Nowhere (10 page)
The car rolled to a stop outside the sheriff’s station. Hays reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out Richard’s keys. I will see you later, right?
“You will… you will.”
“You’re not feeling any effects of the pill yet right?”
“No not really? Should I?”
“No, I think you’ll be ok to drive home, and I’ll follow you to make sure you get there safely.”
“Ok, sounds good.”
“Ok. Well I have to go into the sheriff’s station and talk with the deputy to let them know the plan. I’ll come back out and wave you on when we get the all clear. You can hop in your car and warm up a bit.”
Richard climbed out of Dr. Hays' car and into his own vehicle. He sat for a moment looking at the papers shuffled about. He watched as Hays walked into the sheriff’s office. As soon as Hays was out of sight, Richard lurched forward and began feeling under the seat.
Nothing. There was nothing under the seat. If there had been any silver object it was gone. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. Hays came out of the station, a huge grin on his face, and waved him on. He started the car and drove out of the lot. He passed the pharmacy as he drove down Washington. Then took a left on 4th Street, but continued on towards his apartment. Hays trailed him until he turned down his street and then the Doctor continued on. Richard pulled up to his apartment and sat there for a moment.
First he scanned the street to see if there were any Sheriff’s units along the road, watching for him to return home. He wasn’t sure if they would put surveillance on him, but needed to be on the lookout for it either way. Then he checked his rear view mirror for a few moments making sure Hays didn’t back track to double check that he’d gone inside.
When he was sure he wasn’t being watched or followed, he drove off, not knowing yet exactly where he would end up, but sure that he had to do something and it had to be done now. As he drove he thought about the mug and the events that had just transpired. He put his hand to his jaw to feel how sore it still was. It was a way of re-affirming that it hadn’t all been a dream.
He looked about his car, but couldn’t find any trace of the mug in question. The Sheriff’s office must have taken it as evidence he thought, but he instantly knew that there was another explanation.
“You have to retrace your steps…” Steven’s voice came from the backseat floorboard. Richard almost swerved off the road in shock. He turned to look, but it was too dark.
“Keep your eyes on the road!” Steven whispered angrily. “They can’t know I’m back here. They still could be watching you.”
“What should I do now, where should I go?” Richard tried to speak calmly and focus on the road as best he could. He kept telling himself in his head to act natural, don’t speed, use your signals, drive safely…
“You have to get to the bottom of this, it has to be tonight.”
“Why tonight?”
“They think you’re at home, they think you’re heavily sedated and willing to cooperate fully in order to avoid more trouble.” Steven said. He was calm, almost emotionless. There was a mission to the way he spoke.
“But they’ll expect to see me tomorrow.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll crack this whole thing open before then. We’ll let the world see them for what they really are and start the fight against the aliens.”
“Ok, so what next then?”
“Right now you exist in two different realities, the one you remember and the one they’ve shown you. There are truths in both, but ultimately there is only one true truth. You have to find a way to piece both together and find the true reality.”
“How do I do that?”
“Pull in here.”
Richard looked to his left and saw that he was passing the same Chuckee’s station that he remembered from before.
“But if I go in, they’ll definitely call the cops on me.”
“Then we have to be quick. You have to stay ahead of them at all costs. They’ll be after you as soon as you make contact in that store, but you have to find answers. Pull over to the tree line.”
Richard did as Steven said and pulled over to the tree line at the edge of the parking lot. As soon as he stopped the car, Steven opened the back door closest to the trees.
“Remember, be quick about it and don’t stop till you figure out the truth.” Steven whispered and then he was gone into the darkness within the trees.
Richard sat for a moment and remembered the events of the previous night. In the version he remembered he knew his car was low on gas which eventually had slowed him down. So he decided to pump his gas before going in. He pulled the car up to a pump and got his wallet out to make sure he had some cash to pay for the gas. He had twenty bucks which would give him the better half of a full tank. He pushed the pay inside payment key and held the twenty dollar bill up so the attendant could see that he meant well.
It must have worked because the pump activated and he was able to pump. He stopped the pump just shy of twenty dollars so that he didn’t risk going over and being caught in the difficult scenario of coming up with an additional three cents or so. Then he hung the pump up and went into the store. He gave the attendant the twenty and then waved off his attempt to hand him a few pennies. The attendant instead put them into a charity bin for cancer kids.
Next, Richard went back to the coffee station. The Chuckee’s mugs were white styrofoam at the top and bottom, with a bright orange coloring down the middle. It was tiger orange, Chuckee’s orange, but not the mugs that Richard was looking for. He went back to the front.
It was a different attendant than the one he remembered from the night before, but he figured that wasn’t uncommon for the employees to have shifts on alternating nights.
“Was there anything strange that happened here last night?” He asked the clerk behind the counter. It was a dark haired clean cut fellow with a yellow tobacco stain in the middle of his teeth.
“I’m not sure Sir, why do you ask?”
“Oh I just heard from a friend that one of the local gas stations was getting hassled by some guy last night. I think they caught him though.”
“No, nothing like that I think. I probably would have heard about it if there was something like that. I’m the night manager, you see. I would expect that they would let me know.”
“They?” Richard asked intently.
“Well yea, my employee’s. They would let me know.”
“I see…” Richard said. “Hey, I don’t suppose that you know what chain around here sells their coffee in a forest green colored mug do you?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
“Ok, thanks I do appreciate it.” He said and started his way back out, confident that he had successfully avoided any confrontation that might prematurely alert the aliens to his rogue status.
“Oh Sir!” The attendant said just as Richard opened the door to walk out. He looked back. “You may try that little place on the highway. I can’t remember what the name of it is. It’s not a chain, it’s locally owned. It’s not in town, so I know it’s not really what you’re looking for, but their sign is green, so it may be worth a shot.”
“Thanks a bunch.” Richard said with a smile and a wave as he left.
He quickly walked back to his car, carefully scanning the parking lot for any signs of being detected as he got in. He then leaned over onto the passenger side and opened the glove box. He pulled out an old paper map of the county and then shut the glove box. He decided that he could work his way systematically towards where the attendant had pointed him. He would just run quickly in and check mugs and figured he didn’t have to stop and chit chat any more.
He drove out and toward the highway. He stopped at two more stores on the way to the highway, neither of which had the mug he was looking for. Finally he turned onto the highway and drove toward the small station on the outskirts of town.
It had a forest green sign, roughly the same color as he remembered the mug having, which was promising. He parked and went inside. Just as before, he bypassed the store clerk and went back to find the coffee station. Except when he got there, there was no coffee maker. There were fountain drinks, and refrigerators that contained Yoo-hoos and Power-aids, but in the spot one would expect to see a coffee maker, there was only an empty counter and a black outlet in the wall.
Richard went back to the front. The clerk was a thinly built black woman who looked like she was in her twenties.
“Excuse me Ma’am, I was wondering where your coffee station was.”
“Oh, we don’t sell coffee anymore. We have energy drinks in one of the uprights if you’d like.”
“You don’t sell coffee?” Richard asked in confusion. He had seen places that had nothing more than a single brewer with burnt half day old coffee sitting behind the register before, and places that said they were out or had stopped brewing for the day, but he had never once been to a gas station convenient store that just flatly did not sell coffee.
“No, not anymore.”
“What kind of store doesn’t sell coffee? I don’t understand, how long since you changed that?”
“I’m sorry Sir, but we just stopped offering it. Let me get the manager, he can maybe explain the reasoning of it all to you.” She stepped back into a lounge type room that was behind the counter. She came back out followed by a short balding Italian looking man, but Richard could instantly see that his eyes had the telltale dark circles under them that made Richard panic.
“Can I help you Sir?” The man asked.
“Uhh no, no thank you. I don’t need anything, thank you.” Richard said sheepishly as he quickly back up to the door and left.
He walked out quickly back to his car and when he got in he turned to see if he had been caught. The manager was pressed up close to the glass of the store staring at him with eyes of black. That void behind their eyes sucked at Richard’s soul every time he saw it. He started the car and drove away quickly out of town. He decided to pull in a bit further down the road to gather his wits back together.
He stopped in the parking lot of an old lumber yard that was shut for the night. The parking lot had one lone light pole in the middle that stayed lit all night. Richard avoided this light like the plague and instead crept up to the far end of the parking lot, farthest away from the road and out of the light enough to not be seen from the highway. He killed the engine and took the keys out of the ignition so that all the lights in his car were off.
He breathed deeply and tried to relax. He had to figure this out. He had to make sense of all of this. He had the strong impression that the mug had been from that station. He felt as though he had walked in on a flaccid attempt at covering things up. The one good thing about the aliens is if you looked hard enough at their surroundings you could see that things were just a little off.
They would try to make everything as they felt it should be, their best attempt at making thing seem normal, but it would still just have the aura of being not quite right. Like having no coffee instead of just switching out the mugs. They didn’t quite know what would be perceived as strange or out of place. They weren’t perfect, and that gave Richard confidence.
Presently however, he still worried whether he had been found out by the balding manager or not. He quickly thought about what to do next.
He wondered, what should be done if that was in fact the store he had been looking for. Was that the clue that he had left for himself, was there something about the store that was important? He could go back and try to scare them into spilling information, but he wondered if that would just be a quick way to get himself caught. He wished Steven was with him, he could use the back-up. What he really needed was a weapon…
“The gun…” Richard mumbled to himself as he imagined the video from the pharmacy security cameras. He hadn’t really wanted to voice this as a possibility before, but there had been no doubt in his mind what the silver object in the video had to have been.
He made another attempt at sweeping under the driver’s seat for the object from the video, but still came up empty handed. The sudden light of headlights gave him a start, but he watched as they drove past without slowing until they were out of sight once more in the opposing direction.
He decided to turn his search into a more thorough canvas of the vehicle. He reached over once more into the glove box, this time withdrawing a small penlight flashlight. He then opened his car door and stepped out. He dimmed the dome light as much as he could so that hopefully his operation still could not be seen from the road, then he squatted down so that he could peer under the seat.
