Three weeks later…
They had the large corner booth in Jackie’s Up All Night Diner. It was early afternoon. The lunch rush was over, but the old-timers had already started to filter in for pie and coffee.
Kevin sat on the outside, his leg in a cast, crutches resting against the side of the bench. Rhonda sat next to him, her hair dyed blonde, wearing a pink t-shirt, the Goth girl look a thing of the past. Derek was on Rhonda’s right, his Mohawk matted down and combed over to resemble something approximating a normal haircut as he slurped Dr Pepper through a straw. Fred sat at the other corner, a metal hook where his left hand had been. He had trimmed his beard and was wearing a striped button-down shirt, looking respectable for the first time in his life.
The little bell above the front door jingled as Ryan and Becky entered and made their way over to the booth. “Shove over,” Ryan said and let Becky slide onto the bench first. He was in uniform, but now the brass star pinned to his shirt had the word SHERIFF written across the center. The waitress brought them each a glass of soda.
“You know,” Fred said to Ryan, “you’re the only guy I know who got a promotion by killing his boss.”
Rhonda looked at Becky and said, “Come on, let’s see it.”
Becky blushed and brought her hand out from under the table so they could see the whopper of a diamond ring on her finger. “I told him it was a little flashy,” she said.
“Did you spend all your share of the money on that?”
Ryan shook his head. “Not all of it. Besides, the Sheriff’s package came with a raise. What about you?”
“
Pizza Delivery Man
goes into production next month.”
“No shit? You’re finally doing it.”
“Filming it right here in Trudy. I’m finishing the script now. Got a distributor lined up. They think it’ll do well overseas. I’m thinkin’ it’ll go over well in
China
, if you know what I mean.”
“Don’t say that too loud,” Ryan said.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad,
Sheriff
Carter. I’m not the only one with delusions of grandeur,” Fred said and winked at Kevin.
“Spill it,” Ryan said.
Rhonda said, “We’re going to L.A.”
“When?”
“We fly out of Omaha tomorrow,” Kevin said.
“Just like that?”
“Rhonda wants to get back into the music scene, and me, well, I figure it’s time for a change of scenery. Have to go see about a girl, you know.”
“That was funnier the first time around,” Fred said.
“It isn’t necessarily permanent,” Rhonda said. “This is kind of a scouting trip to see if we can find a place, maybe network a little bit. Kevin thinks he could open another comic store out there.”
Derek appeared to be the only one devastated by this news. He stared at Kevin, his voice shaky when he said, “What about the store here? Do you know how hard it is to find a job in this economy?”
Kevin shook his head. “Actually, that’s where you come in.” Kevin dug his keys out of his pocket, removed one of them from the ring, and slid it across the table to Derek. “I was thinking you could look after the place while I’m gone.”
Derek picked up the key, turning it over in his hand and gazing at it with the kind of wide-eyed wonder one might reserve for examining the Holy Grail. The thing was, to Derek, that brass key was just as remarkable, if not more so. “You mean…you want me to run the place?”
“You’ll be the manager. I think you’re ready. What do ya say?”
“You’re not joking?”
“I’m dead serious.”
Derek looked ecstatic, eyes so wide they were in danger of popping out of their sockets. “Fuckin-A! The answer is
YES
, I will run the store with all my heart and every fiber of my being!”
“Okay,” Kevin said, laughing. “Settle down and quit drooling.”
“Really getting out of Dodge?” Ryan said. “Good for you.”
“How long have we been talking about it? Since high school at least. I always thought you’d be the first one to take the plunge.”
“Three weeks ago you would have been right.” He glanced at Becky. “Things change, I guess.”
“I sense a hero speech comin’ on,” Fred said.
Ryan shook his head and smiled. “No hero speech. I think it was more of a case of thinking things would be greener on the other side. Maybe you can’t really appreciate your home until something threatens to take it away.”
“Which in this case,” Kevin said, “happened to be the zombie apocalypse.”
“Yeah, go figure.”
“We
did
save the town.”
“
And
got paid for it,” Fred said. “Not that anybody will ever know that.”
“
We
know it,” Ryan said.
Kevin chuckled to himself. Rhonda said, “What?”
“I was just thinking…not bad for a bunch of nerds, huh?”
“Heck yeah,” Derek said, raising his glass of Dr Pepper into the air. “Here’s to
us!
”
A few of the old-timers looked around to see what all the commotion was about.
“I’ll drink to that,” Fred said, lifting his own glass, and the others followed. “To us – the motherfuckin’ Z Club!”
Ryan surveyed the parking lot. They couldn’t risk taking two separate vehicles, but his patrol car wouldn’t hold all of them. Neither would Kevin’s Neon. There was a beat up Dodge truck, caked with rust, parked in one of the far slots. There was Darnell’s old ice cream truck, which at least ran, Ryan knew. Parked several spaces away was a big yellow Hummer. Even in the semi-darkness, it looked almost brand new; as though it hadn’t been driven off the showroom floor. It would be a little cramped, but it would seat the six of them comfortably enough, with room in the back for the guns and other supplies. He wondered what could have caused someone to abandon it in the lot.
Could be one of Darnell’s new toys,
he thought, but couldn’t recall seeing it parked in the lot before tonight.
“Let’s take a minute to reload. There won’t be time when we’re in the thick of it.” He thought about giving them a pep talk, informing them of the tiny errors that turned into grave and costly mistakes when a person is in the thick of battle, but decided against it. It wasn’t easy killing a man or woman, even if they were walking corpses with an appetite for brains. After all, Ryan had never shot anyone until the scene at the hospital earlier that day. He didn’t regret shooting Branagan (he could still feel the weight of Branagan’s blood caked Sheriff’s star in his shirt pocket), but shooting the kid haunted him a little. “And then we need to consolidate. There’s no sense in taking two cars. Makes it too easy to get separated if shit gets hairy.”
The others followed his gaze across the lot, settling on the bright yellow Hummer.
“No way somebody would leave the keys in something like that,” Fred said.
“They might if they were in a hurry,” Ryan said. The others gathered around him. “Besides, the only other choice is
that
.” He pointed to the ice cream truck.
“Okay, no-brainer,” Fred said.
“Can I drive?” Derek said.
“Shut it.” Kevin gave him a friendly shove forward. Rhonda stuck close to him.
As they walked toward the Hummer, Ryan’s cell phone began to ring. He took his phone out of his jacket and glanced at the caller ID. When he answered it, he could hear commotion on the other end of the line, muffled voices. “Hello? Jack? Jack, you there?”
He didn’t get a reply, so he listened until the line went dead several seconds later.
“Who was it?” Becky asked.
“My brother,” Ryan said. “He’s in trouble.”
“Did he say that?”
“I didn’t talk to him.”
“How do you know he’s in trouble?” Becky asked.
“Because he wouldn’t have called unless his life depended on it,” Ryan said, his eyes fixed on the two vehicles before him, but somehow looking
past
them, as though he had X-ray vision and was staring through them. His mind drifted momentarily before he reeled it back, moving forward again, toward the Hummer.
Fred said, “Million bucks says it’s locked.”
Ryan grabbed the door handle and gave it a yank. It was unlocked.
“Double or nothin’,” Fred said, “that they didn’t just leave the keys in it.”
Ryan opened the driver’s side door all the way, uttering a little silent prayer that when he leaned over the seat to get a glimpse at the right side of the steering column, that the keys would be hanging from the ignition.
But as he put his foot on one of the runners, lifted himself up, and ducked in, the driver’s seat backrest jerked forward, hitting him on the head. Hit him with enough force that had the seat not been cushioned leather, the impact most certainly would have knocked him unconscious. The Hummer’s stereo system came on, blasting rap music.
Fred looked perplexed. “Anti-theft alarm?”
The interior lights flickered off and on.
“Maybe it’s possessed,” Derek said. “Like in
Christine
.”
Ryan ignored this, reaching his hand around and sliding his fingers along the far side of the steering column, feeling for keys.
The rap music stopped abruptly. A CD flew from the CD player’s slot and streaked past Ryan’s head, inches from taking his nose off. The steering column shot forward, the wheel pinning Ryan between itself and the driver’s seat, the horn blaring.
“What the…”
After several seconds, the steering wheel released him, and he slid out. The six of them stood staring at the possessed vehicle.
“You’re the brain,” Fred said, looking to Kevin. “Explain
this
.”
Kevin shook his head.
Then came the sound of wrenching metal as the Hummer began to mutate, the wheels flattening out, the doors twisting on their sides as the body shifted and transformed itself. They watched in disbelief. The entire process took less than four seconds. And by the end of it, they all had their heads tilted, staring up at a twenty-foot tall robot.
“I knew it!” Derek said. “I knew
Transformers
existed!”
The robot’s head swiveled and it glared down at Derek. “I’m a Gobot, asshole.”
It lumbered past them, the asphalt cracking beneath its feet as they watched it stomp off across the parking lot, swatting Kevin’s Neon aside with a swipe of its hand as it disappeared into the night.
“Whoa,” Derek said. “That was
awesome!
”
“Wait a minute,” Fred said. “What the fuck just happened?”
“What’s really messed up,” Kevin said, “is that isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve seen tonight.”
Treatment by
Fred E. Klemt