Exit (21 page)
Authors: Thomas Davidson
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Marcy Thistleby
November 1 at 5:35pm · Cambridge, MA
Don't know about anyone else, but I live below two terrorists. You see the news today? 2 terorists from Cambridge? That’s them. Her name is Rain. Yeah, Rain. Cringe, cringe, cringe. I don’t know her boyfriend’s name. Never asked, never bothered, never cared. But those 2 are all effed up. This morning I went 2 my parked car behind my bldg, 2 go 2 work (confession: I have a job), and saw them sleeping in their car!!! Its like uh November? Cold? Or should I say Novembrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr????? And she wakes up and wipes the steamy window, makes a circle and looks out. I was like OMG sh’es crazy. It gets better. When I come home from work, there’s like 2 signs in her upstairs windows. U can see it from the street. Get ready…signs sez…”WARNING These Premses are Protectd by CLOSED CIRCUIT TV
24 Hour Video Recording.” Yeah, honey, in yr dreams. The other sign sez…”WARNING All Supicious Persons & Actvities Are Immediately Reported to Our NEIGHBORHOOD WITCH.”
Rain is an artist. ‘Artist’ is a polite way of saying ‘Hey world, I’m a effin’ nutjob.’ Artist? How about Fartist? LOL! Honey, u a terrorist. Like I said, I live right next floor to 2 FAMOUS TERORISTS.
HEY WORLD – HER NAMES RAIN MOORE!!! RAIN RHYMES WITH INSANE!!! SHE’S THE NEIGHBORHOOD WITCH!!!
Tim put an index finger to his lips and gestured for her to remain silent. He showed her where to drive by pointing at the windshield. Soon they were standing inside an empty car bay at Self Serve Car Wash on Somerville Avenue in Somerville. Rayne stepped onto the sidewalk, looked up and down the street, seeing if anything looked suspicious.
A heightened sense of caution had shadowed their lives, and its intensity increased with each passing hour, with each new twist or setback. They were in the fourth of six bays facing the street. She could hear a customer in the fifth bay spraying his car. Sheets of mist blew out from several bays and showered the sidewalk. She hoped the fellow on the other side of the brick wall was a customer. But who knew? Scanning their surroundings was, in large part, an empty exercise, because when she got down to it, everyone and everything were suspect. After all, she had seen her twin on TV, and drones the size of insects. In today’s world,
Big Brother
wasn’t
Watching
you. That was
so
twentieth century. Now they stood on the threshold of something far more disturbing. Subtlety had gone high tech. Welcome to Nano-Brother. Nano-Peeping Tom on her bedroom window. Nano-Voyeur. Nano-Eyes everywhere.
Like the song said:
"Eye seek you in the morning
Eye seek you at night
Eye see you soon…"
The last two days were a nano-nightmare.
She lit a cigarette and called Martina, watching Tim insert bills into the change machine for a handful of quarters.
“Rayne,” Martina said, her voice just above a whisper. “I just got inside MIT. No sign of any flying hood ornaments, least not that I see. Where are you?”
Rayne walked several steps away from the bay so she couldn’t be overheard. “At a car wash.”
“You what?”
Rayne explained why, then said, “Call me when you get to the subway.”
Tim joined her. He, too, spoke in a hushed tone. “How is she?”
“MIT. So far, so good.”
Tim combed back his lemon hair with his fingers. “Well, if you’re gonna get chased by killer drones, what better place to be than MIT. Martina’s surrounded by geeks who’d know exactly what to do in this sort of emergency. Maybe she shouldn’t leave the building.”
Rayne thought:
MIT…Massachusetts Institute of Tink-stoppers…Martina Is Tinkproof.
In the parallel Cambridge, Harvard University had a statue dedicated to Nathaniel Harvard, not John Harvard. She wondered if the parallel world had its own MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Tinkology. The Tinks were now here, in her world. A snapshot image in her head: killer bees, traveling in aggressive swarms, morphing into Tinks.
At any rate, Rayne didn’t know if Tim was kidding or not. She let it go. “Coming here was a good idea. On the way over, I figured it out. I’m impressed. So, the Laundromat, the car wash—you’re on a roll.”
“We’ll find out soon enough. Let’s do it.”
She went to the change machine and got more quarters. She saw a wet car pull out of the sixth bay and turn onto the street.
Tim stood by the bay’s wall and set the dial on
pre-soak
, fed it coins, then grabbed the hose and squeezed the trigger. He started with the left front wheel well, bending down, pointing the nozzle in there and blasting it with water. Rayne crouched down by the front bumper and kept her eyes trained on the undercarriage.
Nothing dropped.
She saw a customer with a scruffy beard appear outside, throw a wet rag into an orange barrel behind their bay, then walk away. The barrel was almost overflowing with paper bags, paper cups and newspapers.
Tim moved to the left rear wheel and shot the well with water, his arm waving back and forth. The water thundered below the quarter panel. Rayne resumed her vigil.
Nothing dropped.
He stood up and looked at her with the expression of a man stifling an obscenity, then stepped over to the right rear wheel. He pulled the trigger, blasting water.
Rayne crossed her fingers and watched.
Finally, something dropped within a narrow waterfall.
She popped up and hurried to the trunk. She faced Tim and nodded. Kneeling, she reached under the car and felt a dragonfly. She brushed it toward her feet, into the open. Tim crushed it with his shoe as if putting out a cigarette. Rayne thought:
SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Eliminating Tinks greatly reduces serious risks to your health.
Two minutes later another one dropped from the right front corner of the Buick. It, too, met Tim’s shoe.
He whispered into her ear, “It’s evidence. I’ll put them in my pocket.”
“You sure they’re…out of commission?”
He held the flattened bugs in the palm of his hand. “Look at ‘em.”
She heard a car pull into the third bay, its engine rumbling. The customer in the fifth bay was fanning water against his car; it sounded like a windblown, driving rain on a plate glass window. “Just to be sure, let’s do a second round with the hose.”
“Like shampoo. Rinse and repeat.”
“Go get ‘em, Mr. Crowe.”
He turned the dial to
wash
and inserted more quarters. One by one, he blasted the wheels with suds. Nothing dropped on this round. Finally he used an undercarriage washer and slowly dragged it front to back, spraying the Buick’s belly like a lawn sprinkler. No additional Tinks dropped from the frame.
Tim put the hose away and stood by the Buick’s door. “Damn, I forgot to wash the floor mats.”
“Seriously, you think we got all of them?”
“I don’t know. We may have. If we didn’t, where else could they hide? If any are hidden in the car, they got shot with soap and water. I’ll leave the soap inside the wheels. No need to rinse it.”
“We found two. For a car, all you need is one, wouldn’t you think?”
“Hey, lady, do I look like a drone expert? Call MIT, they’d know.”
She kissed him and said, “Let get out of here.”
“Where?”
“Every ten minutes, another major decision. Let me think for a second.”
“It’s like being president during a nuclear attack. You call the Kremlin on the hotline, but keep getting a busy signal.”
“Look, I think my car is clean. Debugged.”
“For now. But it’s still a hot car with your plates. There can’t be many 1988 red Buick LeSabres in Cambridge, and the cops may be already looking for it.”
“I hate to abandon it. We may need it.
Will need it
. Everything else has been taken away.”
“Martina’s mother?”
“Well, her garage would be a hideout for the time being. We could get it out of sight.” She glanced absently at the passing traffic on the street, trying to concentrate on their situation. Fatigue and anxiety were taking a toll.
Tim’s voice snapped her out of it. “I hear a ‘but?’”
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this. Martina was with us in the parking lot for all of ten minutes, and already her life is going off the rails. And now my Buick is like, what? A magnet for bad luck and trouble. If I drive it to her mom’s, how long before EyeSoar and the drones close in? Look what happened to James Carney? If something happens to Martina…no really, I really couldn’t forgive myself. She has nothing to do with this. I can’t risk putting this on her.”
“Sounds like you made up your mind.”
“We need Plan B.”
Tim rubbed his hands in frustration. “When I was five years old, I could go months without making a decision.”
“Yeah, well, I guess that’s not gonna…” Her voice trailed off. Her head blanked out for a moment. Why? Then she was aware of a change in the ambient sounds. Something sounded normal, but wrong. She heard water streaming, but the sound was suddenly the same, without variation. She held a finger in the air, then stepped over to the front opening and peeked into the third bay.
The hose was curled on the pavement, suggesting a long snake ready to slither beneath the parked car, an empty, black Ford Crown Victoria. The nozzle’s handle was wrapped in duct tape, keeping it turned on. Water streamed out, not hitting the car, not making the metallic sound against steel.
She almost jumped when she felt Tim’s breath on the back of her neck. She turned and they exchanged a glance. He pointed at the brick wall dividing the third and second bay. She nodded, tapped her chest with a fingertip, and pointed to the rear of the bay. He shook his head.
The sound of running water provided a cover.
She crept across the wet cement to the left edge of the wall. Tim stood about twenty-five feet away on the street end. He held up three fingers. Two. One.
Rayne inched forward, peeked into the second bay, an empty stall, and saw a blur of movement.
A man sprang up from a crouch, dressed in a black blazer, black shirt and skinny red tie. He rushed Tim—half-blind Tim—catching him off balance. He swung his fist; Tim’s head snapped back.
Rayne saw the strip of pumpkin colored hair, orange weeds on a pale pate. She had last seen the mini-drone haircut, the quadcopter, through the face shield of her gas mask as she battled to reach the Gateway’s exit.
C.C. Seymour was whaling on Tim, arms flailing. Tim tried to fend off the blows. A solid punch to the damaged eye, Rayne knew, would be a disaster. An irreversible disaster.
Time stopped for a half second; she heard her deceased father’s voice.
"Listen up, raindrop...”
Inventory: two men, an empty bay, a hose.
“Rule number one…”
She dug coins from her pocket, a few spilling from her fist, hitting the concrete with a tinkling sound.
Don't fight fair…
She rushed over and fed quarters into the box on the wall, turned the dial to
wash
, punched the button.
…fight to win.
Tim had his forearms up, eyes squinting, exchanging blows.
She rushed C.C. Seymour, held the metal nozzle like a pistol, and squeezed the trigger. Suds shot out and blasted the orange hair. She lowered the nozzle, shot him in the face.
Tim backed off, giving her room.
Then an incoming call: music played inside her pocket.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
filled the car bay.
“My mother says,
‘When you gonna live your life right?’”
She went for the bull’s-eye. Kept the trigger depressed and aimed for his lips. He opened his mouth to spit…
Say ‘Aaahhh...’ for Doctor Moore.
…and she thrust the hose forward, the nozzle clicking against his teeth. Three white ribbons of foam appeared, boiling out of his mouth and nostrils. She heard a garbled scream.
“Oh mother dear we're not the fortunate ones…”
Tim grabbed him from behind, hooked his forearm around Seymour’s neck. Tim’s face was red, his lower lip bleeding. His breath came in hard gulps. “Again,” he wheezed.
“And girls they wanna have fun…”
She showered Seymour with suds. Face, eyes, mouth. Her thoughts turned south, below the border. She grabbed him by the belt buckle and tugged, said, “One for the do-da,” and jammed the nozzle down his pants, shooting him between his buckling legs. Both black pant legs rippled, ballooned, then slippery white foam shot onto his shoes. A white puddle widened on the floor.
“Oh girls just wanna have fun…”
“Good Jesus,” Tim said, “that looks perverted.”
Inside her pocket, the band stopped playing.
Seymour clawed his mouth, his air passage clogged, coughing out white mucus.
From the corner of her eye, Rayne saw a silver sphere fly horizontally past the rear of the bay, left to right, the size and speed of a slow moving baseball. She turned, saw Tim swing Seymour by the arm and bounce him headfirst into the brick wall, crushing the quadcopter. The Minister of Security dropped to the pavement.
Tim put a hand to his injured eye. “We gotta—“
A thunderbolt cracked the air. The floor quaked beneath Rayne’s feet.
Two bays away, the Buick exploded.
She stepped out of bay number two, and turned in time to see, among other flying debris, her windows blown apart, pieces soaring through the air like a glass jigsaw puzzle awaiting assembly. Glass shrapnel hit the street. Her daddy had given her that mighty LeSabre, a cherry-red chariot, and EyeSoar had now taken it away.
Her car, home, reputation—gone. She rocked on her feet, smelled acrid smoke as her thoughts pinwheeled.
Now playing at the Gateway Theater: Gone. What’s the movie about? It’s about a Buick, an apartment, a setup…
“Rayne!” Tim’s voice snapped her out of it.
Tim frisked C.C. Seymour’s coat for car keys. Within a minute they were driving down Somerville Avenue in C.C. Seymour’s Crown Vic. In the rearview mirror, Rayne saw a trail of smoke pouring from bay number four and into traffic.