'This is our place! GET THE FUCK OUT!'
Frankie had been smiling. Now he stopped. He strode past the skinny naked man standing by the sink (quailing by the sink might have been more accurate) and grabbed Carolyn by the shoulders. He gave her a brisk shake. 'Don't give me lip, sweetheart. I'm trying to keep you from getting your ass fried. You and your boyfr-*
'Get your hands off me! You'll go to jail for this! My father's a lawyer!' She tried to slap him. Frankie - not a morning person, never had been - seized her hand and bent it back. Not really hard, but Carolyn screamed. The sheet dropped to the floor.
'Whoa! That's a serious rack,' Junior confided to the gaping Thurston Marshall. 'Can you keep up with that, old fella?'
'Get your clothes on, both of you,' Frankie said. 'I don't know how dumb you are, but pretty dumb would be my guess, since you're still here. Don't you know - ' He stopped. Looked from the woman's face to the man's. Both equally terrified. Equally mystified.
'Junior!' he said.
'What?'
'Titsy McGee and wrinkle-boy don't know what's going on.'
'Don't you dare call me any of your sexist - '
Junior held up his hands. 'Ma'am, get dressed. You have to get out of here. The U.S. Air Force is going to fire a Cruise missile at this part of town in' - he looked at his watch - 'a little less than five hours.'
'ARE YOU INSANE?' Carolyn screamed.
Junior heaved a sigh and then pushed ahead. He guessed he understood the whole cop thing a little better now. It was a great job, but people could be so stupid. 'If it bounces off, you'd just hear a big bang. Might cause you to shit your pants - if you were wearing any - but it wouldn't hurt you. If it punches through, though, you'd most likely get charbroiled, since it's gonna be really big and you're less than two miles from what they say is gonna be the point of impact.'
'Bounces off what, you dimwit?' Thurston demanded. With the dope in the sink, he now used one hand to cover his privates... or at least tried to; his love-machine was indeed extremely long and skinny.
'The Dome,' Frankie said. 'And I don't appreciate your mouth.' He took a long step forward and punched the current guest editor of Ploughshares in the gut. Thurston made a hoarse whoofmg sound, doubled over, staggered, almost kept his feet, went to his knees, and vomited up about a teacup's worth of thin white gruel that still smelled of Brie.
Carolyn held her swelling wrist. 'You'll go to jail for this,' she promised Junior in a low, trembling voice. 'Bush and Cheney are long gone. This isn't the United States of North Korea anymore.'
'I know that,'Junior said, with admirable patience for one who was thinking he wouldn't mind doing a little more choking; there was a small dark Gila monster in his brain that thought a little more choking would be just the way to start the day off right.
But no. No. He had to do his part in completing the evacuation. He had taken the Oath of Duty, or whatever the f**k it was.
'I do know it,' he repeated. 'But what you two Massholes don't get is that you aren't in the United States of America anymore, either. You're in the Kingdom of Chester now, and if you don't behave, you're going to end up in the Dungeons of Chester. I promise. No phone call, no lawyer, no due process. We're trying to save your lives here. Are you too f**k-dumb to understand that?'
She was staring at him, stunned. Thurston tried to get up, couldn't manage it, and crawled toward her. Frankie helped him along with a boot to the butt. Thurston cried out in shock and pain. 'That's for holding us up, Grampa,' Frankie said. 'I admire your taste in chicks, but we've got a lot to do.'
Junior looked at the young woman. Great mouth. Angelina lips. He bet she could, as the saying went, suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.i 'If he can't get dressed by himself, you help him. We've got four more cabins to check out, and when we get back here, you want to be in that Volvo of yours and on your way into town.'
'I don't understand any of this!' Carolyn wailed.
'Not surprised,' Frankie said, and plucked the Baggie of dope out of the sink. 'Didn't you know this stuff makes you stupid?'
She began to cry.
'Don't worry,' Frankie said.'I'm confisticating it, and in a couple of days, booya, you'll smarten up all on your own.'
'You didn't read us our rights,' she wept.
Junior looked astonished. Then he laughed. 'You have the right to get the f**k out of here and shut the f**k up, okay? In this situation those are the only rights you have. Do you understand that?'
Frankie was examining the confisticated dope. 'Junior,' he said, 'there's hardly any seeds in this. This is f**king primo!
Thurston had reached Carolyn. He got to his feet, farting quite loudly as he did so. Junior and Frankie looked at each other. They tried to hold it in - they were officers of the law, after all - and couldn't. They burst out laughing simultaneously.