Red the First (13 page)

“
Scat,” Elizabeth tried to
shove Zena off the bed, but her furry butt wouldn’t budge. “Do
something about your dog.” Elizabeth ordered, shaking Red awake to
complain.

“
Two good-looking ladies in
bed with me at the same time—why would I?”

The dog laid her big muzzle on Red’s
head, whipping Elizabeth’s legs with her wagging tail.

“
Ow!” Elizabeth held her
throbbing knee.

The dog let her sloppy pink tongue hang
out unapologetically and rolled over for a belly rub, practically
shoving Elizabeth off the edge of the bed, which was only a double.
Her master obliged. Zena’s leg kicked furiously as she groaned with
pleasure.

“
Silly dog,” Red said,
leaving Elizabeth feeling like she was in a competition with not
one, but two other women. She could never win against the memories
of Kay, but she’d be damned before losing out to Zena. Giving a
heave, she rolled the dog out of bed. Zena protested with a
frustrated bluster and trotted out of the room.

..............................

The next morning, Red knocked on Nate’s
door. The young man lived alone. He answered the door, wearing only
his underwear. In his hand was a 1963 Marvel comic, Strange Tales,
July issue. Red was never much into comic books—as a kid he’d
rather just see the movie—but his father had been a collector so he
knew more than he cared to know about valuable comics.

“
Whatsup, Bossman?” Nate
asked, combing his disheveled hair with his fingers.

“
Sorry to disrupt the heavy
reading there, Nate.”

“
Dr. Strangelove is
introduced in this one,” Nate informed. “The guy who used to live
here has a shitload of nerdware—Star Wars figurines, Star Trek
uniforms, and comic books coming out the yin-yang. A lot of his
stuff is mint, but not anymore. I’ve played with and read his
entire collection. He’s going to shoot me in the next life, but
hey, there’s no market for this stuff anymore.”

“
You don’t have to justify
yourself to me, kid. We’re all just doing what we gotta do to get
along. I’m going on a trip to town and I was hoping you’d come
along and lend me your unique skills.”

“
Let me get
dressed.”

One thing Red liked about Nate was that
he didn’t ask a lot of questions. He was the poster child of
happy-go-lucky. The two of them dragged a flatbed wagon from the
shed at Red’s place, filled it with empty gas cans, and pulled it
through town. Zena tagged along behind them until she saw Michael
and two of his playmates having a swordfight with sticks. Red and
Nate paused a moment to watch. By the clever footwork and deft
moves, it was apparent that the kids played the game often. Upon
seeing they had an audience, Michael held up his stick.

“
Arise, fearless guardians,”
he said, mimicking an English accent. “The lord of our demesne and
his loyal knight have arrived.”

The boys and girls gathered around Red
and Nate in a circle, holding their swords in front of them,
straight and stiff, like knights paying tribute to their king. Red
laughed, but felt a bit uncomfortable.

“
The lord of the demesne
says go to school,” he ordered his subjects.

“
As it is said, so it shall
be done,” the children said, bowing in unison.

“
You are weird little
dudes,” Nate said, turning up the corner of his lip and adding as
an afterthought, “And dudettes.”

One of the girls whacked Michael across
the back with a stick and ran away giggling. Then they all ran off
to resume their fake battle. Zena dashed off after them, barking
with enthusiasm.

“
Zena’s a fickle lady,” Nate
commented.

Red grunted, watching her running
circles around Michael.

As the men walked on, Red decided to
let Nate in on the purpose of the trip.

“
This is a gas
run.”

“
To the city?”

“
Yep.”

“
It’s a dry well out there,
Red. It was slim pickings last year. This year it’s no pickings at
all.”

“
Maybe not,” Red drawled.
“My guess is there were stations with gas in their reserve tanks
when civilization shut down. If you can figure out how to power the
pumps with your ability, we may be up and running.”

“
I think you’re being too
optimistic, Red. That’s how my father died. He got in a fight at a
gas station. He was killed for a gallon of gas.”

“
How awful,” Red said. “I’m
sorry about that.”

A shadow of darkness came over Nate’s
normally cheerful face. Red thought he saw his companion’s jaw
clench, a fist curl, but in a flash, the young man was smiling
again. “My father got off easy compared to the rest of my family.
He was gone like that.” Nate snapped his fingers. “Died without
suffering.”

Red wasn’t sure what he should say—if
anything—so he simply walked beside Nate, letting the younger man
steer the conversation.

“
No offense, but I think
your mission is doomed before it begins,” Nate said.

“
It won’t hurt to
try.”

“
You’re the boss, Bossman,”
Nate shrugged. “I’ll give it a whirl, but don’t get your hopes
up.”

“
After a few hours of
walking, the buildings became closer together, the lots smaller.
Roofs sagged. Bricks had crumbled onto grass-choked sidewalks. A
coat of rust or grime coated everything manmade.

“
I remember when this street
was bumper-to-bumper traffic,” Red said wistfully. He pointed to a
decrepit Starbucks. The green mermaid on the logo used to be
beautiful. Now she looked sinister as the paint eroded with each
passing winter, each passing storm.

“
My wife and I used to bring
the kids here every Sunday morning.”

“
Nice,” Nate said, not
sounding all that interested.

The gas station Red used to frequent
stood at the corner opposite the Starbucks, kitty-corner from a
Walgreens, and he started there, but he planned to hit up as many
of the stations as he could. This area of town had a lot of
them.

The pavement around the dusty pumps had
buckled; dandelions and tufts of grass were poking their way up
through the cracks. He fiddled with the rubber hoses. They felt
kind of brittle, but only two of them were torn. The gas attendants
used to turn the pumps on from inside of the store, so he sent Nate
there to do his thing. Nate emerged a few minutes later, holding up
a box full of Mike & Ikes like a trophy.

“
Look what I found!” Nate
said with a full mouth. “Delectable chemical fake fruitiness—just
like I remember. Mmmm… want one?”

“
Quit horsing around. Find
the fuse box. Circuit breaker. Something useful.”

Together they found it in a little room
behind the checkout counter. After much experimenting, Nate figured
out how to power the gas pumps using his electrical generative
skills. “Now what?”

“
Hope for a gusher.” Red
said. “Now sit tight while I fill the containers.”

His plan panned out; the pump activated
when Nate did his number on the circuit box, and gas poured out of
the hose. After he filled all their gas cans, Red told Nate about
the next order of business. They’d use some of the gas to fill
vehicles and bring them back to Hewego.

“
Why?” Nate wanted to
know.

“
I hope you never know the
answer to that question, Nate. Look for something that can carry a
lot of people, like a bus or something. We also need a few with
speed.”

“
There’s a black ‘Vette on
the corner of Rothman and Wheelock.”

“
Perfect.”

The men resumed their walk, pulling the
full gas cans behind them in Red’s faithful Radio Flyer.

“
You know who I have my eye
on?” Nate said out of the blue.

“
Who?” Red tried not to
smile.

“
Blanche.”

“
She’s a smart
girl.”

“
Yeah. And she has big
baboombuhs.”

“
That’s always a
perk.”

“
Perk, ha! Good one, Red.”
He sighed deeply. “Only trouble is she doesn’t like younger
guys.”

“
How old are you
anyway?”

“
Seventeen.”

“
How old is
Blanche?”

“
Almost
nineteen.”

“
Wow.” Red tried not to
laugh at the younger man’s troubles. “I’m surprised she’s not using
a cane to assist her feeble old legs.”

They walked a while longer without
talking, but Nate was not the type to remain silent for
long.

“
You know what would be a
really cool ability?”

“
What?”

“
If I could shoot
thunderbolts out of my eyes, or the end of my fingertips.” He
spread his fingers. “I’d even settle for my fudge maker. KA-BAM!”
He bumped his pelvis forward as if lightning had just shot out of
his rear. “Electric Assman to the rescue!”

“
Uh, Nate…”

“
It could
happen.”

“
Shut-up and keep
pulling.”

“
Whatever you say,
Bossman.”

Chapter 14

Over the weeks to follow, Nate helped
Red with locating more fuel and recruiting additional vehicles for
the cause. Elizabeth busied herself studying the schematics of the
bunker, reading and re-reading the general’s notes, until she was
sure she had the location and layout of the main control room
committed to memory. By now she could recite the countdown
procedures by heart.

Red concentrated more on what would
happen
before
they entered the bunker, devising a way to
move a lot of people quickly on short notice. There were two
different entrances to the bunker. One was two miles from the
missile control room. The other was practically on top of
it.

Red and Elizabeth left the safety of
the cloaking device to check out the highway leading to the bunker.
Fallen trees blocked part of the route, so they spent a day
clearing the trunks off the road. A jackknifed semi-truck blocked
it further down the way. The truck’s gas tank was empty; Red
siphoned some from the car they were driving, hoping the semi would
start without diesel. The engine sputtered and popped, but it moved
just enough to open one lane of the four-lane road. Now, it would
be a seventy-mile straight shot from Hewego to the Galatians
Bunker.

They managed to find both entrances.
The main entrance, the one closest to Hewego, was located inside a
building on a commercial dairy farm. The other one was located in a
former bean field, disguised as part of a billboard advertisement
for baby food.

Weeds had overtaken the field, so they
parked the car on the side of the road and crossed the four-acre
field on foot until they stood underneath the advertisement of a
gigantic smiling infant.
Feed Your Baby Rainbows
, the sign
suggested. The bunker door, integrated into the huge metal
signpost, was barely detectable, even if you knew where to
look.

The general had given clear
instructions that they weren’t to open the doors until absolutely
necessary, for fear the energy spikes would be detected byg the
Celeruns, so they had to be content with simply finding the
doorways.

“
Do you really think
biospheres are down there?” Elizabeth asked. “The general’s notes
said that they could thrive for only so long without any human
intervention. It’s been over three years, Red. What if we get down
there and everything has shut down? What if all the animals and
plants have died? What if the air processors have
failed?”

“
Worry about what we can
change, Elizabeth, and don’t sweat the rest.”

“
Using my own words against
me,” she muttered. “Not fair.”

“
All is fair in love and
war,” Red said. “And this is war.”

“
And I love you,” she said,
standing on tiptoes to give him a kiss.

Red wished things were different, that
he could provide her with all the things he’d given Kay, but
somehow, he imagined Elizabeth wouldn’t want what Kay had wanted or
gotten. He didn’t know if Elizabeth had always had simple tastes,
but it was something he admired about her now.

They headed back to Hewego, barely
talking, because there wasn’t a whole lot left to say. He couldn’t
read minds, but he could pick up her anxiety about the days ahead
was getting worse.

The main problem, as Red saw it, was
the stubborn people of Hewego. He knew they’d never agree to leave
until they saw the aliens for themselves. He’d talked to Father Bob
about his assessment, and the clergyman completely agreed, but if
they waited too long to evacuate, it might be too late.

If he did convince the Hewegoans to
evacuate to Galatians Bunker, what would they do if the Celeruns
pursued? That’s why the cars he and Nate had brought back to Hewego
had to be in the best shape possible, but getting them to that
point wasn’t going to be easy.