again."

"I did die, couple of times," I responded. "They brought me back though. We're both very much ali - "

That was when Keannadiid stepped out of the shadows carrying an AK47. "You cannot see the tapes," he told me, like he'd said in the school's basement security office. Then, looking at me and taking aim, "We are coming for you."

Darkness exploded in front of me with an explosion like the world was ripped apart by a nuclear bomb, and my arm ignited with exquisite pain.

The hotel room was unfamiliar, dark except for moonlight pouring in the slats of the blinds. I ripped the confining sheets off my sweating body, rolled to the floor with a loud, jarring THUMP, grabbed my Sig off the end table and focused on the shaking red dot dancing across the door. Light bloomed behind me, and I was vaguely aware of distant voices, growing louder. They were a secondary concern, I had to protect her, they might be coming for us again, they'd funnel through that door and then -

Smooth skin against my bare back, lips against my ear. "It's ok, Gary, I'm right here. I've got you, it's ok..."

Slim, pale arms reached around me, and Jessie took the SIG from my shaking hands, set it on the end table before wrapping me in a hug. "You're here, you're safe, it's ok..."

From the back of the room, McKenna was uttering a nonstop stream of "What the fuck" over and over again, and Jessie said "Shut the hell up, you're not helping."

I trembled in her arms until the adrenaline bled off, the storm of fear and anger clouding my mind dissipating before her soothing words and touch. The violent nightmares had gotten less frequent, fortunately, and Jessie no longer had to comfort a scared, armed, disoriented man multiple times a week. It'd been a while since I'd dreamed as ugly and frightening as that.

I rose shakily, turned and held her. "Thank you," I whispered into her ear.

"You're ok?"

"Eventually." My mouth felt like a desert and my arm burned. I pulled away. "Go back to bed, I'll join you shortly."

Mckenna was sitting on her bed cross-legged, elbows on her knees, glaring daggers at me. "I'm sorry," I told her as I walked to the bathroom. "I'm sorry I woke you up, sorry I scared you, sorry you had to see that."

She followed me into the bathroom, ranting as I downed a glass of water and a packet of Tylenol that I found in the vanity. "People like you are the reason people like me think people like you shouldn't have guns! You could've fucking shot us! You were out of your mind!"

I splashed water on my face, splashed some on my arm. If didn't help the flames, they were under my skin. "I wasn't pointing it anywhere near you, you were behind me."

"Great, so the next time you have a bad dream and lose your marbles you're just going to start shooting out into the parking lot? What if you're in a hotel, what about the people across the hall?"

"I didn't shoot anyone, my finger wasn't even on the trigger."

"Whatever, you're still a fucking danger to everyone arou - "

I turned to face her, and she shut up. "Until you've had to deal with the knowledge that living another SECOND, drawing another BREATH means fighting for your life, until you've seen people you love shot down in front of you, you shut the fuck up about my owning and carrying guns. Your opinion means shit all. I've been there, done that, got the motherfucking t-shirt. You are out of your fucking element, Donny."

"But that still doesn't - "

I stepped up, towering over her, making her feel the disparity in our sizes. "Say another word and you're hitchhiking to Denver."

Her mouth opened and I smiled cruelly, raised a finger. "One. More. Word."

I shut the light off on the annoying little programmer and went back to bed. This time, Jessie wrapped her arms around me.

I woke up about two hours later to Jessie rising from the bed, moving to the bathroom. The bedside clock said five thirty. Dammit. Today was gonna suck. I felt like I hadn't slept for even a second, and the thought of last night made my heart start to race.

McKenna rose at six as Jessie exited the bathroom, and I rolled to sitting on my side of the bed, grabbed my shorts and pulled them on. I fished for my wallet, pulled out a bill, sighed, and walked over to the other side of the room. "Hey."

"Can I speak now?" McKenna was still angry.

"Yeah, you can. I want to give you this, it's... It's the best apology I've got."

I handed her the bill, and her eyes widened, then narrowed. "You can't buy off my being mad at you."

"Yeah, I know, but I figured giving you the money for a Taco Johns breakfast would be a great start to your day..."

That made her eyes light up.

We drove south out of Montana and the weather was far better than yesterday, bright blue skies and hot sun and not a cloud in the sky. We left the rolling green hills and reddish highways for the first plains and farm fields of Wyoming, the landscape growing more and more featureless and desolate the farther south we drove.

The mood in the car was subdued, and instead of chattering about the sights we weren't seeing or funny memes on Facebook or Twitter. I felt bad about that, it was my fault. Me and my messed up head.

For the first time on the trip, we took turns behind the wheel. Previously, Jessie would take an hour or so for me occasionally, but we all rotated through the driver's seat so that no one got overtired.

I tried to relax, tried to nap, caught up on the news. Still no arrests in Milwaukee. Still nothing but protests of innocence from the group I'd seen there. Oh well. Not my problem.

Wyoming stretched on, and on, and on. And on. Gigantic farm equipment or buildings appeared minute on the horizon, dots floating on a sea of tan or gray or green. We stopped at every gas station we passed, refilling even if the tank was only down five or ten percent. I didn't want to get stranded out on these lonesome roads, the distance between the vehicles was growing greater, and the pockets of civilization seemed fewer and farther between.

It felt like being in space. Or on the ocean.

We reached Thunder Basin around ten, having made good time. Driving through, I couldn't understand why the girls wanted to visit this place. It looked like every other stretch of highway we'd driven through. Hot, desolate, lonely. Jessie would constantly tell me to stop the car, and she would get out to take a panoramic photo of the landscape, or shoot a selfie with McKenna, silly grins or duck faces against a background of dry scrub and barbed wire fencing and merciless sky.

Trees did appear occasionally, usually popping up beside brooks or small ponds that reminded me of South Dakota. Buttes and hills would sometimes appear on the horizon, never seeming to draw close enough to become more real than a mirage. Otherwise, it was flat, the only vegetation dusty grasses occasionally brushed by an errant breeze.

We encountered a few dusty old wooden cabins, long deserted, and Jessie insisted on taking pictures in and around each one, snapping shots of her and her best friend in creaking, decaying rooms, broken doorways, or by the remnants of ancient fencing. I was happy to play photographer when she needed someone to press the shutter button on the ancient but powerful smartphone she preferred, but it did occasionally get annoying being ordered to adjust the frame over and over and over again, waiting for the pair to pose just right, move into this shadow or that beam of light based on the picture Jessie saw in her mind.

"What can you possibly need all these pictures for?" I asked as we drove on from another quick photo session of the two girls standing in the middle of the empty road.

"What is it that you think your girlfriend does for a living?" McKenna asked, half serious and half sarcastic.

"Uh... Marketing?"

"We're on a photoshoot," Jessie said. "This whole trip. The theme is freedom. That's why all the open spaces, western motifs. What's more free than being out west?"

"I thought this was a bucket list trip..."

She shrugged, gave me a cute little smile. "They coincide nicely."

The photography continued throughout the park, and after we'd exited for the highway, Jessie connected the phone to her convertible, loading up the pictures and passing the device back and forth to review their work.

More dusty grasslands, more gas stations, more harsh sun beating down on the SUV that the air conditioning fought to dispel. Grasslands and farm fields faded into rocky plains and valleys, the occasional house appearing along the side of a ridge or at the end of a long driveway. Mountains rose up before us, and we started climbing into the Bighorn Mountain Range, the Suburban winding up the highway among heavily forested cliffs.

The girls stopped at every pulloff, and now that I knew they were also doing with, it was easy to see where the sightseeing, having fun, selfies ended and the serious photography began. They were less goofy and giggly, instead cycling through a series of emotions ranging from solemn to happy to awed.

Most of the work I'd seen Jessie do these past years had been email or sketching. Now I was seeing her flex an entirely different set of artistic muscles. It was satisfying, watching her, seeing her mind work and adapt her art to her surroundings.

I was proud of her.

We wound slowly through the mountain range, taking in the inspiring spectacle of massive cliffs and deep gorges, trees almost black against the red and gray rock. The striations in the stone walls were diagonal and jagged, as if broken off when thrust through the earth with titanic force. It was impossible to observe the immenseness of the landscape and not feel insignificant.

Out of the mountain range and the woods gradually receded to plains as we headed north again. Jessie and McKenna had decided that the most beautiful entrance to Yellowstone was through Livingston Montana, so we were driving a big, wide U across the state and - to my mind, irrationally - ignoring the perfectly good entrance of Cody Wyoming, which we would need to pass.

Out here, signs of human habitation besides fences and roads were farther and farther between, the towns small and depressing, the occasional houses slumping towards the ground, paint scabbing off like flaking skin.

McKenna pointed out a long train running less than a hundred yards off the highway, and I looked over at the long line of low hopper cars, stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. "Coal, coming out of the mountains. Probably the Rockies."

The sky grew darker with an incoming storm, the wind whipping the grasses and the lines of wire strung between the fence posts, stirring up clouds of dust. Buildings appeared as dots in the distance and I looked at the gas gauge. Not appreciably low. "You guys need to get out and stretch your legs?"

"I could use the little girls' room," McKenna said.

"Ok, we'll top up at the next gas station."

The town was old and dilapidated, three ancient houses sitting off the state highway, the gas station at the end of a dusty driveway. Remnants of old homes remained, a lot of them scattered along the side of the road, foundations sinking around still-standing central staircases. The sight was odd, almost eerie - the houses had all fallen or been razed in exactly the same manner, leaving the stairs reaching two sometimes three stories up into the sky like fingers. They were all different too - a few were wrought iron, one was a massive carpeted staircase like one might see in a mansion. They sprung up on both sides of the highway, remnants of a town that had long ago decayed and been abandoned.

We pulled up next to the single two-sided gas pump, and it was so old that it didn't have a credit card reader, pay inside only.

The wind had picked up, and my shirt flapped against me as I stood next to the pump while it chugged away. McKenna had gone inside and Jessie waited with me at the pump, my "two people with the vehicle" rule in effect even out here in the boonies where the population was measured in square miles per person.

"How are you doing?" Jessie asked, taking off her hat to push sweaty hair back from her forehead.

"Exhausted, but I'm good for driving. Gonna get some caffeine out of the cooler when we get back on the road."

She chuckled. "I could sleep too. Feel like I've been awake for days."

"Yeah, last night was kinda stressful, and it's been a long-ass day."

We stood there silently for a while, basking in the breeze, warm though it was. The hellish heat was pulling sweat from every pore, but the wind made it a little more tolerable.

McKenna came walking back from the store, and the look on her face was odd. " I'll wait for the next gas station. Place is fucking weird," she muttered as she climbed into the back.

I crossed the parking lot and the bell on the door jangled as I entered. The air was still and smelled strongly of antiseptic and despite the oppressive heat, every one of the ten or fifteen people packed into the store was wearing a hoodie pulled up around their face. Sunglasses too. The fuck?

I dug in my pocket for cash and handed the man behind the counter twenty for the gas. He looked slowly between it and me multiple times, and then got my change at a glacial pace, never saying a word.

There were at least two customers per aisle, all wearing summer-inappropriate clothing, and I had to shoulder past them and displays, excusing myself as I went, to get get to the back of the store. I stopped just before the restrooms. Something didn't sound right, something was missing. I looked left and realized the refrigerated cases, all stocked full of ancient glass bottles, were turned off. McKenna was right, this place was weird.

A sign to the left of the restrooms caught my attention "Rental - 50 cents" and I perused a few cases of VHS tapes, their cardboard sleeves soft and worn. Emilio Estevez's Young Guns Two was the newest I could find.

This store must've been open for a long time.

Two more hoodie-wearing men stood in front of the mirror in the Men's room, and they didn't move at all as I used the urinal and flushed. I smiled as I tried to move to the sink they were blocking. "Excuse me."

No words, no movement.

"Pardon me."

I stepped up close at the nearest one and stared at him in the mirror until he turned towards me. I'll admit, I can be physically imposing. I'm a bit over six feet, as lean as I can be with a bulking workout regimen, and having lived through and killed my way through some heinous shit, I can intimidate people.

This guy was a few inches shorter than me, wearing blue jeans, a black hoodie, sunglasses, and looking down, strangely enough hospital booties over bare feet.

He cranked his head around to look at me, mouth slightly open like he was going to speak, but nothing came out except strongly antiseptic-smelling breath. I stared into the glasses. "You got a problem with me?"

Anyone else, sensing a bigger, muscular man with a zero fucks given attitude would, reasonably, react. He didn't, he just kept breathing, waves of sweet and sterile hospital room breath offending my nostrils.

"Screw this." I headed out the door. McKenna was right.

A display of snack food sat ahead of the bathroom exit, and something about it looked off. I grabbed a package of beef jerky and turned it over and over in my hands, a sense of unease growing like the fluffy green-gray mold visible through the windowed packaging. I flipped through a few bags of hard candy only to discover that they'd all crinkled to white sugar dust.

The bell rang against the dirty glass door as I headed out into the parking lot. McKenna could hold it until the next town, we were getting the fuck out of here.

A van pulled up as I approached the Suburban, harried looking, middle-aged women exiting the front doors, five kids piling out of the panel. "I want candy," one of them shouted, and the woman pumping the gas gave me a tired smile. "They always do."

"Yup. Too much energy till they get it, too much after."

"Ain't that the truth." She smiled at the little boy who was tugging on her sleeve. "You can get some candy when we go inside."

My stomach roiled and I swallowed hard, tasted acid. I didn't want these women and their kids going in there. Not among the decaying food and weird people and odd hospital smell. I had an overpoweringly BAD feeling about this, a near-violent reaction to the thought of anyone stepping inside that store.

I gave the tired looking woman a grin. "Tell you what, they had a pipe burst inside and it stinks in there. Manager says they're waiting on a sewer guy to come and fix it. I've got soda and snacks in a cooler in my truck, you and the kids take whatever you like."

Jessie straightened from where she'd been leaning against the pump. "Gary?"

I held out a hand, motioned her to silence. "My treat," I told the woman.

She narrowed her eyes at me. "What is this?"

I tried to act as disarming and naturally nice as possible. "Just trying to be a good guy. That place is a mess right now, I'd hate to see any of you get sick." I opened the back doors of the Suburban, and pulled a Coke out of the cooler by McKenna's feet. She didn't look up from her tablet, studiously avoiding anything besides the screen. I handed the bottle off to the woman. "See, sealed and everything."

She sighed and looked at the bottle like it might contain holy water. "Sure, ok. I'll hold my breath, run up and pay, and then we'll take a few things if you don't mind..."

Pay. Shit.

I caught myself. Why did I have such a...fear...of them going into that store? It was weird, yeah, but I hadn't picked up on any overt BADNESS... It just made me uneasy.

Fuck me.

"Tell ya what. Pay it forward. You tell me your total and I'll go pay it."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Why are you doing this?"

"Just trying to be nice. You all look tired and I wouldn't want you to deal with a shi - er, crappy situation."

Eyes moved from the bottle to me to the store and back several times, then she sighed. "Well, shucks. Thank you."

The kids picked soda and candy out of the cooler, and the two women have us sheepish smiles before leaning in to grab some carbonated caffeine. Jessie, silent most of the encounter, gave me a weird look. "What are you doing? Can I go in and pee yet?"