“You are much, much crazier than I thought you were.”
“You tried to kill me twice that I know of, but I forgive you.”
“How many times did you punch me out? How many times did you kick my son like he was a football?”
“Ten, twenty, I don’t know. You forgive me?”
Sherry stares out the window at oncoming headlights. Fake tears well up. “Okay, Moe. I really do love you. Let’s give it another try.” She raises her arms to embrace him. They kiss. When Moe takes his hand from the gun to feel her breasts, she snatches it and holds it to his head.
“Aw fuck,” he says.
A rest area on I-35. Moe’s pickup pulls in. He stumbles out of the driver’s side with his hands up. The pickup drives away.
Kenny’s rig speeding on I-35. He listens to a newscast on the radio: “Authorities continue searching for leads in connection with Monday’s café robbery and homicide near Hays, Kansas.”
A rest area men’s room. Moe pisses in a dirty urinal. The man in the silk suit enters, uses an adjoining urinal. He gives Moe the once-over, dwelling on his penis. “You’re carrying a heavy hammer there, boy.”
“Thanks for noticing, faggot.”
“No, no. That ain’t it. I’m always on the lookout for big walleys. Name’s Jerry King. I own a couple of clubs in Houston. We run a male stripper thing three nights a week. All the pussy you can eat. Can you dance?”
Moe zips up, gives it a moment’s thought. “You serious?”
“Three large per show. Opportunity never knocks for little cocks.”
Outside, Moe and the King get into the DeLorean and it peels out.
Moments later, Kenny’s rig pulls in next to the outdoor telephone. Kenny jumps out and dials 911. “Listen, I don’t want to give my name or anything, but the man who shot that cook, his name is Moe something and he’s driving a ‘95 Ford pickup, black. He was seen headed south from Dodge City, Kansas and he’s got a woman and a teenage male with him, kidnapped. That’s all. There’s your lead. He’s armed and dangerous, of course.”
In Moe’s pickup, Joe plays the saw. Sherry drives, anxiously chewing gum and smoking a doobie. The firearm sits between them on the seat. The engine sputters worse than ever and makes odd noises. Sherry opens her last stick of gum, adds it to the wad already in her mouth. She passes the doobie to Joe, who stops playing long enough to take a hit or two.
“Joey, boy, we’re outta gum and gas. We gotta stop.”
A convenience store. Joe and Sherry enter. Joe heads for the men’s room, Sherry for the beer section of the cooler and a six pack of light beer. She also grabs some packs of gum.
The men’s room is a confined space with only a toilet stall, a urinal and a dirty sink. Joe pisses in the urinal. His face prunes up as he smells something terrible. He pinches his nose and glances beneath the stall partition. The long, narrow feet he sees are alien; the grunts he hears are too. When the alien empties its bowels, a loud hiss is emitted, along with a burst of steam that rises out of the stall. Joe backs out of the room.
As a clerk tallies Sherry’s charges at the checkout counter, Joe sidles up, jittery, looking over his shoulder toward the restroom.
“With gas, ma’am, that’s thirty twenty-nine.”
“Shit, all I got is thirty. Put a pack of this gum back, Joe.” She hands it to him. He takes it, but his eyes never leave the restroom door. He sees the men’s room door open and a full-blown alien steps out, pulls a high-tech weapon from a side-pouch, pushes Sherry and Joe aside and points the weapon at the clerk. The alien barks indecipherable commands at the clerk, who opens the cash register. The alien leaps over the counter and begins eating the paper currency. When the clerk reaches to push a silent alarm, the alien fires his weapon. It is soundless, but a red hole appears in the center of the clerk’s forehead and he falls dead. The alien grabs a shopping basket, fills it with bread, doughnuts, flour, granola bars and other wheat-based products, including beer, then flees on foot.
Sherry sees it another way — not an alien but an armed robber with a tattooed face who pushes her and Joe aside, then confronts the clerk.
“Open it. Fast.”
The clerk obliges. The robber steps behind the counter and loads the cash into a bag held in his mouth — it almost looks like he’s eating it. The clerk reaches for the silent alarm. The robber shoots him in the forehead; he falls. The robber grabs a shopping basket, fills it with bread, doughnuts, flour, granola bars and other wheat-based products, including beer, and flees on foot, dropping a few bills in the process.
In the aftermath of all this, Sherry and Joe are nearly paralyzed with fear.
Joe salivates heavily. Sherry recovers from the initial shock, picks up the dropped bills, three $100s, then checks on the clerk, who is apparently dead. She calls 911. “There’s been a shooting here…. Where? Shit, I don’t know. A mini-mart on the highway. I’m from out of town. Send an ambulance if you want to, but he looks dead. Bye.” She hangs up.
“They’re hungry,” Joe says. “They use a lot of energy when they swarm. They’ll kill for wheat at this stage.”
“Hush up and get a basket. We’re hungry too.”
They rush around filling two shopping baskets with this and that, and flee.
Kenny drives at top speed listening to the Salty Dog tape. The back door of the rig, already damaged in the cargo-shifting accident, comes open. A sack of flour falls out and bursts open on the highway, then another and another.
Moe and Jerry King cruise in the DeLorean.
“I got a club in Vegas, too,” King says, “so I’m on the road a lot. I hate to fly. I like to drive. You ever see that movie, Back to the Future, when they traveled in time?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“This was their vehicle of choice for time travel. A DeLorean. Exactly like this one.”
Moe snickers. “You rigged for time travel?”
“That was an extra I couldn’t afford.”
King belches several times and clasps his left arm. “I feel funny.” He slumps over, grasping his chest.
The DeLorean swerves dangerously. Moe takes control of the steering wheel, brings it to a safe stop. He feels for King’s pulse, shakes him, realizes he is dead and drags the body into the woods. A few minutes later Moe emerges from the woods and returns to the DeLorean counting the money in King’s wallet and wearing his suit.
He gets into the DeLorean and drives on, kicking up a white cloud as he drives through the flour spilled from Kenny’s rig.
In Moe’s pickup Joe eats pudding cups and Lunchables, drinks Mountain Dew.
Sherry sips a beer as she drives, listening to C&W music on the radio. The engine is in serious distress, knocking, hissing, smoking, wheezing.
News comes over the radio: “Texas state police are on the lookout for a late-model black Ford pickup truck. A suspect in the recent café homicide near Hays, Kansas, is thought to have fled the scene with two hostages, a woman and a teenage boy.”
Sherry slows down, pulls onto the shoulder. “I think it’s time to jump ship, Honey.” The engine sighs, then dies, dripping oil into the dirt. Sherry throws the gun away. She and Joe trek back to the highway with their shopping baskets. Joe also has his saw and bow.
Kenny, pedal to the metal, sees them in his headlight beam, brakes hard. Sherry and Joe climb aboard.
Sherry says, “Kenny, how many times in one week are you gonna save our asses?”
A roadside park. Kenny’s rig pulls in. He and Joe walk to the men’s side, Sherry to the women’s.
In the men’s room, Joe and Kenny piss several urinals apart. They are alone. When Joe looks down he sees that he is standing in sticky green alien goo. He unsticks his feet and moves one urinal closer to Kenny. “They’ve been in here,” he says. “Look at that.” He points to the goo. Kenny looks down but sees only a dirty, wet floor.