Canni

by Daniel O'Connor

  Rob awoke on a pile of blankets where his bed once stood to the sound of Cash rushing in with her phone in hand. John came behind her. Hoffman, another instant-recovery patient, was just behind them. Cash and John had been outside where the reception is better. Hoffman followed them as they reentered the tunnels.

  “Someone is gonna see us, Rob!” she screamed.

  “Huh? What?”

  “A U.S. government official from Washington. We’re going to meet with her in person!”

  “Are we going to Washington D.C.?” asked John. “I want to see the White House.”

  “The Pentagon!” added Hoffman.

  “Fuck that,” said Rob, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “The Exorcist steps.”

  “What?” asked John.

  “I know you haven’t been able to watch movies, bud. We’re gonna change that. But there’s a huge flight of steps in The Exorcist that are located like ten minutes from D.C., and I am fucking going.”

  “Those steps!” nodded John. “They’re in the book, too. Both braille and audio.”

  “Guys, chill,” interrupted Cash. “We’re not going to Washington. She is coming out here.

  We have to meet her at some location near Vegas. Paul has all the details.”

  “An actual bigtime official is traveling across the country because she talked to Paul Bhong?” asked Rob. “You sure he isn’t just stoned?”

  A naked Don Russo strolled in as Cash replied. “The government lady spoke with Paul’s mom, who is a well-respected doctor, and she vouched for us without revealing our discovery. Two hours later, they called back—probably after researching her—and said okay.”

  “Our discovery sounds all sweet, Caroline.” said Russo. “See what I did there—‘Sweet Caroline’? But other than you three and the Asian kid, and now his mom, it seems, none of us—your friends who keep you all safe—know what the fuck you all are talking about when it comes to this so-called cure.”

  “We can’t tell anyone else yet. If word gets out, we’ll lose our leverage with the government. We do have a list of requests, and we will present them to the officials before we reveal our secret.”

  “Lookin’ for that payday, girlfriend. I feel you,” he answered.

  “It’s not about a payday. I want a flight home; a safe, private jet back to New York for Rob and me. We want John to get home, too. We also want help for everyone in your community down here.”

  “Government help? For us? We gettin’ free cheese and shit?” he deadpanned before quoting James Brown, “I don’t want nobody to give me nothin’, open up the door, I’ll get it myself.”

  “It’s not like that,” she responded.

  “How you all gettin’ to that meet-up?” inquired Russo as he picked at his navel.

  “Um, I’m guessing that Paul will probably drive us.”

  “Drive who? You three and Paul’s mother?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Okay,” he said, glancing at whatever he’d removed from his bellybutton, “but you know there’s broods out there. Fucking flocks of ‘em. Perms. They’re forming up in bunches. Killing in packs now. My thoughts are that you might need an escort. Some kind of backup in case you’re attacked.” He looked at Rob. “Am I making sense, bro?”

  “But why would you want to do that?” asked Rob.

  “Look, be straight with me, you two.” said Russo. “You think you have some cure, but only you guys know about it, which means that maybe you all are protected but the rest of us are still sitting ducks . . . ”

  “Not the case at all,” added Cash.

  “Says you. The thing is, if the rest of us down here had anything at all to do with this cure—if it is a cure—we should be involved in this all the way through. We get you to that meeting safe, maybe they let us in, maybe not . . . ”

  “Not.”

  “Maybe. But right after you tell those Washington people. If they actually believe you, then you tell us next. You tell all of my people who have kept you safe and fed you since you got down here. Spats died fighting for us; fighting for you. We want to know before Anderson Cooper and the fuckers at Fox News.”

  “I’ll think about it, okay?” replied Cash.

  Russo was back in his navel. “And we’ll expect more than government cheese.”

  More than thirty hours later, night again fell on Las Vegas, and it was time to go. Just outside the tunnels, the motorcade prepared to roll.

  This was no parade of government vehicles, but a collection of motorcycles and cars to take Rob, Cash, and the underground dwellers to the big meet. Paul stood beside his red Harley as Don Russo and Phaedra approached the black one that they would share.

  “I want you to know, Paul,” began Russo, “that because your mother is coming with us, I did seriously consider wearing some briefs or shorts or something out of respect. But then it dawned on me that she is a seasoned medical professional, so she won’t be fazed by one naked man.”

  “Hmm,” grunted Paul, eyeing the new black high tops on Russo’s size 4E feet.

  “Also, and I’m not cracking wise, but do you think that maybe, when we’re all done saving the world, that if I supplied the glove she might give me a prostate exam?”

  Paul put his helmet on and got on his bike.

  Hoffman had a Harley as well. Rob sat behind the wheel of a six-year-old Ford Explorer with Cash by his side. John G occupied the back seat next to Dr. Anita Chuang. Behind them was a Chevy pickup driven by Quinn, a Gulf War veteran who’d been down on his luck and taken in by Russo the previous winter. Beside him sat Skunk; his healing lymphedema prohibiting him from riding a bike. Two old vans completed the caravan, packed with Russo’s followers, supplies, and anything deemed too valuable to leave unguarded in the tunnels; prized possessions, items of daily functionality, and an enormous load of weed.

  In the Explorer, noticing its popped ignition, Cash had a question.

  “So, all of these vehicles are stolen?”

  “Um, Paul owns his bike,” answered Rob.

  “What if we all get arrested?”

  “How exciting!” blurted Dr. Chuang from the rear.

  “Russo said all the cars and bikes will be returned when we get back,” said Rob. “He explained that the true owners would want to do their part to help us, if only they knew the situation.”

  “Now I see how Russo brainwashes everyone around here,” she answered.

  “Cash, my car was stolen, my dad’s tape collection was stolen, we stole a police handgun, I stole a fucking swimming pool service truck . . . ”

  She slid over and rested her head on his shoulder as she spoke. “And I stole Winthrop Robert’s heart.”

  Her words had him unable to find his own. Dr. Chuang looked at John G and they both beamed. “Awww,” sighed the doctor.

  The trio of Harleys thundered as they led the procession like the tip of an arrow toward Interstate 15.

  Heading north behind the lights of the Las Vegas Strip, they found the freeway to be nearly empty. There were some abandoned and totaled vehicles strewn about along with a few slow-moving taxis. There was almost no chance of any traffic enforcement as the police were overrun with more pressing matters. The further they motored from the strip, the darker it got.

  “You’ve been very quiet,” said Dr. Chuang, tapping John’s wrist.

  “Just a little nervous, I guess.”

  “Nervous about the ride? Or meeting Washington officials?”

  “Well, some of that, I guess, but,” he exhaled, “mainly I’m wondering that if our cure turns out to be legit, will everything change?”

  He turned toward her and she looked directly into his eyes. It was clear that she knew immediately, but he said it anyway.

  “Will I go back to being blind?”

  Just after their second freeway and before the final road portion of their journey, the group pulled off for gas. Hoffman went around with some credit cards. Nobody asked where he’d acquired them, but they c
ould usually be found in a wallet, right beside the driver’s license that would provide the holder’s home zip code and access to any gas pump.

  There was just a single employee at the station and he was bolted within to prevent any canni entries or exits. There were no other patrons around to see the group drinking water and eating jerky; would have been hard to decipher through the clouds of marijuana smoke anyway. Puffing at gas pumps had fallen a notch on the day to day risk meter.

  The group had not encountered any wild canni on their trip and certainly none of the fabled herds of perms. There did soon come some rustling in the brush just beyond the old gas station, though. But between the black of night and the haze of smoke it wasn’t going to be easy to see.

  “Who got the flashlights?” asked Russo.

  Quinn and Skunk came by with a hefty Mag and handed it over. Russo clicked it on and pointed it at the brush, which swayed slightly in the light desert breeze. That’s when they heard the steps; several of them. Grunts, too. Snorts.

  The head of the first one came through first, chewing. Cattle. Half a dozen of them; sauntering sluggishly athwart the bramble. The first group in the bovine parade seemed not to notice or care that the trailing cow trembled as it marched, trying to shake the parasite that rode upon its back, gnawing at its bloody withers.

  Cash had witnessed more than a lifetime of horrors in recent days, but the sight of the helpless cow falling over under the crunching chaw of something that resembled a raging scarecrow had her in tears.

  “Does anyone have a gun?” she cried.

  “We can’t kill him, baby, he can flip back. He could be someone’s father,” said Rob.

  “The poor cow,” she sniffled, “I want to shoot the poor cow.”

  “We have no guns,” said Russo, his ass gleaming in the Silverado’s high beams. “Lost my boomstick in the flood.”

  The skinny, denim overall-clad farmer tore at the animal’s flesh.

  “Can we do anything?” she asked.

  “Best we can do is get back on the road and maybe change the course of this plague. This here is just nature. Usually it’s a wolf that would take down a cow like that . . . ”

  “We’re all wolves now,” interrupted Phaedra, drafting her smoke toward the moon.

  “Let’s get rolling before that hungry hayseed gets tired of Bessie and sets his sights on us,” said Russo.

  The final road, a thin stretch with one lane in each direction, was much darker than the major highways had been. It looked like it would wind for miles before vanishing into the distant mountains. The headlights of the row of vehicles looked almost like the scattered rays of sun that would filter down through the tunnels. The three bikes led the way with Paul at the tip of the arrow. From the back seat of the Explorer, beside John G, Dr. Chuang watched her son ride.

  “You see, it’s my Paul leading, not that Russo character.”

  John squinted. “Yes,” he said, “though maybe Russo is staying back because Phaedra is on his bike. Could be looking out for her safety.”

  “He could always put the young lady on Paul’s bike and take the lead position himself,” she answered.

  “Hmmm.”

  “Paul’s always been a leader,” she said. “Such a good kid. He didn’t have the greatest family life, with his father and me. There was always drama.”

  Cash turned her head to listen. Rob’s concentration was on the murky road ahead.

  Anita Chuang continued. “He would withdraw into himself. Study computers. Read biker magazines. I knew he was hiding. Hiding from reality. I should have done more . . . ”

  “Your son is a good man,” smiled Cash. “You did an awesome job with him.”

  Rob changed the subject. “No sign of any groups of perms,” he said. “We may have caught a break there.”

  Cash had a question for Dr. Chuang. “Was Paul a good student?”

  Before she could reply, Rob had a request. “Cash, can you read those texts with the instructions?”

  “The ones Paul got from that government lady?” she asked, getting her phone out.

  “Yes. The only instructions that I could possibly be talking about.”

  She ignored his attitude and found a text. “Go to the new mini-mart, not the older inn. The town is basically mobile homes, the inn, and the mini-mart. The mart is the only new structure . . . ”

  A late model white pickup pulled up alongside them with no lights, on the wrong side of the road. It paced them. Cash didn’t notice it but the others did as she continued reading the text.

  “Go in the mart. No matter the hour, it will be open for you . . . ”

  The pickup took off, blasting past the bikes ahead and into the night as Cash read on.

  “ . . . Ask the counterman if he sells Buitoni Instant Pizza. After he answers, tell him your toaster is broken anyway . . . ”

  The first road sign on the two-lane trail was just ahead.

  “ . . . Then, purchase a Snickers bar with almonds. At that point, the counterman will give you further instructions.”

  The beaming rays of the Explorer landed on the green rectangular route sign. It was covered in a variety of stickers, many old, some partially scraped off. Still, the white letters were plainly visible.

  EXTRATERRESTRIAL HIGHWAY

  The caravan pulled into the small parking lot. There was barely enough space for the vehicles to fit. The sign on the building was not a monument to creativity.

  MINI-MART

  Don Russo stormed over to the Explorer as Rob and the others were getting out.

  “Why are we stopping here? We’re almost there!”

  “Did you ask Paul?” replied Rob.

  “He told me to ask you.”

  “This is where we were instructed to stop.”

  “Oh, come on,” huffed Russo. “You know, I know, and my dead Uncle Billy knows that we are right down the road from Area 51. That white pickup parked up ahead in the dark ain’t no coincidence. You telling me this meet-up is gonna be at some fucked up 7-Eleven?”

  “I just don’t know, Mr. Russo.”

  “I thought we were all gonna go inside Area 51,” he sighed, sounding more like a child than the leader of the tunnel-dwellers.

  “I don’t know that any of us were going to be in Area 51, but I do know that the specific instructions state that Cash and I are to go in this store along with John, Paul, and Dr. Chuang. That’s it. They said if anyone else walks in with us, there is no meeting. So, you and the crew need to wait out here, or you can drive back home if you want, but we have to follow orders.”

  Russo scratched his shoulder. “I haven’t followed orders since I was discharged from the Marines.”

  “Well, guess what? Like it or not, you are now serving your country again.”

  Rob tugged on the door. For an instant it appeared to be locked, but then came a click, and he pulled it open. As they stepped in, a bell chimed, as it might at any convenience store. The place was well-lit and smelled as clean as it looked. The man behind the counter appeared to pay them no mind, staring at his phone, seemingly in gamer mode. He was certainly under thirty, bearded, wearing a beanie and a black Misfits rock tee.

  “Hello,” smiled Cash.

  He gave a slight wave, eyes never leaving his phone, fingers tapping away.

  The group walked separately about the three short aisles of the modest emporium, glancing around, examining random goods on the shelves, not knowing what to expect. The young counterman never raised his head.

  Cash whispered to Rob. “What are we waiting for? Let’s just do it and see what happens.”

  They waved at the others and all five approached the head of the store. Rob tapped the wrappers of some Little Debbie snack cakes just beside the counter. The bearded fellow looked up from his phone. His dark eyes were trained on Rob. He appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. He flashed a wide, friendly smile.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Rob cleared his throat “Uh, do you
have Buitoni Instant Pizza?”

  “Nah.”

  Initially baffled by the concise response, Rob continued, “Oh, because my toaster is broken anyway.”

  Rob cautiously placed a Snickers bar on the counter—with almonds. The clerk eyed the candy bar and put his phone down. Cash then dropped four more snacks on the counter.

  “Can we just add these to it?” she smiled.

  The store employee rang up the purchase.

  “We do have to pay,” whispered Cash to Rob, as if they’d discussed it earlier.

  He put a few bucks on the counter and waited while the bearded man placed the items into a paper bag, neatly folding the top of it and handing it to Rob. Then, nothing for maybe five seconds, which felt like five hours.

  “Have a nice night,” the employee said. “Leave that way, please.”

  He was pointing at a small brown curtain that hung over a doorway to the rear of the store.

  “Sweet,” grinned Paul Bhong.

  “Thank you,” added Rob, brandishing the sack of candy. The small group shuffled toward the hanging drape. Rob led the way and pulled the curtain aside. They entered.

  It was a storage room; nothing special. Stacked boxes, musty smell, dimly lit. Wrinkled poster of Kate Upton on the far wall. The five of them stood in a semi-circle, not knowing what to do. Would they be followed through that curtain by Dr. Anderson and some government reps? Paul peered back through the curtain, into the store. The counter dude was still there; still playing with his phone.

  Then they heard the noise. Kate Upton was moving. So was the entire wall that she adorned. The newly-exposed room was the antithesis of the storage area. It was bright and sterile. Cramped, though.

  As they walked in, exiting the stuffy grayness of the back room, the group collectively realized that they were in an elevator. John G closed his eyes, shutting out the intense radiance. Rob searched for floor buttons. There were none. The lights above them hummed. The door slid closed behind them and entire lift shook. They were going down. Next, the lights went off.

  Outside the mini-mart, there was quiet. Maybe too much of it. Don Russo stood beside his bike and stared in the direction of the white pickup that sat facing them, lights off, thirty yards up the road. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. He also knew that with Rob’s group gone, he still had about fifteen of his crew with him but without a single firearm. Beyond the short reach of the mart’s parking lot light, there was complete darkness. Yet, he could sense movement in the brush. Be it the desert breeze, coyotes, Area 51 security—commonly known as Cammo Dudes because of their desert camouflage attire—or something much worse, it gave him an idea.