David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

“With gas, ma’am, that’s thirty twenty-nine.”

“Shit, all I got is thirty. Put a pack of this gum back, Joe.” She hands it to him. He takes it, but his eyes never leave the restroom door. He sees the men’s room door open and a full-blown alien steps out, pulls a high-tech weapon from a side-pouch, pushes Sherry and Joe aside and points the weapon at the clerk. The alien barks indecipherable commands at the clerk, who opens the cash register. The alien leaps over the counter and begins eating the paper currency. When the clerk reaches to push a silent alarm, the alien fires his weapon. It is soundless, but a red hole appears in the center of the clerk’s forehead and he falls dead. The alien grabs a shopping basket, fills it with bread, doughnuts, flour, granola bars and other wheat-based products, including beer, then flees on foot.

Sherry sees it another way — not an alien but an armed robber with a tattooed face who pushes her and Joe aside, then confronts the clerk.

“Open it. Fast.”

The clerk obliges. The robber steps behind the counter and loads the cash into a bag held in his mouth — it almost looks like he’s eating it. The clerk reaches for the silent alarm. The robber shoots him in the forehead; he falls. The robber grabs a shopping basket, fills it with bread, doughnuts, flour, granola bars and other wheat-based products, including beer, and flees on foot, dropping a few bills in the process.

In the aftermath of all this, Sherry and Joe are nearly paralyzed with fear.

Joe salivates heavily. Sherry recovers from the initial shock, picks up the dropped bills, three $100s, then checks on the clerk, who is apparently dead. She calls 911. “There’s been a shooting here…. Where? Shit, I don’t know. A mini-mart on the highway. I’m from out of town. Send an ambulance if you want to, but he looks dead. Bye.” She hangs up.

“They’re hungry,” Joe says. “They use a lot of energy when they swarm. They’ll kill for wheat at this stage.”

“Hush up and get a basket. We’re hungry too.”

They rush around filling two shopping baskets with this and that, and flee.

Kenny drives at top speed listening to the Salty Dog tape. The back door of the rig, already damaged in the cargo-shifting accident, comes open. A sack of flour falls out and bursts open on the highway, then another and another.

Moe and Jerry King cruise in the DeLorean.

“I got a club in Vegas, too,” King says, “so I’m on the road a lot. I hate to fly. I like to drive. You ever see that movie, Back to the Future , when they traveled in time?”

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“This was their vehicle of choice for time travel. A DeLorean. Exactly like this one.”

Moe snickers. “You rigged for time travel?”

“That was an extra I couldn’t afford.”

King belches several times and clasps his left arm. “I feel funny.” He slumps over, grasping his chest.

The DeLorean swerves dangerously. Moe takes control of the steering wheel, brings it to a safe stop. He feels for King’s pulse, shakes him, realizes he is dead and drags the body into the woods. A few minutes later Moe emerges from the woods and returns to the DeLorean counting the money in King’s wallet and wearing his suit.

He gets into the DeLorean and drives on, kicking up a white cloud as he drives through the flour spilled from Kenny’s rig.

In Moe’s pickup Joe eats pudding cups and Lunchables, drinks Mountain Dew.

Sherry sips a beer as she drives, listening to C&W music on the radio. The engine is in serious distress, knocking, hissing, smoking, wheezing.

News comes over the radio: “Texas state police are on the lookout for a late-model black Ford pickup truck. A suspect in the recent café homicide near Hays, Kansas, is thought to have fled the scene with two hostages, a woman and a teenage boy.”

Sherry slows down, pulls onto the shoulder. “I think it’s time to jump ship, Honey.” The engine sighs, then dies, dripping oil into the dirt. Sherry throws the gun away. She and Joe trek back to the highway with their shopping baskets. Joe also has his saw and bow.

Kenny, pedal to the metal, sees them in his headlight beam, brakes hard. Sherry and Joe climb aboard.

Sherry says, “Kenny, how many times in one week are you gonna save our asses?”

A roadside park. Kenny’s rig pulls in. He and Joe walk to the men’s side, Sherry to the women’s.

In the men’s room, Joe and Kenny piss several urinals apart. They are alone. When Joe looks down he sees that he is standing in sticky green alien goo. He unsticks his feet and moves one urinal closer to Kenny. “They’ve been in here,” he says. “Look at that.” He points to the goo. Kenny looks down but sees only a dirty, wet floor.

“You know what, Joe. You’re pretty fucking strange.”

Kenny’s rig, back on the highway. Joe is smoking a joint. Sherry reaches for it. “Son, don’t hog that doob.” He passes it to her. She takes a heavy drag. The cab is thick with smoke.

Joe delivers a stoned ramble: “See, we live in a seamless universe, but it has two sides. And one side doesn’t have a clue what’s happening on the other side. It’s like a highway, a two-lane highway. One universe going one way, the other universe going the other way. Sometimes you have head-on crashes. The atoms smash into one another. Like a wreck on the interstate. That’s how the aliens get here, during the collisions.”

Sherry takes a deep drag. “Right, Joe. Whatever.”

The DeLorean pulls off the main highway. Moe gets out and gives his dead and abandoned pickup the once-over. When he’s satisfied no one is around, he returns to the highway at breakneck speed.

Kenny’s rig, hours later. Kenny is drowsy. Joe and Sherry sleep. A highway sign looms in the headlight beam: WELCOME TO KANSAS. In his groggy state, Kenny doesn’t immediately grasp that something is quite wrong here. But when he does, he snaps to alertness, applies the brakes, stops. Joe and Sherry wake up. Kenny backs up, past the sign for another look.

“How’d we get turned around?”

Sherry yawns. “We were in Texas when I fell asleep.”

“And going due south,” Kenny says. “How in the fuck did we end up in Kansas?”

“I told you this would happen,” Joe says. “It happens all the time. People don’t remember is all.”

Kenny shakes his head, truly puzzled. He attempts to turn the rig around on the narrow-shouldered highway, temporarily blocking both lanes.

The DeLorean tops a hill going at least a hundred and ten, an alien at the wheel. Kenny, Sherry and Joe run from the rig. The alien applies the brakes and screeches to a halt inches from it.

The gull-wing door of the DeLorean opens in a cloud of rubber smoke.

Joe says, “It wants us to get in and go. We’re being abducted. I’m beginning to remember how it went. We have to do what they say.”

The DeLorean speeds around the rig and burns rubber down the highway. After an indeterminate stretch of time, it pulls to the shoulder on a lonely stretch of the same endless blacktop. The gull-wing opens. Sherry, Joe and Kenny get out. The DeLorean peels away and roars down the highway.

The sun, at mid-heaven, is ultra-bright. Bathing in its rays are endless fields of ripe wheat.

Joe has his saw and bow, wears his western hat. Kenny shrugs. “How in the shit did we get turned around like this?”

“This is where they dropped me off last time. It’s kind of familiar.”

Sherry says, “We got turned around some way.”

“I don’t think so, Mother.”

Kenny tries to orient himself. “Wait…a…minute.”

The temperature soars.

On the same highway, later. They plod on, sweltering.

Sherry and Joe pass a joint back and forth.