Rick Carter's First Big Adventure (Pete's Barbecue Book 1) (19 page)

     Mel looked at Roger again.  “Let’s get him somewhere a little more comfortable, shall we?” 

    Roger beamed. “Yes, I like comfortable.  Say, where are my pants?  Who took my pants?  I’m buck naked!”

     “Yes, Rog.  You lost them.”  Mel tried to reassure him.  “But, we’ll get you some new pants.”

      Pete took a few moments to press some unseen buttons on the stone pedestal, turning equipment off, before he joined the three of them again.  Rick was still dazed and feeling the effects of the second port.   He looked like he was angry.  “Mel, did you know what kind of crap they had in that place?”

     Mel stopped and looked puzzled.  “Yeah.  It’s standard for that kind of facility.”

    “And you didn’t say anything to me beforehand?”  Rick continued annoyed.

    “Like what?  There’s gonna be armed robots and dart guns?”  Mel laughed.

    Rick looked at him solidly for a moment before he decided to end the discussion by drawing back his right hand and connecting hard with Mel’s jaw yet again.  As trained as Mel was in combat tactics the fast freight train of a right hook once again caught him by surprise.  The blow sent him reeling backward and into the sand.

     “What the hell, Rick!”  He shouted as he raised back up on his elbows in the sand where he fell, his chin red and hurting.

     Rick pointed his finger sharply down at him. “You coulda told me to bring a weapon!  How about that?”

      “But, I wasn’t the only one who knew about the defenses.  Pete did too!  Hit him!”  Mel seemed hurt in more ways than his jaw.

      Rick stood upright and put his hands on his hips.  “Pete didn’t get me into this crap, Mel, you did. Now let’s go somewhere and find out what Roger knows.”  He moved over and grabbed Roger lightly by the shoulders and began to walk up the steep dune with him.  Pete came along and helped his protégé up out of the sand and smiled at him. 

       “He gonna make a damn good agent someday.”  He said and followed behind Rick up the hill.

     Mel stood there rubbing his jaw and brushing sand off.  “I hope so.”  He whispered to himself and then followed behind the others.

     The dilemma of Roger’s missing pants turned out to be an easy fix, at least in finding pants.  Pete kept a ton of supplies stored at the Honey Pot in the case of emergencies so pants were no problem, except they couldn’t find any that fit and they had to settle for a pair that was too big.  They hung off of him like old rags, but at least, he wasn’t as free as the day he was born.   After clothing, Pete said goodbye to Dennis, and they decided to take the vehicles back to the diner.  Pete took Roger in his truck and Mel, and Rick pushed themselves back into their little rental car.  The ride back south started out a quiet one.  Rick sat hunched over in the little car, staring ahead.  He couldn’t cross his arms in anger because it was physically impossible for him to do so in the tiny space.  Mel drove again, rubbing his jaw.  Pete, once again, led the way.  Finally, Mel broke the awkward silence.

     “Why’d you hit me again?”  He muttered through the pain in his face.

      Rick tried to look over at him.  “I warned you.”  He simply said.

      “Look, Rick.  I’m sorry if all of this has been too much to handle.  But, there’s a lot at stake here and believe me, we have to move fast before things…”  He had pleaded before Rick cut him off.

      “Blow-up.”  He finished for his friend.  “I know.  But, you got to be a little more forthcoming with the details.  I’m trying to work with you, not against you.  Besides isn’t Roger being exposed to you gonna cause the end of the universe anyway?”

     Mel reflected for a moment. “This is all complicated, Rick.  But, Roger and I being together for just a little while isn’t that critical.  It won’t cause any real issues.  I need him here to help, just for a little while.”

   “Then what?  You going to take him back and leave him in that room alone again?”  Rick asked.

     “Maybe.  I don’t know.  For now, we have to focus on the current threat.”  Mel pointed out.

    “Which is?”  Rick asked.

    Mel pondered his response for a few moments.  “Finding out what this bloody thing is and where it’s coming from.  That’s what Roger’s supposed to help us with.”

    Rick shook his head. “Is he going to crack up even more, by helping us, I mean?”

     Mel looked over at him concerned.  “Nah, he’ll be alright…I think.”

   “You seem to have a lot riding on hunches, Mel.  For a lot of people, it seems.”  Rick pointed out.

     “Roger’ll be fine, not like last time.  The stakes for him aren’t…the same anymore.”  Mel said reluctantly, looking over at him with an uncertain expression on his face.

     Rick quickly picked up his choice of words.  “What do you mean?”

      Mel was taken off guard, not aware of what he had said.  “About Roger?”

     “Yeah,” Rick responded.

      “Well, it’s just that…well, things are different for him now, is all.”  Mel was obviously making a rather poor attempt not to say something.  Rick remained silent, but his silence spoke volumes.  Mel tried to sputter on.  “I mean, part of the reason he cracked in the first place was because of what he lost.”

      “Which was what exactly, Mel?”  Rick was sensing an important piece of missing information forthcoming.

       Mel thought for a moment, once again trying to figure out how to properly word his response.  “Well, you remember what I told you about reality and how it snaps back into place after a fix?”

      “I remember you mentioning it.  I didn’t understand it, but I remember.”  Rick answered.

     “Well, when we fix a reality problem, the stream just sort of snaps back into place, it’s like that, like rubber in ways.  The Prime Sphere protects us when this happens, and that’s why we still remember everything that happened before.  Our perceptions and memories are left intact.  That’s not the way it is for those not in the Sphere, Rick.  For them, reality just hiccups and their lives keep on going as they did before.  Some people experience visions, deja vue, that sort of thing but mostly, nuthin’.   But, it’s even worse for those that might lose their lives during the event.  For them, they just cease to exist, like they never were.  The reality stream just snaps into place without them, and they are lost to it all.  And no one remembers.  It’s one of the saddest problems we face as fixers and one of the few things we can’t undo.  There have been a lot of lives lost in events before, Rick.  There were lives lost in the last one; the one Roger was involved in.”  Mel sounded torn and almost emotional.

     Rick wasn’t sure what to say.  “I don’t understand.”

     Mel looked at him solemnly.  “Rick, Roger lost people in the last event.”

     “Like who?”  Rick asked, not sure if he wanted to know.

     “Do you remember just now at the Honey Pot how he kept going on about his wife and kids?”  Mel was now fully emotionally charged.

     Rick’s eyes suddenly grew wide as he suddenly realized what Mel was implying. “No.”  He almost whispered.  He stared ahead for a few moments unable to say anything else.  He couldn’t imagine what that must be like, to have someone you love lost to reality, lost to memory.  Especially when you work for a place that’s supposed to fix that sort of thing.  “No wonder he’s so messed up.”  He finally muttered.

    Mel nodded.  “We tell him he never had any family.  It’s the only way to keep him stable long enough to talk to him.”

     Rick sat silent for a moment.  “Can’t he just see it, you know with his power and all?”

   “It’s not a power, Rick.  This isn’t a comic book.”  Mel corrected him.

     “You know what I mean,”  Rick responded.

     “He can’t or chooses not to.  We don’t know which.  Either way, that’s what sent him into his final tailspin.  His version of things is slightly different, and you have to kind of play along to keep things even keeled.  But, he wasn’t the only one to lose people.  A lot of innocent people died last time, Rick before we could get a handle on the situation.  That’s why I’m so hell-bent to stop this one.  Trust me, it’s not a fun part of the job.”  Mel admitted.

     “Sound like the job sucks, Mel.  You erase people.  People are forgotten.  Sounds like horse manure.”  Rick said harshly.

    “Well,” Mel chuckled lightly, “it’s got its moments.  I remember this one time…HOLY SH…!”  He suddenly yelled as something got his attention out of the corner of his eyes, and he saw Pete’s break lights suddenly come on in front of him. He instantly slammed on his brakes as instinct took over, praying that the boony car could stop in such a short distance.  The car came to a shrieking stop, just inches from Pete’s bumper.  Rick’ hands instinctively hit the dash in front of him, or what might have been confused as a dash.  It was little more than a strip of unpadded vinyl that was faded and cracked from too much sun.  The sudden stop was heart pounding, but it wasn’t the quick rush of the near accident that grabbed their attention.  It was the reason Pete had come to a sudden stop in the first place.  It took a few moments for both of them to register what they were seeing, and they didn’t have that long to work it out, because as soon as they saw it, it vanished into the thick saw grass on the right side of the small road.  They both sat stunned, looking at each other in disbelief.  It was a spider, a very big spider as plain as day, as big as a dog or more.  That was a spider, Rick’s brain tried to handle the image. A gigantic hairy red spider just walked casually in front of Pete’s truck, crossed the road and ambled into the jungle like it was on a day stroll.  

     Finally, Mel broke the stunned silence.  “It’s worse than I thought.”

    Rick could hear the faint sound of Roger laughing from the passenger’s seat of Pete’s truck.

       One of the unique problems of living on Guam, where America’s day begins, is not the tropical heat, the typhoons, the unpredictable earthquakes or the occasional volcanic eruption from one of the northern islands.  It’s not even the weird stuff, things that might be dismissed as crazy back in the states or chalked up to some crazy hobo out in the desert.  No, the weird stuff happens all the time on Guam.  Case in point:  a building with a nuclear reactor in its basement and rooms where you can port to other realities.  But, then there’s the occasional thing that happens that even makes the Islanders pause to take notice.  Like giant hairy man-eating spiders.  Guam is one of the few great wonders left in the world. 

     They arrived back at Pete’s Barbecue in a flurry of dust and pieces of broken shell flying into the air.  Mel bounded out of the car toward Pete’s truck, leaving Rick to untangle himself from the tiny rental car.  Pete was just turning his truck off and stepping out when Mel met him at his door.   They looked at each other, but neither spoke.  There was a firm expression of dread and fear on both their faces and it said enough.  Roger followed the two of them to the diner, humming lightly to himself and looking up at the beautiful late afternoon sky.  There was a light breeze blowing in from the deep blue sky over the bay, and it was magical under the hot sun.  Pete unlocked the door, and they entered quickly into the dimly lit interior.  It was a few moments later before Rick caught up to them.

     Inside Pete and Mel stood near Pete’s counter where the cash register was kept, talking quietly to each other.  Rick noticed Roger was sitting by himself in one of the booths nearby, also talking quietly but to his shirt pocket.

    “Okay, Mel what was that thing?”  Rick immediately blurted out.  Mel had been ominously silent the rest of the short way to the diner and Rick, naturally, was about to burst trying to contain his shock and dismay. 

     They both looked at Rick at the same time.  “Rick, we’ve got to start preparing.  Things are moving quicker than I thought.”  Mel said.

    “You better ask Rog, ‘fore we got Company sniffers runnin’ around,” Pete said to Mel.  “I’ll get us somethin’ cold to drink.”  He added and then disappeared behind the counter, pausing long enough to flip the light switches on.

      When the lights of Pete’s Barbecue came to life, the florescent glow revealed a diner lost in time.  Rick had walked in with only the faint light coming in through the drawn blinds.  He wasn’t able to see anything that well and was too excited by the hairy six-legged Jurassic left-over on the road to pay it any mind.  Now, with the lights bright around him, he realized it didn’t matter.  Turning them on had not improved the situation.  The diner was furnished and decorated from the 1950’s.  There was a lot of chrome, in the tables and the chairs and cheap red vinyl.  The table tops were ceramic.  But all of this nostalgia was mitigated by the fact that none of the decorations or furnishings looked like they were modern knock-offs.  They did look like they had come from the 1950s and had been sitting, unrepaired, untreated and unmoved in Pete’s Diner since that time.  The Chrome was faded, spotted with rust, the tile floor was cracked and stained in places with dark patches of something while the ceramic tables were chipped and the vinyl seats were cracked.  Four small round tables occupied the center of the eating area while booths lined the walls.  A dark mottled wallpaper covered the visible areas of walls in between the six large windows, a set of two of them to each wall.  The counter top where the cash register sat was the only thing that separated the dining area from the kitchen area.  It started at the entrance way and extended about half way out in the room.  The kitchen contained the usual stainless steel accouterments with lots of grease stains and signs of heavy use.  Apparently Guam didn’t have an enforced diner code.