Children of Paranoia

by Trevor Shane

  The next day was more of the same. We were plodding through a twelve-hour drive, trying to stretch it into three days without actually stopping anywhere. You found another place on the map where we could kill some time. It was a lighthouse on Lake Erie. We spent a few hours in the park around the lighthouse. We had lunch out of the trunk of the car again. You deserved better than that but you never complained.

  I bought a newspaper at one of our stops. I scanned the headlines and police blotter for anything that might be interesting, anything that might give me a hint as to what was going on in my old world. Things were quiet. I checked the weather. The forecast that night was for rain. With the rain, the creatures began to crawl up from the mud.

  The rain began in the late afternoon. Even before it began, we spotted the tall, dark clouds as they rolled toward us from across the plains. The air became thick and damp. Shortly after that the dark clouds covered the sky, blocking out the sun. It became dark. The air turned cold and the wind began to blow. The trees around us rustled in the wind. Then the rain came, hard and fast.

  When we spotted the rain clouds moving toward us, you begged me to pull over. You said that you wanted to feel the storm approach. So I pulled over to the side of the road and we sat on the hood of the car as the clouds rolled toward us. We felt the mist and the wind. Just before the rain began to fall, I asked you, “Is that enough?” You said yes and we ran back into the car. Our clothes were damp from the mist and I turned on the car and turned up the heat to try to help dry us out. The rain pounded on the car. We could barely hear each other speak over the thumping of raindrops. We just sat there for a few moments, waiting for the rain to ease up enough so that I could see out the windshield.

  “It doesn’t rain like this where I’m from,” you said.

  “We should find a place to get some dinner,” I said once I was able to pull back on the road. The rain was still pouring out of the sky. With each swipe of the wipers, I would have just enough time to catch a glimpse of the road before the world would disappear again in the flood.

  “Where are we going to sleep tonight?” you asked while watching the sky fall down on top of us.

  “Let’s worry about eating first. Then we’ll worry about where we’re going to sleep,” I replied.

  I couldn’t push the car much above ten miles per hour because of the rain. We passed other cars that had simply pulled over, planning on waiting the storm out. I might have done the same if it looked like the storm was ever going to end. We eventually found a small diner just off the side of the road. I pulled the car into the parking lot and parked just to one side of the diner. “Why are we parking here, Joe?” you asked. “There’s a parking space right up front.” I’d pulled our car to the side in order to hide it from people driving by, even on the little back road we were on. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. But I didn’t have the heart to tell you that. So I backed the car up and parked it out front.

  We took two stools at the counter. You wanted to eat at the counter. There were plenty of free booths. You said that you didn’t understand how anyone could come into this kind of place and not sit at the counter. You talked like you were on vacation seeing sights. We sat on the big, plush, red stools, our backs to the door, facing the kitchen. One of the two cooks working the diner came up to us and took our order. He was straight out of central casting, a chunky man, mid-fifties, wearing a white apron covered in grease stains. I ordered a Coke. You ordered a black-and-white milkshake. They didn’t have milkshakes. You changed your order to a chocolate milk. Sometimes I forgot how young you were.

  I ordered a cheeseburger and fries. You ordered a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. You slid your hand onto my back and began to move it in small circles around my shoulder blades. I think that you could sense that I was feeling tense, despite not knowing why. I didn’t even know why. It was just a general sense of unease. Things had been going too smoothly. Your touch calmed me down for the time being.

  About halfway through our meal, the door opened. When it did, I could feel the wind from outside rustle through the entire restaurant. It whistled as it came through the door. I could hear the rain pounding on the pavement outside. It was loud and persistent. Some kid walked in with the wind. He quickly closed the door behind him, shutting us off again from the ugly weather. He was a gangly kid, tall and skinny. He had on a pair of jeans and was wearing a now sopping-wet hooded sweatshirt. It wasn’t ideal rain gear. He had a backpack draped over one shoulder. He took a seat on a stool two stools down from you. When he sat down, he slipped his other arm into the second strap of the backpack. It sagged on his shoulders. He ordered a Coke and grabbed a menu. He looked to me like he was about fifteen. Truth was, he was at least a year older than you. His skin was almost as greasy as his hair. He had acne on his chin and his forehead. After he ordered his food, he began swiveling himself in circles on his stool. This lasted for all of about two minutes before the cook came back out. He scowled at the kid. “It’s a stool, kid, not a fucking merry-go-round.”

  The kid stopped. “Sorry,” he said. I almost felt bad for him. He immediately turned his attention to his Coke. He began busying himself by playing with the straw.

  Suddenly, you broke my focus. “So where are we going to sleep tonight?” you asked again. The rain hadn’t let up one bit. It banged and blew against the diner windows.

  “I already told you, Maria. I don’t know.”

  “We could stay at a hotel.” There was just a hint of hope in your voice.

  I shook my head. “We’ve got to save our money, Maria. It’s running short already, with the food and the gas. We need something for when we get to Chicago. It’s easier being homeless out here than it will be there.” My own words depressed me.

  “What if we found something real cheap?” you asked. Yeah, that’s just what I wanted, to bring my pregnant, seventeen-year-old girlfriend to a cheap motel in backwoods Ohio. I suddenly felt like everything Allen said about me was true.

  “Maybe,” I said. I just wanted to end the conversation. I had eaten about half my burger. You pounded through your soup and sandwich. “You want the rest of mine?” I asked, motioning toward my half-empty plate.

  “You’re such a gentleman,” you said, your voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “You want it or not?” I replied.

  “Sure,” you said. I pushed the plate in front of you.

  I needed a moment alone. “I’m going to run to the bathroom,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I eyed the kid again before I left. There was something about him. I could tell that he felt my eyes on him but he didn’t look over at me. I figured I wouldn’t be gone long enough for there to be any trouble. I went into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. The bathroom was tiny. There was a toilet on one side with a sink and mirror on the other. It was only slightly larger than an airplane bathroom. I stood up and ran the cold water in the sink. I took a few handfuls of the cold water and splashed them into my face. I stared at my own image in the mirror. I looked old. Compared to that kid out in the diner, I looked ancient.

  I don’t remember how long I had been gone. I had lost track of time. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes. But it was too long. It was a mistake. The kid had moved. The kid, a human bundle of twitches and nerves, had moved to the stool next to you. The two of you were talking. I wanted to scold you. I wanted to walk right up to you and tell you that you shouldn’t talk to strangers. He was probably just hitting on you. God knows I would if I were him. Still, I had a sinking feeling that this was going to end in violence.

  Despite my premonition, I wore my best face. I walked back to my stool and sat down. You turned to me once I was back in my stool. “Joe,” you said, “this is Eric. He heard us talking and told me that he knows of a nice, cheap place where we can stay tonight.”

  I reached out, offering to shake the kid’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Eric.” Then I watched for his reaction. He paused, looking down at my hand. He h
esitated, not knowing what to do. It was only for a split second, but he definitely hesitated. He didn’t want to touch me. He was one of them. There was no doubt about it. He was one of them and he knew who I was. It only took him a split second to regain his confidence, but in that split second, he had given everything away.

  “Hey” was all he said in response as I shook his hand. I hated the kid, real hatred. I hated that he had been talking to you. I hated that he had come here looking for us. I hated that I was going to have to kill him.

  “So, you know of a good place where we can crash tonight?” I asked him, staring into his eyes as I spoke, testing to see if he could hold my gaze.

  “Yeah,” he replied, quickly staring back down at his soda. “I know a guy who has an extra room at his place. He’s been trying to rent it out but hasn’t had any luck. Anyway, I’m sure he’d let you guys stay there for twenty bucks.”

  You looked at me, your eyes heavy with expectation. I could almost read the thoughts in your big blue eyes. A bed, that’s all you wanted. “Well, the price is right,” I said. I knew it would make you happy. At this point, even ten minutes of happiness was worth it. God only knew how many more chances we’d get to make each other happy. “How do we find this place?”

  The kid sat there, chewing on the end of his straw, letting it dangle out of his mouth like toothpick. He hadn’t really thought this out. “You guys could follow me. I’ll lead you there and then I’ll tell my buddy about the deal I struck up with you.” He smiled. His smile was genuine. He liked his plan.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” I asked.

  “Pete,” he replied without missing a beat. The whole thing fell in place for him quickly. He was young but he wasn’t stupid.

  “And what’s in it for you?” I asked. I gave him a hard look. I wanted to scare him. I wanted him to back away and run. I wanted him to abandon his plan before it even got started. I was giving him an out. At the time, it was more than I thought he deserved. I was doing it for you, not for him.

  “Joe,” you interrupted, not understanding what I was doing. “That’s not very nice.” You tried to sound like you were just teasing me, but I knew that you were pissed off. You thought that I was going to ruin things for us.

  “No. No. That’s all right,” the kid spoke up in my defense. “I’m just trying to help a couple people out.” This time, he returned my gaze. He gave me a cold, hard stare, or as much of one as he could muster. As he stared at me, I saw in him something that I recognized. I recognized that fearlessness, that unbridled anger. “It’s friendly country around here,” he continued. I don’t know what the kid was thinking. Did he think he could outdraw me? Did he think this was the Old West? “Sometimes the hospitality just takes a while to get used to.” He turned to you and gave you a big smile. You returned his smile—that made me hate him even more.

  “Well, I guess we can’t pass up on hospitality like that,” I said. You turned around in your stool and gave me a quick hug. I hoped it wasn’t the last. The kid didn’t scare me. You scared me. I didn’t know how you were going to react. Still, I tried. I gave the kid his out. He didn’t take it. His loss. It was nearing nine o’clock in the evening. You and I had been sitting at that counter for nearly two hours. “I guess we’ll settle up and go.” I looked down at the plate in front of you. You had burned through my burger and the rest of my fries. “You done with your meal, Eric?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I just have to get the check.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You found us a place to stay. The least we could do is buy you dinner.” I motioned for the cook to bring me our check and Eric’s too. You seemed proud that I had suddenly recovered my manners. I didn’t have the heart to tell you that none of it mattered. I wasn’t being generous. I just figured that we’d have all of Eric’s money by the time the night was through anyway. Robbing generally wasn’t my style, but we needed the money. If I was going to have to take the kid out, there was no sense in letting his money go to waste.

  “Thanks a lot, Joe,” the kid said. “I appreciate it.” I took both checks, left a couple of bucks on the counter, and paid at the cash register. I nodded at the kid again. This time I avoided eye contact. I didn’t want to remember his face later. I wanted to forget what I was about to do even before I did it. It was time to venture back out into the storm.

  We rushed out into the rain. I made sure that the kid ran to his car before we did. I didn’t dare let either of us turn our backs to him. The kid had conveniently parked right next to us. Right out front. He was driving a little beat-up red car. The fenders were rusting. The car was probably only about seven years old, but someone had beaten the hell out of it. The kid probably bought it for a couple hundred bucks. The car had Ohio plates. Ohio plates was a good sign. Maybe he’d lucked upon us. Maybe he wasn’t actually chasing us. Even so, if he’d found us, then other people, people with more experience, could definitely find us too.

  Before he ducked his head into his car, the kid stood up and yelled back to us, “It’s just a couple of turns. I’ll drive slow so that you can keep up.” I waved in response as we stood under the awning of the little tin-roofed restaurant. What was he trying to do? Was he trying to lead us into an ambush? Or was he simply trying to take us out into a field where he thought he could get the jump on us? I couldn’t figure out his angle. Maybe he didn’t have an angle. Maybe he was just winging it. It didn’t matter. He was all but dead anyway. Under different circumstances, I might have liked this kid. He had more heart than brains.

  It took the kid three tries before his engine turned over. Once he had his engine running and had turned his headlights on, we ran to our car. You jumped in the passenger side and I slid in behind the wheel. I turned the keys in the ignition, flared on the lights, and pulled behind the kid as he drove out of the parking lot. I didn’t say anything to you as we eased out into the rain-soaked road. The kid, good to his word, drove slowly so that we could follow him. I didn’t even look at you as we made our first turn, right behind the kid. Every second, the world around us became more desolate. I could feel your eyes burning on me as I drove. I didn’t dare turn toward you. I wasn’t ready to face you yet.

  “What’s wrong, Joe?” you finally asked.

  “You’re not suspicious?” You should have been suspicious. If we were going to survive another two weeks, you needed to be suspicious.

  “Suspicious of what?” you asked, incredulous.

  “You’re not the least bit suspicious?” I repeated, this time with more force.

  “Of him? Of Eric? He’s a kid, Joe. He’s like nineteen.” You fought my anger with your own.

  “Well, that would make him two years older than you.”

  “Fuck you, Joe,” you answered. I tried to keep my cool.

  “It’s not an insult. I was about his age when I made my first kill. He’s one of them. The kid is one of them.”

  “What the fuck does that mean? He’s trying to help us out, Joe.” I just shook my head. “How do you know that he’s one of them?”

  “I just know it. He didn’t want to shake my hand. He hesitated.”

  “I don’t believe it.” You stared out through the rain. You didn’t want to believe it.

  “Yeah, well, watch.” I suddenly cut the wheel to the left, veering off the road onto a small dirt path. “If he didn’t have any angle, do you think he’d follow us?”

  “What are you doing, Joe?” you yelled. You turned in your seat to look back at the road, to watch the kid’s headlights, to see if the kid was going to turn around and follow us.

  “Are you going to believe me if he follows us?”

  “Stop it, Joe!” you shouted. I drove up the path about five hundred yards and pulled the car off to the side of the dirt path.

  “Are you going to believe me if he follows us?” I turned and asked again, staring at you. “Why would he follow us if he wasn’t one of them?” You stared back at the road, watching the kid’s headl
ights. He had stopped his car on the road. The car wasn’t moving. He was assessing the situation. I looked at you. Your lips began to move. Even though no sound came out of your mouth, I could read your lips. You were saying over and over again, “Don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t come.” I knew that it was useless. I reached into the backseat of the car and grabbed my duffel bag. I took the gun out of the duffel bag.

  “What are you doing, Joe? What are you going to do?”

  “He’s one of them, Maria. He’s one of them and he knows where we are. If we don’t get rid of him, then the whole world is going to be all over us. He’s got his out. If he doesn’t follow us he’s free. If he follows us, we don’t have much choice.” Your eyes kept darting between the gun and the kid’s car. Suddenly the kid jerked his car into reverse. He was coming to get us.

  “There’s always a choice, Joe,” you said. It was a last-ditch effort.

  “That’s a cliché, Maria. Sometimes other people make your choices for you. Sometimes you never get a chance.” I looked at you. I wanted you to know that this wasn’t something I wanted to do. It was something I had to do. You weren’t buying it.

  “What if you’re wrong? What if he’s just being nice?” you asked. The kid slowly pulled his car up the little dirt path on which we’d parked. He stopped his car about fifteen feet behind us. Once he stopped his car, he flicked on his brights. The light was blinding. It was his first professional move. He could see us now and we couldn’t see him.