Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

“It’s bad enough to be a hell of sorts,” Reba said.

“We get to make choices still,” Grace said. “I figure that’s hell, when you can’t make choices. When you can’t struggle or strive anymore. Can’t choose to be who you are no matter what the circumstances. We get to that point, then we’re in hell. Right now, we’re still alive.”

About that time Steve brought the bus to a halt.

“Shit,” he said.

We moved to the front of the bus, looked out over the hood. Shadows washed over the hood like floods of ink, but finally they parted long enough for us to see what Steve saw.

A drop-off.

A place that just went… down.

“We won’t be driving any farther,” Steve said. “We’ve come to the end of the trail.”

“What now?” Homer said

“Well,” Grace said, “if we’re going to execute your plan, we’re going to have to start using our heads. Here’s what I suggest. We all relax. Just relax. We keep someone awake at all times. Say two of us. What we do is we start being real quiet. We only talk if we have to. Boring, I know. But what we got to do is be quiet inside ourselves, and listen, and feel for when things change.”

“The pressure in the ears?” Homer said.

“Exactly,” Grace said. “If at least two of us are awake at all times, and two of us feel it, we try to decide if it’s oppressive pressure, you know, going down, or relaxing pressure, surfacing, or being near the surface.”

“Uh,” James said, holding a hand out to Grace, “not to be kicked to death or anything, but near the surface, wouldn’t that be as bad as being way below?”

“Depends on how near the surface,” Steve said.

“But how can we know for sure?” James said.

“You can’t,” I said. “We judge the way Grace says for a time. When we feel we can recognize the way it feels when we get close to the surface, then we plan for the next time and go for it.”

“Don’t your ears adjust after a time?” Steve said. “Get so they don’t pop?”

“You better hope not,” Grace said. “And another thing, we’re going to have to go out there.”

“Outside the bus,” Homer said. “I don’t even like to hang my ass out the window anymore. I got to go, I go damn quick.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, “the bus is starting to stink, all that stuff on its sides.”

“We have to go out,” Grace said. “We got flashlights, and those things don’t like the light.”

“How bad do they not like it?” Homer said.

“It’s the chance we have to take,” Grace said.

“She’s right,” I said. “We have to go out there and find the way out of Ed. The flush, so to speak. And when we do, then we got to figure how to ride our way out, and hope for the best.”

“We could just stay right here,” James said, “inside the bus. It’s not so bad.”

“For how long,” I said. “We’ll run out of food. We’ll end up eating one another-”

“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea throwing Cory away,” James said. “I mean, he was already dead… I’m just saying what I think others are thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking that right then,” Grace said. “But I could. We all could. Some of us have not only thought it, we’ve done it.”

James’s hand went up.

“No shame in that,” Grace said. “If the meat is available. It wasn’t too good for Olympic hopefuls crashed in the snow, and it wasn’t too good for pioneers crossing the Rockies, caught in blizzards, so, by God, it isn’t too good for us. But, I must admit, I wasted some not-so-prime meat.”

“Yeeew w w w w w,” Reba said.

“You just haven’t got hungry enough,” James said.

“Could be,” Reba said, “but I don’t want to start being a cannibal any time soon. I might start to like it the way Bjoe likes it. And then I might not want to wait for the food to die. Or, I might even think how nice it might be if someone did die, so there’d be the meat.”

“At the time,” Grace said, “I was thinking I wanted that bastard out of my sight, not how I could prepare him for dinner. If I really thought about that sort of thing, wanted that sort of thing, I wouldn’t have thrown him out there for the shadows to snack on. Thing is, we can’t sit here. We have to find a way out, even if it kills us.”

“I don’t like that ‘kills us’ part,” James said.

“You have no real say,” Grace said. “You shouldn’t have sided with Cory.”

“I only sided a little bit.”

“Get quiet again,” Grace said. “Thing is, you can stay if you want, but you won’t decide for the rest of us. Look here. I’m not going to decide for any of you, for that matter. All I’m saying is I’m going to try and find a way out. You can work with me, or do your own thing. But, me, I’m going.”

“I’m in,” Steve said.

“Me too,” I said.

Reba and Homer agreed. James was silent, the way Grace had asked him to be.

“All right then,” Grace said. “I say we start the shifts, for feeling the changes. Up and down. No one has to sleep, but someone, two of us have to stay awake. No talking. Starting as soon as we lay things out. Unless it’s necessary to survival. You want to sit up and look about, or try and help the ones assigned to feel the change, go for it. But if it’s not your turn on deck, so to speak, either sleep or shut your mouth. We’ll record what we find. Jack, I’ve seen you writing. You got paper, a pen in that pack, right?”

“I do. The pen is starting to run out of ink, but I have an eyebrow pencil and some mascara that I found in a car. Have to, we can write with that.”

“Good. As I was saying. A couple of us need to go on an expedition. Outside. See if we can find the exit hole.”

“I’ll go,” I said.

“Me too,” Reba said.

“All right,” Grace said.

James raised his hand, looked at Grace. “I know this is something I shouldn’t ask. But who made you captain?”

“I did,” she said. “Problem with that?”

“No. That works fine for me.”

We still had a few flashlights, and there were even a couple of matches Grace had produced from somewhere. And there were knives, of course.

Grace, me, and Reba moved to the front of the bus. I took one flashlight, Reba the other. We each took a knife. We spoke quietly.

“Thing to do,” Grace said, “is go out there, see if you can figure where Ed relieves himself, and can we get out that way. This critter, he isn’t going to be like a normal fish-”

“No shit,” Reba said.

“No telling what you’ll find,” Grace said. Then almost too soft to hear: “But you got to find something. Some way out.”

“Those things move awfully fast out there,” I said.

“I know,” Grace said. “I can go instead of you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I can, though,” Grace said, “but the problem is James. I don’t trust him, and with me out of the way, well, Steve could handle him, but I like having him doubleteamed. I may just go on and kill him. That would be the smart thing to do.”

“But it wouldn’t be the right thing,” I said. “We start doing things like that, then Homer is correct, we’ll be like a lot of other folks on this world, and with no one acting as room monitors, this will be hell.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Grace said. “Now, you remember Bjoe’s story, about how the torches his folk were carrying went out, and they were nabbed. I think that’s exactly what happened. The torches burned out, and the light went out, and when it did, they were nabbed. Once you turn your flashlights on, don’t turn them off. No light, and they come. You’ve got light, they won’t bother you.”