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Our author Larry Winchester now leaves us in suspense as to the fates of the earthbound portion of our cast, and turns the camera and microphone onto “America’s most lovable literary literary couple”,* Dick and Daphne Ridpath, last seen in a flying saucer somewhere between the Earth and the Moon...
“So I take the pilot’s seat while Brad hunkers down and goes to work on Mr. MacNamara,** and I figure, Okay, let’s give this a shot.”
“You were marvelous, dear.”
“Well, so were you.”
“Oh, hush.”
“No, you were. I mean, the poor kid, her dad’s lying there all shot up and whatnot. You were quite a trouper. You really helped."
“Right, I got coffee.”
“Well, sweety, right then I needed coffee.”
“I know. I said to him, ‘Dick, what can I do?’ And Dick says, well, he could use a cup of that joe. And I say, ‘Right, joe.’ I mean, I can do that. I can at least get coffee. And Brad looks up from where he’s holding his finger in my father’s bullet wound, and he says he could go for a cup too. So I’m there, two cups. Right. But I go over to the refreshment nook and guess what? All the coffee’s spilled. It had all just floated out during free-fall. It was then I realized that it had this special screw-on lid to keep the coffee in -- plus the bottom of the pot was magnetized somehow to keep it on the warmer-thing -- but of course we hadn’t put the lid on. And now I’m just cursing a blue streak. I mean, I just got upset and started to cry. And right then poor Harvey wakes up. Poor thing, he was just like a little boy waking up from a nightmare. Although I guess it was more like waking up into a nightmare. But he’s very disoriented, going what the f-word, what the f-word, and so on. So I go to him and start babbling about how I’m trying to get it together to make some coffee, and I’m sobbing buckets, and Harvey just says, ‘Calm down, Mrs. Ridpath, we’ll make the coffee together.’”
“Harvey was good."
“Harvey was a brick. and you know, he just sort of shook the cobwebs out of his head, got right up, marched over to that refreshment nook and started to make coffee like no one’s business.
“So, while Harvey got to work on that aspect of the mission -- and because I was standing there uselessly wringing my hands -- he suggested I get the cups and saucers and things ready. So I found some clean cups and saucers and a tray and some Oreos and put them on a plate and then just sort of hovered around while we waited for the coffee to finish dripping.”
“So -- I -- uh --”
“I kept glancing anxiously over at Brad doing that mumbo-jumbo revivification finger ceremony on poor Papa, and -- even though I was nearly petrified just to look -- a couple of times I did tiptoe gently over just to say, ‘Brad, is there anything I can do? Anything at all.’ And he’d say, ‘Just waitin’ for that java, Mrs. R.’ So I’d go back and watch the coffee drip some more. Oh, the tension. I was all a wreck.”
“You did fine, Daphne.”
“Thank you, Dick. So, finally, the coffee’s ready, I get the cups and saucers and the cookies all nicely arranged on the tray, and to save time I’d already fixed it the way Dick and Brad liked it, black for Dick, four packets of Sweet ‘n’ low and lots of Cremora for Brad, and I bring it over to Brad who pops an Oreo in his mouth and takes a cup, all the while holding a finger in poor Buddy’s bullet hole -- he’d already finished with Papa, who was still lying there comatose, and I bring the tray over to Dick, Mr. Mad Driver here, when -- whoosh!”
“I know, I know --”
“Coffee, all over the place, over me, over Dick, over his little dashboard --”
“Yeah, well, we’d just entered the Earth’s atmosphere, sweety. Things got a little rocky --”
“Oh, I’ll say. I had coffee all over my -- my front.”
“She burned her boobs.”
“Well, I did, and it hurt.”
“Well! So, anyway, there we were, crashing into the earth’s atmosphere --”
“They did hurt!”
“I know, sweety.”
“Well, okay, as long as you know. Because I really was trying to help. And now I was just devastated and miserable and my boobs were burnt. I was wearing this purple satin dress and it was low-cut, and --”
There was a pause in the conversation here.
“Right, so I never got my cup of coffee, and --” Mrs. Ridpath gave him a gentle slap on the forearm, “so, there I am at the wheel, trying to bring this baby in, trying to aim it at North America at least --”
“And I’m crying again --”
“Well, you’d spilled coffee all over yourself.”
“I know, but I don’t think you needed me bawling about a damn spilt cup of coffee.”
“Well, to be honest, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to you, sweety.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Darling, I was trying to land a spaceship.”
“Oh, I know. Tell your story.”
“Well, okay, so --”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, I --”
“I did bring you another cup of coffee, didn’t I?”
“Yes you did. And I really appreciated it, too.”
“Thank you. See, I wasn’t totally useless.”
“No, not at all. So --”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. So, there I am, zooming in. And after a minute I find North America. Great. Zoom in some more. Now -- where the hell is New Mexico?”
“Not easy to tell.”
“No --”
“No state lines, no color codes, just this undifferentiated mass.”
“Yeah.”
“Not like a map or a globe at all.”
“Yeah, so --
“Plus it’s nighttime.”
“True --”
“I don’t know how you ever found the right place.”
“Well -- um, how I found it was --”
“Oh, you are explaining.”
“Trying to.”
“Sorry, darling. I’ll just sip my vin ordinaire. Don’t mind me.”
“Thanks. So, what I did was, I thought I’d try to find the Rio Grande --”
“See, I’d never have thought of that.”
“Yeah, so --”
“I’m horrible at geology.”
“Geography.”
“Whatever. All these ‘phies’. I remember one time at Bennington I tried to drive with my friend Sophie Furness to New York and we wound up in Philadelphia. I remember seeing Billy Penn’s statue up on top of City Hall and thinking, ‘Wait, this can’t be New York!’ But go on, Dick.”
“Where was I?”
“Rio something. The Road to Rio.”
“Right. So, using my vast store of recollected, uh, geology, I finally zero in on New Mexico and the general area of this town called Disdain -- and this whole time we’re watching on one screen this whole business with Enid and Hope and the motorcycle gang -- don’t even ask me about the technology of this, how they were able to keep some sort of cameras on all this --”
“The outer space people are clever.”
“Damned clever.”
“I’m half outer space person.”
“At least. So, I could tell they were near that butte or mesa we’d been on earlier that day, the one with the atomic sinkhole under it, and so I just tried to find it. There’s lots of butte-things around there, but I remembered its position roughly vis-à-vis that atomic bomb-test town, so I found the atomic town finally, and there off a ways from it I saw the butte or mesa and I saw the headlights of the motorcycle guys streaming across the desert and I could see on the other screen that they were heading for Enid and Hope who were running across the desert, and so, well, I just held my breath and started to bring that baby down.
“Of course the problem here being that Brad was still busy trying to save Buddy, and I actually hadn’t the faintest idea how to land this flying saucer.”
“You did the best you could, dear.”
**{See Episode 115 -- Editor}
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As they ran Enid saw the station wagon heading towards them fast at an angle from the left. She grabbed Hope’s arm and they both stopped, sweating and panting. (They both smoked entirely too much.) They stood there and watched as the car approached. Enid saw with some alarm that Derek was driving. Then Paco brandished a rifle from the passenger window, leaned his head out, and let loose with a mediocre war cry which abruptly collapsed into a coughing fit.
Enid suddenly realized that the shooting behind them had stopped. She looked back and saw that the Motorpsychos had now remounted their bikes and were wheeling out noisily.
She heard a horrible screeching and turned to see the station wagon veering off to her left as Derek apparently floored the brake. The car skidded and swerved, then turned left full circle and headed once again full speed straight at her and Hope. She didn’t know which way to duck. Then about six feet from the women the car U-turned brutally to the left again, rising up on two wheels and blowing exhaust and dust in a great cloud, then it turned on its side and skidded for about twenty yards with a sound like an enormous jagged chalk scraping across an enormous blackboard; and then it lay there, its tires spinning and its motor groaning like a dying elephant.
Enid and Hope looked at the wreck and beyond and through its cloud of dust they saw the Motorpsychos roaring and surging towards them across the desert.
Derek was such an ass.****
“Oh, shit, Doc,” said Jake. He stroked the barrel of his Colt. Despite that good dose of the Doc's laudanum he was scared shitless again now. “Shit, fuck and double-damn, I can’t do this!”
They were about five hundred yards from the overturned station wagon and Hope and Enid. And maybe half a mile farther beyond came the roaring swarm of Motorpsychos.
The Doc lit up a cigarette with the dashboard lighter.
“They gonna kill us, Doc!”
The Doc shoved the lighter back into the dashboard and floored the accelerator.
“Don’t worry about it, Jake.”
They could see Enid and Hope pulling someone out of the upturned passenger side of the station wagon.
“Awww, shit!” whined Big Jake, putting one hand on top of his cowboy hat.
“Just think, Jake, Hope will think you’re a hero.”
Enid and Hope had gotten the guy out and he was sitting next to the station wagon holding his head.
“For maybe two seconds she’ll think I’m a hero, ‘fore them Motorpsychos kill us all!”
“Two seconds of glory, Jake.”
Enid and Hope were now apparently trying to get someone else out of the car.
“Don’t want two glorious seconds! Want a billion glorious seconds! Wanta live!”
“We all gotta go sometime, Jake.”
“I know that! But I don’t wanta go now! Wanta go later! Lots later!”
The Doc pulled the Caddy up to the side of the station wagon.
The guy on the ground was Paco, the Indian. He had his hand on his head and blood was pouring down his face. Enid and Hope were trying to pull that English rock star kid out of the car and he was shouting and cursing. He also had blood all over his face. The station wagon’s uppermost headlight was still lit and it laid an ever-widening silvery carpet across the desert for the Mortorpsychos roaring closer and closer at top speed.
“Bloody fuckin’ Jesus fuckin’ bloody fuckin’ Jesus fuckin’ fuckin’ Christ!” yelled Derek.
“Shut the fuck up, Derek, we’re trying to get you out,” growled Enid.
“Hi, Daddy,” said Hope, over her shoulder. She was hoisting Enid on her narrow shoulders as Enid struggled with Derek.
“Get in this goddam car, girl!”
“In a minute, Daddy.”
The Doc had put his cigarette in his mouth and grabbed his black bag off the floor, and now he got out of the car, leaving the ignition on and the door open.
“Now where the fuck you goin’, Doc!”
The Doc walked around the front of the Cadillac and over to the wreck.
Jake lurched his big ass over to the driver’s seat.
“Hope Johnstone, you get in this auto-mo-bile this instant!”
“Fuck you, Daddy, you’re a coward.”
She and Enid had finally gotten the groaning Derek out of the station wagon and they were lowering him to the ground.
“Don’t you call me a coward you little wetback!”
“Fuck off.”
Jake slammed the driver’s door shut.
“All right, then,” he said. “Fuck all y’all!”
The Doc turned around and flicked away his cigarette.
“Calm the fuck down, Jake. You’re not gonna outrun those guys anyway.”
But Big Jake was thinking if he took off now maybe the Motorpsychos would concentrate on doing whatever they were going to do to Hope and Enid and the Doc and the Indian and the Limey, and while they were picking them over he would be zooming away across the flats at the highest speed this old high-powered hunk of Detroit steel could muster, yessiree Bob, and maybe he could live, live God damn it, live, and he jolted the car in gear and turned it around one-eighty, and that’s when he saw it swooping down out of the night sky, first as tiny as a little green star and then getting bigger and bigger till it was just this big fucking green glowing saucer that looked like it was going to slam right into them all and paste them right over the desert floor.
And Jake had never been much of a praying man but in that moment he addressed the Lord:
“Lord -- if You’re up there Big Buddy and I ain’t sayin’ You are and I ain’t sayin’ You ain’t but right now I sure hope to hell You are -- Lord, if You see fit in Your almighty wisdom and mercy to get me out of this here scrape with this wretched old heart of mine still tickin’, why Lord old buddy You are gonna see one brand new changed Big Jake Johnstone and that’s for sure, an’ not the mean vile selfish nasty and concupiscent asshole I been for more’n these past past fifty years but a good man, someone folks’d see drivin’ his Cadillac down the road an’ say that man there, that man is not an asshole! No sir! No sirree Bob, sir!”
But saying this heartfelt prayer as he was driving at top speed abandoning his only daughter and them other ones to their fates as that old fuckin’ flying saucer just kept on coming straight at him with that rabid pack of bloodthirsty motorcycle bandits roaring up to the back of him, Big Jake just couldn’t help but adding:
“But shit damn, good Lord, I ain’t a one to criticize your works and ways, but God damn it if this precious gift of life you have given us don’t eat shit sometimes!”
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