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“Who, Dez?”
“It doesn’t matter, damn it.”
Trout sighed. “What makes you think your boyfriend would even let you in?”
Dez colored.
“Dez?”
“He’s, um … still sweet on me.”
“Jesus H. Christ in a clown car.”
Dez glared at him. “Give me a better idea, then.”
Trout picked up a box of bullets, looked at the label without reading it, and shoved it into the bag.
“Is anything with you ever simple?” he muttered. “I mean ever?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
ROUTE 653
BORDENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
Patrick Freivald knew that he was crazy to be out on a motorcycle in the middle of one of the worst storms in Pennsylvania history. Crazy and maybe a little suicidal. The problem was that his car—his nice, warm, dry car—was parked outside of his nice, warm, dry house way the hell up in the Finger Lakes region, on the far side of Canandaigua Lake, and that was a hell of a lot of miles from here.
He’d hit the road after a very good but very long couple of days bartering and dealing at Monster Madness, a small pop culture convention in Friendsville, Maryland. Patrick had traded some old Aurora monster model kits, including an absolutely pristine Forgotten Prisoner for some newer stuff, including the Vampirella, which was a new limited edition based on a Frank Frazetta painting. He’d made enough profit off the Aurora model to stock up on a bunch of lower-end but still cool PVC statues of classic Universal monsters. All of that was in UPS boxes on their way home, and like a lot of the conventioneers, he’d waited out the storm yesterday and hit the road when they said the worst of it was over.
The weatherman was dead wrong.
Big surprise.
He’d barely hit the Pennsylvania state line before the rains started again. Not the sluggish end-of-the-storm showers, but a real downpour. So bad a lot of cars were pulling off the road. Good for them, they could sit there and listen to Howard Stern on Sirius and stay dry. Can’t do that on a hog.
Outrunning the storm wasn’t going to happen, Patrick could tell that much without having to listen to the news. There was lightning so thick and frequent it looked like a neon forest stretched all the way to the horizon. To every horizon. Going back was for shit, too.
His only real option was to motor through until he hit the first town with a cheap motel. With a storm like this even a roach motel would be good. If it got any heavier, a barn out here in the sticks would be just fine.
Patrick wasn’t crazy enough to listen to an iPad while driving his bike, but he didn’t need the weatherman to tell him there was a storm. Everyone knew about Superstorm Zelda, Sandy’s country cousin. As the miles fell away, though, he began wishing he could hear a traffic report. Ahead of him he could see the double rows of red taillights thickening from a sparse few into tightly packed lines that vanished into the distant rainy darkness. Road speed, already down to forty because of the rain, was slowing more and more until he was barely making enough headway to balance his bike.
“Shit,” he muttered as the line of cars finally ground to a complete stop. Right out in the big dark, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The last sign he remembered seeing was for a twenty-four-hour Starbucks in someplace called Bordentown. He’d never heard of the town, and at that moment didn’t give a crap if it was a nice tourist spot or not. A coffee shop open all night was like a gift from God.
He roll-walked his Italian motorcycle out of his lane and saw that the shoulder was clear ahead. He gunned the bike and began moving again. The winds tried to knock him sideways into the line of stalled cars, but Patrick leaned forward to cut the resistance and kept moving. He cut quick looks at the people in the cars. Some of them ignored him, some flipped him off for doing what they hadn’t yet dared.
The first thing that troubled Patrick was the sudden sound of a helicopter overhead. With the helmet and the roar of the Moto Guzzi’s burly engine he couldn’t hear most sounds, but this was a roar, and he risked a look up as a big damn chopper flew right above him. It was huge, one of those bulky military machines, with stubby wings laden with what looked like missiles.
Missiles?
He was so surprised that he almost rear-ended a Civic that cut onto the shoulder right in front of him. The chopper moved slowly above him, heading farther up the road. The rotor wash took the rain and wind and churned them into a fresh and more intense miniature storm. Patrick had to really fight to keep from having those winds knock him down.
The second thing that bothered Patrick was how low the chopper was flying. It could not have been more than a hundred feet above the tops of the cars. Patrick had never even seen a news helicopter fly that low, especially in winds like this.
That’s when Patrick saw beams of light sweeping down from the storm clouds. Massive, bright searchlights. Intensely bright, but for a moment they did not appear to belong to anything. It was like a scene from that old movie Close Encounters, and for a brief, irrational moment Patrick thought that’s what he was seeing. UFOs. Aliens.
Then the helicopter above him switched on its light, and Patrick understood.
The stormy sky was filled with helicopters.
