She was patient, at least. “You need one more,” she said softly.
O’Connell fumbled, got the other bill and handed it to the girl.
“And twenty cents for tax,” the girl persisted. Sandra reached in, took some coins out, and put them on the window ledge.
“Take out what you want,” she told the girl.
A quarter was removed, the sale was rung up, a nickel was replaced, and, shortly, a hamburger and a Coke arrived.
Embarrassed, upset, and ashamed as well as a little afraid of her conspicuousness, she put the change back in her pocket and took the food and drink over to a picnic table.
She ate the burger greedily and sloppily, and the Coke was gone almost as quickly. She wiped off her mouth with a paper napkin and calmed herself down.
The drug they had given her, she decided, must be a particularly nasty one. Two days after it’d worn off, her brain still wasn’t working nearly right, and she was afraid that it might not ever get back to normal.
The problem wasn’t really with her thinking, though. It was with making her body do what her mind commanded. A series of little short circuits kept coming up. She knew what a hamburger was, knew the word, but somehow couldn’t get it out when she wanted to. She could count, too, except when she had to.
She was still sucking on the ice, sitting there, letting the sun which had already darkened her body warm it more, when one of the truck drivers came over to the table, put down two burgers and a shake, and sat down opposite her.
“Hello, there!” he said pleasantly.
She broke out of her reverie. “Hi,” she managed, listening to how childish it sounded floating from her lips, both a little higher and softer than it should have been.
He was a rough but kindly-looking man, perhaps in his mid-forties, with a sleeveless blue shirt and jeans over cowboy boots.
“You look kinda lost,” he said.
She smiled crookedly. “I am, kinda,” she admitted.
“You’re not from around here, then?”
She shook her head, and now her will power forced itself through. The same mind that couldn’t think of hamburger when it needed it managed something more difficult, although haltingly, with effort great enough that it reinforced the retarded image.
“I’m from Belo,” she volunteered. “I been stuck here, run outta money an’ all.”
The trucker looked her over, trying to fit her into his current world picture. The woman was older than she looked, he could see it in her face, but he couldn’t guess how old. Mid-thirties, maybe. So here was a woman, mid-thirties, dressed like she was twenty and talking like she was a slow twelve. He made a guess.
“You have an identity and movement card?” he asked suspiciously.
That question unnerved her. It was outside of her available memory, this encounter with military checkpoints, monitoring devices, and such things as identity and movement cards. Since the emergency had begun, she’d been drugged and locked up. She’d had a card, of course, but never the occasion to need it.
“N—no,” she stammered.
He shook his head slowly. He was pretty sure he had it, now.
“You wanna get back home, honey?” he asked her casually.
She leaped at it. “Y-yes, sure, yeah.”
“I’m headin’ to Buffalo. There’s plenty of room. I’ll take you,” he volunteered.
She was stunned. This was better luck than she had reason to dream about. Suddenly a thought entered her head. “The soldiers…”
He smiled. “Don’t worry none about them. I make this run between Syracuse and Buffalo so many times they know me by my first name.” When he had finished his burgers, they tossed their trash in the can and went over to his rig.
She’d never been inside a tractor before. There was lots of room, and even a bed behind the seats. There were too many gearshifts and pedals and such to figure out; driving one of these rigs was definitely a lot harder than driving a car.
With much shifting and double-clutching, he backed up, then moved forward and around to the road. It was an interesting and somewhat exciting view; had the man not been so much in command of his cab, she would have been even more nervous, though. They were sitting over the engine, so when the front of the truck cleared a tree by inches it was inches from the windshield as well.
He pulled onto the entrance ramp, climbed laboriously up, and entered the highway.
“Lots easier since they got the cars off,” he muttered.
It was bouncy and uncomfortable, but it was a ride to where she needed to go.
Checkpoints were infrequent on the freeway; for the most part it was exits that were monitored, so it was about thirty miles before they had to slow to a stop. They’d talked little, which was all right with her, and he played irritating country music on his radio and sang along.
Now, as he slowed for the checkpoint, he shut off the radio and glanced at her.
“What’s your name, honey?” he asked, seemingly unconcerned.
She was going to give a false name, but “Sandy” came out.
He nodded. “Okay, Sandy. Just sit and look bored and let me take it. This is the only one we’ll face until we get off in Buffalo, so relax.”
He pulled to a stop, set the brakes, and got out of the cab. She could hear him talking to the soldiers, all of whom looked very young and very bored, and once he came back and reached in, grabbed a sheaf of papers on a clipboard, winked at her, and returned to the soldiers.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, he climbed back in, stuck the clipboard back in its holder, and put the truck in gear.
She was amazed. “How—how did you get me past?” she asked him.
He grinned. “Told ’em a tall story. They like tall stories, they’re young enough to want to believe. Don’t worry. We’ll have you home sometime tonight.”
About ten miles down the road darkness overtook them; about three miles beyond that he took a turn for a rest area, pulled up in the rear parking area where it was almost completely dark, and turned to her.
“Okay, honey, time to pay the fare,” he said jovially.
She was confused, and reached into her pocket, pulling out the remaining bills. “This is all I got,” she said apologetically.
He laughed. “Now I see what happened to you,” he said. “They took you out for a party with the soldiers, with some other girls, and when it came time to do what they brought you for, you wouldn’t —so they stuck you there. Right?”
She was appalled. “Nooo…” she protested.
“Oh, yes,” the driver said, still not unkindly.
Sandra O’Connell had been raised in the upper middle class, had gone to sheltered parochial school and a good Catholic college. She was not a virgin, but she had lived alone for a long time. Her whole life had been a protection—the right schools, the right neighborhood, the right government hospitals and agencies.
Even at her age, she was naive about the real world.
Now that real world caused panic to race through her. She fumbled for the door, but the driver reached out, grabbed her with powerful arms, pulled her to him, and started kissing her. She kicked and started lashing out with her arms, and that finally made him mad. He slapped her, hard, and while she was reeling from it she felt him undo her jeans. She tried to pull away, but he’d partially undressed her now and, holding her wrists together with a brawny, incredibly powerful hand, he turned her over and bound her hands with some cord and her feet with a spare belt.
And, for some time afterward, he did to her exactly what he pleased in that little bed in the back of the cab.
When he was through, he climbed back into the front seat of the truck, put his own pants back on, then his cowboy boots, and put the truck in gear. Once back out on the road he turned on the country music and started whistling to it. She was still bound in the back.