Lance felt stupid, which was perfectly ordinary, but tonight Lance felt especially stupid. Dead cell phone in his pocket and failed excuse of a car behind him he trudged along the shoulder pausing sporadically to kick up dirt and pebbles. There was a chill in the air, but no jacket on his back, a cigarette in his shirt pocket, but no lighter. Whatever the heck he thought he had proven by storming out the door last night and driving “wherever” he clearly hadn’t. What he did have was $800, about $300 of which was overdraft, because he had hit up the ATM at $200 a pop until it wouldn’t let him any longer. Lance decided to focus his mind on this stroke of genius to ward off the voice in his ear telling him how profanely moronic he truly was. He also moved his wallet from his back pocket to his front pocket, just in case.
The sky glowed ahead of him, so there had to be civilization; yet an hour had passed by and Lance hadn’t seen a soul. He pressed on, following the light and pushing out the thought that moths do the exact same thing. All he needed was a motel room, a lighter and a phone charger, and anything else that he needed to think about he could think about after he had those three things. He was sweating, which only served to make the air feel colder and to attract swarms of mosquitoes. Swatting his neck, Lance picked them off in groups of four and five at a time, some of which exploded having swelled themselves with his blood. Ultimately, he gave up, allowing them to dine, as he trudged along the road. A truck blasted past him from out of nowhere and nearly knocked him off his feet. The first vehicle he’d seen tonight. Fairly sure this meant he was supposed to make a wish, Lance wished for a lighter.
At that moment, he tripped over something in the dirt. He hoped against hope that a lighter had manifested itself for him, but it had not. What he picked up off the ground was a curious chunk of metal. He couldn’t make out what it was at all because the light from the truck had blinded him, so he stuck it in his pocket, picked himself up off the ground, and pressed on. The truck’s headlights had briefly illuminated a sign ahead, and Lance wanted to figure out just how far he had to walk to get to wherever. He picked up his pace as reaching the signpost before him became the be all and end all of his existence. Until, of course, he reached it. All the reflective paint in the world could have been used on that sign and it wouldn’t have mattered. There was no source of light to read it.
Lance punched and banged his head on the sign and stamped his feet in absolute futility for a moment before spending the next moment sitting on the ground in the fetal position pulling chunks of hair from his head. He let his hair fall away from his hands and pressed them to his ears to dull the sound of the universe laughing into them. Something vibrated in his pocket and he reached for his phone, his very dead phone. His cell being useless as ever, Lance pulled out the piece of metal he’d found on the shoulder. He felt odd etchings all over it. It seemed to be a coin of some sort. Pawnshop started sounding like the plan for tomorrow, if he could just get to wherever and find a motel room tonight.
A pair of headlights appeared in the distance behind him, and “Windy Creek, 13 miles” revealed itself on the sign above his head. This was no time to start making responsible choices. Lance stuffed the coin back into his pocket, leapt to his feet, and began flailing his arms in the air to attract the driver’s attention. Windy Creek sounded like a stupid name, but it was better than nowhere was and it was where this car had to be headed. The car slowed as it passed him and pulled over on the shoulder ahead. The rear passenger door swung open. The driver stepped out of the car and walked around the front, through the headlights. He was wearing a pair of kaki cargo pants and a green Army tee shirt that fit him so tightly it looked as though at had been tattooed to his body. His head was shaved, and dog tags hung from his neck, but, most importantly, a cigarette hung from his mouth-a lit cigarette.
Lance walked right up to the driver, pulling his cigarette out of his shirt pocket. With no introductions and no hello, he placed the tip of his cigarette to GI Joe’s and took a deep drag until it was lit. GI Joe laughed then abruptly took on a commanding presence, “look, kid, you don’t want to have those kinds of guts around me. I got back from my second tour in Iraq not two months ago and if I’m feeling jumpy I will take your head clean off.” Lance smiled, flicked his cigarette, and watched the ashes flutter in the air as they fell between GI Joe’s boots. “I wouldn’t even have to do any work. The animals would take care of you long before anyone found you. Now get in the car.” GI Joe grabbed Lance by the neck and pushed him down into the backseat. “Now, buckle up, boy,” he ordered as he slammed the door shut, “you wouldn’t want to get hurt.”
GI Joe already had two passengers in his car. They appeared to be FBI agents or something to that effect. Both were men in their mid forties, both wore black suits with black ties, and both had a cocky air behind their black sunglasses, which they wore in the middle of the night. The one in the backseat turned to Lance, lowered his sunglasses, and froze him in place with his ice blue gaze. He spoke slowly and deliberately, in a near whisper, but his words rang in Lance’s ear. “Playtime is over,” he stated, “the learning curve is going to be quick. You are going to follow instructions. You are going to keep your mouth shut unless spoken to. You are going to play by my rules. You are not going to be a problem.” Lance came to a quick conclusion that wherever was not going to be Windy Creek.
GI Joe rolled down his window, flicked his cigarette out of the car then rolled down Lance’s window for him to do the same. The four of them sat in absolute silence, and Lance did not open his mouth when the car reached Windy Creek. He swore GI Joe flashed a mocking grin at him as they drove past a motel and tobacco store, standing side by side in all their glory. As Windy Creek fell behind them they were completely engulfed in darkness. Beyond the reach of the high beams, they may as well have been in outer space. “Where are we headed?” Lance finally asked. The agent in the backseat slapped him upside the head and laughed on single “ha”. “I don’t know,” he replied, “you came to us.” Lance shut up.
GI Joe looked up into the rear view mirror and gave a nod. “Good night,” the agent told Lance. He jabbed a syringe into Lance’s left arm and plunged the contents in. Lance gave a whimper like a kicked puppy, and then he was out. “Seriously,” the agent in the front seat spoke up, “this kid is useless. What are we supposed to do with him?” “I don’t pick them,” GI Joe snapped back, “we get who we get and we don’t throw a fit.” With that, GI Joe fiddled with the radio dial until he found a classical music channel amidst all the static. As the music faded in and out he drove with his left hand while holding an unlit cigarette up in his right and waving it about as though he were conducting an orchestra. When he tired of his charade, he put his cigarette in his mouth, fished a lighter out of his pocket and lit it. Agent number two coughed from the backseat and GI Joe shot him a nasty glare in the rear view mirror.
As GI Joe drove, agent number one was eyeballing the opposite side of the road, lowering his sunglasses for a better look whenever the car went past a road sign. “Yeah, I hope you’re paying attention,” GI Joe told him, “because we’re going to do this right and do this once, ya’ hear?” Agent number one kept his focus and gave a single salute. “That’s my man, you gave your word,” GI Joe laughed. “Just take the next right,” agent number one said. About three quarters of a mile later, GI Joe took a right turn into the bowels of nothingness. The radio offered up a steady stream of static, yet remained untouched.
“Whoa, whoa, stop,” agent number one shouted, “back up!” GI Joe stopped the car, flicked his cigarette agent number one’s direction, and backed up. When he did, his headlight caught a little square reflecting back at him from a tree planted next to a dirt path. GI Joe followed the path with his eyes to a doublewide trailer plopped in the middle of the woods. “Congratulations, you’ve led me to a redneck’s driveway,” he muttered. “Yeah, good for me, follow it,” agent number one replied. GI Joe took a left turn into the redneck’s dirt driveway and crept past a propane tank, five trucks that still wouldn’t make a whole one if pieced together and followed the path as it rounded the doublewide. No shotgun-wielding cracker was waiting for them; in fact, there was no sign of life within it. The dirt path straightened out behind the doublewide, tunneled into a hill from which it never emerged, and became paved road. A couple hundred yards in the tunnel was dimly lit, a few hundred more yards and GI Joe was adjusting his eyes to daylight conditions as agent number two was jabbing another syringe into Lance’s arm.
“Have I forgotten to tell y’all that you’re crazy as all hell,” GI Joe asked rhetorically, “exactly how much of the national debt does this represent?” Rhetorical question or not, agent number one answered, “When you can blow up the world, and do it with authority, there is no such thing as a deficit…not really.” GI Joe ignored him and looked up into the rear view to address agent number two, “How’s sleeping beauty?” “Ask him in a few minutes,” agent number two responded. GI Joe had to laugh. Lance was convulsing sporadically and three times in a row agent number two got popped in the mouth. His eyes were wide open, but it was obvious that he was not yet with it. “Next exit,” instructed agent number one.
The tunnel expanded to mammoth proportions to accommodate a full-scale freeway interchange. The exchange was marked by huge green signs, just as an interstate exchange would be, but the markings on the signs may have well have been child’s scribble scratch to GI Joe. Whenever he went below it was always a surprise to see where he popped up. “Christ!” agent number two exclaimed from the backseat as GI Joe gunned the car around the cloverleaf. “Accelerate through the apex,” GI Joe hooted, “accelerate through the apex.” Lance was now staring, dumbstruck and speechless, out of his window. Lance knew the second he wound up in the car things were going to be messed up, but this was just plain nuts. He had gone from the middle of nowhere to some crazy freeway in a tube. There were three lanes of highway each way, and it was lit up like a torch, but there were no cars other than theirs. Every so often, they blew past ramps exiting off into tunnels of their own. Lance finally asked, “What the hell is this?” “Your new surroundings, GI Joe responded.” He was holding a coin up in the air, about the size of a silver dollar, as he drove. It was covered in engravings of odd shapes and symbols with a red stone of some kind set in the middle. Lance’s mind did a double take as he stared at it in astonishment. His hand reached into his pocket as GI Joe smiled into the rearview mirror. “Effed up, ain’t it,” GI Joe laughed, “it finds you, that’s what it always does.” “Now, why it found you,” he said indifferently, “is not my problem. That’s up to these crazy dudes to figure out.”
“Who are you?” Lance asked. “Sergeant Trey Cooper, that’s who I am,” he responded, “and these guys will tell you who they are if they want to.” “Next exit,” agent number one instructed Sgt. Cooper. The next exit took them into a one-lane tunnel. The sign hanging overhead read, “UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS DEEMED ENEMY COMBATANTS.” “Damn it,” Sgt. Cooper laughed hysterically, “are you authorized to be here?” Lance did not respond, pulled the coin he had found out of his pocket and ran his fingers over it. Gold coin, odd etchings, red stone set in the middle, this was definitely the same as the one Sgt. Cooper held in the air. “What is this?” he asked. Sgt. Cooper shrugged. “It finds you, I retrieve you,” he stated plainly.
The car came to a stop in front of a massive solid steel gate. Sgt. Cooper rolled down his window and pressed his thumb to an electronic pad affixed to a pole protruding from the tunnel wall. A small device popped out from the pad and scanned his eyeballs, and then the gate rose up leaving Lance in awe at what was behind it. It was cavernous, and the light was blinding. Lance could not tell where the walls, where the ceilings, where anything was. He couldn’t find the source of the light as it threatened to make his head explode. Sgt. Cooper drove into the light. “Can’t handle it, huh?” he asked as he reached into the glove box, pulled out a pair of sunglasses tossing them back to Lance, and patted agent number one’s left shoulder twice. Lance scooped up the glasses and put them on. His head was throbbing. “Cigarette?” Sgt. Cooper asked. Lance simply nodded. Agent number one stepped out of the car and opened Lance’s door. As Lance stepped out, he lowered his sunglasses, looked Lance in the eyes, and announced, “Welcome home.”