by Chris Lowry
The screens were simply stapled to the two by four frame walls on the outside.
“Nice atmosphere,” Dawes said as he glanced around.
No decoration on the inside walls, no signs on the outside.
Just a giant steel smoker parked next to the building and a woodshed beside it.
“This is about to be the best food you ever put in your mouth,” Dawes told him.
“You eat here before?”
“Not here man, but everybody knows this roadside grill meat is good. Hey, ya’ll ain’t serving armadillo or possum are you?”
“Boy,” the old man snorted. He was missing a couple of teeth from the bottom row and one on the top. “We got us prime Texas brisket today, and pulled pork if you favor the pig.”
“See,” Carver declared as if he had known all along. “Two briskets.”
“Your momma teach you any manners?”
“Yes Sir,” Carver said quickly. “Two briskets please.”
“That’s better.”
They watched the old man shuffle along the shelf behind the counter. He picked out two paper plates and carried them past the table and out to the smoker.
A moment later, a petite girl with cinnamon skin stepped through the screen door with two heaping plates of meat, baked beans and warm slaw.
She set them on the table in front of Dawes and Carver.
“Damn baby girl,” said Carver as he looked her up and down, then glanced over his shoulder at the smoker.
The old man was gone.
“Ya’ll got a fountain of youth grill out there? You go out an old man and come back fine as hell.”
She smirked and shook her head.
“Don’t be messing with me. My Daddy will come in here and we’ll be serving dark meat for dinner. What you want to drink?”
“Nah, girl I’m just playing. We got big business to discuss up in here. Ya’ll got a couple of cold beers that would go good with this meat?”
He watched her sashay away, eyes drinking in the way her hips swayed side to side.
“She got some Latina in her somewhere,” he told Dawes. “That’s what happens when you mix up a black daddy with a Latina mommy. You get the best of both sides.”
Dawes nodded.
“She had nice skin.”
“Skin!? Man, what’s wrong with you. She got nice everything.”
The waitress came back and placed two sweating bottles of beer on the wooden table top between them, and a squeeze bottle of bar b que sauce.
“Thank you,” Carver flashed a smile.
“What’s your name?”
“Rosita,” she said and started to walk away.
“Thank you, Rosita,” Carver called after her.
“See man, what did I say. Latina all up in this mess.”
He kept smiling as he tucked into the brisket with noisy abandon.
Dawes slurped sauce across the browned outside and let it settle in the crevices while he took a long gulp of cold beer.
“That hit the spot,” he smacked his lips.
"Look man, we messed this thing up."
Carver said between bites.
"Yeah, but you didn't want to go to space in the first place."
"I know that. Don't you think I know that?"
"You said it about a million times."
"Well, I think we need to make it right."
"I think we need to get out of here."
"This is our shot man, this is our chance to be part of something big."
"Didn't we just stop another alien invasion."
"But that wasn't on purpose. We got choices to make in life, and when life gives you choices, you have to make one."
Dawes crinkled up his eyebrows as he let that one filter through.
"That makes no sense."
"Shut up. You know what I mean."
"I literally have no idea what you mean. I heard what you said, life gives you choices and you have to make one. But that is the case with just about everything in the world. It's all choices."
"Yeah, but some choices matter. This is one of those times."
Dawes sighed.
He actually did know what Carver meant, but he was kind of hoping his partner would make the same choice he wanted to make.
Go run. Go hide.
Alien invasions.
A week ago, he was hitchhiking across the Texas scrubland and seven days later, he was up against his second set of invading aliens.
How does that happen to a guy twice?
He glanced at Dawes.
It was probably all of his fault. He took the wrong turn. He hit the button on the rocket that made it go boom instead of zoom.
And now it was his fault that Dawes was even considering listening.
"I'll say please if it helps."
"If you get us killed, I'm going to murder you."
"It's cows man, you're a cowboy. This shit should be easy for you."
Carver waved the waitress over and ordered a couple of bottles of beer.
Now it was time to make a plan.
CHAPTER NINE
They basked in the afterglow of full bellies and a solid plan, four empty beer bottles on the table between them.
"You want one more?" Carver started to lift a finger to wave Rosita over.
"Don't go spending all our money on food. We still have to get to Florida."
"Our money," Carver tossed the rumpled bills on the table. "This here is my money. I don't know where yours it at."
Rosita came over, scooped up the soggy plates with the tattered remnants of sauce and napkins in one hand, and the two twenties in the other.
"Now it's my money," she smiled. "Tip's in that too, I assume."
She didn't wait for an answer. It was Dawes turn to watch her walk out back through the screen door, but Carver didn't waste an opportunity to spin his head around as far as it would go.
"Now what?"
"You think we can get a ride to Florida?"
“We got a ride here,” said Dawes.
He twirled one of the empties on the table top in small circles, spinning it between his fingers.
“I don’t know man, that’s leaving a lot of stuff to chance. Plus, if we’re out on the Interstate, the General could be looking for us and find us.”
“You in the military?” the old man cackled as he stepped through the screen door.
“Damn, what you doing? You out there shape shifting or something?” Carver said.
“No Sir,” said Dawes. “We’re just passing through.”
“From that secret base out there?”
“You ain’t supposed to know about that? You out there listening to us through the screen?”
“Them Army boys think they good at keeping secrets. Hell, ain’t nothing out here but us and some jackalopes.”
Rosita stepped through the screen door and joined the old man at the counter.
“Don’t you start speaking out of turn Poppa.”
“Poppa, see,” Carver turned a triumphant grin to Dawes. “That’s Mexican for Dad, right?”
“Grandfather,” she corrected. “But yeah, it works.”
“Latina,” he said under his breath like he was winning an argument.
“You trying to get to Florida why?”
“Everybody out there listening? Who else you got hiding on the other side of the screen?”
“You talk so loud it’s no wonder that General can’t hear you.”
“Bastard,” ordered Poppa. “Walked out on a check on me once.”
“He came back to pay.”
“Still,” Poppa wiped the bartop with the grungy rag. “It’s the principle of the matter.”
“He don’t seem the dine and dash type.”
“He was in a hurry. Some fools crashed one of his spaceships.”
“That wasn’t us,” Carver said quickly.
“I didn’t say it was,” Poppa grinned.
The could see his tongue poking in the hole between two of
his teeth.
“But if I crashed a super secret experimental space ship that was designed by a young man who turned to bar b que in his retirement, I’d be on the run too.”
“You?” the two men said together.
“Hell no, it wasn’t me. You think if I was smart enough to build a rocket ship, I’d have a rundown shack on the side of the road next to a hidden military airfield.”
Carver crinkled up his eyebrows.
“Maybe you’re trying to be covert.”
“Cowvert,” Dawes snickered. “Think they’re gonna be pissed we ate one of their buddies?”
“That ain’t funny Man. It’s like we’re cannibals or something.”
“Canibals means we eat people. You mean carnivores.”
“I know what I mean. Don’t tell me what I know.”
Dawes pulled his legs out from under the table.
“We need to get moving.”
“I know that,” Carver followed him.
“I saw that cowboy drop you off. You don’t have a car. You boys want Rosita to give you a ride?”
“It’s a fourteen hour drive.”
“For some folks, yep.”
He motioned Dawes and Carver to follow him through the screen door.
“What if I don’t feel like it?” Rosita grumbled.
But she waited for Dawes and Carver to follow Poppa and shuffled after them, still groaning.
CHAPTER TEN
"Is that what I think it is?"
They followed Poppa to a barn behind the bar b que shed and he rolled the doors back on a trundle track.
The exterior of the barn looked like it was ready to collapse in a stiff wind. The inside didn't look much better.
But sitting in the middle of the barn was a plane that looked like a glider and rocket made little torpedo babies.
A gleaming silver cockpit big enough for four was the shape of a bullet, with a shallow nose and rear that swept up into a tail.
Two short wings jutted out like a bumblebee's, round rocket tubes bolted to the end of each.
"What do you think it is?" Poppa asked.
Dawes swept straw aside from the floor to reveal a gleaming steel surface.
"You got a secret base under here?"
"Only secret round here is that, and my sauce," said Poppa.
"He built it," Rosita was proud. "Probably built the ones you crashed too."
"Old airmen don't die, they just fly away," the old man whispered.
"That thing fly?"
Carver eyed it dubiously.
"Ever throw one of those plastic men with parachutes up in the air?" Rosita asked.
"Yeah."
"It's like that. This thing shoots up at an angle, the earth rotates underneath it, and we land on the east coast."
"We?"
"You can't fly it."
"I'm a pilot baby girl, I've flown things that would blow your mind."
"I bet."
"Tell her," he nudged Dawes. "Tell her I know things, seen things."
"He knows things," the cowboy was distracted by the jet. "He's seen things."
"See, I told you."
"I'm flying this," she said with an air of finality.
Poppa propped open the door to the cockpit.
"She's gonna do the pre-flight. Climb in."
Carver and Dawes slipped over the lip of the door and buckled into the backseat, shoulder to shoulder.
It was a tight fit.
Rosita circled the plane, checking the wings, pulling the wheel blocks. Poppa shuffled over to the other side of the barn door and trundled it open. A long straight dirt runway led from the back of the building and straight across the field.
"How long you think it took them to build that?" Carver said.
Dawes was staring at some cows.
They stood on a fence in a line by the runway watching the dark interior. He was sure they couldn't see inside, the angle of the sun and the shadow would make it impossible.
But he couldn't shake the feeling.
The cows were watching.
"Look at those," he pointed.
"Moo," Carver said. "We just had your brother for dinner!"
One of the long horns shook his head and snorted.
"I don't think he liked that."
"Man, cows can't speak English. And even if they could these cows are close enough to Mexico, they would understand Spanish. Or Spanglish."
"They're still watching."
"You're being paranoid."
But now that Carver was paying attention, he noticed the cow's preoccupation with them.
And how still they were lined up on the fence.
And that more were coming in from the fields.
Rosita jumped into the cockpit.
Carver let out a small yelp.
"Scared you?" she grinned over her shoulder.
"No girl, I ain't scared."
But he shivered and Dawes felt it.
"She got you good."
"Shut up man. We going or what?"
Rosita finished up a small checklist on the dash of the cockpit and pulled a switch.
The engines roared to life and she taxied out of the barn.
"That's weird," she said, pointing to the cows.
The number had doubled.
Rosita lined up the wheel with the center of the runway and bled power into the engines. They roared louder and the plane lurched forward, gaining speed as it raced down the dirt packed lane.
One of the bulls plopped back on its rear end and lifted a silver tube in its front hooves.
"Bull!" Dawes screamed.
A puff of smoke flashed from the end of the tube as Rosita shoved the throttle forward.
The rocket plane lifted off the ground as the engines on the end of each wing spun to life.
A projectile whistled under the belly of the cockpit and exploded in the field beside them.
"What was that?" Rosita turned to stare.
"Cow!" Dawes screamed.
"Not where we're going."
She aimed the nose straight up, punched in a code and the rockets lifted them toward the stratosphere.
Dawes tried to glance out of the window, but the higher they got, the smaller the herd became until they were indistinct blurs against the featureless landscape.
"They don't aim so good," he shouted to Carver over the roar of the rockets.
"Taste good though!" Carver grinned as he was pressed back into the seat.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They landed without any more cows taking potshots at them.
Rosita filed a change in flight plan on the radio to a small airport north and west of the space coast area, and settled the plane on the single blacktop runway.
“How you getting back,” Carver leaned over the seat and gave her his best grin.
“I’ve got enough fuel to fly around the world twice,” she told him. “Poppa is a genius.”
“And he makes good bar b que too. Unless that’s all you?”
He wiggled his eyebrows.
“I just serve it,” she said.
“You know it’s a damn shame a fine woman like you is just serving rag meat on the side of the road. Baby girl you should be at NASA or something.”
Rosita stared at him with serious eyes.
“You can’t trust the government. Especially anything that starts with the words super secret.”
“Him? Them? I don’t trust nobody. No generals. No soldiers. Nothing. They all a bunch of liars,” he leaned a little closer and said a little softer. “I’d trust you though.”
She reached up and ran a finger down his cheek.
“You would?”
