More out of blind curiosity than anything, Mindelson decided to ship the object to a private aviation forensics laboratory in Wichita, Kansas, for analysis. This time, the cargo landed safely in Newark and soon after, the vial was on a courier truck heading west. The route to Wichita would not have taken it through Undisclosed, as the interstate bypassed the town completely. However, the driver of the courier truck, Minnie Johnson, heard from dispatch that traffic was backed up on said interstate for miles due to a truck full of bees that had overturned, blocking both westbound lanes. Dispatch did not let her know that a young man in a passing vehicle had jumped out in order to rescue the driver of that semi, only to be attacked by bees and promptly die from anaphylaxis.
Minnie was forced to exit onto highway 131, toward the creepy small city she always tried to avoid whenever possible. Two minutes after entering Undisclosed city limits, the driver approached an overpass and saw some dumb fuck in a Range Rover trying to pass a semi in the eastbound lane, setting the SUV on a collision course with Minnie’s own goddamned face. Minnie braked, but knew that it ultimately would have no effect on how this situation would play out—she had nowhere to go and at best could decrease the amount the Ranger Rover’s cabin was compacted by 10 percent or so, to make it a little easier for the highway patrol to dig the body parts out of the wreckage. The life or death of the Range Rover driver was entirely in their own hands.
She felt only a split second of relief when the Range Rover jerked aside and threaded the needle between Minnie’s rig and the one in the other lane. That’s because right behind the suicidal Range Rover was a psychopath with an even more fervent death wish—the driver of the flat-black truck had his goddamned headlights off. Minnie uttered just one syllable of what was going to be an extraordinarily creative string of profanities before her rig slammed into the truck. Both vehicles went tumbling over the railing, the cab never detaching from the trailer, leaving it and the driver’s shattered body dangling off the overpass just a few feet above the roadway that crossed below.
Passing under the overpass at that exact moment was a pack of six motorcycles driven by members of the Christ’s Rebellion gang led by Lemmy Roach, with John “Beergut” Klosterman bringing up the rear. Beergut happened to glance up exactly at the moment that the horrific collision took place overhead, a semi-trailer rolling and flying to pieces, sending cargo raining down on the roadway around the bikes. Beergut was so busy dodging debris that he did not feel that a single, metal object had landed in the sweatshirt hood that was draped between his shoulder blades. The cylinder would remain there until he would tumble to the ground in the parking lot of the Roach Motel, being bitten by the flying heads of his own deceased grandmother.
15. SOY SAUCE
I reached for the vial, but Chastity yanked me back up to my feet. Damn, she was strong. She screamed, “LET’S GO!”
John saw what I was reaching for, and lunged for it. He accidentally kicked it away instead, sending it rolling across the pavement. A running biker stepped on it, causing him to trip and fly backward, breaking his neck when he landed awkwardly on a parking block. This caused the vial to roll forward again, right toward Amy, who picked it up in stride.
We all went stumbling away from the chaos. We were cut off from both of our vehicles, which were parked behind the bizarre three-way maelstrom behind us. We ran across a row of Harleys and without hesitation, Chastity jumped on one and kicked the engine to life.
John stopped, saw what she was doing, and straddled the next bike over. He started it, yelled at Amy to jump on behind him, and she did.
I do not know how to drive a motorcycle.
John peeled off down the street, and yelled back at me something that sounded like, “BEANIE WIENIE!”
Chastity turned back to me and said, “What are you waiting for? Get on!”
I did.
We dodged through the sparse nighttime traffic and I thought I was going to die. The raindrops were cold needles on my face. We followed John out to the industrial park, not too far from the ice factory where all this bullshit had begun. I knew where he was going. There were several vast buildings in the neighborhood that belonged to businesses that hadn’t survived the economic downturn this town had gone through about seven economic downturns ago. One was a former beans-and-wienies cannery, a sprawling, gray structure with giant, rusting metal letters welded to the front that said,
BEANS
WIENIES
in a bombastic font that made it look like the slogan for a dystopian totalitarian dictatorship. John’s band had played a concert here years ago; at the time the entire second floor of the abandoned cannery had been repurposed as a living space for a hippie artist commune. Back then, twenty or thirty people would drift in and out, living off the grid (though considering they were stealing power by splicing into nearby utility poles and getting city water from unmetered valves, they were actually very much on the grid—they just weren’t paying for it).
Then, one day, a kid died of a heroin overdose and the company that still owned the land decided it was too much of a liability issue. They ran out the hippies and hired a security guard to drive around the place a couple of times a day to kick out homeless people who came in to drink and get out of the rain. Fortunately, said security guard was Tyler Schultz, a friend of John’s. When we pulled up to the length of thin chain that served as a gate, Tyler dropped it and waved us past.
We pulled the motorcycles inside the building to shield them from view. The cavernous structure was a clammy, drippy space, and much of the artwork that had been left behind by the commune was ruined. There was a faded spray-painted mural on one wall depicting the Statue of Liberty covered in blood, underneath it were the words WAR KILLS. I passed a fiberglass Mickey Mouse with dollar signs for eyes and the word GREED spray-painted across his chest (I don’t know what that was supposed to symbolize). There was a creepy concrete snowman with a misshapen face and a single arm made of rusty rebar.
John led us upstairs, toward the quadrant of the second floor that had been devoted to the living area—the roof didn’t leak in that particular spot and four old sofas were positioned facing each other. There was still a pair of refrigerators in the corner, and a sink.
Chastity glanced around quickly, then went and stationed herself by a window.
John said, “As far as safe houses go, this is pretty much the last one in town that I’ve got access to.”
I said, “I don’t like it, the artwork out there is freaking out my worldview.”
Chastity said, “It could be worse. Can see approaching vehicles from right here, six ways out of the building if you’ve got to make a run for it.” She pulled out a roll of cash wrapped in a rubber band.
She peeled off three hundred-dollar bills and said, “You got twenty-five in change?”
Amy said, “Keep your money. You didn’t get Mikey back.”
“Stop with that. This isn’t about charity or having a good heart. I don’t pay you, maybe next month one of my bosses assumes he don’t need to pay me. Maybe that becomes the norm, everybody pressuring each other to turn down their paycheck in the name of courtesy. Then nothin’ gets done, because people know they won’t get paid and underneath all our generosity bullshit, it’s incentives that make the world go ’round. You did the work, you took the risk. You got twenty-five in change or not?”