A biker guy, massive and bare-chested except for a leather vest with SATAN’S 7 stitched on it, and what appeared to be a Tec-9 strapped over his back, was at the counter. He was explaining to a raccoon-eyed counter girl that, no, he wouldn’t be paying for any of his Big Macs. There was a special tonight; everything he wanted was free. At the hush of the door closing, the biker guy turned to see Michaela.
“Hey, sister.” His look was appreciative: not bad. “I know you?”
“Maybe?” Michaela replied, not stopping as she strode up the side of the McDonald’s, skipping the bathroom, and continuing right back outside again through the rear exit door. She hustled for the rear of the parking lot and pushed between the branches of a hedge. On the other side of the hedge was the parking lot for a Hobby Lobby. The store was lit and she could see people inside. Michaela wondered how goddam dedicated to your scrapbooking you had to be to go shopping at Hobby Lobby on this night of all nights.
She took a step and something closer caught her attention: a Corolla idling about twenty feet away. A white form occupied the front seat.
Michaela approached the car. The white form was a woman, of course, head and hands cocooned. Although Michaela was still high from the coke, she wished she were much, much higher. In the cocooned woman’s lap was a dead dog, a poodle, the body wrung and twisted.
Oh, Fido, you shouldn’t lick the webs off Mommy’s face when she’s snoozing in the parking lot. Mommy can be very cross if you wake her up.
Michaela gingerly transported the dead dog to the grass. Then she dragged the woman, by her driver’s license Ursula Whitman-Davies, over to the front passenger side. While she didn’t much like the idea of keeping the woman in the car, she was deeply uncomfortable with the alternative, which would be depositing her in the grass next to her dead poodle. And there was the utilitarian to consider: with Ursula along, she could legally use the carpool lane.
Michaela got behind the wheel and rolled onto the service road that would take her back to I-70.
As she passed the McDonald’s, an evil idea struck her. It was no doubt coke-fueled, but it seemed divinely right, nevertheless. She turned around at the Motel 6 next door and went back to Mickey D’s. Parked right in front and heeled over on its kickstand was a Harley Softail that looked vintage. Above the Tennessee plate on the rear fender was a skull decal with SATAN’S in one eyesocket and 7 in the other. Written across the teeth was BEWARE.
“Hang on, Ursula,” Michaela said to her cocooned co-pilot, and aimed the Corolla at the motorcycle.
She was doing less than ten miles an hour when she struck it, but it went over with a satisfying crash. The biker guy was sitting at a table by the front window, with a mountain of food stacked before him on a tray. He looked up in time to see Michaela backing away from his iron horse, which now looked like one dead pony. She could see his lips moving as he ran for the door, a Big Mac dripping Secret Sauce in one hand and a milkshake in the other, Tec-9 bouncing against his back. Michaela couldn’t tell what he was saying, but she doubted if it was shalom. She gave him a cheerful wave before swinging back onto the service road and putting Ursula’s Toyota up to sixty.
Three minutes later, she was back on the interstate, laughing wildly, knowing that the euphoria wouldn’t last, and wishing for more blow so that it might.
5
Ursula’s Corolla was equipped with satellite radio, and after fiddling with the buttons for awhile, Michaela found NewsAmerica. The news was not so terrific. There were unconfirmed reports of an “incident” involving the vice-president’s wife that had caused the Secret Service to be summoned to Number One, Observatory Circle. Animal rights activists had set free the inhabitants of the National Zoo; multiple witnesses had seen a lion devouring what looked like a human being on Cathedral Avenue. Hard right conservatives on talk radio were proclaiming the Aurora virus as proof that God was angry with feminism. The pope had asked everyone to pray for guidance. The Nationals had canceled their weekend interleague series against the Orioles. Michaela sort of understood this last one, but sort of didn’t; all the players (the umpires, too) were men, weren’t they?
In the passenger seat, the cotton-ball-headed creature that had been Ursula Whitman-Davies mimicked the rhythm of the interstate, lolling gently with the stretches of smooth macadam, jittering around when the tires found grooved, unfinished paving. She was either the absolute best or absolute worst traveling companion in the history of the world.
For awhile Michaela had dated a girl who was devoted to crystals, who believed that, with calm focus and sincere belief, you could take the form of light. That sweet, earnest girl was probably asleep now, swathed in white. Michaela thought of her own late father: good old Dad, who used to sit beside her bed when she was scared at night—or at least, that’s what her mother had told her. Michaela had been three when he’d died. She couldn’t remember him as a living man. Michaela—despite her nose job, despite her fake last name—was a true reporter. She knew the facts, and the one fact about Archie Coates that she did know well, was that he had been placed in a coffin and planted in the soil of the Shady Hills Cemetery in the town of Dooling, and was there still. He had not become light. She did not allow herself to fantasize that she was soon to meet her dad in some afterlife. The deal was simply this: the world was ending and a poodle-strangling woman clothed in webs was swaying beside Michaela and all she wanted was to have a few hours with her mother before sleep took them both.
At Morgantown she had to refill the Corolla’s tank. It was full-service. The young guy who pumped the gas apologized; the credit card machines were down. Michaela paid him from a wad in Ursula’s purse.
The guy had a short blond beard, wore a plain white tee-shirt and blue jeans. She had never been especially attracted to men, but she liked the look of this lean Viking.
“Thank you,” she said. “You hanging in there?”
“Oh,” he said, “forget about me, lady. You don’t need to be worrying about me. You know how to use that?”
She followed the tilt of his chin to Ursula’s purse, which rested at the hip of the cocooned woman. The grip of a revolver protruded from its unzipped mouth. It seemed that Ms. Whitman-Davies had fancied firearms as well as canines.
“Not really,” she admitted. “My girlfriend knew I was making a long drive and loaned it to me.”
He gave her a stern look. “Safety’ll be on the side. Make sure it’s switched off if you see trouble coming. Point it at the middle of Mr. Trouble’s body—center mass—and pull the trigger. Don’t let go or get hit in the boob when it recoils. Can you remember that?”
“Yeah,” said Michaela. “Center mass. Don’t let go or get hit in the boob. Gotcha. Thanks.” And rolled out. She heard the Viking call, “Hey, you on TV, maybe?”