A Life On Fire (4 page)

   “I need a fucking drink,” he said, pulling into a gas station.

Gerald looked around the gas station, more than a little confused as to why it was empty. No, empty wasn’t the right word. The shelves and coolers were as full as one would expect them to be.

   Deserted.

   No one, including a clerk, was present. It obviously wasn’t unheard of to be the only customer in a store, but the only
person
? That was a little odd.

   “Hello?” Gerald called. His voice echoed slightly. He thought the situation was bizarre and didn’t want to spend any more time there than necessary. He walked to the cooler, grabbed the closest case of beer, and started walking out. Before exiting, he looked on the counter for a spot to leave and take change. Rather than bring on bad karma over a case of beer, he left a five and a ten on the counter, thought again, added another ten, and grabbed three packs of cigarettes before exiting.

   Why hadn’t there been anyone in the store? It couldn’t have been closed. The door was unlocked and all the lights were turned on. Come to think of it, there hadn’t been anyone on the street when Mr. Holman got hit, either. What the hell was going on?

   Gerald drove home slowly, taking a long route, trying to spot any sign of other people. For several miles, he saw nothing, and began to wonder if maybe he’d been the one who was hit and killed by the truck. Maybe this was Hell, or limbo of some sort. For a moment, he began to wish he’d been a more religious, or at least spiritual, person. Maybe then all this would make sense.

   About the time he was wondering how to pray, he turned a corner and the street was full of cars. Moving cars, being driven by people. The sidewalk was populated with what appeared to be a normal amount of pedestrians. Essentially, everything had turned back to normal.

   Still shaken, he took a road leading out of town, into the county area. He needed to think. He didn’t know why, as no amount of thought could make sense of the situation but, ironically, thinking seemed the only sensible thing to do.

   Ahead of him, two old guys on motorcycles came toward him in the other lane. They cruised along, just a couple of old bikers. Gerald wasn’t really a motorcycle guy, but he thought they were cool enough. When they were maybe four car lengths away, a bird swooped down in front of Gerald. He tensed up, thinking he was going to hit it, but the bird banked and swerved to the left. As Gerald let out his breath, thankful for the near-miss, the bird flew straight into the inside biker’s face. The man screamed, throwing both hands up, trying to pry the bird from his eyes. As a result, his balance was thrown off, and the bike flopped onto its side, directly in the path of the other biker. Gerald’s jaw and stomach dropped simultaneously as the second biker ran over the first biker, before wrecking his own motorcycle directly in the path of Gerald’s car.

   He wrenched the steering wheel to the right, running his car off the road and into a corn field. The small car went headfirst into the dirt, impossibly stuck. The last thing he remembered was the seatbelt grabbing his chest.

Chapter 9

“Don’t move.”

   “Who said that?” Gerald asked. He looked around, not seeing anyone.

   “You wrecked your car. You’re not hurt, but you need to wake up slowly, on your own.”

   “Okay, seriously, who the hell is saying that?” The voice did not speak again, but laughed softly. Gerald knew that laugh. “Tracy?”

   After a long silence, Gerald heard, “Well, sort of.”

   “But, you . . . you’re . . .”

   “I know. That’s why sort of and not yes,” the voice, supposedly Tracy, said. The memories of the forest, the fire, the creatures violating Tracy flooded Gerald’s mind.

   “Last night, in the forest—”

   “That wasn’t me.”

   “But—”

   “It wasn’t me that you saw. I’d never do anything to hurt you like that.”

   “Really? You wouldn’t?” Gerald said, regretful for the accusation, but also relieved he’d finally gotten to say it. Tracy didn’t respond. “I . . . I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

   “No. You have no reason to apologize . . .” Tracy trailed off. “But it wasn’t me in the forest. Regardless of anything else I did or didn’t do, that wasn’t me.”

   Gerald took his time responding, taking care not to say anything else he’d regret. Finally, he said, “I know,” then added, “I miss you.”

   “I need to go now.”

   “No . . .”

   “I don’t have a choice,” Tracy said. Gerald could sense she was fading, but heard her say, “But you do.”

Chapter 10

Why do I smell pancakes?
Gerald thought, slowly regaining consciousness. He opened one eye, then the other, and lifted his head. Not pancakes. Maple syrup. “Oh shit.” He immediately realized the smell was not syrup, but antifreeze, and remembered he’d wrecked his car. Not really much of a mechanic, he knew a little about cars, enough to know the syrup smell meant antifreeze was leaking onto something hot and that probably meant the radiator, or at least a hose, was destroyed. It also meant his car wouldn’t be going anywhere for awhile. He clicked the button to release his seat belt and slammed into the steering wheel.

   The car’s frame was bent slightly around the door, forcing him to climb out the window. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” he said to the wrecked (and likely totaled) car. From somewhere in his head, a voice said,
Bet you wish you’d taken Mr. Holman’s double-knife a little more seriously now, don’t you?
Gerald laughed, then remembered Mr. Holman splattered all over the road. Whatever he was going to do, it didn’t include hanging around here.

   Ahead, strewn across the road, were the two wrecked motorcycles and what was left of the riders. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but it had apparently been long enough for five enormous turkey vultures to smell the bikers, find them, and start dining. Though he’d always thought vultures were interesting creatures, the way they plunged their heads into the men’s bodies and tore off messy hunks of meat was nothing short of repulsive.

   Gerald opened the trunk and took out his emergency kit backpack. His office had gone through disaster training and each employee was issued a backpack. They contained things like flashlights, first aid kits, foil blankets, even a hard-hat. He tossed the hard-hat back into the trunk, but kept the rest. He also took the tire iron and decided to get the beer. He couldn’t fit the case into his pack, but managed to get nearly all the cans put in separately.

   After packing all his supplies, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. Despite having lived in the area his entire life, he had no idea where he was. Given the day’s events, he didn’t find this all that surprising.

   He took a final look in his car and saw his cell phone on the passenger seat. He wondered how he’d missed it before, grabbed it, and remembered it was supposed to have some sort of GPS feature. This was the sort of thing he would have made fun of before, but it seemed like it might be useful now. He opened the phone and flipped through menus until he found the GPS. After activating it, he waited a few moments for it to load. After nearly twenty seconds, the generic map on the phone’s screen disappeared, replaced by a large question mark. Several seconds after that, the question mark disappeared, and a skull and crossbones appeared. That couldn’t be a good sign.

   He pocketed the phone and started walking. He’d started in the direction of the wrecked bikers, but once he got a look at what he’d previously thought to be vultures, he went the other way. The bird creatures were huge, had black bodies and red heads like vultures, but their faces were reptilian. They seemed familiar to Gerald, but he couldn’t quite figure it out. They certainly didn’t look like anything he’d seen at a zoo, unless maybe a vulture and a crocodile had gotten together and mated rather than killing one another. The offspring from such a union couldn’t be any uglier than the birds devouring the bikers. Whatever they were, staying away from them seemed like a pretty damned good idea.

Several miles down the road, Gerald noticed he hadn’t encountered any cars. He’d given up on trying to make sense of the day’s events and was content trying to find his house. The thing was, that was seeming less and less likely to him. He’d lived around here for thirty-two years, his entire life. As a kid, his friends had been spread throughout the county area. In high school, he and those same friends had made a lifestyle of cruising all the back roads aimlessly. He’d had a paper route, for Christ’s sake. How was it possible to walk so long without seeing anything he recognized?

   He stopped and sat down in the middle of the road. This was all too much. What was that expression, that it was always better to do something than nothing? Fuck that. Sometimes not doing shit was exactly the right thing to do. “I’ll drink to that,” Gerald said, and cracked open a beer from his pack. It wasn’t exactly cold anymore, but he was thirsty and fed up with this nonsense. He drained the first beer quickly, and chased it with another. If this shit was reality, he was content to spend as little time sober and experiencing it as possible.

   “You know what?” Gerald said antagonistically, “I’m gonna have another cigarette, too. No, I’m gonna have two of them!” He pulled two from the pack, but felt stupid and put one of them back before lighting them. About an hour, five beers, and half a pack of smokes later, Gerald passed out in the middle of the road.

A naked man sat cross-legged in the road facing away from Gerald. The man’s arms were above his head, bent at the elbows, with his hands together.

   “Hello,” the man said as Gerald opened his eyes.

   “Hello,” Gerald responded.

   “I should apologize.”

   “For what?” Gerald said, confused.

   “For chasing you earlier.”

   “Chasing me?” Gerald said, and all of a sudden, the voice grew eerily familiar.

   “Yes. My behavior was grossly inappropriate.”

   “Mr. Holman?”

   “Ah, you finally remembered my name.”

   Gerald was dumbfounded. “What the hell are you doing here?”

   Mr. Holman lowered his arms and turned his upper body to face Gerald. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

   “Ha-ha,” Gerald said, smirking. “I saw you get hit by a truck.”

   “Uh-huh.”

   “And now you’re sitting here.”

   “Uh-huh.”

   “That’s not exactly normal, is it?”

   Mr. Holman took off his glasses, produced a cloth from nowhere and cleaned the lenses. “How much shit that you’ve seen in the last few days would you regard as normal?”

   “Fair enough.” Gerald sat up and ran his hands over his face and through his hair. He coughed a few times and picked his cigarette pack up from the road. Shaking one out for himself, he looked at Mr. Holman and offered him one.

   “No thanks,” Mr. Holman said, shaking his head. “I’m trying to take better care of myself this time around.”

   Gerald nodded, said “Good for you,” then lit his. He drew deeply, exhaled, and looked around again, laughing.

   “What’s so funny?” Mr. Holman said.

   “Just realized I slept in the middle of the road.”

   “I was chasing you with a pair of scissors and got hit by a truck. Now we both have something to laugh about.”

   Gerald looked at Mr. Holman uncomfortably and pulled a beer from his pack, thought twice, and put it back. “You know where I can find something to drink? All I have is beer.”

   “I’ll show you where you can get some water. Will that do?”

   “Yeah. I’d murder somebody for a cup of coffee, though,” Gerald said, smirking as he realized his faux paux. Mr. Holman either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

   “None of that here, I’m afraid. I could probably get us some breakfast, though.”

   “Breakfast, huh? I take it that it’s still morning?”

   “Time doesn’t really mean much here. I said breakfast only because you just woke up.”

   “Okay. What kind of breakfast were you thinking?”

   “I really don’t know. I don’t think I’ve been here much longer than you.”

   “Before we get going, any chance you could tell me where we are?”

   “We’re in the middle of the road.”

   “Don’t be smug. You know what I mean.”

   “Don’t think of it as where. It’s more of a mindset.”

   Gerald’s eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

   “Again, I ask you, how many things have made sense as of late?”

   Gerald thought on this for a minute. “Okay, point taken. How do I get home?”

   “Right now, it’s not about getting home.”

   “Then what is it about?”

   “You’re overthinking it. Worry about right now.”

   “Overthinking it? All I want to know is how to get home.”

   “Why?”

   “Why? Why?! Um, maybe because I have a job. Maybe because I don’t like sleeping in the fucking street. What the fuck do you mean, why?”

   “I think that’s enough philosophy for now. Come on. Let’s go get something to eat.”

   “Okay, you’re on. Where are we headed?”

   “I told you, it’s not about where.”

   “Right. Well, lead the way.” Gerald shouldered his backpack. He started to clear the cans off the road but decided there wasn’t really much point. “Think there’s any chance of finding a Denny’s? I could really go for a Grand Slam— Wait a minute. If you haven’t been here any longer than me, how do you know so damn much about all this?” When Mr. Holman didn’t respond, Gerald looked around, unable to find him.

   “Hey, where the hell did you go? And what about breakfast?” Though irritated, Gerald got the idea he was supposed to walk, and that maybe doing something would be better than doing nothing.

Road.

   Trees.

   More road.

   More trees.

   Despite the inherent weirdness of wherever (
it’s not about where
) he was, the scenery was pretty dull. At first, the normalcy had seemed odd, but now, just dull.