“Wilbur, aren’t you the type,” Goog said, after a victorious glance at the fleX. “Intoxicated by an idea of yourself as having a direct line to Jesus, or whoever’s voices you’ve been hearing since you were a maladjusted kid. Just the sort of loser who used to sell his soul to Scientology—since the so-called Free State is just another fringy, goofball cult. And always so cozy with that fruitcake rabble-rouser Jarred. Makes perfect sense you’d snuffle the wacko’s trail, searching for the pothead at the end of the rainbow. Sorry to poop your pipe dream, but I’ll be flagging your chip. Drones from the Bureau will descend from the sky the moment you leave the tri-state area. As for you,” he told Nollie. “Conspiracy to defect to the USN is one of the few statutory justifications for forced chipping. So you might start shaving the back of your neck.”
“How convenient,” she said. “Its hairs are already raised.”
“Later, you’ll both thank me,” Goog said. “No nonagenarian with writer’s block would ever have scaled a considerable improvement on the Berlin Wall. And your head, Wilbur, would have splattered over the sand like a busted watermelon the moment you crossed the border.”
“Really? I guess we’ll find out.” Willing had to admit he felt yunk, pointing an X-K47 Black Shadow at his cousin. It simply didn’t feel serious. All the same, in seconds he had ratcheted up the stakes of this encounter in a manner that was difficult to ratchet back down. When you’ve pointed a gun at someone, you pretty much have to keep pointing it. You can’t put it back in your pocket and return to calm, interested discussion of your travel plans.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Goog said, with a quaver in his voice. “I’m not only your cousin, which obviously doesn’t mean much to you—”
“Or to you,” Willing said.
“I’m also a Scab agent.” Interesting slip. “Any idea what happens to you if you shoot one of us?”
“Nothing worse,” Willing calculated easily, “than if I don’t shoot you. The difference between drudging at Elysian for next to nothing and drudging at an outsourced prison for absolutely nothing? Negligible.”
“I came here to be nice,” Goog hissed.
“You came here to be disarming,” Willing said. “It always pissed you off that Jarred didn’t trust you with the guns.”
“But what are we going to do with him?” Nollie said.
“We could tie him up,” Willing supposed. “But there’s food and water to consider. Unlikely, but he might do something resourceful. And this is the last housewarming present I’d want to leave Fifa.”
“Nuts,” Nollie said. “You mean we have to bring the prick along. And I had been looking forward to this trip.”
• CHAPTER 4 •
SINGIN’ THIS’LL BE THE DAY THAT I DIE
“They only include a manual setting for emergencies,” Willing advised.
“Remember what I told you about preserving your dignity by breaking the rules?” Nollie said, struggling into what no one even called the driver’s seat anymore. “That goes double for driving your own fucking car.”
“People your age insisting on controlling the vehicle are the only reason anyone has accidents anymore. It’s two and a half thousand miles.”
“You want to drive?”
“I don’t know how.”
“No one does. It’s pathetic.”
Willing had always liked his aunt for her obstinacy. So he couldn’t object when she wouldn’t comply with his wishes, either. He suppressed a tremor of trepidation in the seat beside her. This whole venture was a suicidal careen toward a sheer cliff. If they slammed into an interstate meridian midway, the truncated expedition would simply be more efficient.
They set off with their reluctant passenger in the backseat, de-fleXed, wrists duct-taped graciously in his lap rather than uncomfortably behind his back. They allowed Goog to expend his vexation by listing the many crimes they were committing: abduction, false imprisonment, obstruction of the official duties of a federal employee. Yet as they retraced the route their family had trod in the cold, wet spring of ’32—east on Atlantic Avenue, over the Brooklyn Bridge, up West Street—even the captive got caught up in reminiscence. Its personnel much reduced, the second Mandible migration was blindingly swift in comparison to the one on foot. Oh, mobes in gang formation did veer into the road with no warning (crazed blithers on motorized trikes having long ago replaced the comparatively anodyne cyclist as the New Yorker’s anathema). Yet a shrunken, flat-lined GDP had done a spectacular job of thinning vehicular traffic. After its fifty-some years of snotty road-hoggery, only grinding poverty coast-to-coast had put the kibosh on the hulking sports utility vehicle by about 2040. When Willing pointed to one up ahead, the sighting was rare. “Still chugging!” he said. “It beats me where they get the gas.”
“Man, the SUV was one of the cruelest American inventions of all time,” Goog said. “I fucking loved my mom’s Jaunt. When it went out of production, I was all set to snag the latest model.”
“Bullying, brutish, and plug-ugly,” Nollie quipped. “Guess people recognize themselves in cars same as they do in dogs.”
On the GW, the metal grates of the surface rattled, the bridge itself lurching with a subtle sway. “I get the willies crossing these things,” Nollie said.
“No kidding,” Goog said. “This rusted contraption hasn’t had any serious maintenance since the 1990s.”
“According to Avery, the federal buildings in DC are just as dilapidated,” Willing said. “She said the ‘White House’ is a misnomer. Congress, the Lincoln Memorial—they’re all a dingy yellow dripping with black streaks. She said chunks of the Washington Monument keep falling off. After a girl was killed by one, you can’t get within a hundred yards.”
“My mom is biggin’ exaggerating,” Goog sneered. “I looked up pics of the Mall online. Pristine.”
“That’s because it’s cheaper to post old photographs than to pay for steam cleaning,” Willing said.
They curved on I-95 and bumped onto I-80 in Teaneck. Willing’s mood began to lift. He’d only been to New Jersey a handful of times, mostly with Jarred to plow rapidly inflating profits into hard-asset farm equipment. Besides New York, this was the only state of the union in which he’d set foot. As soon as they hit Pennsylvania, it was a brave new world. If these truly were the last days of his life, they’d be interesting days.
Nollie plugged her fleX into the sound system, cranking up the harmonies of her youth: “Hotel California,” “The Weight,” and some of the yunkest lyrics Willing had ever heard in a song called “A Horse with No Name.” She played Don McLean, JJ Cale, and Fleetwood Mac, until Goog exclaimed, “Christ, Nollie! This is like Tunes of Cro-Magnon Man. What’s next, Vivaldi?”
“I’m bankrolling this operation. This is my car, and my road trip,” she declared. “Ergo, my music. You’re a hostage, remember? Act like one.”
In truth, the moldy soundtrack grew on them. By the time they’d hit Stroudsburg on the Pennsylvania state line, both Willing and Goog were driving their Chevies to the levy at the top of their lungs.
With the late start, the first day was short. Nollie drove manfully—and pointlessly, since the Myourea could have done the job by itself—until 9 p.m., when they pulled into a rundown motel in Dubois. The proprietor was none too happy about Nollie’s being unchipped—since a chip would have automatically covered him for losses if his ninety-year-old guest went berserk on Jack Daniel’s and trashed the room. But he accepted a fleX payment because his operation was clearly hard up.