Rhubarb (20 page)

“Our man in Sidney,” said Jeffrey. “If I’d known you were
here last night, I would have given you a call. We could’ve gone out for a
drink or something.”

“I got in late, had to park the truck around the back,” said
Martin.

“I’ll bet you did,” said Jeffrey.

Two minutes and thirty seconds later, Martin joined Jeffrey
at a table. “I never heard from anyone from your company,” he said. With
everything else going on, Martin had nearly forgotten that Jeffrey had all but
offered him his job. “Did your thing in Denver not pan out?”

“You know how these things go; always takes longer than you
think,” said Jeffrey. Another man wandered into the breakfast room with a USA
Today tucked under his arm. Jeffrey waved.

“Morning, Mark,” said Jeffrey. Mark was a greeting card guy.
Not Hallmark or American Greetings, but folksy sorts of cards. Wacky cowboys,
shriveled grannies, and farm animals with their tongues up their noses wishing
for you to get well or to have a happy birthday. If you threw a Santa hat, a
Bible verse, or few pink hearts on them, the drawings worked for any holiday. A
spinning rack of them lived in most Montana stores, never too far from
Jeffrey’s candy.

Mark gathered his complement of breakfast and joined them.

“Mark, you know Martin. FastNCo.?” said Jeffrey.

“Sure.”

“Good to see you again,” said Martin.

Mark chewed a bite of donut and swished it down with orange
juice, all the while pointing at Martin. “That,” he said and finished
swallowing, “wasn’t you I heard on BI last night?”

“What?” asked Martin.

“No? It’s funny you’re here, because I thought of you when I
heard it. Caller was named Martin. From Billings,” said Mark.

“What did he call about?” asked Jeffrey.

“The show was about all the Mayan end-of-the-world junk, but
this guy, Martin…”

“Not me,” said Martin.

“…goes completely off topic. Starts babbling about how
aliens are coming to Brixton—yeah, Brixton, Montana—and how they’re going to
kill everyone on Earth. Oh, and he has video proof of all of it. Danvers pretty
much shut him down.”

“You see why I don’t listen to that show,” said Jeffrey.
“Bunch of nutcases. Listen to it long enough, and you start to believe it all,
too.”

“Too bad Danvers hung up on him. I like it when he lets the
kooks on,” said Mark.

~ * * * ~

Martin had tucked his overnight bag behind the driver’s seat
of his truck when he heard his name. Jeffrey had left the back door of the
motel with his own bag.

“You okay?” Jeffrey asked, shading his eyes from the morning
sun with his iPad.

“Yeah, why?”

“Not to be rude, but I think maybe Mark had you pegged. Are
you calling into
Beyond Insomnia
now?”

“What do you mean?” asked Martin.

Jeffrey waggled his iPad. “Listened to the podcast of last
night’s show—the bit Mark told us about, anyway. And it really does sound like
you. And it’s about Brixton. I know you’ve been spending some time over there
lately.”

“What’ve you heard?”

“I know that girl who baked you a pie left town. And I heard
you got arrested for scaring the crap out of a trucker,” said Jeffrey. “What’s
going on, Martin? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“I’m fine,” said Martin. “Wait. How do you know about the
pie?”

“What are you talking about? You told me,” said Jeffrey.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” said Martin.

“You told me as we passed each other on Highway 12.
Remember? I called you. You told me my driving sucked,” said Jeffrey. “It
wasn’t that long ago. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Martin dove into the cab of his truck, brushed a couple of
paper bags from yesterday’s meals onto the floor of the passenger seat, found
what he needed, and slid back out onto his feet.

“Hey, whoa, FastNCo. issue a permit for that thing?” Jeffrey
laughed.

Martin kept the staple gun pointed at the ground. “Who else
did you tell?” he asked.

“About what?”

“About me and Cheryl? About the pie?”

“Are you off your medication?”

“Who did you tell?”

“No one. What’s the big deal?”

Martin raised the staple gun. “Where is she, Jeffrey? Or
whoever you are?”

“Holy crap, that was you on the show,” said Jeffrey.

“She doesn’t know anything,” said Martin.

“And you are nuts.”

“Don’t move,” said Martin.

“You’re delusional,” said Jeffrey, not stopping. “That’s a
staple gun. I can see the FastNCo. logo on the side.”

“Then why are you backing away?” asked Martin.

“I’m leaving now. Stay away from me.”

Martin aimed just to Jeffrey’s right and squeezed the
trigger handle. The staple gun clicked and popped like a staple gun should and,
as if coincidentally, the trash can by the back door of the motel exploded.

Jeffrey stumbled away from the shower of shrapnel. Martin
felt a brief, hot concussion, and debris peppered the back of the truck. The
staple gun still felt perfectly normal.

Jeffrey straightened, unhurt but changed. No more
indignation and false fear. His eyes were no longer casual, lying things, but
sinister, focused.

The desk clerk burst out the back door and swore at the
wreckage.

Jeffrey bolted.

“Hey,” the desk clerk called.

Martin tossed the staple gun into the truck and chased
Jeffrey around the side of the building in time to see him dodge between two
cars. A few seconds later, the Lincoln Town Car lurched out. Its tires squealed
as it braked, then again as it raced forward. As it bounced out onto the
street, a pickup truck slammed on its brakes and skidded sideways.

Martin stayed in town long enough to give both the fire
chief and the sheriff Jeffrey’s full description. He told everyone how he had
witnessed Jeffrey drop an object into the trash can a few moments before it
exploded. Homeland Security FBI types liked to hunt mad bombers, didn’t they?

The truck’s headlights swept across an all-too-familiar
Buick Skylark parked on the street outside Martin’s apartment building. His
apartment was dark and locked, but that didn’t keep Martin from saying, “Make
yourself at home, why don’t you, Stewart?” before flipping on a light.

“Where the hell have you been?” Stewart asked from the
recliner. A wind-up radio, Lee Danvers recommended, played BI at a whisper on his
lap.

“Trying not to lose my job,” said Martin.

“What was the last thing I said to you?”

“Just say what you have to say,” said Martin. “It’s late,
and I’ve been on the road for three days.”

“I told you not to do anything stupid,” said Stewart. “What
possessed you to call the show?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m not content to sit on my ass while
your friends kidnap my girlfriend and exterminate my species.”

“She wasn’t your girlfriend,” said Stewart.

“Oh, fine, let’s argue semantics right now,” said Martin. He
tossed his bag in his bedroom and called, “Have you been sleeping here?”

“I couldn’t stay home, and you didn’t come back,” said
Stewart.

“Get out,” said Martin.

“They monitor the show, Martin. And it’s not going to take
them long to figure out how you learned about the production plan. They left me
alone as long as I kept my mouth shut. But now…”

“So you came here?” asked Martin. “It probably won’t take
them long to figure out where you went. In fact, I ran into one of them a
couple of days ago.”

Stewart furrowed his brow. “Who?”

“A candy salesman named Jeffrey Scarborough. He was in
Sidney the morning after I called the show.”

“Why do you think he’s…one like me?”

“Because he’s the only one I told about Cheryl baking me a
pie before she disappeared. I’d forgotten I even mentioned it to him. He drives
all over the state, knows every little diner, bakery, breakfast joint
everywhere. Always seems to be in Brixton. And you should have seen the look he
gave me after I shot at him.”

“You shot him?”

“I fired a warning shot with your little staple gun.”

“What happened?”

“A trash can blew up,” said Martin. “After that, he pretty
much gave up the pretense.”

“You better get packed,” said Stewart, waving Martin back
toward his bedroom. “It’s not safe here.”

“Forget it,” said Martin. “Besides, I’m a crackpot. Lee
Danvers wouldn’t even believe me. You know what he said? He told me he hears a
dozen alien invasion stories a week. I even told the gist of it to a producer
of his. Don’t worry, I didn’t mention you or Cheryl or the pie. She thought I
was crazy, too. But she heard me out because they wanted to buy my video before
I put it on YouTube.”

“What video?”

“I got a rough shot of a truck, or ship, or whatever coming
through the gap thingy, down on Highway 360,” said Martin.

“Did you give them this video?”

“Emailed it this morning. They’re paying me five hundred
dollars for it,” said Martin. “But do you see what I’m saying? I’m no threat to
your friends, even if I know their preposterous plan. No one’s going to take me
seriously. It’s not like the Pentagon’s going to nuke Highway 360 on the word
of a Waker.”

“That’s why no one will care when you disappear,” said
Stewart. “I used to be one of them, Martin. I know how they think. There may be
a thousand other nutcases out there, but you’re the one with the right
information. They won’t want to risk anything.”

“They let you live here as a human,” said Martin. “Why risk
that?”

“You don’t think I’ve asked myself that a million times?”
asked Stewart.

“You aren’t some kind of deep cover agent, are you?”

“I could have already told them about you,” said Stewart.
“You’d be out there with Cheryl right now.”

“You know where she is?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say she’s out on the production
facility.”

“And where is that?”

“Through the portal,” said Stewart. “Out in the Kuiper
Belt.”

“The what?”

“That’s what your astronomers call a big ring of small icy
bodies outside Neptune’s orbit,” said Stewart. “There’s a minor trans-stellar
network branch terminus out there.”

“The off-ramp?”

Stewart nodded. “And that’s where you’ll go if you don’t get
packed and get the hell out of here with me.”

“I’m not leaving,” said Martin. “If they want me, they’ll
get me one way or another. Now, I’m going to take a shower. Then I’m going to
drink a beer while I upload my orders, if you haven’t been raiding my fridge,
too. And then I’m going to get some sleep. We can talk about this in the
morning.”

Stewart gave his radio a few cranks and turned it up. Martin
found two beers still in the fridge. He took both back to the bedroom with his
laptop.

Half an hour later, Martin closed the bedroom door to fall
into bed, but he stopped on a sigh. He dug a spare pillow and blanket out of
the closet and tossed them onto the living room couch. “You take the bed,
Stewart,” he said.

As Stewart used the bathroom, Martin snuck down to the truck
and found the staple gun. “Say hello to my little friend,” he said as he
settled in on the couch. An hour later, the front door remained unmolested, and
down the hall, the tinny mumble of Stewart’s radio clicked off.

~ * * * ~

Martin awoke with a sore back and the hope that the last few
days were nothing more than a late-night-spicy-burrito-induced hallucination.
But he still had the FastNCo. staple gun that didn’t fire FastNCo. staples. And
none of the memories had faded like dreams should. Nope, they were as real as
the coughing and wheezing old man who took his own sweet time in the bathroom.

“I’m really not supposed to have passengers,” Martin said as
he dug Stewart’s spare oxygen tanks out of the Skylark’s trunk. “So, if anyone
asks, you’re my uncle and you got kicked out of your assisted-living place for
groping one too many nurses.”

“Who’s going to ask?”

“I’m just saying I’m not real comfortable with this,” said
Martin. Stewart started to reply, but Martin cut him off. “Right. I know. It’s
better if we stick together until this blows over.”

“I was only going to offer to buy breakfast on the way out
of town,” said Stewart.

Martin chuckled. “Well, then. Mount up.”

With a Croissan’Wich in one hand, the steering wheel in the
other, and the staple gun hanging from his belt, Martin merged onto I-90 West.
Pixar-perfect clouds salted the expanse of Big Sky. On the southwest horizon,
the Beartooth Mountains floated like a chunk of New Zealand had been digitally
transported out of the
Lord of the Rings
movies. The fully loaded truck
handled sluggishly but soon got up to speed. And for once, the radio stayed
off. It had become half armrest, half table, where Martin’s cardboard tray of
French Toast Sticks waited with the little pack of syrup.

“This is what I do,” said Martin. “Ninety percent of my job,
right here.”

“I had to do a bit of travel for my job,” said Stewart.
“They’d send me to different planets, and I’d sample the local delicacies,
determine which ones had market potential.”

“Was it you who found the pie?”

“No,” said Stewart. “We heard about it through our
distribution division.”

“Truck drivers,” said Martin.

“You could call them that. The field report and the samples
were sent to my division. But they only brought me in when the first formula
acquisition attempts failed.”

“Why you?”

“It usually wasn’t that difficult. Bring a few samples to
the lab, and they’d break it down,” said Stewart. “But with this pie, we found
strange inconsistencies in the samples, and nothing indicated what gave it that
kick, that special ingredient that made it so good.”

“Is it really that good? It didn’t taste any different to me
than the other,” said Martin. “I tried them both that morning before you threw
them in the trash.”