A sign on the outside of the restaurant said JACKIE’S UP-ALL-NIGHT in pink neon. It was the only food joint in Trudy that was open twenty-four hours a day.
The inside of Jackie’s had been made to look like an old-fashioned 50’s diner, with the black-and-white checkered floor, metal finish, and a row of stools with red cushions lined up in front of the polished steel counter. Framed pictures of James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe decorated the walls. Booths lined the opposite wall. A jukebox sat neglected in the far corner, next to the narrow hallway leading to the restrooms.
It was busy. The noon hour rush. The place reeked of sautéed onions, one of the key components of Jackie’s famous patty melt.
Rhonda Sanchez topped off one of the elderly customer’s cup of coffee, ignoring the way his watery eyes shifted slowly from her hair (which maybe had to do with it being cut short and dyed jet black) to the tiny sparkling diamond of her nose piercing. It was the same contemptuous stare she usually got from the restaurant’s mostly older regulars.
“Enjoy, gramps,” she said as she headed back behind the counter, dropped the pot of coffee onto the burner, and disappeared into the back. She walked past the break room, punched the clock, and slipped out the back door, where she lit a cigarette and tried to ignore the cold and the snow. She was joined a minute later by Janelle, who was taller and prettier in a traditional sort of way.
“Can I bum one off you?”
“Sure.” Rhonda handed Janelle a cigarette and the lighter.
“How’re your tips?”
Rhonda dug into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a wad of bills. “They’re not drunk enough yet. The big tippers come in drunk during graveyards.”
“You pullin’ a double?”
“Not tonight. Second job.”
“You still workin’ at that bookstore?”
“Comic shop,” Rhonda said.
“Right, whatever,” Janelle said. “I hear the owner is a real perv.”
Rhonda puffed on her cigarette. “Kevin? I don’t think so. Just has a thing for girls younger than him. Like most guys. I catch him staring a lot, but he’s never tried anything.”
“
Ew
. That guy seems so…skeevy.”
“Kinda.”
“Isn’t he like fifty or something?”
“Thirty.”
“Jesus, and you’re like twenty-three. What a chester.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Rhonda said, rolling her eyes. Secretly, she really didn’t mind the way Kevin was always looking at her. It made her feel kind of good about herself, actually. After all, thirty wasn’t
that
much older.
“What does he pay you? Can’t be much.”
“Store credit.”
“Oh, I forgot, you’re into all that nerdy stuff.”
“It isn’t that bad. I pretty much just hang out,” Rhonda said, angry that she was trying to justify herself to this stuck-up girl she didn’t even really like. “Give the nerds something to drool over. The more they drool, the more they buy.”
“Sounds a little slutty,” Janelle said.
Rhonda tossed her cigarette onto the ground, stamped it out with her foot, and immediately lit another. “That’s right up your alley, isn’t it? Want me to pick you up an application?”
Janelle scowled and said, “Bitch,” and opened the door to head back inside. “Thanks for the cigarette.”
After the door had swung shut, Rhonda smiled to herself.
I hope her future husband beats her,
she thought. She didn’t feel bad for thinking it.
Fred Klemt pulled his beat-up Ford truck into the driveway of a spacious Georgian-style house. Written on the side of the truck, in green vinyl lettering, were the words WE’LL SNAKE YOUR DRAIN. Fred was twenty-eight, but his wide face and grizzled black beard made him look at least ten years older. His sizable beer gut preceded him as he exited the truck and walked around to the back, digging in the bed until he brought out his tool belt, which he draped over his shoulder as if it was a bandolier. He was wearing navy coveralls with
Fred’s Plumbing
written in cursive on the back.
Fred walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. He waited. A cute blonde – she had to be in her mid-forties (
cougar,
Fred’s mind screamed) – wearing a short silk robe that was tied-off at the waist answered the door. The robe was thin and the weather was cold, which was why Fred could see the outline of the blonde’s hardened nipples. She had the kind of deep tan that would probably make her look like shit in later life, but for now it made her look as hot as hell. She was holding a glass of iced tea with a lemon wedge perched on the rim.
“Can I help you?” the blonde asked as if his coveralls and the fact that he was carrying a leather belt stuffed with tools weren’t indication enough of why he was there.
“I’m here about the clog,” Fred said. And then he winked at her; a wink that said:
we both know why I’m
really
here.
At first, the blonde’s eyes narrowed, staring at him skeptically, but then she smiled and, stepping aside, said, “Do come in.”
Fred sauntered into the house, stomping the snow off his boots on the welcome mat. The blonde closed the door behind him and said, “The clog is downstairs. It’s bad.”
He followed the blonde as she led him through the foyer and dining room, opening a door at the back of the kitchen. She led him down a flight of stairs, into a finished basement where he caught a glimpse of a dimly-lit room with a pool table as she led him to the laundry room.
“Watch your step,” she said, switching on the light.
She hadn’t been kidding. Most of the laundry room’s concrete floor had been flooded. The smell was awful, and although he had encountered that familiar putrid stench a hundred times over, he found he never got used to it. If there was one truth in life that being a plumber had taught him, it was that
everybody’s
shit stank; didn’t matter if they were rich or poor or black or white. And the cute blonde was no exception.
“Can you fix it?”
“Sure. Let me get my snake.”
Fred trudged up the stairs and out to his truck, hauling a drum auger out of the back. He pulled it along by its custom dolly. It made a dull repeating thud as he lowered it down the stairs. He wheeled it to the edge of the laundry room where the blonde was waiting in her silk robe.
“Mind plugging this in for me?” He gave her another sly wink.
The blonde took the cord and plugged it into the outlet in the basement’s half-bathroom. Fred grabbed the cable, holding the end up so the blonde could see the rusty blades at the end. “Assuming there isn’t damage to the pipes, this usually does the trick.”
Fred switched the auger’s motor on, holding the cable tightly in his gloved hands as it tried to buck wildly. He trudged through the shallow pool of human waste to the center of the room where the water bubbled up.
The sewage was deep enough that finding the drain wasn’t easy. He dipped his hand in, feeling around, until he found the drain, and then guided the cable, feeding it in a few inches at a time.
Fred glanced back over his shoulder at the blonde. He smiled and she smiled back. He threw his leg over the cable, squatting down so he was straddling it as it jittered down the drain, thumping against the pipe. He began to thrust his hips, sliding his hands back and forth over the gyrating cable, and made low moaning sounds. “That’s right, baby. Take it all in. Feels so –”
When Fred looked over his shoulder the second time, the blonde wasn’t alone. Fred froze, mid-squat, hands still clutching the cable between his legs. Standing next to the blonde was a large black man (it took him a second to realize it was a man and not a Silverback gorilla), who was easily 6’5”, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Michael Clarke Duncan.
The blonde and the black man were staring at him. The blonde looked appalled. The black man was shaking his head. Fred let the cable slip from his hands. It hit the water and danced and arched, splattering fecal matter all over the place.
The black man bent down and switched the auger’s motor off. There was a loud gurgling sound as the sewage seeped into the now unclogged drain.
Fred was covered in feces. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Nervously, he pulled the cable free from the drain. “Guess that about does it.” Fred grabbed the dolly’s handle, wheeled it around, then glanced down at the white carpet and then to his soaked boots. He undid the laces and pulled them off before setting foot on the carpet. “Running a special today,” Fred said. “So that’s gonna be…”
The black man glowered down at him.
“…no charge,” Fred said as he hauled the dolly up the stairs and walked back to his truck in his stocking feet. He didn’t put his boots on until he was safely in the truck.
Ryan Carver exited his squad car and began the long walk over to Sheriff Branagan, who waited on the other side of the snow-covered field. After a two year stint as a detention deputy in the Coldwater County Jail, and now going on five years in patrol, he hadn’t ever seen anything like this. A couple of years ago, they’d responded to a plane crash in neighboring Woodbury County. Miraculously, both the student pilot and his instructor had walked away with only minor injuries.
That was the closest Ryan’s mind could come to relating the current situation with past experience. But this wasn’t a plane, and judging by the still-smoldering wreckage strewn out over a quarter mile radius, Ryan wasn’t optimistic about finding any survivors. This wasn’t the kind of accident a person just walked away from.
As he closed the hundred yard gap to Branagan, he took in the scene from a distance. Trudy’s two fire trucks were parked next to each other; an ambulance was parked a little farther back; there were two patrol cars in addition to the Sheriff’s white Yukon. Capt. Randy Aldo and Lt. Nathan Finnigan stood next to Branagan.
When he reached Branagan, he said, “That what I think it is?”
Branagan nodded, absently kicking away a rock with his boot as he watched the firefighters search the wreckage.
“Don’t know what they’re lookin’ for,” Finnigan said. “Sure as hell ain’t gonna find any survivors in that barbeque.”
Aldo said, “Isn’t one of ours. American, I mean.”
“How do you know that?” Ryan asked.
Aldo pointed at a twisted sheet of metal that had been lodged upright into the ground during impact. “That look like English to you?”
Ryan followed Aldo’s sausage-sized finger. There was lettering on the chunk of metal, and even through the scorch marks, he could tell it wasn’t in English.
“Looks like a bunch of chicken scratch to me,” Finnigan said.
“
Chink
writing,” Branagan said. He spoke with a watered-down New England accent. He’d moved to Trudy thirty years ago, but a little of the hometown Jersey boy remained.
Ryan winced. Branagan was a racist. Not the hardcore, let’s-go-lynch-somebody variety, but comfortable enough that he didn’t feel the need to hide it. The sad fact was, in a town like Trudy, that kind of thinking was still tolerated; for some, the old ways were alive and kicking.
“You know Chinese now?”
“Don’t any of you watch the news? The Chinamen lost themselves a space ship. Last I heard, that’s not a common occurrence, so I reckon this is the one they was talkin’ about.”
They stood watching for twenty minutes while the snow fell softly and the firefighters put out the remaining flames. After the smoke had cleared, Ryan followed Branagan, Finnigan, and Aldo over to the shuttle’s forward fuselage where it had snapped from the ship’s central body. Wreckage was strewn everywhere, and paramedics were loading what was left of the ship’s crew into body bags.
“I don’t get it,” Ryan said. “How does a Chinese space shuttle crash land in Iowa?”
“Bad fuckin’ luck,” Branagan said. “That’s how.”
“Worst kind,” Finnigan agreed.
“Um huh,” Aldo grunted.
A medic was dragging one of the ship’s cushioned seats. An astronaut was still strapped in it. As the medic passed, Branagan said, “Hold up a sec.” Branagan approached the body and studied it for a minute. “What happened to him?”
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” the medic said. “Are you talking about the fact that he looks like a TV dinner that cooked in the microwave too long, or that the top of his head is missing.”
Judging by Branagan’s expression, it was the latter that had caught his attention. Stepping closer, Ryan noticed it too.
How the hell does that happen to a guy,
he thought.
The top of the astronaut’s head was missing; scalp, skull, and all. There were deep grooves in the bone of the skull where the man’s forehead would have been, and Ryan noticed something else: peering down into the man’s head, all he saw was an empty black hole. The man’s brain was missing.
Ryan glanced at the medic. “Hey, your guess is as good as mine,” the medic said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s like those pop-up timers people use during Thanksgiving. That little red thing pops up when the turkey’s done. Could be his head did the same thing. Guy cooked too long and his brain exploded right out the top of his skull.”
“You’ve seen stuff like that before?”
“Hell no. I’m just saying…stranger things have happened.”
The medic resumed dragging the body, chair and all, toward the ambulance.
“That seem right to you?” Branagan asked, looking at Ryan.
“Nope.”
“What are we gonna do with this fiasco?” Finnigan said.
“Pawn it off. Call in the State Police, Aldo. Have them send a guy out here. Or better yet, two or three guys. Let them deal with it. They can take it up the chain from there.”
Aldo said, “It happened in the county.”
“I don’t care if it happened in Lizzie Baker’s back yard. We’re gonna wash our hands of this whole damn mess before we even get ‘em dirty. And make it quick. I want the so-called experts here before any reporters show up. That cunt from channel 6 would just love to catch me with my thumb up my ass.”
Aldo headed off for his patrol car, Finnigan kept pace beside him. They were too far away to hear it when a man screamed. Ryan saw one of the firefighters writhing on the ground twenty feet away. He rushed past Branagan, whose reaction time had slowed significantly over the years.
Ryan reached the downed firefighter, looking up at the other men that had rushed over. “What happened?”
“Beats me,” one of the other firefighters said. “He was fine a second ago.”
Ryan kneeled down beside the firefighter. The man had yanked off his helmet and was clutching his head between his hands, squeezing it as though he were trying to keep a bomb from exploding. His face had gone a deep purple color and the vein in his forehead pulsed and throbbed. Ryan noticed a faded tattoo on the firefighter’s neck depicting a grinning skull wearing a fire helmet.
Several of the medics arrived, saw the color of the firefighters face. “He’s asphyxiating. Get him in the ambulance.”
One of the medics grabbed the man beneath the shoulders, another by the legs, and they lifted him off the ground and began carrying him away. By the time Branagan reached the scene, the medics had already loaded the screaming firefighter into the back of the ambulance.
“What was that about?” Branagan asked, wheezing after the short jog.
“Beats me.”
Ryan spotted a heavy-duty plastic container several feet away. The lid was one of those springy kind that have a metal latch to hold it in place. The container was on its side, a haphazard crack running down the center of the plastic, so that Ryan was looking at two halves of the red biohazard symbol printed on the container’s side.
Branagan took a step forward, starting to bend down to take a closer look at the container. Ryan grabbed Branagan’s shoulder and pulled him back, shaking his head. Ryan said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sheriff. Unless you want to end up like the other guy.”
Branagan righted himself, nodding. “I don’t want anyone else getting in till the Staties get here. That clear?”
“Roger that.”
Running a beefy hand along his cheek of scratchy gray stubble, Branagan said, “This is bad shit.”
Ryan agreed.