Listening to this had made Terry very angry, and it wasn’t just because he had inherited the Tucker temper. After having survived a living hell like the one JB was going through, Terry became determined to protect his younger cousin. So it was, that before the reading of the will had concluded, Terry promised JB that he’d come by from time to time to keep an eye on him.
As much as he liked Cousin Terry, JB didn’t take the promise seriously. After all, Terry lived miles away and had just started driving, so JB took it as a nice, though empty gesture. As it turned out though, future events would prove him wrong.
It was one night, not long after his brother’s funeral, when Willie-Dean Tucker came home crazy drunk. He stalked into the trailer yelling for JB, who unable to flee, was cowering under the tiny dining table. JB’s pappy grabbed him up from his hiding place and flung him towards the door, screaming at him to start running and to take his head-start while he could. JB knew all too well what that meant. In the past, he only had about twenty seconds to make good on his head-start before Willie-Dean came after him in the Olds. He didn’t waste a second of it.
In a panic, JB tore out past the open secret gate and onto the dirt access road. The moist ground grabbed at his sneakers as he ran as fast as he could, but his pulse quickened even more when he heard the roar of the Oldsmobile revving up behind him. Seconds later, the car easily caught up with him and was following just inches behind. Willie-Dean, a maniacal look in his eyes, began pacing his ten-year-old son in the Olds, striking him repeatedly with the car while laughing and yelling at him to run faster.
As luck would have it, on that same night, Cousin Terry had come by, driving his late papa’s truck. He was dropping in unannounced, making good on his promise to check up on JB. As Terry headed down the road towards the trailer, he saw a terrified JB running up the road, illuminated in the headlights of Willie-Dean’s Oldsmobile. The car was smacking him over and over with the front bumper as JB futilely tried to outrun it. And Willie-Dean’s roars of delight punctuated every nudge from the Olds, enjoying every moment of his monstrous pastime.
Terry, furious, at what he was seeing, jammed on the brakes and jumped out of his truck. He was a full-back on his high school football team and had no trouble quickly catching up to the Olds. All the while, Willie-Dean’s entire focus was on relishing in JB’s ordeal, so he never saw Terry coming. Terry popped open the door of the Olds, and in one, ferociously swift motion hauled Willie-Dean out of the driver’s seat and onto the ground.
Incoherent with rage and whiskey, Willie-Dean struggled to his feet and threw a useless punch at the sixteen-year-old, who was twice his size. Willie-Dean’s blow missed, but Terry exploited the move and grabbed the older man’s arm as the fist whistled harmlessly past him. He caught it in a vice-like grip and twisted the limb behind Willie-Dean’s back and pulled up hard. Willie-Dean went to his knees, but his other hand had found an empty whiskey bottle in his back pocket. He smashed it against the ground and slashed blindly over his shoulder in an attempt to cut Terry with jagged glass.
Terry dodged backward to avoid the bottle and released Willie-Dean’s arm. In that moment, Willie-Dean’s adrenaline had overpowered the alcohol, and he jumped quickly, got up to his feet and lunged towards Terry, wielding the broken bottle like a lance. Terry ducked under his attacker’s outstretched arm and kicked Willie-Dean hard on his kneecap. There was an audible crack, and Willie-Dean pitched forward hitting the ground face first with a loud groan. He was bleeding profusely from his shattered nose as he attempted to struggle back onto his feet, but his injured leg wouldn’t cooperate. He could only manage to bring himself into an upright sitting position and was reduced to sputtering curses as he pinched his nostrils together in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood.
Terry kicked the bottle away and walked off to see to JB, leaving Willie-Dean where he was, holding his nose with one hand and grasping his injured knee with the other. After that, Willie-Dean never walked the same way again, nor did he ever forgive JB for his injuries, or, more importantly, his humiliation.
As JB drove away from the place he used to call home, these were the memories that flooded back into his consciousness. He didn’t bother closing the camouflaged gate behind him for he had no intention of ever coming back. Aside from the fact that there was nothing left to return to, he had a realization that this wasn’t just another chapter in his life… He was beginning an entirely new book. The trailer and the horrors he had suffered there all belonged to who he had been and not who he had become. JB having been reborn, now had to decide what to do in the remaining time he had left. About that, he harbored no illusions at all. His days were numbered.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Road not Taken
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, JB entered a stretch of roadway that would eventually intersect with the Great Dismal Swamp Highway, the most direct route over to the Outer Banks and on to Ocracoke Island. However, since he wished to minimize the chance of any contact with law enforcement, he chose to take a network of roads that were seldom used after the interstate highway system had been completed. Ever since his close calls in Virginia, backroads like these were his preferred routes. He couldn’t be sure if any troopers in North Carolina were looking for him, but he was well aware that Ol’ Blue’s distinctive front bumper and push plate were easily identifiable. JB wasn’t inclined to push his luck, especially since the Virginia incident involved a dead state trooper. The trooper’s death wasn’t his fault, but the “aliens did it” defense wasn’t going to play well in any courtroom he could think of.
The two-lane road he was traveling on paralleled the more popular routes, but there were some places where it veered off into the marshlands before meandering back to the interstate. Here, the cracked and crumbling asphalt roadway was bordered by walls of dense vegetation on either side. The gravel on the shoulders of the road had, for the most part, eroded away and was now overgrown with thickets of wild grasses and foxtails.
The road narrowed in places where the surrounding marshes were only feet from the roadway, and where untrimmed branches from large bushes encroached on the asphalt, scratching the side of his pickup as he drove by. Clearly, this portion of road hadn’t been maintained for years, JB thought, noting that the driving conditions continued to deteriorate the more he drove on.
It quickly became a rough ride, and despite the pickup’s heavy-duty shocks and oversized tires, JB, had to slow down. Even so, both he and the jaundiced beams from Ol’ Blue’s headlamps continued to bounce up and down as the truck tunneled through the moonless night. A few miles further on he had to slow down even more due to the fog bank that had rolled onto the road and was growing thicker with every passing moment.
Even with his Sawbonite enhanced vision, JB couldn’t see much more than a dozen yards dead ahead in the billowing mist. He traveled at a crawl, trying to avoid being blinded by the reflection of his headlamps off of the moisture in the air. Occasionally, the fog would thin momentarily, but only enough to reveal the tangle of vegetation that crowded both sides of the road. Whether it was the weather or simply paranoia, he became suddenly wary. His unease was growing, enveloping his consciousness much like the dense fog.
He reflected that his knowledge of these little-used roads was great for avoiding attention, but on the other hand, these isolated byways also offered many opportunities for an ambush. Having considered his options, JB had still decided it was worth the risk, especially now. Since it had been only hours since the attack at his trailer, he figured to take advantage of his head-start before his off-world pursuers could regroup and organize another attempt. But there was still a risk, and he was also aware that his assumptions were only worth so much, especially against adversaries he knew so little about. There was just one thing he could be sure of. That regardless of any precautions he took, the aliens hunting him would never be far behind. How they managed to do that was yet another mystery for him to ponder.
JB’s thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the sound
of crashing metal and splintering wood from up ahead. He jammed on his brakes and skidded to a stop, but he saw nothing. He proceeded slowly ahead until he found himself several yards behind another pickup truck that had run off of the road and into an immense oak tree. The fog had thickened up again, and the reflected glare from his headlights made it difficult to see clearly. He stopped his truck and got out for a closer look.
The night air was warm and humid, again reminding him that spring had come early this year. He approached the wreck and called into the darkness. “Anybody hurt?”
“Nah,” replied a male voice. “Doin’ fine!”
Like a staged magic act, the man appeared out of the fog. He was an inch or two shorter than JB’s six-foot-six, but far heavier. The man’s ample belly struggled against the buttons on his shirt that did little to keep it from ballooning over his large, silver belt buckle. He approached JB shaking his head and said, “‘Fact is, I’m doin’ better than you are.”
JB narrowed his eyebrows and was about to react, but he heard the click of a revolver being cocked behind him and another male voice.
“Don’t move or you’ll take one in the head.”
“Just do as he says,” the heavy man said. “And you won’t get hurt.”
“Turn around slow,” ordered the voice behind him.
Calmly, JB did as he was asked. The man holding the gun was JB’s height, but much slighter of frame. And despite being rail-thin, he bore a certain resemblance to the heavy man who had suddenly appeared out of the mists. JB was certain that the skinny man, dressed in prison orange overalls and holding the gun on him, was the other man’s brother.
“What y’all want?” JB asked. He kept his voice even as he looked unflinchingly into the skinny man’s eyes.
“Our ride just blew a tire and skidded us into a tree,” the heavy man explained. “We need you to take us a couple more miles up the road.”
“Yeah,” the skinny man added. “An’ to help us dig.”
JB found that he couldn’t help himself and started to laugh. The skinny man got up into JB’s face and hissed, “What the hell is so damn funny?”
JB was still chuckling as he replied. “Y’all know, that in times past I would have never stopped to help. I woulda kept right on going, but as they say, No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you did,” snarled the skinny man. “Otherwise I would have shot your ass!”
“That’s been tried before,” JB muttered under his breath.
“What was that?” snapped the skinny man.
“Nuthin’. I was just sayin’ that I ain’t never lost my ride before,” JB replied slowly, even though his mind was going a mile a minute.
He was turning the scenario over and over in his head. If these two were a couple of aliens in human guise, he’d be dead already, which only left one obvious possibility. He was getting carjacked by real, bonafide human beings. That was the only good news, as far as JB was concerned. The sticky part was how to extricate himself from this situation without a mess of collateral damage.
JB entertained the notion that he would just overpower the two men and be on his way, but he couldn’t shake the tiny nag tugging at the back of his consciousness that warned him that would be a bad idea. As much as he hated being delayed, he decided to go with his gut for the time being and hold off from doing anything to escalate the situation.
“Get goin’!” demanded the skinny man, giving JB a nudge in the chest with the barrel of his gun. “You’re drivin’… An’ if I see your hands leave the steering wheel, I won’t hesitate to shoot you.”
“Y’all’s got nuthin’ to worry about from me,” JB replied flatly. “I’ll take y’all where ya wanna go.”
The heavy man took a couple of shovels from the wrecked pickup and threw them into the bed of JB’s truck. The skinny man kept his gun trained on JB as he got into the front bench seat of the old Ford and slid to the middle before directing JB to get behind the wheel. The heavy man got in on the passenger side and closed the door.
The skinny man sat squeezed between JB on one side and the heavy man on the other. To avoid pinning the arms of the skinny man, who was keeping his gun trained on JB, the heavy man practically hung out of the open passenger window trying to make a little extra space on the bench seat.
“So, where are we goin’?” JB asked.
“Shut up and drive. I’ll tell you when we get there,” The skinny man barked.
The fog had grown thick again. The roiling, white clouds made it difficult to see more than several feet ahead, so JB proceeded carefully and slowly up the road.
The heavy man spoke up. “Hey Paul, how you gonna know where to find it? I can’t see a damn thing!”
Paul, the skinny man, coughed a forced laugh and said, “I’ll know when we get there. It’ll be especially hard to miss, since Southern boy here is practically draggin’ his ass down the road.”
“Well, look what happened when you were drivin’,” complained the heavy man.
“Weren’t my fault,” argued Paul. “The damn tires were bald!”
“Shit Bro! They looked practically new!” the heavy man protested.
“Well, then you need glasses,” retorted Paul.
“Hey fellas, y’all sound like a couple of brothers I knew back in Georgia,” JB said. He figured he had nothing to lose by striking up a conversation.
“True enough,” said the heavy man.
“Dammit Wade,” said Paul crossly, shaking his head incredulously. “Why don’t you just go ahead n’ give this guy your goddamn home address!”
“Shit, you know that ain’t fair,” Wade crossed his arms and moved his bulk even closer to the door, in a ridiculous attempt to sit further away from his brother. “I helped you get out of Doleman, didn’t I?”
“Doleman?” JB interjected. “The prison farm upstate? Is that where y’all comin’ from?”
“Why d’ja want to know?” Paul snarled menacingly.
“Just makin’ conversation, that’s all; besides we all know you’re probably gonna kill me after we’re done with whatever y’all’s got in mind.”
“You’re a pretty cool customer; I’ll give you that. But listen, you play along, and I promise nothin’ will happen to ya,” Paul said. “I ain’t much, but I’m no damn liar.”
“Okay, then, Paul. The name’s JB Tucker. An’ if that’s your deal, I’ll take it.”
Paul nodded. He was still pointing the gun at JB, but he looked more relaxed than he had been before. He said, “Okay, Tucker. All you have to do is help Wade dig, and we’ll drop you someplace.”
“Yeah,” said Wade. “Paul says he knows where it is, but not what it is. Right, Paul?”
Paul shook his head again, this time in resignation at his brother’s big mouth and snapped, “Wade, do you know what T.M.I. means?” He didn’t wait for his brother to answer. “Shit, don’t you know that every trooper from Tennessee to Texas is looking for us? An’ here you’re blabbing to Tucker about stuff he shouldn’t know… Especially if we’re gonna let him live.”
“Now fellas, don’t y’all argue on my account,” JB said, playing the country hick to the hilt. He could have easily disarmed Paul, but he was intrigued despite the dodgy situation. “I ain’t gonna tell nobody. Why do y’all think I was on this road in the first place? I got troopers lookin’ for me too.”
“Oh yeah, for what?” Paul said dismissively, “You don’t look the type.”
“Looks can be deceivin’, my pappy used to say,” replied JB, even though Willie-Dean never said such a thing in his life.
“Ma used to say that too,” Wade offered, earning him a quick glare from his brother.
“So y’all’s not sure about what we’re gonna be diggin’ up? Are y’all thinkin’ it’s some kind of treasure?” JB asked.
“Why should you care? You’re not gettin’ any part of it,” Paul barked.
“So, if that’s the case, what do y’all have to lose by tellin�
�� me?”
“His cellmate, the one who died, told Paul about it,” said Wade, adding, “Should be lots of money though, ‘cause he said it was stuff he hid before going to prison.”
“But, he never got out,” said Paul, even though he was annoyed at the turn in the conversation. As they progressed up the road, the fog had thinned considerably, and Paul’s concentration was split between keeping an eye on JB and the landscape ahead.
“Slow down even more!” Paul said. “I think we’re getting close!”
Ahead, revealed in the dingy wash of Ol’ Blue’s headlights, was a bend in the road, about a hundred yards further.
“Stop! Stop! This is it!” yelled Paul, and JB did as he was told after pulling off onto the shoulder.
“You sure?” asked the heavy man.
“Hell yeah!” said Paul confidently. “See that old Black Oak? Right up there where the road starts to curve. The one with the charred trunk.”
“Lightning struck it, so what?” His brother argued.
“That’s the marker! An’ it’s right where he said it would be, and the forked tree is exactly the way he described it!” Paul exclaimed. He was growing more excited, now that the prospect of success appeared close at hand.
Wade looked unconvinced. “Lots of lightning-struck trees in the swamp, Bro.”
“Yeah, but not like this one.”
JB could see why Paul had been confident about identifying the landmark. From his life in the swamp, JB knew that most trees, when hit by lightning, burn from the inside out. The intense heat explosively cracks the trunk open, usually near the bottom, and the smoldering embers quickly gut the interior of the tree trunk. What’s usually left is a triangular gash that exposes the blackened interior of the now, hollow tree. That being said, the tree that Paul had called out was markedly different.
The manner in which this tree had burnt was both distinctive and unusual. Instead of consuming this tree from the inside out, the lightning had split the tall oak from top to bottom, as if a giant, flaming cleaver had sliced it neatly down the middle, stopping right before cutting it entirely in two. JB parked at an angle where the two charred and blackened halves jutted in opposite directions forming a perfect “V”.
Alien Roadkill-Homecoming Page 3
