Part 30 (1/2)
After I came home from Clear Lake, that thought recurred with increasing frequency. Whenever it did, I got on Peggy Sue and rode far away until my only thoughts were of the road, and the trees, and the sky.
Until my Ariel and I became a meteor burning through the night.
In April, Julie Calloway called. She didn't make love on the first date with just anyone, she said.Something special had pa.s.sed between us, and she would not let it get away if she could help it.
Which she couldn't. We began seeing each other again, but whenever a problem or argument seemed imminent, I rode away. Sometimes I was gone for two or three days.
Julie was patient. She knew what it was like to lose a mother, she said, and would give me the time I needed to overcome my grief. My grief, however, had dissipated at the moment that I had scattered Mother's ashes in a holy place. Grief is easy. Guilt is hard.
We were together for almost five years. She even lived with me for a year in the middle. When she moved back to her own apartment, she warned that if I ever ran away again, we were finished. She told me this in colorful, obscene terms that made me love her more than I already did.
I ran away six more times. After the sixth time, I brought her a bag of cheeseburgers, and she told me to eat s.h.i.+t and die. I took the burgers home and snarfed them while watchingBeat the Devil via satellite from Vancouver. When they were gone, I rode away again, but I returned after a few hours. I felt too heavy to run anymore. Besides, Cowboy Carl was getting p.i.s.sed at his star salesman for missing so many days. A man has to make a living. Mother's house still wasn't paid for.
Boog halted our convoy a half mile south of SkyVue. The night was dominated by searchlight beams and the flame of the refinery tower, and the taste of burning fuel scorched my mouth. It was almost 1:00 A.M.
Boog dismounted his Harley and walked back to the Kamikaze. ”You sure you want to go in?” he asked me.
The crowd of w.i.l.l.yites was hidden behind the theater's wooden fence, but an oceanic murmur of voices gave me an idea of its size. I didnot want to go in, but the tugging sensation that had drawn me here had become overwhelming, as if I were a lemming unable to stop running for a seaside cliff. I still couldn't imagine what I was supposed to find, but I knew, just as I knew the locations of my feet and hands, where it was.
”I have to get to the snack bar,” I said.
Pete was watching the rearview mirror. ”Better hurry.”
I looked back. Two of the bikers were immediately behind us, but beyond them, a Chevrolet sedan was coming to a stop. Even through the flare of its headlights, I saw that the driver was the Bald Avenger.
”Go!” I yelled, ducking. ”Go gogo!”
Boog ran for his bike, and his gang charged forward. The two that had been behind us sped past.
Our radio dial exploded, throwing plastic flak. I glanced up and saw that the Barracuda's rear window had a bullet hole. The Kamikaze leaped ahead.
The gang swerved into SkyVue's driveway, formed a ragged phalanx, and paused as Boog's Harley and the Kamikaze pulled up behind the pickup truck at the point. Ahead was a ticket booth lit by yellow tubes. Two men wearing the dark brown suits of the Corps of Little David stood beside it. One of them waved, and ten more brown-suited men emerged from behind the satellite dishes on the lawn. Out on theroad, the Bald Avenger's car was approaching the entrance.
Boog brought his machine alongside the Barracuda and grinned in at me. ”A good f.u.c.kin' day to die!” he said, and raced his engine. His gang did likewise. A woman ran from the ticket booth and hid behind a satellite dish. I pulled on my helmet.
”I hate this,” Gretchen said, gripping her tire iron. ”I really hate this.”
Boog popped his clutch, and the phalanx surged. The Kamikaze screamed like a tyrannosaur, and I was slammed back in my seat. Sixteen representatives of dead technology burst from their collective grave and raced to meet the forces of SkyVue.
One of the pickups. .h.i.t the ticket booth, which burst into a shower of plaster and gla.s.s, and the two Corps ministers in the drive scrambled away. The fence splintered as the lead pickup rammed it, and then we were past, and through, and swallowed by chaos.
The way to the snack bar was clogged with men, women, and children, and our phalanx disintegrated to avoid plowing into them. Two pickups collided, and three motorcycles went down. The Kamikaze slid sideways, pinning Boog's Harley against a post. The third pickup and the rest of the bikes veered off among the rows of cars.
Pete killed the Barracuda's engine, and he and Gretchen crawled out via the winds.h.i.+eld hole. I clambered through the gla.s.sless pa.s.senger window and slumped across the fuel tank of Boog's motorcycle.
Boog pointed up at the movie screen. There, the forty-foot visage of the Reverend William Willard, looking like the offspring of Edwin Meese and a Komodo dragon, glared in displeasure.
”WHAT IS THIS?” he demanded, his voice thundering. ”YOU CAN'T DISRUPT A PEACEFUL GATHERING OF G.o.d-FEARING AMERICANS. WE HAVE A PERMIT.”.
Gretchen, standing with Pete on the hood of the Kamikaze, raised a fist and extended the middle finger.
For an instant, I was six years old again, watching my mother defy the elemental beast that would try to kill us.
The crowd roared and began to gravitate toward us, compressing its ma.s.s as if we were a singularity at the heart of a black hole. Four members of Boog's gang were caught in the crush and beaten with flashlights.
As they approached, the w.i.l.l.yites gathered white rocks from the theater lot. The first one they threw shattered the Harley's headlight, and the second ricocheted from my helmet. Then there were too many to count. Gretchen swung her tire iron and batted away an incredible number, but it wasn't enough. We were going to be killed.
Boog leaped from his bike and dove at the rock throwers, swinging fists like sledgehammers, while I jumped onto the Kamikaze's hood and tackled Pete and Gretchen. A searchlight beam swung down to trap us in brilliance.
”What do you think you're doing, s.h.i.+thead?” Gretchen screamed beneath me.
”Protecting you from the rocks! I'm wearing a magic s.p.a.cesuit!” ”But we already have something better,” Pete said. ” 'Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light!' ” He broke free of me and stood. The rocks came flying faster and thicker than ever, but Pete smiled in the electric blaze and was not touched.
I relaxed my grip on Gretchen, and she stood as well. When she swung her tire iron at a flying stone, it curved away as if repulsed by a magnetic field.
”BROTHERS AND SISTERS, STOP,” the face on the movie screen commanded. ”ALLOW THE MINISTERS OF THE CORPS TO BRING THE TRESPa.s.sERS TO ME.”.
The stones stopped, and I stood up beside Pete and Gretchen. s.h.i.+elding my eyes from the welding-torch-bright light, I watched as Boog, bloodied but still grinning, shoved his way out of the crowd and leaned on the Barracuda's fender. The other members of his gang, minus their vehicles, began struggling toward us as well.
”BRING ONLY THE FOUR ON THE AUTOMOBILE. THE OTHERS ARE PUPPETS. THROW.
THEM OUT WITHOUT THEIR SHOES.”.
Boog's friends were seized by a mult.i.tude of w.i.l.l.yites and dragged away. Boog started forward as if to rescue all fourteen of them, but as he did, eight men in brown suits appeared before us. Four of them held wrist-braced, rubber-surgical-tubing-powered metal slingshots loaded with ball bearings the size of marbles. The ministers were pointing them at our heads.
I jumped down and grasped Boog's arm. ”If you make a move, they'll nail us. And I'm the only one with a helmet.”
Boog stopped, but his ma.s.sive body remained tense. ”Tell me again why you wanted to get here,” he said.
”BRING THEM TO THE SNACK BAR,” Bill w.i.l.l.y commanded.
”Oh, yeah,” Boog said. ” 'Why did the Antichrist cross Oklahoma?' 'To get to the snack bar.' ”
They took us out of the light and marched us through the mob to the center of the lot, where the Reverend waited atop a cement-block building. A truck with a cherry picker sat nearby, but our captors lifted us by hand to fellow ministers who hauled us up and threw us onto the tar-and-gravel roof as if we were tuna.
I was the last one. The gravel bit into my bare hands, and energy thrummed into my palms as if I were touching an electric fence. I was almost where I was supposed to be.
When I raised my head, I saw the life-size version of William Willard standing on a platform and looking upon me with contempt. My contact-weary eyes hadn't recovered from the searchlight, so I saw him bathed in a greenish aura.
”SO THIS IS THE MAN WHO CLAIMED HE COULD SAVE THE WORLD,” Bill w.i.l.l.y said.
I rose to my knees. ”No. Buddy read a sign that said to contact me for a.s.sistance, but I didn't haveanything to do with that. Besides, that only meant a.s.sistance forhim.”
Pete was on his knees beside me. ”How do you know?”
It occurred to me that I didn't.
”Your Reverendness,” Gretchen called out, ”I agree that this schmuck”-she indicated me-”couldn't save his way out of a wet paper bag. But he doesn't pretend to be able to, either.” She and Boog were both kneeling as well, and a Corps minister stood behind each of us. I didn't like it. In the movies, the gangsters make you kneel like that when they're going to open up the back of your head.