Hitchers

by Will McIntosh

Lorena leapt at Grandpa, wrapped her arm around his neck from behind and squeezed. Grandpa reared back, threw his shoulders; Lorena’s head hit the wall. Her grip relaxed and Grandpa headed for the door. Behind us, Lorena shouted for him to wait.

  Grandpa strode out to the parking lot and hopped into the Maserati. “It’s good to have legs that work,” he said as he fumbled the key into the ignition. “Everything is harder from a wheelchair.” His head lurched forward, then backward as he sped out of the parking space. “You just can’t get away from people when you want some peace and quiet.”

  I couldn’t believe how cavalier he was about pounding someone’s head into a wall. He was talking as if nothing had happened.

  “I could never get any peace and quiet when I was alive. Between Frenchie trying to control my every move right down to when I bent my pinkie, and the rest of you blaring the TV and yammering back and forth like chimps, I never got a moment’s peace.” He wheezed mocking laughter. “I’m the selfish one?” He barely slowed taking the turn. “So why did you keep hanging around after you grew up? I didn’t ask you to come by, but there you were every couple of days, coming to butter me up, ready to pick my bones as soon as I hit the ground.”

  Why did I keep coming around? I guess I thought that’s what families did. They ate meals together once in a while, exchanged gifts at Christmas. Silly me.

  “You think I was going to hand over my life’s work to a sissy like you? Still hanging by your mother’s apron strings when you were shaving? Letting that Mexican pay your bills while you brought in nothing, drawing your crap cartoons. For God’s sake, make your way like a man! Don’t whine and complain and wait for women to wipe your nose for you.”

  Grandpa peeled through Toy Shop Village and up to my apartment in a cloud of road dust. Three news vans were waiting.

  “Ah, shit. I don’t need them hanging around.” He jerked the Maserati into park while it was still moving, went around to the trunk, pulled up the carpet and retrieved the crow bar.

  He turned to the closest news team. “Get out,” he said, brandishing the tire iron. “This is private property. Get off it before I spill your brains.”

  A cameraman held out his hands. “Relax—”

  “Now, God damn it!”

  Grandpa watched as they pulled out, breathing like a bull after his charge. “That’s how you handle them.”

  Satisfied they were gone, he headed inside. “I told you I wanted you off my property. But did you listen? You’re nothing but a leech, just like your God damned father.” He turned on a burner, grabbed a grocery list off the refrigerator and held the tip of it to the burner until the tip burst into flame.

  “You want to play, Finnegan? Let’s play.”

  The flame crept toward his hand as he carried the burning paper to my studio, to the stacks of papers piled on my desk—the contracts and financial statements that had been rolling in as a result of Toy Shop’s success.

  He wouldn’t, I thought. He wouldn’t light my desk on fire inside his own building. He held the burning paper to the edge of a document leaning off the desk. The flames crept across the page and lit others.

  There was a poof. My desk was a bonfire. Grandpa backed out of the room.

  He found lighter fluid under the sink. I’d barbecued in the drive-in lot exactly once, so it was almost full. He sprayed a trail from the kitchen right into my study, then dropped the canister and headed outside.

  Everything I owned was in that apartment. All of my photos, everything I’d ever drawn. He’d just torched my life.

  Summer and Mick were waiting outside by Mick’s car, surrounded by newspeople and cameras. There was a black welt under Mick’s eye that looked like it wasn’t nearly finished swelling. They pushed their way over to Grandpa. “Is it you, Finn, or still the old man?” Gilly was back. He looked at Grandpa’s hands, frowning in concentration.

  Grandpa peered up at the apartment. “Me and Finnegan are playing a little game. Aren’t we, Finnegan?”

  Inside, I screamed and raged and swore I’d get him for this.

  A roar erupted inside the apartment. A window shattered. Flames leapt out the broken window and climbed the stucco wall.

  Summer pulled my phone out of her pocket, opened it. It was hard to believe no one in the news crews had bothered to call, but she was right to make sure. Who knew what they would do?

  Grandpa swatted the phone from her hand. “Let it burn. It’s mine, I can burn it if I want.” He turned his face toward the flames. “You want to play, Finnegan? I told you to get the hell off my property. Now you’re off. How do you like that?”

  CHAPTER 30

  Grandpa was driving back to his house from Murphy’s Pub when I finally regained control, six hours after he’d burned my apartment. He’d downed five drinks at Murphy’s, and as I headed back toward Mick’s place in the Maserati I felt like I was driving on a ship at sea rather than a level road.

  The traffic going the other way—out of town on Route 85—was crawling. Every day more people were fleeing. I couldn’t blame them—every day more hitchers walked the streets of Atlanta, seeking out friends and loved ones who didn’t recognize them, returning to their old haunts (pun intended), and generally scaring the shit out of everyone who was not afflicted. No doubt about it, Atlanta was getting weird, and if I wasn’t afflicted I would pack up my stuff (if I wasn’t afflicted I would still have stuff to pack) and join the bumper-to-bumper traffic fleeing this giant morgue.

  “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” I said aloud. “Lousy drunk. Mick is the drug addict? You want to see a drug addict, take a look in the mirror.” I tried to point at the rear-view mirror and poked it instead, then had to readjust it. “I think I finally figured out why you hated me so much. It’s because you saw yourself in me. Oh sure, you were the man, except you had to sneak to the bar so your wife wouldn’t find out. You handed over your paychecks to her and got an allowance. That’s it, isn’t it? You harp on my weaknesses because it’s easier than owning up to your own.” I took a deep breath, tried to calm down. I had a feeling I’d hit a nerve with that last observation, and it felt good. I’d shut up now, and let the bastard stew.

  The lampposts just off the exit were papered with flyers of people seeking dead loved ones. I’m sure they realized that if a dead loved one had returned, he or she could simply pick up a phone. It was hard to give up hope, I guess, and I imagined most of the unafflicted who were staying in Atlanta were doing so because they hoped to find a dead loved one.

  National Guard troops stood on a corner, watching over protesters who wanted all of the hitchers rounded up and put in a camp, or shot on sight.

  When I got to Mick’s, Mick was back and Lorena was with him. Lorena leapt from the couch with a jubilant shout, flew into my arms. After a moment of cheerful reunion she gestured toward the TV. “Have you seen this?”

  They were watching my apartment burn on CNN. I was suddenly big news—the celebrity face of a horrible new plague. Well, me and Mick. They’d already run a couple of stories on Mick, but he was used to it and didn’t seem to care. The police wanted to speak to me about the fire. There was a debate on the Rachel Maddow show about whether a person was culpable for a crime (arson, for example) if he was either suffering from post-traumatic identity disorder or possessed by the dead. Rachel and her guests didn’t take a definitive stand on which I was—that was a topic for another show.

  “Dave didn’t show up?” I asked. Lorena shook her head.

  “I have to go look for him.” I desperately wanted to take a shower first, but I couldn’t spare the time. My mouth tasted like sour beer. “I don’t even have a toothbrush.” I looked at Mick. “Do you have a spare toothbrush?” Then I realized I needed more than a toothbrush. I needed a place to sleep. “Is it okay if I crash here for a couple of nights?” I added.

  Mick shook his head. “Nah. Not for a couple of nights. Stay until we straighten this out or we go...” he motioned with his thumb. “Both of yo
u. All right?”

  I grinned and nodded. I wondered if Grandpa was in there realizing that while he’d hurt me by torching everything I owned, he’d also done me a favor. Suddenly I felt less alone. One good thing had come out of this wretched mess—my new friends.

  On TV, CNN was covering a mass exorcism at the Believer’s Church, one of those mega-churches that looked like an indoor stadium. Eyes clenched shut, the preacher stood with arms spread in front of the standing-room-only crowd, howling at Satan to release them from his unholy grip. On the History channel and TLC all they were showing were programs on possession and exorcism, which was feeding this sort of crap.

  I turned to Mick to escape the pull of the television. “So, you talk to your FEMA friend lately?”

  “Most every day.”

  “Do the feds finally understand that it’s possession, not mental illness?” I asked.

  Mick wobbled his head. “Depends who you talk to. But they all agree that the hitchers aren’t bothering anyone besides the people they’re inside (unless you count scaring the piss out of people as bothering), and they’re not sure how forcefully they should intervene.”

  “In other words, they’re trying to decide whether this is their problem.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Mick said.

  Lorena had her jacket draped across her arm. She tugged me gently toward the door. “Should we get going? I’ve already been out for two hours.”

  I shrugged my coat on and followed her out.

  “This is so hard,” Lorena said as we rode the elevator down. “I want to spend time alone with you. I want to hear everything that’s happened to you since I’ve been gone.” The tender sentimentality of her words was rendered so strange by the deep belching roll of her voice.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s so hard, though. I feel like I have to spend every minute trying to get free of Grandpa.”

  Lorena made a sound in the back of her throat. “That’s hard, too. Sometimes I feel like you’re trying to kill me, too.”

  Kill? The word made me squirm inwardly. I wasn’t trying to kill anyone. “You know it’s not that simple. It’s all wrapped together so tightly; it’s like we’re all different sides of the same coin, and if some come up heads they can’t also be tails, even though that’s what I want.”

  We had to pause to climb into the Maserati. When Lorena shut her door, her expression—hurt, angry, empathetic, all at once—made her look remarkably like herself. “That’s not exactly a vote of confidence.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to navigate this.” I wanted to add that Lorena was being a little selfish, that it was Summer’s body, after all. I didn’t have the energy to get into it, though. I was so tired my eyes burned and my head ached.

  Lorena opened Summer’s purse, rooted around for something. “Oh,” she paused, looked at me, “have you called my sister yet?” The hope in her eyes was evident even through the slackness of her face. Here was another conversation I’d been dreading.

  “Yeah, I did. Lore, I tried to explain it to her as gently as I could, but—” I struggled for words, then gave up and let it hang.

  Lorena studied my face. The hope drained from hers. “She’s afraid of me?” she said, her dead croak underscoring the point. Lorena and Fatima had been incredibly close, as close as twins. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t believe it. My own sister.” She looked at me. “What about my mother?”

  I shook my head. Forewarned by Fatima, her mother had hung up as soon as she recognized my voice.

  “Oh, Mom. Not you,” she whispered. “They would have died for me. Both of them. Now they won’t even talk to me?” Lorena wiped a tear with the back of her sleeve, picked up my phone, which was sitting in the cup holder between the seats. She turned it over and over.

  “I can dial for you if you want to try yourself,” I said. “Maybe if she heard your voice.”

  Lorena laughed bitterly. “That’s okay. I don’t want to—”

  Scare her, I thought she meant to say, but couldn’t bring herself to.

  “Give them time,” I said, although I wasn’t sure time would heal this rift. I wondered, What would happen if the hitchers did take us over? Would they eventually be accepted back? Would the syndicate allow Grandpa to continue the strip knowing it was being drawn by a dead man? Would people read it?

  Lorena shrugged noncommittally at my tepid attempt to console her. She pulled the phone closer to her face and chuckled. “Is that the date? Tomorrow is my birthday.”

  I did a quick calculation. “Your thirtieth. I’ve been so preoccupied I lost track of the days.” Was it her thirtieth birthday, or did your birthdays stop when you died? So many strange questions arose out of this. If the dead did take over living bodies for good, would they count the age of their bodies, or their souls?

  Lorena reached out and squeezed my hand. “Take me out for my birthday? I want to go dancing!” She wriggled her shoulders, tried to snap her fingers but got only a papery sound. Her movements were still stiff and rubbery.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to sound more enthusiastic than I felt. “If you’re here tomorrow night. And I’m here.” I sure didn’t feel like dancing or celebrating a birthday. What were the odds that we’d both be here, though? I was in control about half the time now, Lorena maybe one third of the time. So, one in six?

  I imagined Grandpa suddenly taking control while Lorena and I were dancing, and it made me a little sick. Not that Grandpa wasn’t a fine dancer, as I’d seen. “I should ask Summer if it’s okay with her.”

  Lorena lowered her hands, scowled. “I don’t need her permission. I didn’t ask to be in this situation any more than she did, and I think I’ve been very considerate.”

  It was nice that all we had to do was ask Lorena to do something, rather than wrestle her to the ground and tie her hands. “I know. But—” I was going to say, But it is her body, and thought better of it. “We should all go out of our way to get along.”

  Lorena’s scowl melted. “Fine. As long as I get to go dancing on my birthday.”

  We had no luck finding Dave, or Salamander. Twice I talked to people who said they knew Salamander, that he was “around here somewhere.” When the light started fading we gave up and went shopping. I was exhausted by the time I returned to Mick’s. It had been forever since I’d slept through the night.

  CHAPTER 31

  The McMansions along Fairview Road were mostly dark. These were the people who could afford to flee Atlanta for an extended period. When they were packing, I wondered if they had considered the possibility that they might not be allowed to come back.

  They weren’t calling it a quarantine, which was probably wise. The president called it a “precautionary controlled observation of the situation.” As promised, commerce wasn’t being interrupted, so we were still able to buy Snickers bars and the new Arcade Fire CD, assuming they could find truck drivers with the guts to drive in and out of the Haunted City (as the press were now calling it), but people weren’t able to drive in or out without a good reason.

  Rather than risk sounding crazy by talking about the dead rising, or appearing to have his head in his ass by insisting on the post-traumatic identity disorder explanation, the president simply referred to it as “The grave events taking place in the aftermath of the anthrax attack.” Using of the word “grave” seemed like a bad call to me, but he went with it. He assured the American people that the problem was contained and would not spread, and that every resource was being brought to bear to help those afflicted.

  The federal government had so many resources, so many channels of information, yet they always managed to be a step behind in reacting to any but the most predictable disasters. Their response to an anthrax attack looked like a carefully choreographed dance. Their response to mass possession? More like a drunk stumbling home from a bar, pausing occasionally to vomit in the gutter.

  When we hit Little Five Points, with its stretch of cafes, bars, and trendy shops, dar
k houses gave way to brightly lit streets.

  “Wow,” Lorena said.

  Hitchers were everywhere. It was almost as if they all knew Little Five Points was the place to be.

  “How did you know we should come here?” I asked.

  “There’s a Facebook page for The Returned,” Lorena said.

  I stifled an ironic laugh. Figured. We were calling them Hitchers, the dead, parasites. They were calling themselves The Returned and twittering each other.

  They lurched along the sidewalks on Euclid like extras in a George Romero film, sounding like giant bullfrogs as they greeted each other. We passed a Fox News truck; near it a reporter was interviewing hitchers.

  The dead must be eager to go out and live. Most of those still in Atlanta who weren’t possessed were probably at home cowering behind bolted doors, watching the news. That’s where I would be if my situation were different.

  Not all of the unafflicted were hiding, though. A throng of people were standing across the street, watching, shouting things at the hitchers. Some looked scared, some angry. They weren’t holding protest signs, but had that sort of air.

  We found a parking space three blocks over and walked arm-in-arm to Loca Luna, one of Lorena’s favorite hangouts. I wasn’t the only person on the street who was not occupying someone else’s body, and when I spotted a fellow “living” I smiled at them. I suspected most of them had hitchers that were dormant at the moment.

  There was a street preacher on the corner of Moreland. He was discussing Revelations, his lips frothy with emotion, imploring passers-by to let him cast their demons out.

  A young woman in a short skirt approached him, sobbing, flat-out begging for his help.

  The preacher touched the woman’s elbow. “Pray with me.” They got down on their knees. Two others joined them on the pavement. The preacher traced the sign of the cross in the air as six or seven others joined the group, causing the flow on the sidewalk to clog as people skirted the group.

  “Come on,” Lorena said. I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling as she watched them there, so desperate to exorcise their “demons.” I, on the other hand, couldn’t blame them for trying. It wouldn’t work, I was sure, but when you have no good options, any option looks appealing. We moved on as more people joined the exorcism.