Volume One: The Road Out
Chapter Three
Verse One: Don't Fight an Agent
The Goblin rattled along the highway until, as the sun began to hit it's noon day high, Harley spotted a sign for a town named "Admiral's Warning" with a listed population of two hundred and forty one people. The town was tiny. If Marion closed his eyes for a brief rest he might literally blink and miss it as they passed through. A tiny commercial core of buildings around which a few small suburbs clustered and out from which a series of dirt roads radiated out leading to rural properties at the outskirts. Cattle grazed like a slow eyed watch dogs and the smell of manure became rapidly overpowering as they approached.
"That seems sleepy enough to be safe." Marion observed.
Harley agreed, "It sounds safe enough. I'll grab the exit and we'll gas up and food up there. To be safe, keep your distance from the locals though, but don't act like your trying to keep your distance."
"How do I do that?"
"I don't know, act natural."
The rock gradually faded from a ruddy ochre to a bleached bone white as Harley and Marion drove the Goblin into the town, although calling this empty desiccated collection of stores and dilapidated buildings a town would be generous. The town seemed like a corpse, drained by some architectural vampire and left to bleach in the white hot glare of the sun. As the Goblin clunkered through town, a few stray humans looked up from creaking porches and peered from over dusty blinds. The visible expressions were cut with lines and furrows that spoke of fear and mistrust.
"I can almost hear the banjoes playing." Harley said as he steered the Goblin down what passed for a main street, "Does the map have anything to say about where we can find a gas station. We need supplies. Food and gas to start and then probably some decent camping and road side maintenance gear."
"Why all the stuff? Is something wrong with the Goblin?" Marion asked, "I thought he was lumbering pretty well today? I mean, he is the Goblin, but still I thought he was doing well."
"We're wanted for questioning. Perhaps wanted as suspects now. I turned off my cell phone completely so I can't check. You turned yours off too right?"
Marion nodded and Harley continued.
"We're being framed. The less contact we need to have with people who could turn us in, the better. There is nothing wrong with the Goblin, but the Goblin isn't know for it's longevity on the highway, and I don't want to be in a position of asking for help from passerbys and hoping they don't recognize us from the nightly news more time than necessary. I'd like to avoid hearing a police siren behind me if possible, and so we need supplies to minimize our need to interact with strangers."
There was a strange popping noise from the Goblin's engine and the van bounded a little in response, as though the ancient machine were either agreeing with or objecting to the boy's assessment of it's performance.
"It's okay boy," Marion said with a grin, "We trust you, you've been a good beast of burden and we're just talking about how to take care of you so you can keep going another thirty years."
"I don't think anything could give the Goblin another thirty years. I just want it to last long enough to get us as far as possible as quickly as we can manage."
"He doesn't mean that." Marion said, patting a torn green seat cover, "He loves you too."
"The Goblin has been a great tough old vehicle, but I will not anthropomorphize it."
Marion stuck his tongue out, "Either way, let's also minimize our interactions with the bad guys by turning left right now. Right Now! Turn Left!" Marion said, his voice rising as he pointed our a white van with two men in dark glasses and dark suits speaking into ear pieces beside the white van.
Harley cranked the wheel and turned, sharply, but smoothly onto the side street. The dominant colour for exterior walls in the town seemed to be taupe with a generous coating of white rock dust.
"Did they see us?" Marion acted.
"I don't think so. But this complicates matters. We have to go into silent running mode now and sneak around getting things done without any of them raising the alarm. Fantastic." Harley said, "How did they get here before us?"
"I don't know. I'm not even sure that they're real people, maybe they just possess people like in the Matrix?"
"I hope not. I like my villains to be a little more original than that."
"And here I was hoping that actually listening to the story would help improve my luck."
"Maybe this is an improvement." Harley said.
"Or maybe we're not doing the right thing yet."
"Okay, I want to hear what the map says about gas stations in this little town. Every time I think I've got the feel of the new music, things go all free jazz on me. " Harley said.
"What have you got against free jazz? The spirit of Pharaoh Sanders will rise from the grave to kick your butt if you keep doing that."
"Pharaoh Sanders isn't dead you know."
"Your blasphemies would kill him and he would rise from the grave in indignation.
"Pharaoh Sanders is a genius. He isn't the problem, the problem is people who think that they can be Pharaoh Sanders, and me having to listen to them."
"Weak excuses, to little and too late to stop the vengeance of the Pharaoh."
"That sounds like an old Hammer Film."
Marion grinned in spite of himself and scanned the map. Admiral's Warning was not a big settlement, but at least the place seemed to have built for people who owned vehicles. Roads spun out in all directions, like spider webs spinning out from a hypothetical town centre
"There's only one gas station," Marion said, "And we have to go past the suits over there to reach it. But there are plenty of side streets, so we may be able to sneak around them. If we're lucky, which we aren't, then we can reach the gas station undetected and the gas station and the grocery store are attached, so it would be a one stop shop and then we can return to running like scared children."
"Listen to yourself. We aren't running like scared children," Harley said, "We just don't have any leads right now. Everything spins on those kids, and the number they called from was blocked. I can't dial them back. So we have to listen and hope that they call again. Until then, we have to stay free."
"That makes us seem so much better than how I was thinking about our situation." Marion said.
"That's my job. I'm the stable one."
"I thought I was the stable one."
"No, you're the adorably befuddled one, that I keep out of trouble."
"So what are saying exactly?"
"That I'm really bad at my job apparently. No sense stalling. You direct me, and we'll try to sneak around them."
"That way." Marion pointed ahead at a smaller side road named Lowe Street, and Harley directed the Goblin down the street. The two tried to get to the gas station, but every turn led them to a white unmarked van parked between them and the gas station. After nearly an hour of frustrated circling, they gave up.
"Our gas isn't bad just yet," Marion offered, "We could just keep going and try again later."
"I want supplies before I need them." Harley countered, "Not after I need them. We can go on foot, sneak through yards and get to the grocery store. At least then we have some of what we need."
They parked the Goblin on a quiet residential side street and began making their way through weed filled lanes between the homes, slowly working their way towards the grocery store. When they finally got within sight of the building, they could clearly see five men in dark glasses and dark suits standing spread out across the parking lot.
Harley shook his head, "They know what we would need if we stopped here. There are probably more inside. We should just go. I should have listened to you. I made a bad choice here."
Marion didn't argue, and the two slipped back towards the Goblin. However, upon getting within sight of the Goblin they immediately spotted two agents with fingers pressed to ear pieces standing beside the van talking to the open air.
"Harley," Marion said quietly, "I am definitely still not lucky, and it appears to be contagious."
Harley and Marion crouched in the wild grasses growing between two yards at the edge of the road where the Goblin was parked. The two agents quickly were joined by nearly a dozen other agents. The agents quickly used a pry bar to open the back doors to aging cricket Van and agents swarmed in as the air hummed with radio crackle and conversation.
"Now what?" Marion asked.
"The longer they have access to the Goblin, the worse things are for us. We can't hear what they're saying, but I assume that none of it is good."
"We could leave the Goblin, and steal a car." Marion offered.
"I can't pick a lock and I can't hot wire a car, can you?"
"No. I can't"
"So we need the Goblin back and fast. We need a distraction to draw them off, so we can get back and make a run for it."
Marion raised his eyebrows, "This seems like a reasonable plan to you? I thought you were the stable one."
"This seems like the most reasonable plan given our resources and abilities and the limitations of our situation. I don't hear either of us voicing anything better. This isn't a good option, but I don't think we've got another option that has a better shot at success."
"We could hitch hike?"
"I don't want to be reliant on the kindness of strangers and upon strangers not recognizing us from the nightly news. Based on how things are going, I want to involve fate as little as possible. I want to keep control of what's happening in our hands."
"I understand that you don't want to rely on people who could turn you in. I don't want to get shot at by what may or may not be federal agents."
"I don't think we're going to be able to avoid that one for long given our current and growing list of problems"
"Fine, why not? We're probably going to die horribly anyway."
They crouched, motionless, watching the agents mill about, trying to gauge the least suicidal moment to act. The wind slowly waved the grasses into their faces gently scratching and tickling them in the least enjoyable manner Marion could imagine. The sun beat down on them and Marion could feel sweat pooling at the base of his spine. The sound of grasshoppers chirping rose around them as they remained still. Marion began to pass the time by watching their shadows move across the dry gravel strewn earth.
"How are we going to distract them?" Marion asked finally after they had been motionless for nearly fifteen minutes and his legs were beginning to cramp.
"I have absolutely no idea." Harley answered in a frustrated deadpan.
"Well we could-" Harley began to say, only to be cut off by a startled warbling female voice.
"Hey! What are you two doing there? " Marion and Harley turned to see an old woman looking across her white picket fence, metal rake paused mid stroke as she stared at the two of them.
"Crouching suspiciously in the bushes apparently." Marion said.
The agents besides their van turned to look. Harley closed his eyes tightly for a moment and shook his head, "Time to run now."
"I think the world might end if I got lucky." Marion said bitterly.
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