Part 51 (1/2)

PART III

Sammy had filled a cooler and stuck it in the back-seat of his car the night before, programmed his coffee-maker, and when his alarm roused him at 3AM, he hit the road. First he guzzled his thermos of lethal coffee, then reached around in back for bottles of icy distilled water. He kept the windows rolled down and breathed in the swampy, cool morning air, the most promising air of the Florida day, before it all turned to steam and sizzle.

He didn't bother looking for truck-stops when he needed to p.i.s.s, just pulled over on the turnpike's side and let fly. Why not? At that hour, it was just him and the truckers and the tourists with morning flights.

He reached Miami ahead of schedule and had a diner-breakfast big enough to kill a lesser man, a real fatkins affair. He got back on the road groaning from the chow and made it to the old Wal-Mart just as the merchants were setting up their market on the roadside.

When he'd done the Boston ride, he'd been discouraged that they'd kept on with their Who-ville Xmas even though he'd grinched away all their fun, but this time he was expecting something like this. Watching these guys sell souvenirs at the funeral for the ride made him feel pretty good this time around: their disloyalty had to be a real morale-killer for those ride-operators.

The cops were getting twitchy, which made him grin. Twitchy cops were a key ingredient for bad trouble. He reached behind him and pulled an iced coffee from the cooler and cracked it, listening to the hiss as the embedded CO2 cartridge forced bubbles through it.

Now here came a suit. He looked like a genuine mighty morphin' power broker, which made Sammy worry, because a guy like that hadn't figured into his plans, but look at that; he was having a huge fight with the eyebrow guy and now the eyebrow guy was running away from him.

Getting the lawyers to agree to spring the budget to file in every location where there was a ride had been tricky. Sammy had had to fudge a little on his research, claim that they were bringing in real money, tie it to the drop in numbers in Florida, and generally do a song and dance, but it was all worth it. These guys clearly didn't know whether to s.h.i.+t or go blind.

Now eyebrow man was headed for the cop-cars and the entrance, and there, oh yes, there it was. Five cars' worth of goths, lugging bags full of some kind of home-made or scavenged horror-memorabilia, pulling up short at the entrance.

They piled out of their cars and started milling around, asking questions. Some approached the cops, who seemed in no mood to chat. The body-language could be read at 150 feet:

Goth: But officer, I wanna get on this riiiiiide.

Cop: You sicken me.

Goth: All around me is gloom, gloom. Why can't I go on my riiiiiide?

Cop: I would like to arrest you and lock you up for being a weird, s.e.xually ambiguous melodramatic who's dumb enough to hang around out of doors, all in black, in *Florida*.

Goth: Can I take your picture? I'm gonna put it on my blog and then everyone will know what a meanie you are.

Cop: Yap yap yap, little b.i.t.c.h. You go on photographing me and mouthing off, see how long it is before you're in cuffs in the back of this car.

Sc.u.mbag street-vendors: Ha ha ha, look at these goth kids mouthing off to the law, that cop must have minuscule t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es!

Cop: Don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Eyebrow guy: Um, can everyone just be nice? I'd prefer that this all not go up in flames.

Sc.u.mbags, goths: Hurr hurr hurr, shuttup, look at those dumb cops, ahahaha.

Cops: Grrrr.

Eyebrow: Oh, s.h.i.+t.

Four more cars pulled up. Now the shoulder was getting really crowded and freeway traffic was slowing to a crawl.

More goths piled out. Family cars approached the snarl, slowed, then sped up again, not wanting to risk the craziness. Maybe some of them would get on the f.u.c.king turnpike and drive up to Orlando, where the real fun was.

The four-lane road was down to about a lane and a half, and milling crowds from the shantytown and the arriving cars were clogging what remained of the thoroughfare. Now goths were parking their cars way back at the intersection and walking over, carrying the objects they'd planned to sacrifice to the ride and smoking clove cigarettes.