Redneck Eldritch

by Nathan Shumate

  It was farther than The Squid first thought. They were almost twenty-five miles from Wendover when they came to a huge furrow that had plowed into the salty desert. The rocket or whatever it was had hit a local landmark, or eyesore, depending upon your artistic interpretation. Something known as the Utah Metaphor Tree. The colossal steel and concrete monstrosity was leaning forty-five degrees crooked beside the highway with those same eerie green flames sputtering about like ghostly candles where shreds of steel and concrete had been cast off like dead leaves.

  Ogre had made it there a bare moment before The Squid; he leapt from his truck and ran out into the enveloping darkness. “Hahaha! Look at that! It almost wrecked that damn tree! I hate that ugly thing!”

  The Squid felt obliged to follow at a more leisurely pace, keeping his sweater tight about him against the April chill.

  Ogre yelled out something unintelligible.

  “What is it, man?” called The Squid.

  No answer or sound but the licking flames that made shadows dance like marionettes.

  “Come on, man, quit yanking my chain. Where are you?” shouted The Squid. He couldn’t see much in the interplay between darkness and flickering lights. He felt a ripple of wind and a twinge of nausea, and wondered a moment if he was dizzy or sick. Then the feeling passed as quick as it had come.

  “Hahaha! Look at that! It almost wrecked that damn tree! I hate that ugly thing!” shouted Ogre from the darkness.

  “I heard you the first time, man.”

  “First time?” asked Ogre in a shout. “What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah, yeah, where’s the rocket?” asked The Squid, casting a look about the black landscape.

  “I wish it had knocked that ugly piece of trash all the way over! Hey! It’s over here!” shouted Ogre, running forward from the gloom. He stopped suddenly as The Squid caught up to him. “You gotta see this!” said Ogre, tugging on The Squid’s sweater. “The Martians have landed.”

  “Come on, man. It’s not alien. Must be an experimental rocket accident or something. Like the Challenger, man.”

  “Hell, no, Squid, lookit that thing. That is a bona-fide UFO right there. You ever heard of Roswell, Squid?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  Ogre’s childlike glee went deadly serious. “It’s only just the most radical secret the government has ever tried to keep from us is all.”

  A long silver object was half-plunged into the salt flat. Mist surrounded it. “It’s a rocket, ain’t it?”

  “Damnit, Squid! Aliens crashed in the New Mexican desert. Lee Iacocca and the Bilderbergers have been trying to hide it from us for almost forty years! You need to read a book, my friend. And right here, right now, we are here to witness this one!”

  “Iacocca? Outside of Wendover? Next to the damn Utah Tree? It looks more like a silver cigar.”

  “I’d call it more of a lozenge, but hey! Fate shines! I know exactly what we need to do. We have to take it!” Ogre slapped The Squid on the back.

  “Ow! What, man? No, I’ve got a load to pick up.”

  Ogre spun The Squid saying, “You know what Julius Caesar would say here?”

  The Squid shrugged. “‘Et tu, Brute?’”

  “Stop playing games, Squid! He said, ‘Seize the day!’ It’s like his most famous quote, and that’s what we are gonna do! We are gonna seize the day!”

  “What? No, man,” said The Squid, shaking his head. “I’ve gotta get to Denver.”

  “We are gonna pick up this thing and get the hell out before the Feds arrive to turn it over to the Illuminati and reverse-engineer it.”

  “That’s crazy. The army handles this stuff. We can’t do this.”

  “That’s the beauty of it, Squid. You got a flatbed, I got a forklift. We can snag that thing before anyone’s the dumber. I need to do this, dude. I need money bad. My mom has cancer.”

  “I have got to get to Denver, Ogre. It’s important.”

  “No problem, we drop it off and hide it at my brother’s place in the Four Corners.”

  “Your mom has cancer, since when? And you have a brother? You never told me that before.”

  “We don’t talk much. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness.”

  “And the Four Corners, Ogre? That’s not on the way to Denver.”

  “It’s the scenic route, Squid. Try and be a team player here. We are doing this for truth, justice and the American way. It’s the right thing to do. I need to do this. For Mom.”

  “No way.”

  “You love my mom. Help me.”

  “This won’t fix that.

  “It will if we sell it.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  Ogre moved uncomfortably close to The Squid and looked him in the eye. “You remember that time I saved your life? How about that other time I pulled you off that mountain on I-90 over Butte? Are you just gonna forget all the times I caught the tab? Do you know how many times I have paid for your drinks? Two hundred and ninety-three times. Are you leaving me hanging now?”

  “You counted?” asked The Squid, wrinkling his brow in disbelief.

  Ogre frowned in response as if it was plain as day. “Two hundred and ninety-three times, Squid.”

  Shaking his head, The Squid responded, “I bailed you out of jail, that cost five hundred dollars. And you gave me snow chains once. Once. And that lifesaving thing? I wasn’t drowning, man!”

  “I couldn’t take that chance, Squid. You owe me.”

  “No way. I have got to get to Denver.”

  “All right, all right. Just help me load it on your truck, and you take my rig to Denver and I’ll meet you there by tomorrow evening. I need to do this. Will you help me? For Mom?”

  Exasperated, The Squid nodded. Ogre was gone in a flash to get his forklift as The Squid looked closer at the wreckage. The silver cigar-shaped object was perhaps twenty feet long, smooth all over with no discernible seams or rivets. Amazingly, the impact had not scratched it at all. At its widest diameter it was around six feet and gradually tapered at each end to about a two-foot diameter. Except for the direction it was facing as it plowed into the ground there would have been no way of knowing which end was front or back.

  The Squid touched the craft. It was surprisingly cold. Warm air coming off the Great Salt Lake met the cold surface and a mist swirled about in phantasmal caresses.

  A long dark shadow moved in behind The Squid, cutting him off from the rig’s headlamps. He turned suddenly, expecting a person to be right behind him, but it was just Ogre coming with the forklift. It was an odd feeling; he would have sworn someone was there but he didn’t see anyone.

  Ogre drove the forklift to the furrow and with a bit of skill and luck, got the forks under one end of the big cigar. He was pleased. “This sucker is light! I was afraid I couldn’t pick it up. This is great! I’m gonna use the straps to put it on the trailer.”

  “You know, Ogre-man, what if this is, you know, just one of ours, or it’s a missile or something? Maybe we shouldn’t even be touching it. Like, what if it goes off or something?”

  Ogre spun one end of the cigar out of the furrow and started on the other. “Squid, if it was gonna blow it would have done that already when it hit the Utah Tree and the ground. It’s not a missile, it is the skateboard of the gods, my friend. You never read Daniken?”

  “No, I never read Daniken. Come on, man, this might be dangerous and what if the army shows up?”

  “Salvage rights, Squid. They’re probably on their way but we got here first and if we take it, they’ll probably just think it took off again or that it’s not their problem to deny to the TV-watching zombie public anymore.”

  The Squid shook his head. “They don’t forget stuff like this, Ogre-man.”

  Lights appeared on the highway and a car slowed to look at them. It was an older man in a yellowed Buick. “Do you need help?”

  The Squid and Ogre looked him over, back to the gleaming silver craft caught in the big rig’s headlights, a
nd back to the old man. “No, we’re good.”

  “What is that? Some kinda airplane?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  Ogre looked at The Squid, who was covering his face in his hands. “No sir, its fine, it’s just a model for a movie.”

  “Oh? Which one?” asked the old man, excitedly.

  “The next Star Wars.”

  “Never heard of it,” said the old man, frowning. He threw his car into gear and drove off.

  “And a good day to you, sir,” said Ogre, waving the old man off dismissively.

  “See, now there are witnesses that we messed with the Tree,” said The Squid. “We gotta get outta here.”

  Attaching a long strap about one end, Ogre set to pulling the craft out of the furrow. “Relax, Squid, he thinks it’s all part of a movie and that’s the end of it. Like Freud said, sometimes you gotta break a few eggs to make a salad.”

  “What? Are you high?”

  “Egg salad, Squid. Don’t be naïve.” Ogre finished tying off the strap and spun the craft fully out of the furrow. He then slowly drove it up to the trailer bed and lowered the forks gingerly, placing the craft on the deck. It didn’t roll thanks to a few two-by-four nubs catching it along the center.

  The Squid looked the cigar over and said, “He did ask one question right. What if there is someone hurt inside this thing?”

  Ogre raised his eyebrows well above his shades. “Nobody is hurt. I didn’t hear anyone crying for help, did you?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Ogre peered over the smooth silver craft again. “I don’t see any doors. Maybe it’s just robotic.”

  “So you jaw all you want about skateboards of the gods and now decide there is no chance of anything living inside?”

  “Hey! This is my first time handling one of these, Squid.” Ogre ran a hand along it. “It’s cold. Maybe they’re frozen inside and this is like a deep freeze sleeping bag.”

  The Squid rolled his eyes at that. “Are you sure you want this thing at your brother’s, then?” The Squid held his hands out wide for emphasis. “What if whatever is in the sleeping bag wakes up? What then?”

  “I was being facetious, Squid, just like Immanuel Kant. It’s gotta just be a probe or something.”

  “And how does us taking it away help anything?”

  “It helps us. I need to do this. For Mom. I’m going to make a fortune on this. Unless you’ve changed your mind and want in on this action? The choice is yours. Accept the golden goose or get out of the kitchen. What else do you have going for you as far as a nest egg is concerned?”

  The Squid looked about nervously and blurted out, “Look, I didn’t want to tell anybody yet, but the real reason I gotta get to Denver by tomorrow afternoon is Jeanie is gonna find out if she is pregnant and I wanna be there.”

  Ogre acted as if he didn’t hear and tossed a strap to The Squid. “Well, this will only be a minute, I need your help on the tie downs. Come on.”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  Ogre stopped and pulled his shades down a hair. “What do you want me to say?”

  “How about maybe, ‘congratulations?’ ‘You’re going to be a father, that’s awesome,’ maybe?”

  “Sorry Squid, I can’t relate, I’m shooting blanks myself. I suspect the whole ‘father’ thing is overrated anyway. This is a helluva world to bring a child into.”

  “You’re an ass. I’m outta here.”

  Ogre, exasperated. threw up his hands. “Sorry, Squid man. Look, I’m glad you’ll get to experience all that diaper shit and baby puke and nagging and settling down with a white picket fence and all that boring stuff. I guess I just didn’t want to see you fade away like that. I thought more of you, Squid.”

  The Squid ran a hand alongside the bottom of the silver craft and snatched it back from the cold. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Just what I said, I’m gonna miss you.”

  “Miss me? That’s not what you said.”

  “Yeah, I mean you’ll be rotting away at home and I’ll still be out here, a lone cowboy of the highways and you, you’ll be at home withering away, is all.”

  “Is that what this is? You think you’ll lose me as a friend? I’m still gonna truck, Ogre.”

  Ogre wiped away a tear. “No, I’m fine. I know you’ll find something else to do, it’s all right, I’m sorry for what I said. I’ll be okay.” He snorted and spit before wiping away yet another tear.

  “I’m not playing your game, Ogre. This isn’t about you.”

  “I’m sorry, man, I love you,” said Ogre, slapping The Squid on the shoulder.

  The Squid responded in kind, saying, “Thanks. Jeannie and I are gonna be happy.”

  Ogre nodded. “Yeah. She’s made a lot of guys happy,” he muttered under his breath.

  The Squid wheeled and punched Ogre in the nose. Blood shot from the big man’s nostrils. Ogre wiped blood from his face, grinned and punched back. Both men went down on the salt flats wrestling and cursing, kicking and spitting in anger. They missed the searchlight in the sky heading their way.

  3. Gimme Three Steps

  The Squid and Ogre beat each other black and blue. When the dust flying at them was far beyond a strong breeze they finally noticed the helicopter. A searchlight coated them like it was basting turkeys. A voice on a megaphone commanded, “Stay where you are! You are in violation of international law! Do not touch the TAV.”

  The Squid shouted into the wind, “What the hell’s a TAV?”

  “What’d I tell you, Squid? It’s the U.N and the Men in Black! They want to steal it from us.”

  “From us? We don’t own it!”

  The megaphone continued. “Lay down on the ground. Keep your hands on your head. Do not move!”

  “Like hell,” answered Ogre, defiantly taking a step forward.

  A three-shot burst from an automatic rifle made each man drop to the ground immediately.

  “Try that again, Fat Boy!” taunted the megaphone.

  The Squid and Ogre lay on their bellies on the salt flat. The helicopter backed away slightly from them and prepared to land on the side of the Utah Tree away from the direction it was leaning.

  “Thanks a lot, man,” muttered The Squid.

  “I was just trying to tell you she gets around,” said Ogre.

  “No, you jackass! Not Jeanie! The Feds! We’re going to jail.”

  “I need to do this. You with me? Look, I ain’t gonna let them take this from me and Mom.”

  The Squid scoffed. “I don’t think they’re giving us much of a choice here, Ogre.”

  Ogre got up. “I’m not gonna let them steal our investment. Just drive the rig! Get the hell out of here! I’ll hold them off!”

  The helicopter touched down amidst a swirling dust storm.

  “What? How?”

  The megaphone barked at them, “Get back on the ground. We will fire!” Men barely visible against the search light jumped out of the helicopter and ran toward them.

  “Trust me, Squid! I can handle Iacocca’s goons!” shouted Ogre. “You just get our payload somewhere safe!” He pulled out a bowie knife and slashed the straps holding the craft. It dropped and hit the deck with an echoing gong. Ogre then threw his forklift in reverse. It kicked up dirt, racing backward into the dark.

  The Squid jumped in the cab and threw his rig in gear. He put the hammer down. In the rearview mirror, he could make out little against the gloom and the blinding searchlight.

  Men were shouting and many had drawn weapons. Ogre leapt from the forklift as it careened backward, smashing into the already tilting Utah Tree.

  It was enough.

  The Tree made a terrible groan and leaned left, then right, and slowly fell, smashing the unmarked black helicopter into road pizza.

  “Two turds with one stone!” shouted Ogre, making a fist of triumph. Several shots in his general direction had him ducking a
nd running to his truck.

  A few of the undisclosed men continued shooting at Ogre and his rig, but that stopped as the helicopter exploded in an amazing fireball.

  Ogre hopped into his cab and pulled away. Before he was out of earshot, he had to lean out the window and shout, “Suck it, Iacocca!”

  A few miles down the road, The Squid picked up his CB. “Ten-Ten Mud Hen, you got your ears on? This here is The Squid, come on back.”

  “Ten-four, Squid.”

  “What’s your twenty? I need to know what my back door looks like as far as Wendover goes. I am eastbound and down. Come on back.”

  “Copy that. Just passed the Bend-Over exit. Be aware there’s a lot of Po-Leese back here and maybe some cocaine cowboys on your back door too. Lots of them and some G.I. Joes too. Everybody is running eastbound.”

  “Much obliged, Mud Hen.”

  “Ten-four. ’Sides, you got a triple-digit truck. You’ll be all right. Just keep your nose clean.”

  “Ha! Copy that.”

  The Squid looked in his rear view mirror and worried about the bizarre craft. It wasn’t tied down or covered, and soon as day broke everyone would see it plain as anything. And what if it vibrated or rolled right off the flat bed? It was round after all and the nubs along the edge couldn’t hold it in forever.

  Feeling like he had some distance between himself and the Feds, he pulled off an exit and grabbed some tarps and straps from his truck-box. He threw the tarps over the top of the craft, then the straps, and cranked them down quick as he could. Oddly, he could have sworn that thing had been cylindrical and symmetrical but now it appeared that the bottom was flat; it was resting gently on the bed, not capable of rolling at all. The Squid wondered a moment if it had squashed down a bit when Ogre had cut the straps and dropped it the last few inches into place. He touched the craft again, expecting cold, but instead of being freezing, it was almost as warm as the trailer itself.