to make it.
About then she opened her eyes and said, “You know, the thing that would do me some good right now is a chicken fried steak. Maybe some mashed taters and cream gravy and rolls with it. Big ole glass of ice tea.”
“Rest now,” Sam said.
“It’s the batter does it on them steaks,” Mable said. “Don’t got that right, it ain’t worth eatin’. You dip the steak in the milk-and-egg batter, then into the flour, then back into the milk and egg, then back into the flour. Makes it extra crispy.”
“Ssshhhh, now, sugar bee, you rest.”
“Don’t do it that way, you don’t get that good flaky crust, and I do like a good flaky crust.”
She passed out again.
Bob came over and gave me one of the pistols from his belt. “Here, you might want to shoot someone later.”
I took it and walked to the open door at the back of the bus and looked out. The Christians were fist-fighting, probably over drops of blood on the asphalt, or what was left of the sardines Sam had dropped. I could see the greasy-haired girl lying on her side with her eyes wide open. There was a young man with a knife cutting strips of meat off her legs. I took a deep breath and closed the door.
2
Bob and I ate sardines while Sam lay asleep on the floor near Mable, who now and then came awake and gave us in great detail one of her favorite recipes. We had been through cherry pie, buttermilk biscuits, chili and hominy cakes.
“I feel kind of bad eating another person’s food,” I said.
“They were going to eat you,” Bob said. “Look at it that way.”
“A point,” I said, and ate a little faster.
“You’re going to need your strength when the Christians come for us. They’re not going to be worried about the bomb anymore. They’ll have it figured now, since we didn’t get blown up.”
“How’d you know the bus wasn’t rigged with a bomb?”
“Just figured… didn’t know for sure… Hell, Jack, I don’t care anymore. If this is life, it ain’t worth living. I think what you and I ought to do is something real foolish. Otherwise, we’ll end up licking blood out of hubcaps.”
“What you got in mind?” I asked.
“Destroy the Orbit symbol.”
I mulled that over awhile. “It has a ring to it. Any reason?”
Bob looked back to make sure Sam and Mable were still sleeping. “Come with me.” He pulled the lever and opened the door and we went outside, “You’ve been a mite busy to notice, but when I woke up and seen you were gone, I figured you’d joined the Christians.”
“Okay, I was a jackass. Happy?”
“It’s just your way, Jack. I’m used to it. Anyway, I woke up and come out of the camper and the first thing I seen was that.”
He pointed at the Orbit symbol. “And it’s worse now than when I’m talking about.”
“God Almighty,” I said.
The Orbit symbol had turned a hot blue, so blue it hurt my eyes. It was getting the juice from the tentacles- there were twelve of them now and I couldn’t think of them as anything other than tentacles-and they were twisting and lashing across the blackness, spitting lightning from their tips like venom, and this lightning no longer ran the length of the pole, but just gathered in the symbol alone, and the symbol was spinning very fast, hurling more lightning than ever from it, striking the concession. The concession glowed so violently that at any moment I expected it to move, like amputated frog legs hopping in response to a live wire. The marquee was no longer there. I figured it had exploded and crumbled down, like a charcoaled stick.
“I figure something new is about to happen,” Bob said, “and I’m not sure it’s worth waiting around for. Last time we had something like this we got the Popcorn King.”
I agreed with Bob. I felt it was gearing up for something bigger and more catastrophic. I tried to figure exactly what it was with the symbol and why the power from the lightning concentrated itself there before going to the concession. A number of B-movie possibilities presented themselves: The symbol had accidentally been made from smelted iron ore that had been mixed with some strange and horrid sentient metal that had come to earth in a meteor, and once it had been converted to the Orbit symbol it had awakened from a long sleep and was now tormenting us earthlings for lack of anything better to do. I figured being a chunk of rock, or even a sign, could get pretty boring. It was the sort of thing that could give you a bad attitude. And I thought again of the B-movie gods, and that idea appealed to me most of all. Their motives seemed to fit in with those of most low-budget moviemakers. Bring it in on time. If it doesn’t make sense in spots, well, make it pretty or exciting. Don’t let them think about it too long.
“You getting hypoglycemic again,” Bob said, bringing me up from the pit of my thoughts.
“No,” I said. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“About rewriting the script.”
“The script?”
“Let’s just say this is a movie and those tentacles-”
“Just drips of goo, Jack.”
“-belong to the B-movie gods, and they’re manufacturing all this, using us as actors, only we’re not acting, and they’re making up the script as they go. They’ve isolated us, they’ve given us our monster, the Popcorn King, and now they’re looking for the big finish, and I don’t think they’ve planned a heroic ending. I think this is one of those downbeat films.”
“Always got to have something to believe in, don’t you, Jack? Astrology, Christianity, now B-movie gods.”
“Give me something to blame all this on. A random universe with no god, evil or otherwise, is just too much for me. Just let me say it’s the B-movie gods and they have this bad scenario planned, and you and me, we’re not going to stand for it. We’re going to destroy the symbol
… Hell, let’s do something even if it’s wrong.”
“Believe the ghost of Elvis is doing it if you like,” Bob said. “It don’t make a hang to me. But I’ve got a plan for taking that symbol down…”
Bob woke Sam up when we got back to the bus. He pulled him up front and said, “You know how to use that torch and stuff?”
“I don’t just carry it around, boy. Sure, I know. But I aint’ got a hankering at the moment.”
“I’m going to give you a hankering,” Bob said. “We’re going to cut the Orbit symbol down.”
“Have at it,” Sam said.
“We want you to do it. You know how to use the equipment.”
“After what you done to Mable, you think I’m gonna help you? You shouldn’t oughta shot her hand off, little buddy.”
I thought he might add “nahnuhnahnah,” but he passed on that.
“We want to cut that sucker down and drop it on the concession,” Bob said. “See if we can smash the Popcorn King… Christ, we want to do something besides wait to get eaten, or end up eating one another. What say, Sam?”
“Don’t use the Saviour’s name in vain… I don’t know. You have to cut it just right, get it to fall that way.”
“That’s why we need you,” Bob said. “You’re the expert.”
“Well,” Sam said, rubbing his lingers along his chin, “it might not change a thing, but it sure could give a man peace of mind for trying, now couldn’t it?”
