A Man Overboard Page 14

  The direction of the breeze shifted, and the glorious smell of bacon erased every other thought. There was pig to be eaten.

  As he approached the front door, he noticed the screen was torn in a few places, the wood framing it old and splintered, paint faded and chipped. But the sweet aroma of pig being burnt on the altars of Ma’s Atlantis carried him through the door like one of those old cartoons, his toes wiggling above the ground. He didn’t even look behind him to make sure this wasn’t some sort of trap, armies of black, SVR bears closing on his location.

  “Hi there,” came a girl’s voice.

  But Jack’s eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darker interior of the restaurant. “Ma?” he asked.

  Then a young girl, probably in her late teens, stepped forward and into the light pouring through the screen door behind him. She smiled, the flannel shirt she was wearing rolled up to her elbows, an apron covering her faded jeans, her dark hair in pigtails.

  “If by ‘Ma’ you mean Ma’s great-granddaughter, then yes, that’s me,” she said through an innocent smile. She looked him up and down. “You look like you could use a glass of water, mister.”

  “Do you have ice?”

  She laughed. “Go grab a seat, and I’ll get ya the tallest glass we have.”

  “Thanks.” He stepped into the belly of the place. There were picnic tables set up along the windows on the street side and smaller tables against the other. He counted six customers, and none looked like they’d just come from the former Soviet Union. Though, without a red star stamped to a big fur-laced hat, he wasn’t exactly sure how he’d be able to tell.

  He took a seat by the window and tried ignoring the inquisitive glances coming from the small gathering of local diners. He set the backpack on the bench and against the wall beside him. Then he took out his wallet and counted out his cash, hoping this place hadn’t made it onto Homeland’s list of business institutions worthy of receiving their “how to spot a terrorist” flyer. He wasn’t going to use a credit card, though he was pretty sure a place like this wouldn’t accept them anyway. No doubt a terrorist organization for sure. Ma’s—yummy, homegrown terrorism since 1890. Cash only.

  The girl walked over and set a tall glass of ice water down on the table in front of him. The glass was sweating, hundreds of water drops sliding down and gathering in a ring around its base. It looked to Jack like it had been scooped from the Fountain of Youth itself, and he wondered if there was really a halo around it.

  “You’re not related to Ponce de Leon, are you?” If it was scooped from such a place and Ma had inherited the secret location from her ancestors, the glass might cost more than he had.

  A look of confusion crossed her face.

  “Never mind.”

  “Would you like something to eat?” she asked instead, not pursuing what had to be one of the strangest questions ever asked of her.

  “Uh…” He looked around for a menu.

  She smiled again. “You ain’t from around here, are you? What would you like?”

  He shrugged, and his sore shoulders cursed him for it. “You have burgers?”

  “You bet. Cheese?”

  “Please.”

  “Okey dokey.” And she spun away.

  When he went to pick up the dripping glass, it almost slipped right through his fingers. If it had, he would’ve licked the puddle up off the picnic table, broken glass, splinters and all. The ice-cold well water coated his throat and splashed into his stomach to choruses of singing angels.

  Ten minutes later, the young girl was back and sliding a huge plate toward him. The burger was the biggest he’d ever seen, and it was buried beneath a mountain of fries. He could make out a sliver of green canoe beneath the salty crosshatching and knew it must be a pickle.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “I’ll get you another glass of water.” She took the empty glass away.

  Once he finished the meal, which was beyond earthly description after tuna fish straight from the can, he made his way to an old register that could have been used by Ma over a century ago. A guy with a beard stood behind it, waiting for him. The girl’s father, no doubt.

  “Everything okay, mister?” he asked politely.

  “Perfect. What do I owe you?”

  “Five bucks.”

  He’d eaten the equivalent of two fast food “value” meals and was fairly certain this had been real, organic meat. “I’ll have to come here more often,” he commented.

  The man smiled and took a five from him. “What brings you up this way? Looks like you walked from wherever it is you came from.” There was just a hint of suspicion hidden in his voice.

  “I was staying at a cabin for a couple days. Must’ve left the interior lights on in the car, ‘cause now the battery’s dead. And of course my phone died, and I forgot my charger…”

  The man had no reason to doubt him and, given that he was a terrorist himself, probably wouldn’t be calling the state police on him just for being slightly suspicious. Though if he knew there was a sawed-off shotgun in his backpack, it was possible he might consider it. But the hand-written sign on the wall behind him that was advertising raw milk told Jack that he could’ve been carrying an M-16 and this guy wouldn’t have cared in the least.

  “Isn’t that stuff illegal?” Jack asked, nodding to the poster.

  The man laughed and pulled a revolver from beneath the counter. “The FDA comes in here, and they’ll be in for a surprise.”

  Yup, terrorist. Raw milk was the new plutonium.

  “That senator,” the guy began, “the son of the guy who’s running for president again…”

  “I know him,” Jack said. And indeed he did. As someone who relied on independent news sources, he was very familiar with both father and son and the bill that the cashier was about to reference.

  “Yeah, well, he’s taking it to the FDA. Finally, someone is. I’ll tell you, I don’t know what the heck is happening to this country, but if I get some gun-toting FDA bureaucrat showing up here without reasonable cause, a warrant or nothin’, I’m gonna exercise my constitutional right and tell him to get the heck off my property.”

  “Amen,” Jack said, though he knew that pulling a gun on a federal officer these days would only get the guy an early special on pine pajamas.

  “Yeah, he tried passing a bill that would take away the FDA’s ability to carry firearms. I mean, just what in the heck are they doing carrying guns, anyway? This country has lost its freakin’ mind! The FDA says it’s illegal to advertise the health benefits of vitamins and supplements, but it’s okay for pharmaceuticals to make whatever claim they want, even though prune juice ain’t ever killed anyone! Did you know that FDA-approved drugs have killed over a million people since 1998?”

  Jack did know.

  “Well, he’s trying to stop the FDA from blocking scientific publications that tell how nutrients protect against disease and all. Four court orders have declared it a violation of the First Amendment, but they just keep doing it, and the government does nothing to stop ‘em!” He leaned forward. “You know what my theory is?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Big Pharma’s in bed with the government, and they want us all sick and dying. They don’t care about healing nothing. They want profits. The sicker we are, the richer they get. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Either that or Washington’s just gone bonkers. I mean, there’s a reason that we’re the fattest and unhealthiest country, you know? And it probably ain’t proper of me to say, but look at the countries with socialized medicine—and I ain’t sayin’ we should have that here—but those countries focus on prevention. The governments of those countries don’t wanna pay for your clogged arteries! That’s why they ban all the crap we have over here! Over there sickness bankrupts, but here, sickness makes a bunch of people rich! Why else would they make alternative medicine—medicine proven to be more effective than the drugs they wanna pump into you for a thousand bucks a pop—illegal? Yeah, that’s right,
let’s use aborted baby DNA and GMOs in our food, let’s dump chlorine and fluoride into our water, let’s inject ourselves with mercury and formaldehyde, but hey…don’t you freakin’ dare sell raw milk or tell anyone that prune juice can cure constipation!”

  “I hear ya,” Jack replied, and it could have been Stacey talking to him.

  The man laughed. “You got me all worked up.”

  “Most people aren’t even aware of this stuff.”

  “And ain’t that the most frustrating part? You know they want to make it illegal for kids to work on the farm? You know what that’ll do to the few farmers left in this country? Between Monsanto suing for theft of property whenever their Franken-corn finds itself destroying an organic farm, and the FBI shooting farmers’ pigs, there ain’t gonna be a farm left in this country. And ya know what? I think that’s exactly what they want.”

  Jack nodded. “Well, hopefully those bills will pass, and we’ll be saved from this Nazi tyranny.”

  He nodded vigorously. “You said it, man.”

  “Well, keep your chin up, and your gun loaded, I guess.”

  “Yeah, same to you, mister. Thanks for your business, too.”

  Jack slapped the counter. “See you later.” Terrorist. He opened the door, stepping back into the parking lot. He took his full belly over to the gas station and wasn’t surprised to find that it was the type you’d expect to see in a horror movie, the last outpost where the old, decrepit guy in overalls was chewing a long piece of grain and warning you away from “here.” But the guy at this gas station wasn’t that old and, like the people from next door, wasn’t in overalls either. When he saw Jack strolling up to the two pumps, he came out of the supply shop to meet him, no trident strapped to his back.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Jack looked around. “I need to get to Connecticut.”

  The man chuckled as he ran a calloused hand through his unruly hair. “On foot? That’ll take you a while.”

  “Thinking of hitchhiking,” he said. “But I’d like to get on the right road.”

  The man considered him. “The sun’s gonna be goin’ down soon. I wouldn’t recommend walking the roads at night. No streetlights. You’d likely get run over.”

  “Or shot by a bear.” Had he really just said that?

  The gas station attendant looked at him funny.

  Yup.

  The guy pressed ahead, uncertain. “I don’t think you have to worry about that out here. Maybe in Montana they have bears packin’ heat…”

  Jack smiled, thinking that he was truly losing his mind. “That’s good to know. So which way you think I should be heading?” He squinted up and down the road.

  “Well, I guess you’d want to find your way to 84.” He sighed, thinking. “Wish I could give you a lift, but…” He waved at the station and shop behind him.

  Business was booming. “I appreciate it, but I’m okay walking.” Though he wasn’t. In fact, he was eyeing the pickup parked behind the supply store. Its windows were down.

  “Well, then keep walking down this road until you get to the next. Go right, and just keep walking.” He spit on the ground. “I really hope someone picks you up.”

  “Me, too. Thanks.” He turned away, heading for the road again.

  Once the gas station was out of sight, he left the road and double-backed through the woods, coming up behind the supply store.

  Exiting the woods, he crept up to the pickup and stuck his head through its open window. No key in the ignition, and he was more certain than ever that people only did that in the movies. But he checked beneath the floor matt and above the visor just in case. The gods weren’t making this easy.

  He snuck away from the only vehicle in the back lot and went to the back door of the shop. It was standing wide open, and he could hear music playing from within, the guy he’d met whistling along to the country tune from an unseen position in the front of the store. Zeus in a cowboy hat and flannel? This was definitely not Asgard. Jack stepped into the store, trying to think of any reason he could give the guy if he were to catch him. Unable to come up with one, he thought it best not to get caught. The back was just a small storage room with an open doorway leading to the rest of the store, and right there, beside the doorway, was a row of hooks—one of which had a set of keys dangling from it.

  Jack quietly pulled on a pair of latex gloves from the backpack and crawled to the keys. He slowly wrapped his hands around them and lifted them off their perch without so much as a jingle. Once he was back to the open door, he sorted through the keys until finding one that declared FORD. He slid it off the ring, placed the remainder of the keys on the ground, and headed for the truck. He opened its faded door and slid the key into the ignition. He placed his backpack on the bench seat and then pulled the gearshift into neutral. He couldn’t alert the man to his borrowing of the truck right from the get-go or some backwoods sheriff would be pulling him over in minutes, all hopes of getting to Connecticut erased just as fast. After a quick look around, he leaned all his weight against the doorframe and used his aching legs to push the truck forward. Thankfully, it was already facing the road. He just needed the guy’s face to stay buried in a fishing magazine and his music loud enough to drown out the rolling tires.

  The truck moved, and his legs screamed louder. But twenty yards later, he had the truck turning out onto the road. He braced himself for the blast of a gunshot that would rip through his back and stop all this, but none came. He jumped behind the wheel, knocking the backpack to the floor, and pulled the door closed. As the truck rolled downhill in neutral, it began picking up speed, and soon the supply shop was behind him. Looking in the rearview mirror, there was no indication that anyone had seen him. He started to breathe again.

  At the bottom of the hill, he brought the engine to life.

  25

  Rather than taking 84 all the way to Connecticut, Jack followed signs to Allentown instead. Five minutes into the city, he pulled into a gas station. He paid cash for ten gallons of gas and a Connecticut map after using the bathroom to flush the phone down the toilet. He got directions to the nearest Greyhound from the cashier, relieved that it wasn’t far. And by eight o’clock, he was walking into the station, leaving the pickup behind and trying to soothe his conscience by reassuring himself that the relocation was justified. But by the time he had a ticket to Hartford in his hand, the truck was as good as forgotten, expunged from his thinking by the high tide of his own concerns. Like the wrapped present he was carrying under his arm.

  It wasn’t worth trying to smuggle the shotgun onto the bus, so he’d put on the coat Johnson packed for him and left the backpack beneath the seat of the truck. Even if Johnson was wrong about this whole thing being over with, he wasn’t about to get in a shootout with agents while squeezed onto a bus full of innocent civilians. The pistol, however, was a different story. He couldn’t leave that in the truck because it was registered under his name. It wouldn’t take any great sleuth to pin the truck’s theft on him, which probably wasn’t a huge offense, but one that would beg questions he was sure the CIA would much rather remain unanswered. If the CIA, or whoever was behind all this, was willing to forget the whole operation, then Jack didn’t want to give them any reason to reconsider. He would go to his grave with his lips sealed if his silence would ensure the safety of his family (though if something had happened to Joseph, or if Stacey ended up being an innocent victim in all this, he would dedicate the rest of his life to shouting his story from the mountaintops). But first, he had to find them, and that meant concealing the pistol in a way that wouldn’t raise suspicion. He hadn’t been to a bus station in years and wasn’t sure whether or not there were now metal detectors and dogs or radiation-emitting cameras showcasing all your most personal business, so on his way to Allentown, he’d stopped at a Staples and got all he needed to secure the Smith & Wesson in a cardboard box beneath the wrappings of birthday cakes and balloons. Had the post office been open at that hour, he wou
ld’ve just sent the gun back to his neighbor along with a note. But as it was, he would be glad to have a weapon with him in Avon. He wasn’t sure what to expect, and if confronting an SVR-CIA double agent, he would certainly prefer to be armed.

  The bus ride to Hartford was just over two hundred miles and would take eight hours. According to the map, he would be dropped off ten miles east of Avon, and he could walk that if he needed to. One of the few trips made from Allentown to Hartford during the day was scheduled to leave at 8:55, so he had only to wait half an hour before departing.

  By the time he was seated on the bus with the “present” riding on the empty seat beside him, he was looking forward to the eight-hour trip and the sleep it might allow. He was more exhausted now than he could ever remember being, and he figured that, whatever was going to happen tomorrow, he should probably be awake for it. He wrapped his finger around the bow, ensuring that no one could steal the package without waking him up, and closed his eyes. He was already asleep when the bus rolled out onto the street, the sun slipping below the earth and plunging everything into darkness.