by Jack Slater
“Bite it?” Trapp started, shocked even through the waves of alcohol that made concerted thought difficult to attain.
“Listen – I’m not…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “What’s your name anyway?”
“Patricia. Patty to my friends.”
“Okay, Patty –”
“I didn’t say you could call me that,” Patricia scowled. Then she cocked her head and looked up at him almost coquettishly. “Say, anyone ever tell you that you got real sexy eyes? I’ve never seen nothing like ‘em before. Like a cat or something.”
Trapp hung his head back, look to the sky and muttered, “Dear Lord in heaven, what did I do to deserve this?”
He dropped his gaze back down to purgatory, which was a good description of his present interaction, and said, “Fine, Patricia – let me lay it out on the line for you. I’m not going to fuck you. I’m not going to try and kiss you. I’m not even going to touch you. You can take the bed, and I’ll take the floor, and in the morning when I’m sober I’ll hop on my bike, and we’ll never see each other again. How does that sound?”
Patricia gave the young veteran a calculating look before a girlish smile crept across her face, sweeping before it years of stress and toil.
“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” she said before leaping forward and entering Trapp’s motel room. She stopped, placing a hand on the door frame, and turned back to look at him. “One last thing…”
Trapp scarcely masked his frustration as the words slipped through his lips. “What is it?”
“Patty’s just fine.”
3
Trapp only knew he was awake because of the throbbing pain behind his eyes. That, and the crick in his neck from lying on the floor the whole damn night. He was hardly a stranger to sleeping on the cold, hard ground, under nothing more than the dull glint of faraway stars as often as he was covered by the canvas of a tent, but the Green Machine had discharged him months ago, and he was out of practice.
The headache seemed to rise and fall in intensity along with the groaning of the air-conditioning unit mounted outside the motel room, which was already struggling to cope with the oppressive heat of a Texas summer’s day, though the morning had barely begun.
His hand lunged outward in search of the bottle of water sitting on his bedside table, but his fingers grasped only empty air.
Of course. You gave her the bed, jackass.
He’d regretted it then, and the feeling returned with additional vigor now. It left him with a simple, binary choice: keep lying where he was and possibly die of dehydration, or stand up and take his chances with the nausea that was sure to follow.
Trapp kept his eyes scrunched tight shut as he reluctantly rolled himself onto his front, placed his palms in a push-up position, and levered himself up onto his knees. The world was still black, and he couldn’t remember the layout of the room in any great detail, so he risked opening them up – just a crack.
He regretted it immediately.
It was a beautiful summer’s morning. He was facing out, toward the parking lot, and the motel room’s curtains were stubbornly un-drawn. Thick rays of sunlight flooded the room, revealing stains where none should be – and that several of the largest were located on the carpet just below his feet.
You slept on that.
“I’ve slept on worse,” he muttered, his voice rough from dehydration and lack of use. Then he remembered. The girl. Patricia.
Patty.
He turned, momentarily forgetting his hangover, and looked at the bed. It was empty. The ancient, sagging mattress and graying bedsheets were dented in the outline of a woman’s body, but the individual in question was nowhere to be seen.
Trapp whispered a prayer of thanks. The last thing he needed to deal with on a morning like this was a woman like that. He guessed she must have had a rough childhood to end up in a place like this, earning a living on her back, but then – so had he.
You’re not exactly doing so hot yourself, Jason.
He quickly showered, maneuvering himself through a bathroom that was built for a man half his size, and toweled himself dry, not bothering to do much more than wick the worst of the dampness from his hair. The morning’s heat would make short work of it. He grabbed his wallet and the room keys before stepping out in search of breakfast.
The little rest stop consisted of the motel he’d slept in that night, the strip club he’d visited, and a small diner with a faded 1950s Americana vibe. They bracketed the parking lot in an angular U-shape, and each looked more depressed than the last. In the cold light of day it seemed a sad little place, catering mostly to truckers, he guessed, and whatever locals managed to drag themselves out of the fields that were all else the eye could see.
The parking lot gravel crunched underneath his boots. The sun climbing overhead warmed already-tanned skin. Then a tinkle as he opened the diner’s spotless glass door. The air-conditioned interior was a welcome relief from the heat outside.
“Sit yourself down anywhere, honey,” the waitress said, only half-looking up from rearranging the coffee cups behind the diner’s counter. “I’ll be with you in a second.”
She must’ve been in her mid-30s, though she had the voice of a smoker twice her age. She was nicotine-thin and dressed in a red striped T-shirt and light blue jeans. It seemed to be the establishment’s uniform, though each of the three staff in sight – all-female – were wearing different takes on the same general theme.
Trapp set himself down on the farthest left barstool on the counter and reached for a menu. It was plastic and a little bit sticky. He looked at it with tired eyes but didn’t take a lot in.
“Coffee?”
“Huh?”
“You want coffee?” the same waitress asked, now free of whatever task had occupied her a few seconds before. She held out a glass jug, half-full of ebony-black steaming liquid, and looked back at him from the other side of the counter.
“Sure.”
“How do you like it?”
“Black’s fine,” he croaked. “And can I get a glass of water?”
“Coming right up. You want anything to eat?”
He was halfway through shaking his head when his stomach protested, and then the hangover joined in, reminding him that if he didn’t line the first, then the second wasn’t going anywhere fast. “Actually, yeah. You do pancakes?”
“It’s a diner, honey,” she replied, though her tone didn’t carry the same sarcasm that the words implied. “You want bacon with that?”
This time it wasn’t a choice. “Absolutely.”
She finished pouring his coffee and left, saying, “Be right up.”
Trapp was technically conscious for the ten minutes or so between placing his order and the food arriving, but very little of consequence crossed his mind. His lizard brain took over, conducting the orchestra of rehydrating him with alternating sips of coffee and ice-cold water.
He inhaled the pancakes when they arrived, along with a little more than half of the jug of maple-flavored syrup that came with it. He didn’t taste them much, but the sugar helped.
When it was all done, his hangover did indeed seem to have abated, though he guessed it was probably a temporary reprieve. He signaled for the waitress’ attention. “Can I get the check?”
“Coming right up,” the waitress said.
She was as good as her word, and a few moments later, she presented Trapp with a thin strip of paper that looked like it had been gently caressed by a dying printer cartridge. “You paying cash?”
“Yeah,” Trapp grunted, his torso arching backward as he fished for his wallet in the pockets of his denim jeans. The thick bulge of leather, credit cards and cash appeared in his fingers a few seconds later, and he flipped it open.
The sight of the empty black interior didn’t compute. There was supposed to be what, three hundred bucks in there, right? Give or take a Jackson, anyway.
It took Trapp’s alcohol-poisoned mind a few seconds to process
what had happened. His head tipped backward. He let out a groan that started as a hiss. “Son of a bitch. She fucked me.”
The waitress’ voice reminded him that she was still standing by his right elbow. He colored a little, embarrassed by his choice of language. Not the words themselves, which wouldn’t have raised a single hair on base, let alone an entire eyebrow, but the fact that he’d used them in front of a woman.
“Let me guess,” she said, had turned somewhere in between amused and scolding. “Her name starts with a P and ends in Atty…”
Trapp opened his eyes. “How’d you know?”
A throaty, ragged laugh greeted his question. “Honey, you aren’t the first john she’s fucked like that, and I’m guessing you won’t be the last.”
“It wasn’t like that!” he protested, instantly wishing he could be anywhere else in the world except here, and any when but now. “Honest. I scared some guy off, she told me she needed a place to stay. I let her take the bed, you know…”
His voice trailed off, and the waitress patted him on the shoulder in an almost soothing manner. Her touch made him feel a little uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to it.
“Consider it a white knight tax, honey. You gotta be careful who you try and help nowadays. Ain’t everyone like to be as honest as you.”
“I think I got some cash in my room,” Trapp muttered, the back of his neck chilling with uneasy premonition. “I’ll be right back.”
“Uh huh,” the waitress replied evenly.
He was left with the distinct sense that her gaze would remain fixed firmly on his back the whole way, and that if he tried to dine and dash, it would be the last thing he ever did. The steel wool that served in place of her lungs clearly did its bit to stiffen her spine.
Trapp made the return journey at a brisk walk that was in truth just short of an all-out run. He briefly fumbled with the room’s latch before almost busting the door down with his shoulder. Finally, it gave, and the second it swung closed behind him he sprinted for the bedside, collapsing onto his knees and reaching underneath the grimy bedspread for the canvas bag he hoped still lay underneath.
He snatched at it with frantic, clammy fingers, and dragged it out. It wasn’t big. Not much more than a wash bag, really. He trembled with the zipper, like an EOD tech at a bomb site, then pulled it open.
A guttural hiss of relief escaped his lips, flowing until his lungs were empty and screaming for air.
It was still there.
She hadn’t found it.
Twenty-seven thousand dollars, all cash, sorted into two ten-thousand-dollar strips and most of a third. It was every last penny he had to his name. Every single dollar had been painstakingly saved over the course of five long years and defended against the ravages of endless nights at the bar. It was made of his enlistment bonus, hazard pay, and basic salary.
Every last penny minus the Harley sitting outside, of course. And whatever he’d spent these last few months of endless roaming.
That was a warning, you dumb bastard. Consider three hundred bucks a down payment on never being so careless again.
He fished out twenty bucks for his breakfast, grabbed the backpack that contained the rest of his life – just a few spare T-shirts and underwear, really – and threw his savings in. He stood and scanned the room with a cursory but exacting glance to ensure he wasn’t leaving anything behind.
A minute later, his entrance back into the diner was greeted with another accompanying table. The waitress looked up.
“I was wondering if you’d be back,” she said.
Trapp handed over the bill and waved away her offer of change. “Why’d you trust me?” he asked, casting his mind back to her warning on precisely that matter.
“You got a nice face, honey.”
He grinned. “You should be careful trusting guys like me. One day you’ll get yourself burned.”
“Bless your heart, but if it’s happened once, it’s happened a hundred times,” she said. Her eyes dropped to his battered, dusty but perfectly functional backpack. “That old white knight tax again. I’m just hoping on a refund when I get to the pearly gates. So where you headed?”
Trapp shrugged. “No place special.”
“Anywhere I’ve heard of?”
“When I find it, I’ll tell you.”
4
The road had branched off the 287 about ten miles back. It was laid down with cracked asphalt and covered by a thin layer of windswept dust that billowed behind the roaring Harley like one of the jet engine contrails that criss-crossed the otherwise clear blue sky overhead.
Trapp didn’t even have to squint that hard for the endless flat ranchland zipping behind him to his left and right, front and back, to remind him of endless days spent underneath the punishing sun of the Iraqi desert. A few months before he’d whistled down a road that was not unlike this one, his eyes scanning either side constantly, searching for spotters or the telltale line of disturbed dirt that indicated a lurking IED.
The lingering trickle of cool sweat down the back of his neck had subsided over the past few days. His eyes kept searching, though, their split irises weighed down by a habit that he would doubtless now carry with him the rest of his life.
He squinted then, not to aid the comparison with some long-stifled memory, but because in the distance he could just about make out a horizontal green signage board raised up on two thin stilts.
It read: Goodmorning – 10 miles.
Who the hell calls a town Goodmorning?
It probably wouldn’t be much of a place, he knew. They rarely were out here. Just a single strip of buildings on either side of the road. A general store, a bar, a place to fill up on gas. Some of them had always been that way, though many more bore the scars of an economy that hadn’t treated places like this well, not for a long time: shuttered storefronts, boarded windows, shattered glass.
They were good places, though, populated by good people. More than once he’d been offered a place to lay down his head after a long day on the road, having met his generous host only a few minutes before. That was what set places like this apart: the people here knew each other. They looked out for each other, and even for strangers – especially those with a neat, practically austere crewcut like his. Many of them had served too, way back when. It was what people did out here. They fought, or they farmed, and oftentimes both.
A smudge on the right-hand side of Trapp’s vision sent out a warning signal, attracting the attention of his conscious brain. In an instant, that nervous tension that was never that far away these days ramped itself back up. His fingers curled around the throttle, not feeding gas into the engine just yet, but ready to with a second’s notice.
The smudge became a cloud, and as his neck snapped round, he realized it was heading straight for him – low on the ground.
“The hell?”
Boars.
His brain supplied the answer instantly. They were a pest where he grew up, too; vicious, mean things, constantly uprooting the vegetable patch that provided the best part of the family’s nutrients. The budget didn’t stretch for fresh produce. Not often anyway. Especially not when his daddy had been out drinking, and that was most always.
So he hated the damn things.
Hated waking up in the morning and finding the family’s half-acre dug up to all hell. In fact, they were the reason he first learned to handle a rifle. Just a .22, which was enough to hurt them, but rarely sufficient to put them down properly. Certainly not with one shot. It took getting up close, close enough that you could see the pain in their dark eyes. It hurt the first time. After that, it was just business. Not quite life or death, but he quickly realized that he’d rather they went to bed hungry than him.
They tasted like crap, but he’d learned to deal with that, too.
The flood of memories hit him just a second before the herd of thundering wild pigs threatened to do exactly that. They were sprinting at an acute angle toward, and then across, the road – and i
n about three blinks of an eye, they were going to collide with him. The bike was pushing 80 miles an hour – well over the speed limit – which meant that the impact would kill the pig.
Unfortunately, the bust-up would inevitably take him out, too.
“Fuck,” Trapp growled, eyes locked onto the oncoming threat. His body reacted just like it had from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq, dumping adrenaline into his bloodstream, narrowing his vision, stifling his fear.
He dragged the handlebars left, starting a turn that was just about as hard as physics would allow. He’d never taken a course in defensive driving, and the bean counters at Big Army sure as hell never would have authorized motorcycle training even if he had, so he acted on pure instinct. He jammed the throttle forward, dumping every ounce of gas into the engine that the tank would give.
Every second, his brain was calculating the angles, working speeds, trying to determine whether he was about to live or die. All that mattered right now was velocity. It was too late to kill speed. He wouldn’t get halfway to a dead stop before colliding with the local wildlife, and coming off a Harley head-first at forty would kill him just as dead as crashing at twice that pace.
No, the name of the game was speed.
The bike responded instantly, charging forward, giving everything it had. Trapp couldn’t spare the attention required to look at the odometer, but he knew that he was well past 100 miles an hour and climbing with every half second that passed.
He couldn’t hear the clattering of the boars’ trotters against the road’s asphalt over the growling of the bike’s engine beneath him, but they were on the road now.
Twenty feet.
Ten.
The pigs were too damn dumb to stop; they just careered on, disregarding the oncoming chaplain of death. If anything, they were speeding up, startled by the thunder speeding toward them. Then again, that was his strategy too.
Five.
The window of life was now just a couple of feet in between the front wheel of Trapp’s bike and the snout of the closest oncoming pig.
