by phuc
"She wasn't holding the knife with her foot," Bob said. "Just be glad I'm shooting slugs, or you'd have all got peppered."
I looked at Mable. Her face was as pale as a baby's ass, and her eyes were foggy. I figured she wasn't going to make it.
About then she opened her eyes and said, "You know, the thing that would do me some good right now is a chicken fried steak. Maybe some mashed taters and cream gravy and rolls with it. Big ole glass of ice tea."
"Rest now," Sam said.
"It's the batter does it on them steaks," Mable said. "Don't got that right, it ain't worth eatin'. You dip the steak in the milk-and-egg batter, then into the flour, then back into the milk and egg, then back into the flour. Makes it extra crispy."
"Ssshhhh, now, sugar bee, you rest."
"Don't do it that way, you don't get that good flaky crust, and I do like a good flaky crust."
She passed out again.
Bob came over and gave me one of the pistols from his belt. "Here, you might want- to shoot someone later."
I took it and walked to the open door at the back of the bus and looked out. The Christians were fist-fighting, probably over drops of blood on the asphalt, or what was left of the sardines Sam had dropped. I could see the greasy-haired girl lying on her side with her eyes wide open. There was a young man with a knife cutting strips of meat off her legs. I took a deep breath and closed the door.
2
Bob and I ate sardines while Sam lay asleep on the floor near Mable, who now and then came awake and gave us in great detail one of her favorite recipes. We had been through cherry pie, buttermilk biscuits, chili and hominy cakes.
"I feel kind of bad eating another person's food," I said.
"They were going to eat you," Bob said. "Look at it that way."
"A point," I said, and ate a little faster.
"You're going to need your strength when the Christians come for us. They're not going to be worried about the bomb anymore. They'll have it figured now, since we didn't get blown up."
"How'd you know the bus wasn't rigged with a bomb?"
"Just figured . . . didn't know for sure . . . Hell, Jack, I don't care anymore. If this is life, it ain't worth living. I think what you and I ought to do is something real foolish. Otherwise, we'll end up licking blood out of hubcaps."
"What you got in mind?" I asked.
"Destroy The Orbit symbol."
I mulled that over awhile. "It has a ring to it. Any reason?"
Bob looked back to make sure Sam and Mable were still sleeping. "Come with me." He pulled the lever and opened the door and we went outside. "You've been a mite busy to notice, but when I woke up and seen you were gone, I figured you'd joined the Christians."
"Okay, I was a jackass. Happy?"
"It's just your way, Jack. I'm used to it. Anyway, I woke up and come out of the camper and the first thing I seen was that."
He pointed at The Orbit symbol. "And it's worse now than when I'm talking about."
"God Almighty," I said.
The Orbit symbol had turned a hot blue, so blue it hurt my eyes. It was getting the juice from the tentacles —there were twelve of them now and I couldn't think of them as anything other than tentacles—and they were twisting and lashing across the blackness, spitting lightning from their tips like venom, and this lightning no longer ran the length of the pole, but just gathered in the symbol alone, and the symbol was spinning very fast, hurling more lightning than ever from it, striking the concession. The concession glowed so violently that at any moment I expected it to move, like amputated frog legs hopping in response to a live wire. The marquee was no longer there. I figured it had exploded and crumbled down, like a charcoaled stick.
"I figure something new is about to happen," Bob said, "and I'm not sure it's worth waiting around for. Last time we had something like this we got the Popcorn King."
I agreed with Bob. I felt it was gearing up for something bigger and more catastrophic. I tried to figure exactly what it was with the symbol and why the power from the lightning concentrated itself there before going to the concession. A number of B movie possibilities presented themselves: The symbol had accidentally been made from smeltered iron ore that had been mixed with some strange and horrid sentient metal that had come to earth in a meteor, and once it had been converted to The Orbit symbol it had awakened from a long sleep and was now tormenting us earthlings for lack of anything better to do. I figured being a chunk of rock, or even a sign, could get pretty boring. It was the sort of thing that could give you a bad attitude. And I thought again of the B movie gods, and that idea appealed to me most of all. Their motives seemed to fit in with those of most low-budget moviemakers. Bring it in on time. If it doesn't make sense in spots, well, make it pretty or exciting. Don't let them think about it too long.
"You getting hypoglycemic again," Bob said, bringing me up from the pit of my thoughts.
"No," I said. "I was just thinking."
"About what?"
"About rewriting the script."
"The script?"
"Let's just say this is a movie and those tentacles—"
"Just drips of goo, Jack."
"—belong to the B movie gods, and they're manufacturing all this, using us as actors, only we're not acting, and they're making up the script as they go. They've isolated us, they've given us our monster, the Popcorn King, and now they're looking for the big finish, and I don't think they've planned a heroic ending. I think this is one of those downbeat films."
"Always got to have something to believe in, don't you, Jack? Astrology, Christianity, now B movie gods."
"Give me something to blame all this on. A random universe with no god, evil or otherwise, is just too much for me. Just let me say it's the B movie gods and they have this bad scenario planned, and you and me, we're not going to stand for it. We're going to destroy the symbol . . . Hell, let's do something even if it's wrong."
"Believe the ghost of Elvis is doing it if you like," Bob said. "It don't make a hang to me.
But I've got a plan for taking that symbol down."
…
Bob woke Sam up when we got back to the bus. He pulled him up front and said, "You know how to use that torch and stuff?"
"I don't just carry it around, boy. Sure, I know. But I ain't got a hankering at the moment."
"I'm going to give you a hankering," Bob said. "We're going to cut The Orbit symbol down."
"Have at it," Sam said.
"We want you to do it. You know how to use the equipment."
"After what you done to Mable, you think I'm gonna help you? You shouldn't oughta shot her hand off, little buddy."
I thought he might add "nahnuhnahnah," but he passed on that.
"We want to cut that sucker down and drop it on the concession," Bob said. "See if we can smash the Popcorn King . . . Christ, we want to do something besides wait to get eaten, or end up eating one another. What say, Sam?"
"Don't use the Saviour's name in vain ... I don't know. You have to cut it just right, get it to fall that way."
"That's why we need you," Bob said. "You're the expert."
"Well," Sam said, rubbing his fingers along his chin, "it might not change a thing, but it sure could give a man peace of mind for trying, now couldn't it?"
"Our point exactly," Bob said. "You'll do it then?"
"All right, but this don't mean we're friends."
"Wouldn't think of it ... One more thing. We're gonna need this bus, and when we finish with it, it won't be in any shape at all."
"No sir," Sam said, "you ain't gonna . . ." Then he looked hard at Bob and the shotgun. "It don't matter what I say, does it? You'll take the bus anyway."
"We'd like to have your permission," Bob said, "just to be sociable."
Sam nodded wearily. "Well, tell me what you're gonna do to it."
The bus was part diversion, part weapon.
We tore the wire off the shelves, took the food and put it in a couple of blanket
s and tied it up, pulled it to the rear of the bus. We took the wire outside and Sam welded it into a kind of pen on the hood of the bus while Bob watched with his shotgun, just in case we had visitors. When Sam finished, I brought all the cans of paint thinner he had and put them in the wire enclosure, made sure they fit snug by pushing a couple of moldy pillowcases in between them.
"When the front end hits that electrical field," Bob said, "it'll blow. And if we can get enough momentum behind this baby, really put the hammer down, it'll run on into the concession and the gas tank will go. We're lucky, that'll get the Popcorn King. Or the symbol will when it comes down. The idea here is to try and hit him with both things at once. I've got a flare gun in the camper, and I'll give that to one of you. When the symbol is about to drop, shoot off the flare and I'll put my foot through it, put this sucker in his lap."
"And how will you get out?" I asked.
"I'll jump. I'm a jumping sonofabitch, didn't I tell you?"
"No. I knew you could hide under mufflers good, but I didn't know about the jumping."
Bob smiled. "If Wendle was here right now, big guy or no big guy, I'd kick his butt . . .
after I had me something to eat, that is, like about ten cans of those sardines in there."
"I don't doubt it," I said. "But right now, let's kick the King's butt."
"I'll get the flare gun," Bob said.
Bob got the flare gun, then we took the blankets of food over to the camper, trying to make sure no one was watching, but not worrying too much about it. It was most likely a formality anyway. I didn't really expect to be coming back. If our plan failed, the Popcorn King would have plans for us—lunch, probably.
Fact was, I figured our time was running out anyway. So far the King had been patient, waiting for us to get hungry enough to join his flock, or maybe not thinking about us at all. He didn't seem to have any master plan. Feed the flock, and gradually feed on the flock. An insane demigod without true design; a voyeur of human destruction; the Jim Jones of Popcorn.
When we got back to the bus Sam was sitting on the bed beside Mable. "Died," he said.
"Just gave her buttermilk-biscuit recipe and died. Didn't quite make it to the part about how long to keep them little buddies in the oven."
Bob nodded and went to the front of the bus.
"You did this, cowboy," Sam yelled at Bob's back.
Bob pulled the door lever and went outside. I went after him. He was leaning against the bus, the shotgun cradled in his arms. He was watching the movie. It was The Toolbox Murders.
I went up and leaned beside him. "You saved my life. I'm sorry you had to shoot the woman, but thanks for saving my life."
"I never said I was sorry for shooting her," Bob said, but he didn't look at me.
We leaned that way for a time. "Movie any good?" I asked.
"It's all right," Bob said, "but I've seen it."
I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on," I said. "We've got things to do."
We went back inside the bus.
Sam looked at me and snarled. "Damn you, if you'd just gone on and cooperated, we'd have eaten you and things would have gone on like they were . . . least for a while."
"I have days when I'm obstreperous," I said.
"To hell with this talk," Bob said. "We're going on with it, Sam, with or without you even if I have to teach myself how to use that torch by trial and error and let Jack drive the bus.
So how's it going to be? You in or out?"
Sam turned to look at Mable. He closed her eyes with his fingertips, then looked at us.
"I'm in," he said.
Bob nodded. "Now . . . what would you like to do with her body?"
There was no way to bury her, and options were few. We could toss her into the acidic blackness or we could leave her on the bus to burn when it exploded. (If it exploded. Just because we had a plan didn't mean I had a lot of faith in it.) Sam preferred to leave her on the bus. He got some cans of sardines out of her overcoat pockets (he wasn't so sentimental as to leave those), and put some old clothes on top of her to help her catch fire. He took some plastic plumbing pipe, couplings and pipe glue, used a hacksaw to make her an artificial hand. Or that's what it was supposed to be. It looked like a dull garden rake to me. He tied it to the stump of her arm with some rounds of twine and a twisted coat hanger.
Finished, he put a blanket over her and tied it and Mable to the bed with some strips of old sheet, changed out of his festive-tie shirt and put back on the one with a black tie. He said some words over her, then changed back to the shirt with the red tie painted on. I presumed that was also his welding shirt.
"Sam," I said, "I'm not one to meddle, but I've been meaning to ask you. Why do you paint those ties on your shirts?"
"Can't tie the knots," he said.
Made sense.
We ate some sardines, talked the plan over one more time, then Sam and I lowered the dolly with the welding equipment on it out the back of the bus.
"Go for it," Bob said. We shook hands and he gave me the flare pistol. I slipped it into my belt next to the revolver.
"Let's get on with it," Sam said. "I ain't gonna shake hands with nobody."
I took hold of the dolly, cocked it back and started pushing it across the lot at a dog trot.
Sam ran alongside me, wheezing like a tire going flat.
3
We weren't too worried about the Popcorn King noticing us. We were a good distance away, and hey, it wasn't like there wasn't something strange going on all the time anyway.
But the closer we got to the little fence that led out to the stretch of concrete where The Orbit symbol was, the more nervous I became. My courage began to falter, and I wanted to go back to the truck and get into the sardines and eat those, and just hope for the best.
Still, I kept running, and Sam was staying up with me. We saw the Christians here and there, standing around, watching, wondering, I suppose. None of them waved. Stuck up.
I looked toward the concession. It glowed beautifully against the blackness, like some exotic gem on black velvet. One of those little winds that kicked up out of nowhere from time to time started going and it carried the stink of the no-longer-used toilets to me, and the smell was as hard and mean as a head-on collision.
In the window of the concession I could see the bodies hanging, like big fish in a market.
Some of them were little more than skeletons.
We came to the wooden fence and Sam got up there and straddled it, and I pushed the dolly up where he could get hold of it and twist it over, lower it to the other side.
Sam followed after it and I took his place, straddling the fence. I looked out at the great tin fence surrounding the drive-in (except this area that led out to The Orbit symbol), and saw the cruel blackness beyond. I saw some of the screens and their movies and wondered how they had gone on so long without being destroyed. But then I knew. They were light. They were holy shrines to a mad god. I wondered how it would be if we managed to destroy the concession here in Lot A and the three movies went out. Once in darkness, would it all end, like bad dreams tumbling down the throat of sleep?
Nope. Lot B would be the center then, for how ever long that lasted. Lot B with its empty concession and its manned film room, carrying on with or without the King until there was mass murder and/or starvation and finally over there the lights went out as well.
I could see people moving around the drive-in, a number of them moving toward the concession. Probably time for the next meal of popcorn vomit. I figured some of the patrons could see me up there, but it most likely wouldn't excite them much. Many had gone over the fences and out into the blackness, and in their eyes I'd just be one more quitter.
"You gonna lay an egg up there, or what?" Sam said.
I went on over and took hold of the dolly and started pushing it out on the spur toward the symbol. It was brighter out there because of the lightning, and the ozone was so thick it smelled like a wound being c
auterized.
The spur narrowed as we went and the ebony pudding was close on either side of us, and I thought about how easy it would be to end it all. I mean it was right there taunting me, inviting me to freedom. But I kept pushing.
When finally we made the tall, tapering pole that held the symbol, I looked up at the tentacles (liked to think I could see suckers on one side of them, like on an octopus) and the lightning coming out of them, watched the bolts strike the symbol, spin off and engulf the concession. Looking up at that great light, those tentacles, made me feel small and weak and hated.
Sam tried to arc a spark on the torch, but wasn't having much luck. He talked to it. "Come on, now, be good. Come on. Hot A'mighty, that's the way."
A spark jumped to the torch and he turned it up and the flame licked out and he put it to the pole, began to cut through. "Might as well get comfy," he said. "This is going to take a while."
I remembered it was not wise to look at a torch without goggles because a spark could jump to your eyes, and I didn't want to watch Sam work without goggles. The way he was squinting at the flame made me ache. I turned and looked at the blackness, but that was too dreary and it had a siren's call, so I turned and looked at the fence and the back and top of the concession. I could see the upper half of one of the screens beyond that and I tried to watch the movie, Night of the Living Dead, but it seemed too much like reality and I knew all the lines by heart. I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing, but there was just too much in my head for that. I wondered what Bob was doing and how he felt sitting there in the bus, waiting for our signal. I wondered if he really would jump. I figured he might have already turned the bus toward the concession, and he would be watching the symbol, waiting for our flare. God, I hoped the bus would start.
Then I didn't think about that anymore. I thought of Randy and Willard and I felt pity, something I was afraid I might have lost, then there were tears in my eyes and they might have been for Randy and Willard.
"Getting there," Sam said.
I thought, no, the tears are not for Randy and Willard, they are for all the good dreams I've dreamed, for all the good gods, who do not exist, for all the good in man that is only social conditioning to keep the bigger man from breaking his head. Yes, that was what I was weeping for, mankind. The fact that man is not kind at all. But then I knew that was malarkey and that I was weeping for myself, all my loneliness, disappointment, the awareness of my mortality, the realization that the universe was a dark, empty place and life was nothing more than a carnival ride and that when the bell sounded to end the ride and you got off, you stepped out into nothing. It was all over then, all there was was ended, flesh and soul might as well have never been.
