Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (15 page)

“Man, he was a pretty awesome guy,
come to think of it,” said Drake.

“Yeah, but everyone says that when
someone dies,” said Keith.

“I know, but it’s just a matter of
courtesy. Besides, he was never all that annoying or dumb—all I’m
thinking about is how he never really talked or hung out with us
that much.”

“During or aside from
school?”

“Well, just in general! Hell, you
never heard of him going out with friends a lot, have
you?”

“He
was
autistic….and
introverted….I suppose he just liked to be alone most of the
time.”

“Yeah, of course,
but whenever we started talking to
him
, he was just fine with it. It’s
just that he never took the effort to start a conversation with us,
really.”

“Right.”

The two guys paused for a few seconds,
recollecting their breath and their thoughts.

“You know what we should do?” said
Drake. “Seriously, we should drive to the place where Andrew’s car
was, then we could find out for ourselves what could’ve
happened.”

“Okay, first of all, that’s a lot of
money right there that we would need for food and gas. Secondly,
how would we know any more than the investigators?”

“Think about it, it’s not too far from
Area 51, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and—”

“You’re not seriously saying it’s
aliens, are you?”

“Hey, hey, it’s totally
possible.”

“No! No it’s not! The idea that Andrew
went off to live in the wilderness is more believable!”

“That’s where you’re
wrong.”

“Oh, oh, am I?”

“I will fucking prove it! And the best
way to do that is to go over to that place for
ourselves!”

“Only if we can bring other people.
Just in case you’re wrong.”

“Actually, bringing more people would
be a good idea, just because there may be something that they could
provide….” Drake paused, trying to find the right word to match his
thoughts. “Insight! Insight on that we don’t know yet.”

Keith thought about mocking Drake one
more time, but he suddenly stopped to allow a series of thoughts to
flow though his head. He stood there with the phone to his head and
not a single word was uttered. Drake broke the silence with,
“Keith? Are you still there?” He responded with “Hold on, I’m
thinking.” After another moment, Keith concluded his thoughts by
saying, “Who would we bring? Not everyone is willing to go on a
road trip just to search for a missing person in the middle of the
Nevada desert.”

“It’s for Andrew’s sake. There will be
plenty of people who want to know what happened to
Andrew.”

To Drake’s surprise, there weren’t all
that many people willing to go. There were plenty of people
concerned for Andrew’s well-being, such as Elise and Shaun, but
they believed that if the investigators didn’t find any clues or
evidence, neither would anyone else. There was also the matter that
most other people didn’t want to take the risks of going out there
themselves. There were two people, however, that did decide to go
with them.

Keith had a
girlfriend named Marlene, who recently moved to Searles sometime
after Andrew had moved out. She previously lived in Grand Junction,
Colorado, and although Searles hardly appealed to her, anything was
better than living with her athletically-obsessed parents. She was
fairly shy and quiet, but of course her personality shined whenever
she was around people that she liked and was comfortable being
with. Everything she loved most in this world revolved around
Japanese anime; she could list off dozens or even hundreds of shows
and mangas that appealed to her, not to mention she had an anime
collection that crowded her entire bedroom. Her social life was
minimal and had not changed much between Searles and Grand
Junction, yet the only reason she even
knew
and
cared
about Andrew’s disappearance
was because she knew Keith, and Keith knew
Andrew.

Marlene and Keith
found out about each other by accident when Keith decided to dial a
random number as somewhat of a prank call, which turned out to be
Marlene’s cell phone number. She played along, and Keith couldn’t
bring himself to hang up the phone. After several minutes of
awkward conversation, in which both people were unsure when to end
the conversation and hang up first, they grew attached to each
other and became friends. After a couple weeks, Marlene told her
newly-found friend about her “duel” between enjoying anime and
having to run several miles each week, all the while arguing with
her parents constantly. Keith replied, “Why not live with me? I
mean, its not much of a place to get excited about—in fact, it’s a
freaking salt pit—but at the very least you won’t have to worry
about arguing with your parents all the time.” Marlene eventually
accepted his offer and saved up some money in order to pay for the
trip.
Eventually
,
considering how she was about to go move into some dude’s house she
knew nothing about. Predictably, Marlene and Keith did end up in a
relationship with one another, and after a few months, he told her
about the incident with Andrew.

“You know what? I’ll go with you,”
said Marlene, “simply because you want to help him out so much. And
besides, the road he was taking—Highway 6—was the same road I drove
down to get here from Grand Junction. It’d be nice to see some of
those places in Nevada again.”

The other person that agreed to go
with Keith and Drake was a former school bully, whom everybody
liked to call “Billy Bob.” Technically named Bill Langley, he
worked at the nearby factory, thinking about his social peak during
his high school years. He had been on the Varsity football team, he
had plenty of friends, and he had lived in a rich household with
loving parents. So why did he go around behaving like a jackass to
any unpopular kids he could find? His parents had hardly ever set
limits with him, and his friends weren’t much help either. The only
moments when he was under control was under the school system and
under law enforcement whenever he got arrested. He never cared
about going to college, but he did make sure to graduate high
school; he hoped that it would make finding a job easier if he at
least had a diploma. It had hardly helped, and the factory sure
didn’t care about diplomas.

As the years passed,
the real world gave Bill a change of heart. He realized that
although the glory days were gone, he could still do something
about his life to make it meaningful.
I
don’t want the rest of my life to end up like this,
he thought.
I don’t
wanna keep working the same crappy job in the same shitty place
forever and ever. But….how am I gonna do it? I don’t know what I’d
do, or where I’d go, or anything!

It was shortly after thinking this
that he heard about Andrew’s disappearance, how Drake and Keith
were looking for someone to go with them for the search. Bill
decided to start off his “new life” by helping them, but there were
some complications.

“And why are
you
so suddenly
interested in helping us?” said Keith. Bill had met up with Keith
and Drake in person.

“I’m just trying to get my shit
together, that’s all,” said Bill. “I thought maybe I could start by
helping some old friends—”

“DON’T! Don’t you
dare call us “friends” after these last four years!
We have no reason to believe that you, who’s
cracked some of our
bones
before for the fun of it, all of sudden wants to
be this peace-loving oaf!”

“You don’t think I’m
different now? How would
you
like working at a boring dead-end job with no way
out, you motherf–”

“Enough, God dammit,” interrupted
Drake, “both of you! If Billy Bob says that he wants to help out,
then maybe he’s telling the truth!” He faced Bill. “And if you
really do want to get your life together, then you need to treat
people better.”

“I will. And don’t call me Billy Bob.
Just Bill or Billy.”

“Actions speak louder than words,”
said Keith.

“Dude, seriously, I know I’m not all
that good, but I can at least try.” Drake winced at Bill’s
argument—it was not very persuasive, but at least it seemed
honest.

After some discussion involving fees,
time, and arrangements within the following week, Drake, Keith,
Marlene, and Bill met on a warm July morning at Drake’s house. He
would drive first, then Keith, then Bill, then Marlene, and repeat;
they would change seats every time they stopped, whether it was to
eat, to stretch their legs, or anything else. Whoever wasn’t
driving—but was going to drive after the next stop—would sit in the
passenger seat. They packed their belongings into the trunk of a
Ford Fusion, got into the car, and began the drive.

Bill started complaining a half hour
into the drive saying that his knees were hurting. Drake replied,
“You know, it’s only been half an hour. We’re not going to stop for
at least one full hour.”

“I’m serious though, my knees are
killing me. I’ve always had a little bit of trouble with my knees
during road trips, but I’ve never had them this bad before. Maybe
it’s the muscles in my legs. Can’t we at least stop so I can
stretch my legs? That usually helps.”

“Would you like some aspirin
instead?”

Bill pondered this for a moment.
“Okay, fine, but if it doesn’t get much better, then we’re
stopping. Where is it?”

“In the glove compartment. Would you
give him the aspirin, Keith?”

Keith handed the aspirin back to Bill,
who had grabbed the water bottle he brought as well. He put two
pills in his mouth, took in some water, and swallowed.

The group stopped in Lone Pine—the
aspirin didn’t help, and Bill was aching to get out. They stopped
at the outskirts of the town where they could see Mount Whitney to
the west. All stone with some snow here and there, Drake and Keith
enjoyed looking at it for a brief moment. Bill was mostly focused
on his knees, which were getting better as he stood and walked, and
he didn’t care much for looking at mountains anyway. Marlene was
most pleased by the sight since all the high snow-capped peaks
reminded her of the mountains in Colorado.

Keith drove from Lone Pine to Bishop;
Bill sat in the passenger seat with the seat as far back as it
could go, giving him enough leg room to prevent his knees from
acting up for a while. Drake, however, sat right behind him, the
seat pressed onto his knees as he remained uncomfortable for the
next hour.

They had an early lunch in Bishop at a
sit-down restaurant named the Bristlecone. Drake and Keith both had
sandwiches, Bill had a hamburger, and Marlene had an omelet,
believing it was never too late for breakfast. When Keith went up
to go to the restroom, Marlene decided to play a little prank by
putting whatever condiments she could find into his cola, and the
other two guys played along as well. The dark brown color of the
cola hid the mustard, steak sauce, etc. quite well. When Keith came
back and drank his befouled cola, he said, “Okay, what the hell did
you guys do to my drink?”

Drake, Marlene, and Bill laughed for a
solid ten seconds, then Keith said, “Seriously, one of you is going
to get me another one.”

“I know, I know,” said Marlene, “I’ll
buy you a new drink, along with some dessert. How’s that
sound?”

Keith closed his lips and nodded his
head before responding. “You know what? That does sound
good.”

“Wanna know
what
we put in your
drink?”

“No, I would not.”

After several more hours of driving on
one of the loneliest highways in America, with everybody saying how
bored they were, they finally reached their destination.

“So….what now?” said Keith.

“Well, his car’s gone—must’ve been
taken away. I suppose we could check the buildings around here, or
maybe we could find somebody up the road that would know what
happened to Andrew.”

They were reluctant in checking inside
the abandoned buildings in the area, since even if there was the
chance that it was legal, it seemed like taboo. All they could find
were cobwebs, cockroaches, some old photos, and graffiti on the
walls. So, they drove a few miles along the road to the nearest
house. It was an old-fashioned house, with some trees around the
yard and plenty of crops in the background.

The person who answered the door was
an elderly woman, most likely in her seventies, and everywhere from
her eyes to her grimace showed that she was bitter. There was noise
coming from the television in the house, and it sounded as though
an old man of equal age and his son were busy watching it. “If
you’re government agents,” she said, “or missionaries, or you’re
trying to sell me something, then just go away. I won’t even
bother.”

“It’s none of that,” Bill interjected,
“we were just hoping to find something out about a friend of ours
that went missing around here some time ago.”