The Complete Drive-In

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “I remember the dream well. Gave me this feeling that the world was all a lie, and that I made it up as I lived and breathed. And sometimes, my daydream broke down.”

  “So in the dream, you dreamed you were daydreaming?” Steve said.

  “Yeah. And now I may be living in just the sort of world I dreamed about. But, a lot more unpleasant.”

  “My head’s starting to hurt,” Homer said.

  “About escaping?” Steve said.

  “Yeah,” Grace said. “I was going to say, could be, in the back, there’s a way out.”

  “Great,” Cory said. “We go out the asshole riding on a turd. And drown.”

  “That’s where Homer’s idea comes in,” Grace said.

  “What idea was that?” James said. “I still don’t think I understand all I understand about that idea.”

  “It’s about listening to the inside of our heads,” Grace said, and she let that hang in the air like a fart.

  “I get it,” I said. “We work our way to the rear, hang around until we feel the change in our heads, in our ears. Then, it’s the asshole escape. Homer’s idea, but without a conventional door.”

  “That’s right,” Grace said. “But we have to prepare ahead of time. We have to be sure there’s a way out back there. It may be there’s real fish guts to the rear. We might need floating devices of some sort.”

  “Maybe the Scuts got life jackets,” Steve said.

  “Funny,” Grace said, “but it’s some kind of idea. Otherwise, we live our lives in the belly of a fish. Just hanging around until an overwhelming crowd of hungry folk descend on us ready for dinner.”

  “It’s possible we could get along with them,” James said. “We’ve seen and done some pretty strange stuff ourselves. I mean, shit, I can’t believe I’ve been fucked in the butt. That’s not something I’d do on a Saturday night back home. I even ate a dead baby once. Maybe twice. All right. Probably three times. And I saw two of them killed. So what makes me better than them?”

  “You have to make yourself better,” Grace said. “We all do. We’ve all missed a step. We’ve done what we had to do to survive. But, I know me and Steve and Jack, we’ve tried to keep it together. Tried hard. Now we can keep trying, and the rest of you can try with us. If you want to stay here, that’s your choice. All of you. Me, I’m looking for a way out of the exhaust pipe.”

  James nodded. “Guess so.”

  “Hell,” Homer said. “I’m for it. It’s my idea, and I didn’t even know I had one.”

  “How about everyone else?” Grace asked.

  “I’m in,” I said.

  “Me too,” Steve said. “I go where you go, honey.”

  Cory raised a hand. “Count me in. But, maybe we could make some kind of deal with those guys up there. For some of that liquor. It tastes like boiled dogshit, but it makes you feel pretty good.”

  “That’s one thing we don’t need,” Grace said. “Distractions.”

  “So what’s the exact plan?” James asked.

  “That’s a bit of a problem,” Grace said. “An exact plan hasn’t exactly come to me yet.”

  “Then we all put our heads together,” I said, “come up with a more detailed plan.”

  “It sounds iffy,” Cory said.

  “Actually,” James said. “It sounds fishy.”

  He looked a bit disappointed when no one laughed.

  “It does,” I said. “But, I’m tired of being pushed around by this world. I want to push back. Let’s rustle up something to eat, then put our heads together and figure how to do what we want to do.”

  7

  We scrounged up some food. A few fish Ed had swallowed. We cut them open and ate them raw. I wondered if they too were lined with little wires, a combination of flesh and electricity.

  After eating, first order of business was to see if the bus would start.

  It wouldn’t.

  Steve and Homer opened the hood and checked around under there.

  “I think it’s just damp,” Homer said. “We got to get something to dry the inside of the carburetor, and such. Some rags would do it.”

  “We’re wearing them,” I said.

  “Everybody shuck,” Grace said.

  We took off our clothes and stood butt-naked while Homer and Steve took our rags or animal wrappings and used them to dry the inside of the engine.

  Well, we weren’t all butt-naked. I had shoes. And so did all the others. Grace’s were made of dried animal hides, as were Reba’s. I’m sure I looked ridiculous standing there wearing only shoes, and shoes where the soles would have flapped like tongues, had they not been tied up with twine and vines I had scrounged during our stay in the drive-in.

  This drying business went on for awhile, and in time, our clothes, now greasy, were returned to us. I put my rags on, as did the others. Grace, however, decided her top was too greasy and threw it away.

  It was enough to make me want to believe in a good god.

  Almost.

  After a bit, we all tuckered out, and I was feeling queasy on top of everything else. Sea sickness. I guess Ed from time to time swam faster and deeper, and perhaps slightly off-center.

  We decided enough was enough, closed up the hood, and tried it again. It fired up. We drove it up close to the pile of cars, decided to rest. I went right to sleep. As always, there were thoughts and worries and dreams. I dreamed about the ghost of the drive-in. Where was it? Did it only mist about on the sea above us?

  I dreamed of aliens with devices that seemed to be cameras, and maybe special effects instruments. Were they filming us? If there were lights inside this fish, why not cameras? Were we some form of exploitation film? A documentary on strange life placed in odd circumstances; a kind of reality show for the quivering, tentacled, green-faced masses that slithered above our sea and above our sky?

  And then, in an instant, it came to me, like the flash of an old-fashioned camera, one of those kind that made the eyes go bright, then see white, then turn one temporarily blind. In that instant, I knew for a fact that a truth was thrust upon me. Something inside me put it all together, worked it all out, took hold of it and held it and saw the insides of everything that was, and there was a revelation. I knew how the universe worked. To be more precise, I knew how my universe worked. I was astonished. I was elated.

  And then I awoke, it was lost to me, fleeing fast from my memory like dark water down a drain. I felt as empty as a eunuch’s nut sack. I lay there on the hard bus seat and tried to call it all back to me, but it was like calling a deaf hound dog. That buddy had done run off and was gone.

  I pulled my arm from over my eyes and sat up in my seat, and was startled.

  The bus was surrounded by the fish cave folks. There were even a couple on the hood, their faces pressed up against the glass, looking in.

  One of those on the hood was Bjoe. He was on his knees with both hands on the glass, sort of cupped, and his forehead was pressed up against them, and he was looking in.

  I must have let out a startled sound, because Reba, who was lying on the seat across from me, sat up, saw them, and let out a loud noise herself. Pretty soon we all stirred.

  Grace, who was in a seat near the front, rose up and looked around. Her naked breasts took my mind off of the fish cave folk for a pleasant moment. She didn’t look self-conscious at all. “What do you want?” she said loudly to the glass.

  Bjoe put a hand to his ear.

  Grace repeated herself.

  Bjoe stuck the tip of a finger against the glass. It was pointing in her direction.

  “Why?” Grace said.

  Bjoe just smiled.

  Grace shook her head. More of the fish cave fol k cl imbed onto the hood and pressed against the glass, thick as a grape cluster. All of us were out of our seats now.

  Cory said, “Maybe they just want to talk?”

  “They don’t look as friendly as before,” Steve said.

  “They’ve had time to think about us,” Cory said
. “Probably been comparing long pig recipes.”

  “Ain’t no different than the rest of us,” James said. “I’ve eaten dead bodies. I’ve cannibalized.”

  “Yes,” Reba said, “but those bodies were dead. We aren’t.”

  “Yet,” Homer said.

  “Is the door locked?” I said in a soft manner.

  “Yeah,” Steve said. “It is.”

  We watched them for awhile, then sat in our seats and watched them watch us, their faces and hands pressed against the window glass.

  “I feel like one of those lobsters in a tank,” Steve said, “you know, the ones where you pick your own.”

  “And I’m the prime lobster,” Grace said, without one hint of modesty.

  “I think we’re going to need to start the bus up,” I said, “drive deeper into the darkness. This bit of shadow doesn’t worry them like I hoped it would.”

  “I believe you are right, Brother Jack,” Steve said.

  “I say we wait,” Cory said. “They’re just weird. We’re weird. They haven’t done anything else.”

  “One of them has a large bone,” Reba said, “and he’s trying to work at the edges of my window.”

  We looked on her side, and sure enough, one of the guys had a big old bone, sharp on one end from having been broken, and he was sticking it in the edge of the window, trying to work the glass loose. He wasn’t looking at what he was doing. He grinned at us. He had very yellow teeth.

  They began to beat on the windows, all around, with their fists.

  “Yep,” I said, “No question in my mind. They want to eat us.”

  “Well, fuck them,” Grace said, turned her ass toward the front glass, and pulled down her little fur shorties and gave them a moonshot.

  They beat on the glass harder.

  “I think you’re just encouraging them,” I said.

  Steve climbed into the driver’s seat, hit the key. The engine sprang to life. Steve jerked it in gear and punched it. The bus seemed to leap. The folk on the hood went flying backward, and there was a sound like someone stepping on crackers in cellophane. The bus bumped twice.

  I looked out the back window. A couple of the fish cave folk lay in a bloody wad on the grating, and Bjoe was up and limping after us, shaking his fists. The others were coming at a run, passing him.

  We were going pretty goddamn fast for a large bus in a small space with a short length to run. Also there was another problem. A large pile of cars in front of us, and no time to stop, and really, no purpose in stopping.

  And there was the little problem of the Scuts, whatever they were, waiting in the dark.

  The bus slammed into the pile of automobiles and the darkness that surrounded them.

  8

  The bus hit the pile of cars, hit them hard, knocked our asses about, tossed me over a seat and into another. When I clambered to my feet and looked out, the bus was no longer moving, but it had moved the cars a mite. The darkness had fallen over the front of the bus and covered it like a drop cloth.

  Glancing out the back windows, into the light, I saw the fish cave folk were closing from the rear. I could already envision myself being ripped open, my guts pulled out for an appetizer.

  Steve jerked the bus in reverse, backed it with a full-throttle wobble, hit a couple of the fish cave folk and drove them down beneath the bus, smashing them like walnuts. Then he gunned the bus forward again, but at an angle. This time he hit one of the cars and really moved it, pushed it back deeper into shadow. He put his foot down hard on the gas, and there was a sound like metal grinding, and smoke rose up from the tires. For a long time the bus just held its spot. Held long enough the fish cave folk reached us and leaped against the back of the bus, up on the bumper and beat at the glass and metal wall there.

  The cars began to move, began to slip backward. The bus began to creep forward, taking us and the bus and the pursuing fish cave folk into the darkness.

  Steve drove on, the cars parting like the Red Sea, rolling up on either side of us, tumbling along the grate floor. After a few moments, we were deeper into the darkness and the fish cave folk began to fall back.

  “They don’t like it here,” Reba said.

  “Neither do I,” Steve said. “I just saw something that didn’t look like anything, but like all kinds of things, rush by the hood.”

  We were still moving, but we had slowed down. We looked out the windows and saw nothing.

  “You still see it?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Steve said. “It went by fast.”

  “Maybe it was just a shadow,” Grace said. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “You weren’t looking straight ahead,” Steve said. “And no, it wasn’t a shadow. Unless they can pull themselves apart from the darkness and ... well, I don’t know what it did. Run? Flew? Tumbled? I couldn’t tell you. It was there, then it moved, then it wasn’t there anymore. It was like it fitted itself into the darkness again. It was ... I don’t know, darker than the dark.”

  “Stop the bus,” I said.

  “You sure?” Steve said.

  “They aren’t coming anymore,” I said.

  Steve geared the bus down, brought it to a halt. Looking back, it was as if we were down in a dark hole staring up at the sun. Against the light the fish cave folk moved. They grabbed up their dead, and pulled them to the side, set upon the bodies with knives. Fights broke out.

  Bjoe appeared from the midst of the fleshy wad, slashing at anything in his way with a bone knife. A throat was cut. A man fell at his feet. The crowd parted around him, scuttled back. At his feet the man whom he had cut thrashed and squirted blood from his throat.

  Bjoe looked toward the bus, knife in hand, hair disheveled, dick and balls hanging like some kind of withered fruit. I guessed he could see our shape. He didn’t come toward us though. He just looked at us for a long time, then turned and said something to those around him.

  After a moment the fish cave folk moved toward Bjoe, slowly, respectfully. They set about cutting, mostly tearing, at the bus-crushed bodies. Bjoe leaned over and stabbed the quivering man he had wounded a couple of times, ripped him open from gut to gill.

  Intestines hissed up steam, and blood gushed. Fish cave folk dropped to their knees and dipped their faces into the bloody body. Some ran off with meaty pieces, like dogs.

  Bjoe, realizing his prized long pigs were being taken from him, settled down over the man he had killed, bared his teeth. I couldn’t hear him from there, but I could sure see those teeth. Could even imagine him growling like some protective wild animal.

  “I think it’s a good thing we didn’t stay back there,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Reba said. “Bjoe has done run all out of nice.”

  “He was so friendly the other night,” Cory said.

  “Hell,” Grace said. “You wouldn’t know. You were drunk. You ought to be glad we didn’t leave your intoxicated ass lying up there. We thought about it.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” he said.

  “I don’t believe it takes a ton of thinking,” I said, “to know that Bjoe is off his nut. He was friendly, and maybe he thought that would work for him. With the girls.”

  “Yeah,” Grace said. “He saw you and me as maybe a willing carnival ride. Then, an unwilling lunch.”

  “It didn’t turn out so easy for him, though,” Reba said.

  “No, it didn’t,” Grace said. “And I wish he’d put something over that big old ugly thing of his. It looks like a turkey neck. You know, cut up for boiling in soup.”

  “Don’t make me hungry,” Homer said.

  “Course,” James said, moving his head from right to left as he looked out the window. “Bjoe and his bunch may turn out to be the least of our worries. I just saw what Steve saw.”

  9

  No one else saw it, but none of us doubted there was something out there to see.

  “We got some food still,” Steve said. “And water. We can settle in for awhile, think things over.”
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  “And if we need to go to the bathroom, do a one or a two?” Cory asked.

  “Hang it out the window,” Steve said. “Have someone watch so whatever those things are don’t crawl up your ass.”

  “It’s the bathroom part I hate the most,” Reba said. “Not having privacy and some place comfortable to go. And, you guys, you may do number ones, but you don’t do number twos. Way some of you smell, those have got to be number fours.”

  “On that note,” Steve said, “what say we hustle up something to eat?”

  “And might I suggest we eat small,” Grace said. “We want time to figure on Homer’s plan.”

  “I just love that part,” Homer said. “Me with a plan.”

  After eating, we decided on lookouts. We started with Steve. Way we worked was we let the ones who felt the least tired do the watching. There was no way for us to know how long a watch was, so we just had to go by instinct. If someone felt they wanted to watch for awhile, they took over, replacing whoever was on duty at the time.

  The plan was, everyone got a watch.

  The rest of us, though not sleepy, tried to sleep anyway. It wasn’t that hard, really. Boredom, fear, depression, it all helps you sleep. Only problem for me is, it didn’t really give me freedom. In my dreams I thought about the same things I thought about when awake.

  As for the plan to escape, nothing more was mentioned about it for a time. But, I did feel my ears pop a couple of times, and I reported it to Grace.

  We were sitting up front of the bus, me and her and Steve, and she was speaking softly. She said, “Homer’s plan gives hope, such as it is, but I don’t know it will actually work.”

  “It was really your plan,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said. “Thing is, could be our ears pop when we go down, and when we come up. Trick is to know which is which.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “I think I can tell the difference,” Grace said. “There’s a real pressure when we go down. It’s subtle, but it’s there. When we go up, or when I think we go up, I feel ... well, lighter. Thing is, I’d like a few days to really get used to feeling it.”