The Complete Drive-In

12

Even with the lights it was very dark, and my first thought was that those little pale yellow beams of ours weren’t worth anything when it came to the big bad things out there in the wilds of Ed’s belly; those dark things all het up and fast and nasty and full of teeth.

Reba actually put her butt to mine and backed. We rotated our beams like search lights looking for Kamikazes. We hadn’t gone far when we found the little shadow dears.

They whispered past us, rattled and fluttered there in the dark. I shone my light this way and that, felt something at my elbow, snapped the beam over there, only to have a chunk of the dark pop away.

“Oh, shit, don’t fall down, Jack. Don’t trip. Don’t fuck up. And, for heaven’s sake, I hope the flashlights don’t go out.”

“I’ve been trying not to think about that,” I said. “All I’ve been thinking is, I ever get hold of the director of this picture, boy is he gonna take a bitch-slapping.”

“Oh, Jack,” Reba said. “It hit me.”

“What?”

“Those things. One of them hit my arm. It’s bleeding.”

“Get the light off yourself. Keep it searching. Keep moving.”

“I shouldn’t have come. I sounded so brave when I volunteered. But I shouldn’t have come.”

“Neither of us should have. Do you want to go back to the bus?”

“Yes. But guess what? I can’t see it anymore.”

I looked back the way I thought we had come. And Reba was right. There was nothing but the dark to see.

The things moved around us as if we were the center of a hurricane. They swirled, crinkled, and cracked, like an old film negative being wadded. As we moved forward, flashlights extended, waving this way and that, the things scattered.

But it seemed to me they were getting a bit more testy, coming ever closer. Pretty soon, we both had a number of cuts from the edges of the things as they flittered by.

“Look,” I said.

So she could look, I turned right and she followed around until I took her position and she took mine.

“My God,” she said.

“Yep.”

What she was looking at was a narrow metal bridge. A grillwork bridge. It went across into a darkness the flashlights would not cross.

The bridge spanned what looked to be an abyss.

“Let’s scoot onto the bridge,” I said. “One of us can point our light, get a better look at what’s down there while the other watches for critters.”

As we made our way onto the bridge we were confronted by a foul smell.

“God Almighty,” I said. “We must be at Ed’s sewage plant.”

“Or a way out,” Reba said. “It goes down a ways, but it also veers to the right there, to what could be Ed’s rear end. Though, with just a flashlight, it’s hard to tell what I’m seeing.”

“Let’s change roles,” I said. “You flash about, I’ll have a look.”

Reba was right. The hole beneath the bridge dropped way down, and there were worker ladders on either side of the pit, something the robots used for maintenance. But there was a ki nd of tunnel that went off to the right. I noticed too that it was moving. As I watched, it irised open, then closed. Then repeated itself. Again and again.

It was a sphincter. I saw a mass of something dark rise up from the pit and reach the tunnel, flow into it as if sucked, and disappear.

I lifted my light and joined Reba in flashing mine about.

“I think it’s a sphincter that exits Ed’s waste. We might could get out that way.”

“Boy, won’t that be shitty?” Reba said.

“Frankly, I don’t see how we can do it. Not and live.”

“Grace is right though. We have to try something. We can’t just wait here. We’ll die anyway. I’d rather go out trying.”

“I could go down there and investigate. I think I can swing over the bridge and get closer for a look. Can you stand being here by yourself?”

“Oh, Jesus… Make it quick as you can.”

“Kiss me,” I said.

She did. Quickly.

I went to the base of the bridge and started climbing over. Reba’s light hit me.

“Shadow,” she said.

I jerked my head and my light. My carnivorous shadow friend fluttered away from me.

I got my foot on the ladder and started climbing down. It was hard to do with my flashlight, and I knew if I dropped it, I was dead meat. Maybe the things wouldn’t come down here, but even still, if I dropped the light, when I went up, they’d be waiting.

The deeper I went the stinkier it got.

What had seemed like depth from the bridge, darkness in the light, was something moving, gurgling, and stinking.

Ed functioned as a fish, but had never been completed. Like Bjoe said, someone forgot, or the mechanisms just played out too soon. Still, Ed was working all right, and his innards were working satisfactorily enough to manufacture what we in the bathroom business (which is pretty much all of us), would describe as pure-de-ole-identifiable-for-a-fact-you-bet-your-smelly-ass S-H-I-T.

No question there.