"We shouldn't have left them."
"It was Arnold's idea, not mine—I just happened to agree with it. In case you haven't noticed, the wax around the windows isn't what it used to be. Some of the stink is starting to get out. If we'd stayed there much longer, someone would have said something to one of the security guards and then…."
He didn't need to finish it.
After several minutes of my continued silence during which Christopher kept getting more and more restless and agitated, he said: "Hey, here's an idea—you ever play 'Bury the Cow'?"
"Life has denied me that thrill."
"Oh, well, then, we have to get a game going. Isn't really a proper road trip without a few electrifying rounds of 'Bury the Cow'—it's a classic for a reason. Okay, here's how you play it—you keep an eye on your side of the road, I keep an eye on my side—"
"—really not much in the mood for 'Kill the Crows'—"
"—'Bury the Cow', please keep up, and how do you know you're not in the mood until you hear all the rules? You don't, so listen: you watch your side, I watch mine, and we each count all the cows we spot on our side, then—"
"—not listening to me, I'm really not in the—"
"—then whoever has a cemetery pop up on their side of the road loses all the cows they've counted up until then, and we keep going until we stop and whoever has the most cows when we stop, wins. Isn't that the greatest road game you ever heard, I ask you. How, I ask again, how could anyone refuse to play? No one should ever travel without playing 'Bury the Cow' at least once in their—"
(…ain't been taking his pills like he's supposed to—that's why he keeps changing the way he acts…)
"Christopher?"
(…and if you don't go with him…)
"Yeah?"
(…he'll keep not taking them and then he'll really go…)
"You're getting a bit manic."
(…crazy and I don't want that to happen…)
"So what?—I'll take a pill later. C'mon, Mark, I'm trying to get the old juices going, help me out here, why don't—"
(…that's not him, he's not really that way….)
"How did all of you get away from Grendel?"
"I'll answer that—but only if you play—"
"'Snuff the Livestock', I know… all right, all right—deal. Answer my question and we'll go a few rounds. How did you get away from Grendel?"
He reached down and lifted the universal locater, setting it on the dashboard between us. "What makes you think we were ever away from him?"
I stared at the blinking white dot in the center of the grid. "You're telling me that he's been back there in the trailer this whole time?"
"He's been in that trailer for eight days, Mark. And he's going to spend the rest of his life there… unless he goes along with the game I've got planned for him. He was always making up new games for us to play, or changing the rules of old games and not telling us about it until we were in the middle of things. Seems only fair that he should have to play someone else's game just once, don't you think?"
"Are you going to blow him up along with the bus and trailer?"
Christopher grinned. "That'll be his decision, when the time comes."
"How did you get away from him, Christopher?"
His right leg was bouncing rapidly up and down. "Do you like Tony Curtis? I always thought he was a terribly underrated actor. He was really creepy in The Boston Strangler. He looked great as a woman in Some Like It Hot. Ever see him in The Last Tycoon? Damn good actor."
"What the hell has that got to do with—"
"Ever catch him in Houdini, Mark? Or see the TV movie they made with that actor who played on Starsky & Hutch? Did you know you can learn things from books and movies, Mark?" He wiped some perspiration from his neck. "Did you know, for instance, that in both movies about Houdini they describe how he was able to control his abdominal muscles and gag reflex to prevent himself from vomiting up things he swallowed, like keys? Keys he used to unlock himself from the restraints and chains they'd put him in before locking him in a trunk and dumping it in the water? Oh, yeah—the TV movie got really graphic about it, and almost all of his biographies went into a lot of detail about how he trained himself to do it. He used to say that anyone could learn how to do what he did, if they had enough discipline." His right leg was going so fast now you'd almost mistake it for not moving at all.
"Well, Grendel made sure all of us had that kind of discipline, didn't he? Didn't he?" His arm shot out and he hit the dashboard with his fist. "No matter how much or how little we'd eaten, no matter how long it had been since we'd gone to the bathroom or how badly we needed to go, no matter what got shoved up inside of us, we learned how to keep control, how to maintain discipline. I got really good at it. As of today, providing that the object isn't longer, wider, or thicker than my index and middle fingers combined, I can hold it down my throat or up my ass indefinitely, doesn't matter how bad it tastes or how much it hurts, old Christopher here can take it! Not only can I take it and hold it, I can puke it up or shit it back out at will! Don't even have to think about it anymore, that's how good I've gotten, it's just"—he snapped his fingers—"and out pops the prize—oh, it took time, and it took practice, but I had lots of both to work with."
He was past being agitated and moving toward frantic. "I think I'd like to start playing 'Bury the Cow' now, please."
He hit the steering wheel with the side of his fist. "Oh, no you don't—it wouldn't be fair, and being fair is important, fairness is what a good person shows another to prove that their word means something, and I gave you my word, Mark, and because I haven't answered your question yet we can't start playing 'Bury the Cow' because that would mean I was going back on my word—and, besides, now I want to answer all of your questions, so, let's see now—where were we? Oh, right—Houdini."
I thought he was going to rip the steering mechanism, wheel and all, right out of the floor and then take a bite out of it. He was beyond manic; he was in the grip of a sudden, blistering, searing rage that bordered on outright hysteria; he seemed about a breath away from insanity.
There are no words for how stark staring terrified I was right then; none at all.
I opened my mouth to speak, but a quick flash from his eyes killed the words halfway to my immediately- and wholly-dry tongue; I was so startled by that flash—how in a blink he ceased being Christopher and instantaneously metamorphosed into this possessed, snarling, livid, agonized, howling, frenzied thing that I knew would tear out my throat as soon as look at me—I was so shocked by it I'm surprised I didn't wet myself.
Maybe Grendel's discipline was contagious.
"All right, then," he yelled, beating a rapid drum roll on the wheel. "After Houdini—but before Mad Max, there was The Great Train Robbery—Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, Lesley-Anne Down? Now there's a movie for you—more ways to pull off the perfect crime than you can count! And Lesley-Anne Down is hot! God is she hot in this movie! That bit at the end, when she slips Connery the keys to his handcuffs through her mouth when she kisses him—it's almost enough to make me want to touch and be touched by another human being again! You bet your ass Rebecca and me filed that one away just-in-case. But the beauty part of the whole thing was the way Donald Sutherland got an imprint of the key to the luggage car—I'd've never thought of doing it that way in a thousand years, but—bam!—right there it was in full color and Grendel handed it to us and he never had a clue! God, it was so easy once all the pieces started falling together—I mean, yeah, sure, it took a couple of years to find the pieces before all the falling-into-place part could start happening, but once it did—pow!-zap!-whammo! and word to your mother—he couldn't fucking touch us!—okay, he could touch us, but he couldn't get a whiff of what we were up to, and half the time he watched the movies with us!" He threw back his head, hit the steering wheel again, and barked a short, shrill, ear-shattering laugh and resumed talking in a rapid cadence, nervously, like there were dashes around everything.