The Complete Drive-In

2

Bob and I ate sardines while Sam lay asleep on the floor near Mable, who now and then came awake and gave us in great detail one of her favorite recipes. We had been through cherry pie, buttermilk biscuits, chili and hominy cakes.

“I feel kind of bad eating another person’s food,” I said.

“They were going to eat you,” Bob said. “Look at it that way.”

“A point,” I said, and ate a little faster.

“You’re going to need your strength when the Christians come for us. They’re not going to be worried about the bomb anymore. They’ll have it figured now, since we didn’t get blown up.”

“How’d you know the bus wasn’t rigged with a bomb?”

“Just figured… didn’t know for sure… Hell, Jack, I don’t care anymore. If this is life, it ain’t worth living. I think what you and I ought to do is something real foolish. Otherwise, we’ll end up licking blood out of hubcaps.”

“What you got in mind?” I asked.

“Destroy the Orbit symbol.”

I mulled that over awhile. “It has a ring to it. Any reason?”

Bob looked back to make sure Sam and Mable were still sleeping. “Come with me.” He pulled the lever and opened the door and we went outside, “You’ve been a mite busy to notice, but when I woke up and seen you were gone, I figured you’d joined the Christians.”

“Okay, I was a jackass. Happy?”

“It’s just your way, Jack. I’m used to it. Anyway, I woke up and come out of the camper and the first thing I seen was that.”

He pointed at the Orbit symbol. “And it’s worse now than when I’m talking about.”

“God Almighty,” I said.

The Orbit symbol had turned a hot blue, so blue it hurt my eyes. It was getting the juice from the tentacles-there were twelve of them now and I couldn’t think of them as anything other than tentacles-and they were twisting and lashing across the blackness, spitting lightning from their tips like venom, and this lightning no longer ran the length of the pole, but just gathered in the symbol alone, and the symbol was spinning very fast, hurling more lightning than ever from it, striking the concession. The concession glowed so violently that at any moment I expected it to move, like amputated frog legs hopping in response to a live wire. The marquee was no longer there. I figured it had exploded and crumbled down, like a charcoaled stick.

“I figure something new is about to happen,” Bob said, “and I’m not sure it’s worth waiting around for. Last time we had something like this we got the Popcorn King.”

I agreed with Bob. I felt it was gearing up for something bigger and more catastrophic. I tried to figure exactly what it was with the symbol and why the power from the lightning concentrated itself there before going to the concession. A number of B-movie possibilities presented themselves: The symbol had accidentally been made from smelted iron ore that had been mixed with some strange and horrid sentient metal that had come to earth in a meteor, and once it had been converted to the Orbit symbol it had awakened from a long sleep and was now tormenting us earthlings for lack of anything better to do. I figured being a chunk of rock, or even a sign, could get pretty boring. It was the sort of thing that could give you a bad attitude. And I thought again of the B-movie gods, and that idea appealed to me most of all. Their motives seemed to fit in with those of most low-budget moviemakers. Bring it in on time. If it doesn’t make sense in spots, well, make it pretty or exciting. Don’t let them think about it too long.

“You getting hypoglycemic again,” Bob said, bringing me up from the pit of my thoughts.

“No,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About rewriting the script.”

“The script?”

“Let’s just say this is a movie and those tentacles-”

“Just drips of goo, Jack.”

“-belong to the B-movie gods, and they’re manufacturing all this, using us as actors, only we’re not acting, and they’re making up the script as they go. They’ve isolated us, they’ve given us our monster, the Popcorn King, and now they’re looking for the big finish, and I don’t think they’ve planned a heroic ending. I think this is one of those downbeat films.”

“Always got to have something to believe in, don’t you, Jack? Astrology, Christianity, now B-movie gods.”

“Give me something to blame all this on. A random universe with no god, evil or otherwise, is just too much for me. Just let me say it’s the B-movie gods and they have this bad scenario planned, and you and me, we’re not going to stand for it. We’re going to destroy the symbol

… Hell, let’s do something even if it’s wrong.”

“Believe the ghost of Elvis is doing it if you like,” Bob said. “It don’t make a hang to me. But I’ve got a plan for taking that symbol down…”

Bob woke Sam up when we got back to the bus. He pulled him up front and said, “You know how to use that torch and stuff?”

“I don’t just carry it around, boy. Sure, I know. But I aint’ got a hankering at the moment.”

“I’m going to give you a hankering,” Bob said. “We’re going to cut the Orbit symbol down.”

“Have at it,” Sam said.

“We want you to do it. You know how to use the equipment.”

“After what you done to Mable, you think I’m gonna help you? You shouldn’t oughta shot her hand off, little buddy.”

I thought he might add “nahnuhnahnah,” but he passed on that.

“We want to cut that sucker down and drop it on the concession,” Bob said. “See if we can smash the Popcorn King… Christ, we want to do something besides wait to get eaten, or end up eating one another. What say, Sam?”

“Don’t use the Saviour’s name in vain… I don’t know. You have to cut it just right, get it to fall that way.”

“That’s why we need you,” Bob said. “You’re the expert.”

“Well,” Sam said, rubbing his lingers along his chin, “it might not change a thing, but it sure could give a man peace of mind for trying, now couldn’t it?”

“Our point exactly,” Bob said. “You’ll do it then?”

“All right, but this don’t mean we’re friends.”

“Wouldn’t think of it. One more thing. We’re gonna need this bus, and when we finish with it, it won’t be in any shape at all.”

“No sir,” Sam said, “you ain’t gonna…” Then he looked hard at Bob and the shotgun. “It don’t matter what I say, does it? You’ll take the bus anyway.”

“We’d like to have your permission,” Bob said, “just to be sociable.”

Sam nodded wearily. “Well, tell me what you’re gonna do to it.”

The bus was part diversion, part weapon.

We tore the wire off the shelves, took the food and put it in a couple of blankets and tied it up, pulled it to the rear of the bus. We took the wire outside and Sam welded it into a kind of pen on the hood of the bus while Bob watched with his shotgun, just in case we had visitors. When Sam finished, I brought all the cans of paint thinner he had and put them in the wire enclosure, made sure they fit snug by pushing a couple of moldy pillowcases in between them.

“When the front end hits that electrical field,” Bob said, “it’ll blow. And if we can get enough momentum behind this baby, really put the hammer down, it’ll run on into the concession and the gas tank will go. We’re lucky, that’ll get the Popcorn King. Or the symbol will when it comes down. The idea here is to try and hit him with both things at once. I’ve got a flare gun in the camper, and I’ll give that to one of you. When the symbol is about to drop, shoot off the flare and I’ll put my foot through it, put this sucker in his lap.”

“And how will you get out?” I asked.

“I’ll jump. I’m a jumping sonofabitch, didn’t I tell you?”

“No. I knew you could hide under mufflers good, but I didn’t know about the jumping.”

Bob smiled. “If Wendle was here right now, big guy or no big guy, I’d kick his butt… after I had me something to eat, that is, like about ten cans of those sardines in there.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But right now, let’s kick the King’s butt.”

“I’ll get the flare gun,” Bob said.

Bob got the flare gun, then we took the blankets of food over to the camper, trying to make sure no one was watching, but not worrying too much about it. It was most likely a formality anyway. I didn’t really expect to be coming back. If our plan failed, the Popcorn King would have plans for us-lunch, probably.

Fact was, I figured our time was running out anyway. So far the King had been patient, waiting for us to get hungry enough to join his flock, or maybe not thinking about us at all. He didn’t seem to have any master plan. Feed the flock, and gradually feed on the flock. An insane demigod without true design; a voyeur of human destruction; the Jim Jones of Popcorn.

When we got back to the bus Sam was sitting on the bed beside Mable. “Died,” he said. “Just gave her buttermilk-biscuit recipe and died. Didn’t quite make it to the part about how long to keep them little buddies in the oven.”

Bob nodded and went to the front of the bus.

“You did this, cowboy,” Sam yelled at Bob’s back.

Bob pulled the door lever and went outside. I went after him. He was leaning against the bus, the shotgun cradled in his arms. He was watching the movie. It was The Toolbox Murders.

I went up and leaned beside him. “You saved my life. I’m sorry you had to shoot the woman, but thanks for saving my life.”

“I never said I was sorry for shooting her,” Bob said, but he didn’t look at me.

We leaned that way for a time. “Movie any good?” I asked.

“It’s all right,” Bob said, “but I’ve seen it.”

I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on,” I said. “We’ve got things to do.”

We went back inside the bus.

Sam looked at me and snarled. “Damn you, if you’d just gone on and cooperated, we’d have eaten you and things would have gone on like they were… least for a while.”

“I have days when I’m obstreperous,” I said.

“To hell with this talk,” Bob said. “We’re going on with it, Sam, with or without you even if I have to teach myself how to use that torch by trial and error and let Jack drive the bus. So how’s it going to be? You in or out?”

Sam turned to look at Mable. He closed her eyes with his fingertips, then looked at us. “I’m in,” he said.

Bob nodded. “Now… what would you like to do with her body?”

There was no way to bury her, and options were few. We could toss her into the acidic blackness or we could leave her on the bus to burn when it exploded. (If it exploded. Just because we had a plan didn’t mean I had a lot of faith in it.)

Sam preferred to leave her on the bus. He got some cans of sardines out of her overcoat pockets (he wasn’t so sentimental as to leave those), and put some old clothes on top of her to help her catch fire. He took some plastic plumbing pipe, couplings and pipe glue, used a hacksaw to make her an artificial hand. Or that’s what it was supposed to be. It looked like a dull garden rake to me. He tied it to the stump of her arm with some rounds of twine and a twisted coat hanger.

Finished, he put a blanket over her and tied it and Mable to the bed with some strips of old sheet, changed out of his festive-tie shirt and put back on the one with a black tie. He said some words over her, then changed back to the shirt with the red tie painted on. I presumed that was also his welding shirt.

“Sam,” I said, “I’m not one to meddle, but I’ve been meaning to ask you. Why do you paint those ties on your shirts?”

“Can’t tie the knots,” he said.

Made sense.

We ate some sardines, talked the plan over one more time, then Sam and I lowered the dolly with the welding equipment on it out the back of the bus.

“Go for it,” Bob said. We shook hands and he gave me the flare pistol. I slipped it into my belt next to the revolver.

“Let’s get on with it,” Sam said. “I ain’t gonna shake hands with nobody.”

I took hold of the dolly, cocked it back and started pushing it across the lot at a dog trot. Sam ran alongside me, wheezing like a tire going flat.