“LeBron may take you up on that offer. He’s talked to me about changing his name a few times.” Yue replied sidling over to join in the conversation. She wanted to personalize their brother to the big guy. Harley took the bait with a glint in his eyes that indicated he knew exactly what she was doing.
“LeBron seems like a fine name for a proud young black man.” Despite himself Harley was now a little curious what the deal was.
“He’s not good at basketball. Horrible actually. Loves to sit in his room and read all day. He won’t even watch sports. It’d be like if I was named Joe Montana. Except I’m actually pretty awesome at football so I guess it’s not the same thing at all.” Drew said. He didn’t know where Yue was going with this but intuited this was the right thing for him to say.
“That’s kind of a boy named Sue situation.” Harley joked. Yue and Drew stared back at him completely lost.
“Johnny Cash?” Harley tried. When they both still sat there staring at him, he muttered something about millennials and told them they should go grab some food since they’d be working later.
“What are we going to be doing?” Drew asked. With all the circus talk he had visions of pounding in stakes to help setup a tent. He kept wondering if this was all just some weird dream and he was really face down in the air bag in the Hummer. He could easily have gone into a coma or something when they hit that tree. Harley’s response to his question made him think being in a coma in a broken-down car surrounded by crawlerz might be better than their new reality. The pain in his face and the burn marks on his skin from the air bag dashed his hopes of it all just being a dream.
“You two get to be our canaries. When we stop there’ll be plenty of cameras and the drivers will be able to look around. The place we’re heading for should be deserted, but you never know for sure. The best way to find out is to send a couple of pikers like you guys to walk around for a bit. If no scary monsters come running to try and eat you that means the rest of us can come out and have a picnic before the sun goes down. Once the sun starts going down the rule is everyone back in the trucks for quiet time no matter what.”
Chapter 34: Canaries
The trucks slowed to turn off the highway. Once off the highway they began twisting and turning down a long winding road. Yue and Drew sat near the back doors next to a man and woman in their late twenties. Both of them had shaved heads and were wearing too much jewelry. One of them caught Drew checking out their heads.
“We’re quick change artists. We use wigs in our act so keeping our heads shaved just works for us. Although I guess we don’t really need to worry about it so much now. Just habit I guess.” The man said.
“More like it gets itchy when it starts growing back. So far, we haven’t had any issues getting our hands-on shaving cream and razors. We must be the only ones in the world still worried about shaving. Although my legs are probably hairier than his at this point.” The woman said grinning over at them.
Yue smiled politely back at the couple while Drew just ignored them. He’d made up his mind he didn’t like these people and he wasn’t as good of an actor as Yue was. She had to keep reminding him to play nice since these people had LeBron locked up in another trailer. Based on the general weirdness of these people there was quite literally no telling what they may do to LeBron if they screwed up. The truck slowed then came to a stop.
“Your time to shine.” Charani appeared out of the depths of the trailer. She was holding a handheld radio. Harley was walking behind her with a big black duffle bag. The huge muscles in his arm twitching as he set the bag down on the floor in front of them.
“It’s your gear that we took off of you. Go ahead and pull out what you want. You can leave the rest in the bag. It’s your bag so we won’t be taking anything out of it now that you’ve agreed to be one of us. We don’t steal from one another. Anyone else is fair game.” Harley nudged the bag towards them with his foot to get them to open it.
Inside the bag were all of the weapons they’d been wearing when captured plus a good portion of their other gear. They spent a few minutes sliding back into their rigs. It felt good to have the weapons on again. Drew realized now how naked he’d felt without them.
“What about the rest of our stuff?” Drew asked as he was busy shoving knives and magazines into his pockets. Yue gave him an exasperated look. They really should be pretty happy with being armed again.
“Bulk food and ammunition supplies are stockpiled to be shared for the good of the clan. You’ll get more storage place and privacy the longer you’re here. We’re not a bunch of hippies but we’re pooling our supplies together to get through this. You have a problem sharing all your cans of tiny flavored sausages?” Charani fixed Drew with a stare that showed why she was fierce enough to be in charge of one of the vardo.
“What do we do now?” Yue asked looking to change the subject. She wanted to get this job done and see if they could check on LeBron.
“Once we get the word you and your brother will exit the
