Jigsaw World (11 page)

******

Tom pulled the RV up into the parking lot of
the always present Wal-Mart next to the other six RVs that were
‘camping out’ in the parking lot. As one of the few places that do
not hassle RVers for extended parking overnight, outside of an
expensive RV park, Tom had found that the standard Wal-Mart parking
lot was the center of the RVing social universe. If you were
looking for other
traveling
RVers, that was where you would go
to find them. In one of the parks, you may find that the person you
were talking to had put down roots.

Markus had put in some real time in his world
traveling about the continent in an RV, and he had told Tom some of
the workable shortcuts in the RV world, such as where you can get
away with dumping your black-water, and what sorts of deserted
spots are suitable for overnighting, and which ones will get you
rousted in the middle of the night by the authorities, or by the
owners of the property.

“
Welcome to the Catcall City
Walmart, Happy campers!” Tom announced. “Another of the thousands
of cities in Texas that doesn’t appear on our maps.”

“
Shouldn’t we be way out of Texas
by now?” Charla ventured. “We have been traveling for more than two
days since Sidney and I came on board, and I am quite sure that we
should have passed through Dallas and into western Louisiana or
Arkansas by now.”

Tom and George exchanged amused looks. They
had argued this point many times on this never-ending trip. As best
they understood, the State of Texas now contained an almost
infinite number of miles of road. Tom roughly estimated that he had
traveled nearly ten thousand miles since starting out on this
trip.

“
Welcome to the New Earth.” George
said. “You can travel all you please, but the destination may
always be out of reach. It is a good thing that the fun is in the
trip, and not in the destination.”

Even though Charla had been exposed to the
oddities of the road life for quite some time, and experienced it
with the group for more than two days, she didn’t seem to be able
to wrap her head around the idea that trip reality was very
malleable. She could see and accept the monsters, but the scenery
not obeying the rules bothered her.

“
Okay, everybody, let me go talk
to our neighbors, because I got the biggest dick.” Tom said.
“Markus doesn’t count. That’s not his real body.”

Tom got out and went to rap on the door of the
nearest RV. The man who opened the door said that his name was
Edwin, so Tom called him Bubba at every opportunity in their
conversation. Fortunately, the conversation was brief, and no
weapons fire was exchanged.

In a few minutes, Tom was back in the vehicle
with the scoop. It seemed that Bubba (AKA Edwin) was getting ready
to leave, and advised the group to follow suit. It seemed that
there was some sort of mass insanity taking place in this town.
Bubba had claimed that the town’s folk would be talking normally
one moment, and would start to rant and rave the next. During these
bouts of insanity, things would start happening, such as object
flying off of their resting places, and strange mass movements of
insects and other crawling things.

Edwin had also managed to get his hands on a
drawing that one of these afflicted Town’s people had drawn. When
Tom saw the drawing, he had a shock of awareness of what they faced
in this town. On the page were several shapes, including the broken
triangle with an open summoning spell written in Latin around its
periphery.

Anyone using that ritual would summon a demon
that was not bound by geometry or by name. Once the demon was
freed, he would bring a horde of others. The Summoner would subject
his entire world to a plague of demons.

As Tom recounted his visit with ‘Bubba’, the
RV next to them pulled out of the parking lots, and headed for the
road. Edwin might have been dumber than a bucket full of rocks, but
he was showing some rare common sense in leaving. Time for the
group to show a similar level of intelligence.

“
I suggest that we might want to
head out ourselves.” Tom proposed. “I don’t know of any good wards
against possession. I don’t know if any or all of us carry any form
of immunity to possession. I don’t know if a demon can kick Markus
out of that body and possess it. We should run from the danger we
don’t understand.”

“
Any against leaving raise your
hand. Unanimous vote to leave.” Markus joked. “I don’t think I want
to see if this body will hold three spirits, and eviction is no
fun.”

“
Alright then, let’s get some gas,
and head out.” Tom said. “We can postpone our Wal-Mart shopping for
the next town.”

George cranked up the RV, and started to move
toward the parking lot exit. A sign on the way into town advertised
the existence of a gas station about a half mile up the road, which
was also the way out of town and to the on ramp. George stopped at
the Stop sign at the exit, and turned right toward the
station.

Charla came to the front of the vehicle,
excited and wanting to show Tom something that she had drawn on a
notepad. What Tom saw drawn there was a Circled pentagram with a
number of either Arabic or Hebraic letters or
characters.

“
This is a general protection
against magic that was in the Keys of Solomon.” Charla said. “I
remember it, because I was going to get a tattoo of it on my leg. I
think it should protect us from possession if anything
will.”

“
Why not?” Tom said. “Why don’t
you draw that on everybody, just in case it works?”

Charla got happily to work, starting to draw
the relatively simple symbol on George. Everyone else was busy
prepping their weaponry and watching the surroundings. It took all
of two minutes for the RV to reach the gas station, and George got
out to gas up the RV, since his drawing was already
done.

This was one of those self-serve stations with
the outdoor ATM style payment stations, so George would not have to
go inside to see who or whatever manned the cash registers, unless
he overpaid at the stations. He fed enough Wal-Mart cash into the
station to buy a hundred gallons of fuel, so he would have no such
problem as picking up the cash inside.

While George was pumping fuel, Charla
completed the process of drawing the warding symbols for everyone
in Sharpie ink. No one quite knew what to do about Bailey, so
eventually she just took the drawing she had, and slipped it into a
pouch that she hung on his collar. Bailey seemed to be happy enough
to receive his new ornament, as long as the charming Charla deigned
to touch him.

George had pumped maybe eighty gallons of fuel
into the RV when it happened. The air suddenly obtained a
substantial chill, from an eighty odd degree warm night to
something that felt decidedly close to the freezing point. A full
moon was out, haloed with that vaporous effect that thin clouding
has on the moon. Even with the clouds, one could almost read a
newspaper by the moonlight.

George saw a moving figure coming towards him
out of the corner of his eyes. Turning away from the pump and
toward the figure, he saw that it was a slender man, perhaps six
feet two inches tall with dark hair, and maybe 175 pounds soaking
wet. George took an instant dislike to the guy. The man’s facial
muscles were jerking and twitching randomly, as though there was a
limited epilepsy or syndrome happening just to his face.

The man began to jabber something that might
have been some sort of language that George had never heard before.
It almost sounded like there was some sort of structure to the
sounds, but he could not recognize a single one of the ‘words’ in
the conversation. When the man came within six feet of George,
several things began to happen.

First, in the concrete at George’s feet, a jet
black plant forced its way out of the cement, and grew into a foot
tall plant with a jet-black bloom at its crown, all within ten
seconds. Second, when the man stopped in his position close to
George, the RV door slapped the side of the RV as Sidney threw it
back and came out of the RV with his sniping rifle in hand. Third,
the man smiled at George, and started to speak to him in cultured
English.

Tom watched with interest the animated
discussion that George had with the man, with Sidney standing by
with his rifle. George had a similar build to the man, slender and
about six feet tall, but as he was slightly shorter, Tom was
treated to the sight of George speaking to the man as he matched
stares, having to peer slightly upward into the dark eyes of the
dark haired man. George took on a slightly feminine air in this
context, with his long and stringy hair being tossed
about.

Tom decided that he should go out and listen
to the raving. He figured that he could hang back and avoid most of
the problems and the danger, while still giving the appearance of
assisting George with the situation. He picked up the Moon-Blade
Knife, and strapped it in its holster to his belt, before he walked
out of the RV’s door.

When Tom got to where George was yelling at
the possibly crazy man while Sidney watched and fingered his gun,
he could tell that George was just about at the end of his
patience. He got that ‘one more time’ look in his eyes.

“
Are you going to tell me how many
of you there really are in this miserable excuse for a town?”
George asked. “Give me more nonsense, and we are done!”

“
I didn’t lie to you, human.” The
man said. “There are millions of us, enough to possess every one of
you humans that we can catch. You can do nothing to stop us. You
will die, and we will take this world from the light of
God.”

As the man completed saying this, three
shadows broke away from the tree line next to the station. The fuel
tank had finally finished filling and the hose had shut off. George
took the seconds to put the hose away, and replace the gas cap. The
three people that had walked up, two men and a woman, stood in a
semicircle behind the obviously possessed man, and seemed prepared
to attack him.

“
Sidney, why don’t you shoot me
this asshole?” George asked.

Sidney nodded, and raised the barrel of the
rifle to sight it on the man. There was a small smell like burning
solder, and the rifle barrel drooped and dripped away, to puddle at
Sidney’s feet.

“
I told you that you could do
nothing to stop us.” The Asshole started to say, just as Sidney’s
ham-hock of a fist made contact with his jaw. There was a flash of
bright, white light, and when Tom’s eyes cleared, he say a very
confused looking man rubbing his newly bruised jaw.

“
Where the Hell am I?” Asked the
man. “Who are you people?”

“
You are standing beside my RV,
these are my friends, you are an idiot who got possessed by demons,
and I don’t know these three.” Tom said. “What are you three doing
here?”

The three answered him. It turned out that
they were Bobby, Darrin and Vera, and they were residents of this
town until it became demon central. Then they became demon hunters.
They were the only non-possessed people in town that they were
aware of, and the only way they had found to defeat the demons was
to cut their hosts’ heads off. They were very interested in what
had happened when Sidney had hit this guy. They had lost several
friends to possession when they had made contact with the
possessed.

“
Far as we can tell, it is because
we are all warded by our little Inkings here.” Tom said, as he
showed them his key of Solomon version of the pentagram. They all
huddled around and oohed and ahhed over the drawing. Tom called out
Charla, and set her to work drawing the temporary tattoos on their
guests.

Charla worked quickly on the inks, and Tom
questioned the guests on their immediate plans. The two guys were
adamant about clearing the town of the demons, now that they had an
easy way to exorcise them, and a protection that was easy to
distribute to all the newly Unpossessed to keep them from being
retaken.

Vera was just as certain that she wanted to
skip town as soon as possible. Tom had scouted the female territory
under question. While Vera was beyond question north of Mature, she
still maintained a very nice body which promised its share of
delights for the modern jaded male. He certainly didn’t object to
her tagging along. It had been a long time since Vicki, and that
stingy Sidney
did
not
want to share Charla!

A few short minutes later, it was settled. The
two lads would return to the fight to evict the demons from the
town, with King Solomon on their side, and Vera would hop the RV
and go with the gang on the eternal road trip, and would hopefully
be hopping Tom soon as well.

Five minutes later, the RV was cruising down
the interstate once again, with the newly expanded group on board.
Tom almost nostalgically thought about the beginning of the trip,
when it was only him and Bailey, after Nancy and Susan had fallen
to the darkness. His company had grown over the last several days.
Now it consisted of him, George, Sidney, Markus, Charla, Vera, and
Bailey.

Tom thought about the strange and nebulous
mission of this little group, and about the group itself. Through a
series of less than instructive rumors and dreams, and in light of
an even more suspect set of conversations, the group seemed to be
embarked upon a venture that was loosely pointed toward the
objective of fixing the world, and returning it to something
approaching a normalcy such as the majority of the world already
believed existed.