Mad Dogs (17 page)

30

Gray fog lit the beach where I stood on Day Four. Morning tide rolled steel colored waves to shore. Our stolen Jeep sat on packed sand. I could see about fifty yards up the sloping beach to the scrub grass beside the highway. The chill made me shiver. Every inhale smelled of wet sand and cold ocean, each exhale birthed a dying cloud.

In the fog on the highway, a car door slammed.

Car motor
: purring away.

Out of the fog walked a lone figure in a long coat.

Suddenly I forgot I was achy, cold, hungry and tired.

Zane and Russell took my flanks.

I said: “Target one unknown standing on the highway turnoff.”

“'Xactly,” said Zane.

“So it's real,” said Russell.

“‘
Real'
equals what we all see.”

“Man, I hope you're right,” said Russell.

“Victor, with me,” said war boss Zane. “Russell, boots and saddles.”

Russell ran to the SUV.

Zane and I fanned out so one machinegun burst couldn't drop us both as we marched toward the highway.

“What the hell you two doing down there?” yelled the specter.

A woman: an
old
woman. She wore a tan raincoat and a plastic rain cap tied over her shellacked black hair. Wrinkles mapped her chalk face with its gash of ruby. Her pale hands curled like bird's claws as she stood on graveled apron beside the highway.

“Looking at the ocean,” said Zane as we reached her.

“Why?” Three shopping bags with loop handles and a combat sized black shoulder purse waited on the gravel behind her. “Never mind. Which bus?”

“Excuse me?”

“Which…
bus?
”

Zane frowned. “Our bus is… blue?”

“Like that matters,” she said. “Especially if you're dilly dallying down on the beach when it comes. You're either on the bus or in the fog.

“Atlantic City picks up over there.” Fog swirled to reveal two women standing further up the road. “The N J double-M stops right here.”

“The N J—”

Her waving hand shushed me. “OK, it's got some fancy schmansy new name, but it's still the North Jersey Mega Mall. You two taking the motel deal for the night?”

Luck is recognizing your chances.

“How far—how long is the bus ride to the Mall?” I asked.

“Ninety minutes, though in this damn fog… Can't see nothing for nothing.”

“Too bad,” said Zane. I caught his frown.

“How does this work?” I said. “The rest of… our family, we parked off the highway where we wouldn't get hit until—”

“More of you down there?” The bird woman squinted into the fog.

“
Brother
,” I said, “go have… have Uncle Sam drive you all up here.”

“If your uncle's coming too, there's a pull-off just up the road. Put ten bucks under your wiper, the county road crew guys let you park there couple days.”

As he hurried down the beach to our car, Zane said: “Don't leave without us.”

Bird woman tapped my shoulder. “Stick with Bernice, you'll be fine.”

“Counting on it,” I said. “Do you work for the bus?”

“Hell no,” she said. “Then I'd have to let things happen their way.”

Bernice scoffed at our lack of preparedness, gave us shopping bags to fill with the gobs of loot our GODS bags clearly wouldn't hold. Other riders joined us. Retired couples. Mom and Aunt with a chattering 20ish gonna-be a bride; they smelled of hairspray. A Korean woman.

As Russell walked back from ditching the SUV, the Atlantic City bus wheeled out of the fog. Casino posters covered its metal. A dozen gamblers scurried on board. That bus rolled away with them and left us still standing by the side of the road.

Our silver bus lumbered off the highway ten minutes after the gamblers left.

“Don't hand me your money!” shouted Bernice as she shaped our meager crowd into a ragged boarding line. “We'll do tickets on board. Grab a seat, Honey. Nobody wants to be the one who holds us up.”

We five filled the back rows.

“This better be better,” grumbled Russell.

“We're safer where we got tickets than in a stolen car,” I said. “Hiding in here, in the crowd… We break our trail of crimes. We're so low profile we disappear.”

Zane sniffed his clothes. “We're awful ripe for public transportation.”

“We need to stretch out and get real sleep,” said Hailey.

Eric nodded.

Our silver bus hummed through fog as Bernice worked her way down the aisle.

“Edna, you got your walking shoes? Janice, didn't your daughter-in-law like that quilt? Did you tell her about doctors? No complaints, Melvin: you can always sit on a planter in the mall and watch girls. Agnes, you need tickets or you got coupons?

“Oscar!” Bernice yelled to the bus driver. “You want I should collect?

“Course you do,” she answered herself. “Get us off quicker on the other end.”

By the time she reached us, we'd learned enough for me to say: “We've got no coupons, and we want the full package with motel rooms.”

Bernice'd left her rain cap and tan coat on her seat. She wore a pink sweat suit. An unlit cigarette tucked over her right ear poked through her shiny black curls.

“You get breakfasts,” she said handing us vouchers. “Bus drops-off at the motel before the Mall opens, so do some damage to the buffet. The bacon goes fast.”

Her hard green eyes notched us off. “You're room res' numbers 17 through 21, you pick who's what where. Give these slips to the front desk.”

“Do they want a credit card imprint?” asked Zane.

“Don't matter. Nobody gets on the bus tomorrow if they got room charges.” She squinted at Zane's white hair. “You got grandkids?”

“Ah… no.”

“
Children
: just when you think they're done breaking your heart, they give you an encore. I might as well not have my little troubles, much as I get to see them.”

Her gaze floated over five strangers sitting in the back of her bus: That white-haired guy without grandkids. The Black woman who looked like none of these guys' sister. The pudgy guy with thick glasses perched on the edge of his seat. The shaggy-haired rock 'n' roll outlaw no grandma wanted her precious to bring home. The poet with ghosts in his eyes and a switchblade smile. “You're an odd family.”

“Who isn't?” I said.

The unlit cigarette from behind her ear rolled back and forth in her bird claw.

“Families,” Bernice told us. “Moms are in your face with what they're not saying. Dads are gone even when they're sitting in that damn chair. Brothers and sisters, forget about it. You carry their troubles and they eat your time. Kids won't listen to how it was, so they know zero about how it is.”

The white tube snuck between her veteran fingers.

“I thought they banned smoking on buses,” said Zane. “Fires and cancer.”

“I ain't smoked for years.” The killer stick slid back behind her ear.

Our silver steed rolled onto a major highway.

Bernice stared out the bus windows. “When I was a girl, we went from store to store by going outside. Then we got malls so you never had to see the sun, never had to get wet. Now there's computers, if you got smarts and bucks. No need to leave your house, or even meet the deliveryman. Free to stay locked in where you are. Real stores run bus deals to catch us people who need a reason and a place to go.”

I sent her words back to her: “You're either on the bus or in the fog.”

“Yeah,” she said. But she didn't like it.

Two hours later, the five of us were in adjoining motel rooms, breakfast bar stuffed, Russell caffeinated enough to take first watch and wash our clothes in the motel's laundry center while we collapsed into actual beds. In the hall beyond my door, Bernice urged someone to
get a move on
as I sank into dreamless sleep.

Seven hours later, we blew up the police car.

31

Six hours and nine minutes after Bernice crossed the road to the white stone mall, our crew stood facing its mirror doors. We carried Bernice's donated bags, scavenged gear, matrices, our GODS. Our reflections looked slept, showered & shaved, and certain they knew what they were doing in the evening sun.

“Check it out,” said Russell. “Five maniacs in the heart of reality.”

Staring at our reflections, Hailey told him: “I thought you had the breakthrough.”

“Yeah, but turns out it's whacky on the other side.”

“'Xactly.”

I said: “Let's do it.”

The electric eye caught us stepping forward and slid open the mirror doors.

Our pupils absorbed the mall's oceanic light even as it absorbed us. Breathing brought that mall smell. Industrial perfume muted a million armpits and tired feet. Shirts and skirts on store shelves exhaled an aroma of cloth. The deeper we walked into the mall, the sweeter came the food court scent of waffle cones and fried grease. Speckled white & black tiles ate the sound of shoes and showed no footprints. We heard snatches of conversation, the whoosh of vacuum, the hum of air processors,
faintly-everywhere
recorded instruments cheerfully torturing a vaguely familiar song.

“No!” cried Russell. “That's The Beatles! From the
Sgt. Pepper's
album. ‘A Day In The Life' is about how they'd love to turn us on, not sell us shit!”

“Nixon was President last time I was in a place like this,” said Zane.

Two old women in stylish sweat suits quick-walked past us, their mouths flapping, their arms pumping, their pure white shoes marching in time.

“They're here to exercise their hearts,” I told Zane's stare.

“Oh.”

“We're here to gear up and get gone,” I said.

Eric shuffled closer to Hailey, forced out: “Don't leave me!”

“Won't happen,” she told him.

We wandered to a kiosk with a backlit map and lists of money stops.

“This one mall has five different sneaker stores!” said Russell.

“Everybody's running,” I said for the second time in less than a day.

Eric forced out: “Least we got a reason.”

But we walked like we'd lost it, drifted along the wall of chain store windows where headless mannequins sported pants and pullovers cut in communist China's clattering factories or 10 toxic steps south of Texas. Trademarks, brand names, merchandized spin-offs, and franchises flew at our eyes like machinegun bullets. One store promised us herbal vitamin formulas to
naturally
fight ills suffered by vibrant people in the ads who knew they were secretly bald, fat, hollow boned, sick skinned, artery clogged, limp dicked and anxious. The next store offered miles of gold chains, rings, bracelets, designer watches that also kept time. Nearby windows revealed salesclerks showing customers how to program massage options in leather reclining chairs or how to link a patio-mounted video telescope to a laptop computer so you could sit in your living room and scan the stars.

“How did all this happen?” said Zane.

“Right before our eyes,” I said.

“Well,” said Russell, “not our eyes. We've been locked up.”

Hailey said: “Don't think that makes us innocent.”

We walked on.

Hollywood posters for movies at the mall's Cineplex hung on a kiosk.
Beautiful Actors
beating the odds to find love. A volcanic world where only
magic
in a heartbroken boy could stop evil's triumph. Back-to-back
rebel cops
blazing pistols at the brilliant bad guy no law could touch. A sexy black-leathered blonde and her sextet of cool sidekicks scoring the
heist
of the century. The
so-lost
affluent family of clueless white people saved by the street savvy of a craggy Black guru. A wildly adventurous
animated
sure-to-be-a-classic for the whole family in which absolutely nothing happened over and over again, the end.

“I'd love to see a movie I'd love to see,” said Russell.

The five of us stared into the glowing wonderfulness of a bookstore.

Hailey sighed. “I'd love to visit my better self.”

“I'd love to visit old friends.” Visions of Faulkner, Lewis, Steinbeck, Camus, Hammett, Marquez, Emily and Williams danced in my heart. “Make new ones.”

“They might have maps we could use,” said Russell. “Or great CDs.”

Zane shook his head: “They'll be looking for us where we want to be.”

Eric nodded.

We turned to walk away—

“
Freeze!”
whispered Russell, quickly correcting himself: “No! Look natural!”

Eric overloaded, trembled.

Hailey took his arm: “Be calm!”

“What is it?” Zane's hands crossed near his waistband that hid our gun.

“Cameras.” Russell pointed his eyes toward heaven.

White metal security cameras hung from the ceiling, swiveled slowly from side to side as they constantly swept the mall with Cyclops glass eyes.

“And in the ATM on that wall!” said Hailey.

“Behind the cash register in that sexy underwear store,” said Zane.

“Everywhere,” said Eric.

“So what,” I said. “Cameras here won't see what matters. They're looking for rowdies or shoplifters, not escapees from sanity.”

Eric said: “But there'll be a record we were here.”

“If and when anybody looks for us on those tapes,” I said, “we'll be long gone. Plus, as long as there's no reason to check the tapes, it's like we were never seen.”

“Still don't like it,” said Russell. “It's still not good.”

Hailey asked: “What happens to America when Homeland Security finally gets real time surveillance cameras all over the country?”

Zane said: “Shrinks like Dr. F will need to redefine paranoia.”

“Too late,” I said, casually leading the crew under the leafy canopy of a palm tree rising from a planter. “Everybody who's not crazy is already paranoid.”

“The Animals sang it,” Russell told us: “We gotta get out of this place.”

“We didn't get what we need!” said Zane.

“They don't got it here,” I answered. “But now they got us.”

“We've only been here half an hour!” said Hailey.

“Time's up,” I said, stepping to a booth where a sign read INFORMATION.

“What do you need to know?” said the booth's white-haired woman.

“Everything,” I answered. “Or the fastest way to the biggest parking lot.”

“Your nearest exit might be through the all night drug store.”

“Should have figured that,” whispered Russell.

We went the direction she'd pointed until we spotted the drug store next to a place that sold football jerseys, soccer balls, Team Viagra NASCAR jackets—and sneakers.

“Bathrooms are next to the sports store,” I said. “Everybody use 'em.”

“Stealing a car from a mall is a bad idea,” said Russell. “Forget about how you might get filmed. You never know how soon someone will come out and find what they don't have anymore, call 911 and stick your ride in the system. Stealing it while there's still daylight…”

“This is the chance we've got,” I argued. “And we've got to get out of here.”

“Amen,” said Eric.

Zane shook his head: “Look at all your shaking hands. First, we've got to fix.”

A water bottle from a vending machine. Hailey shook high school pills out of the jar she'd borrowed from Jules. The only one who took more than three pills was Russell, and his Number Four was small and white. Hailey smiled at me as he popped that one. I was too jangled to pay her with a nod or a grin.

“Gotta get outside,” I said as we walked from the mall into the syrupy smelling drug store. Aisles of adult diapers and menstrual pads and mosquito repellent and ceiling lights closed in on me. “Grab what we need, I'll scout us a sled.”

Russell tried to stop me: “Popping a ride's not your thing.”

“Learn and live.”

Zane said: “At least let Eric—”

“
Hey!
I gotta be, gotta get out of here
alone!”

And I blasted outside to the parking lot.

Pink hues softened the afternoon's long sunlight. I fought to keep control. To look ordinary. Like I belonged.

Must be 2,000 cars out here
. I drifted up one aisle and down another. I checked all the SUV war wagons and the minivans.
None of the locks look popped up
.

Few people were in the parking lot. It was as if human beings got sucked straight from their cars to
the shopping experience
by some mammoth vacuum inside the mall. Maybe that vacuum was the hum in the canned music that butchered songs of our youth.

Must be some vacuum, I thought. I still hear it hum behind me. Now
focus:

Which vehicle to steal? The five of us would barely fit in that red Toyota. The minivan with the “SOCCER MOM” bumper sticker has low tires, locks clicked down, the polluted whiff of last year's diapers and this year's bubblegum. That gold SUV has its locks clicked down… but its driver's window is open a few inches! Maybe—

Behind me, a woman's voice froze me in my tracks, said: “Can I help you, sir?”

She had light short hair. Tan blouse and pants, black shoes. A silver badge rode her left breast and holstered on her hip was a 9mm Glock. Her idling police cruiser hummed behind her. I saw the radio mike clipped to her epaulet, the black patent leather pouch on her belt for handcuffs, but what truly nailed me were her mirrored black sunglasses that reflected the burning red ball of the setting sun. And me.

“Can I help you sir?” Second warning.

“Absolutely!” I smiled my most innocent smile.

Even though I absolutely knew she knew. Knew she knew I knew she knew. We stood there, each playing our part, each trying to write the ending for this script. Each living the cosmic wisdom that this was a scene to finish, not start. That choice kept us civil and standing right where we were until the other one made a damning move.

“What seems to be the problem?” Her uniform told me she was a local cop.

“Which one?”

“The one that's had you cruising the aisles like you're shopping for a car.”

“Call that luck. My car's in the shop so we used my wife's car to come here.”

“And this is it?” The sunglasses nodded towards the gold SUV.

“Yup. We usually take my Ford when we go out, so I only ride in her SUV a few times a month. These days, SUVs are all that's out there and they all look alike.”

The black glasses swung from side to side as she worked her peripheral vision without looking away from me. “Where is your wife?”

“She's not here.”

“And yet you are.”

“Well… sure.”

“Got a driver's license to show me?”

“I'm not driving.”

“I'm helping you out. What if you got the wrong vehicle? Like you said, they all look alike. I'll radio check the registration of this vehicle and be sure it matches the address on your license. You do live with your wife, don't you?”

“Who else would?”

She didn't laugh.

“I don't have my driver's license. Well, I do, but… It's in the car.”

“In the car.”

“With my wallet,” I said. “That's why I'm out here. To get my wallet.”

“You went into a shopping mall but left your wallet in the car.”

“Call me an optimist,” I said. “But my wife…”

“Your wife isn't here.”

“She's in the mall. Standing in a cashier's line, actually. Waiting for me to come get my wallet so we can use my credit card, not hers.”

“That's a good story,” said the cop.

“If only it had a happy ending.”

“Let's get your wallet, then we can work on happily ever after.”

“See, that's the problem.”

“Ahh.
That
's the problem.”

“
I know
! I mean it's one thing to leave my wallet in her junk compartment with all those random things that live in there, but then to have her send me out here to get it–”

“For the credit card.”

“—for the credit card and have both of us forget to give me her keys.”