Chapter Five: Unconventional Wisdom — Part 3

ChoCho is up earlier than Jynx, dressed and active far sooner than he ever would have been on a Monday morning when he was still living his life on the dates of the old calendar and schedule of school and life. ChoCho is positively jazzed, mostly because of the make up sex the night before, though he hasn’t made the conscious connection just yet. His nerves have been jarred by a potential threat that has him moving. He’s heard a rumbling on the road, and has the binoculars out, hopeful in one instance, frightened in another. He’s scanning the line of the road from the edge of the lot, when Jynx brings him a cup of coffee, squeezing his bottom and putting her head on his shoulder. There is just enough light to see details down the road, but the headlights tell ChoCho that there are two UPS trucks, mottled in tan and black earth tones, coming towards them, led by what had once been a white van, before the masters of ceramic spray paint got to it.

“Have a look.” He says, stepping back and handing Jynx the binoculars so she can see what is still invisible to the naked eye.

Jynx pulls the binoculars ahead on the road and brings them into quick focus on the driver of the van. “Shit.” She says.

“Total Shit.” ChoCho says, somehow conveying concern and contempt simultaneously.

Jynx sees Daria driving the van with Kevin, Jon, and Teri. Joe, his right eye swollen, is driving one cargo truck while some unknown other guy is driving the second one. Daria’s cheek looks as bad as Joe’s eye, and the others in the van that she can see clearly how much they look like they’ve been jumped for their lunch money. Daria seems calm, worried, and in a hurry all at once. Joe, on the other hand, is simply looking painfully at the road ahead, scanning it for signs of something unknown.

Somehow the emotional impact of the sound of engines and the vehicular occupants makes it past the post-sex humming in Jynx’s ears, and she loses a little bit of her smile. After a second more, she goes through the motions of worrying, but for what she can’t tell. Daria looked injured, so did her friends, but the worry for that seems to be overdriven by another concern, one that is right next to her, watching the road with her. Jynx drops low, crouching down close to the ground, looking over the bushes through lenses that currently magnify forty times. She doesn’t want to be seen, but she hopes she is seen. The conflict is causing her to shake a little.

“Think they can see us?” Jynx wonders.

“Two more important questions come to mind. Why are there only two UPS trucks and a van along the road? Second, what are the odds that they will stop here before moving on, when there’s still so much daylight left ahead of them?” there is no hint in ChoCho’s voice as to whether he hopes that they will stop or move on, and Jynx decides not to press the matter.

In a few anxious minutes, the trucks drive by steady, not stopping or even pausing to consider the off ramp. Jynx lets out a breath of relief, and the two make a study of the road, for nearly thirty minutes, until they are both satisfied that the rest of the caravan is not following Daria and her crew as they travel. Jude is drinking coffee and collecting the bottles left out with funnels in them the night before. The bottles have collected enough rain and humidity to be half full. ChoCho can’t let go of the memory of Daria’s knuckles and fingers on the steering wheel: the Bones showing through pale skin, muscles wrapped tightly, almost desperately, around the plastic covered circle of pipe, all in desperate control of a van that looks like it was propped up for a poor remake of the movie Road Warriors.

“She has really big hands.” ChoCho says, trying to be considerate.

“Yes she does.” Jynx blushes, and goes to pack up the truck, hoping her unintentional slip doesn’t cause another argument. “Ready to get out on the road?” She asks Gryph.

Gryph wags his tail hopefully.

“But where are we going?” ChoCho finds it hard to mask his anxiety.

“I have friends in Missouri.” Jude says suddenly. “Or, at least I had a friend. I’m not counting on the odds, but we can at least go and check it out.”

Jynx considers. “Missouri sounds good. What do you think, Cho?”

“I think it’s really green in Missouri.” ChoCho says suddenly. “What kind of friends do you have up that way?”

“Government types, not too laid back, really, but into the same kind of research I was doing.” Jude whistles at Gryph, who comes running immediately, and the two climb into the back seat of the truck.

Jynx is at the wheel again, feeling the road as her tires bite into it and bringing the trailer up to speed. She doesn’t notice that the remains of a plane has just passed over her, drifting silently as if it is a balloon being pulled along by a string. ChoCho doesn’t notice either, but Jude sees it, and points it out. After the initial shock of seeing a plane adrift, Jynx sets out without looking back. ChoCho starts to write in his notepad, while Jude pulls out a shortwave radio, plugs it into a car power outlet set in the back, and sets the tuner to auto-scan through all frequencies.

The radio spends the hours of the day, spinning around thousands and thousands of empty frequencies, stopping on static, and then moving on to seek out an actual hume-made signal, only to come up short every time it thinks it’s found something. With the sun up, only local broadcast can be heard, and nothing, apparently, is being broadcast locally. They are well into Colorado when Jynx sees the storm clouds building and pulls off the road in order to call it a night. They have managed to drive around every major city, all of which are dead, rotting from the inside out, and infested with scavengers seeking to clean up the mess.

After an evening rainstorm that is chill but still lets the trio bathe, Jude drops an antenna line across the entire length of the trailer, listening for any signal from anywhere in the world that might be bouncing back to him. He listens for hours, but nothing, not encrypted data, not digital stream, not even a blip of a voice, is bouncing its way around the ionosphere. Jude takes off his earphones after twelve hours of tuning in, hoping that even though he has tested the radio set and knows better, it has decided to break.

“We’ve kept our radio scanning since day one.” Jynx says. “Whatever happened took out the transmitters. At least that’s what I figure.”

“I was just hoping that somebody had gotten a shortwave transmitter back up, or that somebody, or maybe even a whole city, wasn’t destroyed.” Jude does something that neither ChoCho or Jynx is prepared for, tears are flowing down his cheeks. “Sorry. It’s just now hitting me. There wasn’t one gay guy in that entire group of survivors, there wasn’t one person my age. There wasn’t a single dog. I know it sounds selfish, but Gryph and I might never get laid again.”

“I have to believe that we’ll find more people, more gay men, and more dogs, for that matter. They may be screwed up and hurting like us, but they’ll be out there.” Jynx says.

Jude pulls a wet nap from his personal supply, blows his nose loudly, apologizes for the fuss, and stares out the window, his mind torn apart by the sudden realization that he probably won’t see anybody he had come to a state of friendship with ever again. His life in Phoenix has ended, and it terrifies him that his life is now in the hands of two teenagers with no fear of death, and a frightening sort of luck. Despite considerable resources, almost supernatural foresight, and a certain sort of cunning genius, both of them are disturbingly immature. Yet Jude finds himself trusting them and their odd luck. They have, after all, managed to make it this far.

To avoid a city, Jynx turns off the freeway and onto a service road, keeping tabs on direction. She knows she’s headed to a city because she is down wind of the building sweet stench of rotting flesh. She plots her course around the forest on a ranger’s service road that circles Colorado City, back-tracking until the smell fades. The forest has gotten thick around them, but the road is still somewhat serviceable when she decides to push forward on it in search of a safe place to camp for the night. Coming around a tight turn in the road, Jynx drives rather unexpectedly into a hundred acre patch of emerald green marijuana, the road ending in the field.

Jynx gears down and stops at the end of the road, scanning her surroundings, smiling deviously when she realizes that nobody is anywhere in sight, and for once it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Government signs are posted at the edge of the fields, ordering people to keep out, but since she’s already parked on a road set into the field to aid with collection, she sees no real reason to worry over the signs. Jynx opens the glove box and takes out three freshly acquired, ornately carved meerschaum pipes, still invisible in their hard cases. She can see that the field has been abandoned in mid process, piles of freshly cut marijuana lie on tarps all around them, covered from the rain by black plastic held down with rocks. She can see green houses in the distance, their windows recently broken out. Her focus doesn’t stay on the broken glass for long.

“Either of you got a problem staying here until morning?” Jynx asks in alto monotone.

“Hell no.” Jude and ChoCho both say at the same time.

“Then we’d best get ready for bed because I’m tired of driving.” Jynx says, laughing giddily as she steps out of the truck, pipes in their cases, practically dancing into the field of green.

Jynx takes the time to set up a fire at the center of the clearing before changing into her pajamas and readying the pipes for use. She hums while packing down a pipe with the dried, sticky looking leaves that lie in bunches at the edge of the fields, waiting to be processed into bricks. Jude and ChoCho have disappeared in opposite directions, with hand spades and wet wipes, so Jynx makes certain food is waiting and that the ornately carved pipes are ready to use before going out to do her own business. When she returns from the field, ChoCho and Jude are waiting for her. They haven’t lit their pipes yet. When she is sitting down by the fire, the night is settled in, and the field is alive with sounds of insects and the animals that hunt them. ChoCho takes up a long, thin stick and puts it into the fire until its end is burning, lighting Jynx first, who sucks until the hot smoke fills her lungs and her heart starts to race. He then lights Jude, and by the time he is lighting his own pipe, his stick is barely a stub that he tosses into the charcoal flame Jynx set to burn.

“Anybody hungry?” Jynx asks, having the rations out and ready to eat.

“No.” Jude says knowingly, pulling another long hit from his pipe. “But I will be soon.”

Advertise Here