1
“The driver is on his way, babe,” Hilo is tense, Jaime can hear it through the phone.
“It’s all going to be fine, I promise.” Jaime says.
She finishes uploading the malware into a Micro-USB sticking out the side of her laptop and throws the computer into her backpack.
“Who is this guy anyway?” Jaime asks Hilo over the phone.
“His name is Garder, got a rap sheet so long it's spilling out the bottom of my computer.”
Jaime laughs at her boyfriend's hyperbole before he continues.
“He’s real old school, drives some old hunk of shit with a V8 engine in it,” Hilo says.
Jaime hears her ride before she sees it, grabs her backpack, pulls on some socks and kicks untied shoes on while she heads out the door.
The muscle car grumbles its way up the street, vibrating the block. A silver bullet with a black stripe up the middle, the car reminds Jaime of an old heist movie her grandpa used to watch while her mom was out of town. It didn’t end well for the passengers. He pulls up to her nice and slow.
“Real inconspicuous,” Jaime says, slamming the door on her way inside the car.
“Her name’s Martha,” Garder says, giving the leather dashboard a slap, “She’s built for speed, baby, not spying.”
He’s a cowboy in jeans and a plaid shirt, he smiles at her like The Cheshire Cat as she hops in his ride.
“Well we’re gonna need it to do both.” Jaime crosses her arms, and her legs, to Garder’s dismay. “This has gotta be the only non electric car north of Nebraska. We’re gonna stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Ever heard of hiding in plain sight?” Garder gives her a wink and shifts into drive, screeching the wheels as they pull out onto the highway’s feeder road at 110 miles an hour.
“What’s your role in all this?” Jaime yells out over the engine as they fly down the interstate.
“Delivery man.” Garder nods in her direction, keeping his eyes on the road. “Point A to Point B. If you wanna make a stop in-between,” He breaks his gaze from the highway as a creepy smile spreads across his face, “That can be arranged.”
“I’m sixteen, asshole.” Jaime lies and sits back with a huff. She doesn’t look over to see his reaction, but doubts there’s any changed feelings on his part.
They ride in silence for a while. Jaime notices something attached to the steering wheel. She recognizes it from an engineering blueprint floating around The Internet.
“She’s a hybrid.” Jaime states plainly.
“That’s right,” Garder flips the paddle Jaime noticed.
The suspension lowers and the rumbling of the engine dies down immediately as the car smoothly transitions to electric.
“You like that?” Garder asks, a sly grin ever present on his face.
“Fuck off.” Jaime rolls her eyes.
“It’s a long way to Vegas, baby girl,” The middle aged man says to the teenager next to him, “Would go quicker if we got along.”
“I can tell from the hard-on you’ve had since seeing me that our ideas of getting along are vastly different.”
Garder grimaces and shifts back into manual, the engine roars down the interstate, passing columns of perfectly straight, self-driving vehicles. Sleek, white cars speed alongside massive black Semi Trucks with no drivers at the wheel, inches away from each other.
Garder weaves through them like a speedboat in a kayak race.
Hours pass as Garder takes his sexual frustrations out on the gas pedal under him. His perverted gaze occasionally sweeping over the passenger’s seat. Jaime, despite her best efforts, passes out in the seat next to him as the traffic blurs together outside her window.
***
“So,” Garder says loud enough to wake up Jaime, “We’re halfway to Vegas.”
“Yeah?” Jaime rubs her eyes awake.
“I got a question for you,” Garder says.
“Go ahead.”
“What do you have that they want?”
Jaime feels the Micro-USB in her pocket. She remembers what it took to get it, who it took.
“Secrets,” She replies.
“See I’ve run girls like you for Georgey before. Most of the time they’ll take up my offer, even if it lightens my wallet, if you catch my drift.”
“I’m not a whore,” Jaime says.
“Didn’t say you were. Just saying if you ain't in the business than you’re better off not ever seeing Georgey, no matter what he offers you.”
“Why’s that?”
“Only two paths to go down in that part of town, you either turn tricks for Georgey or I end up burying you a foot deep in the Mojave.”
“I have information he wants,” Jaime raises her voice.”Quit projecting your pervy little fantasies on me you fucking creep.”
“Big vocabulary for a sixteen year old,” Garder says with a tone that knows she was lying about her age.
“What’s Martha’s password?”
“Crickets.”
Jaime flicks her phone open and connects to the car, playing rap songs that drown out the roaring engine. Neither appreciate the music. Hours pass as the plains of the northern states morph into the desert surrounding Las Vegas.
Garder cuts the tunes.
“What the hell?” He asks the silent car.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
A crowd of people sit next to the side of the road, nothing around for miles except desert and a pickup truck. A small telescope stands in the middle of their semicircle of chairs, they seem to be waiting around for the sun, which sits low in the sky, to set.
“UFOs.” Jaime says, “You don’t watch the news?”
“Never,” Garder answers, “Ain’t there been sightings in this desert for the last 300 years? Nothing ever came of it before.”
“Yeah, well,” Jaime peers at the group as they recede in Martha’s rearview mirror, “There’s been a little more than sightings lately.”
The car jolts as it transfers back into electric.
“Ah shit,” Garder checks a gauge, “Gotta pull off for some gas.”
“Just run electric ‘til we get there. I’m in a rush.”
“My car, my rules. I like manual on the desert roads, we’re getting gas.”
“Do they even have gas stations anymore?” Jaime asks, impatient.
“I know a place.” Garder gives her a malicious smirk.
Ten minutes later Garder pulls into a dilapidated station, gravel crunching under cheap tires in the isolated parking lot. Not another car in sight.
Jaime goes inside to piss, an android greets her with a generic:
“Welcome to Shale Stop n’ Shop! Restrooms are for customers only.” He smiles mechanically under a handsome rubber face.
Jaime’s piss hits the bowl the same time Garder’s gas starts pumping.
The shifty driver glances around the desert before heading inside the store, the sun setting behind him.
***
“Jesus Christ,” Gabriel Ramos regards the scene in front of him, covering his mouth and nose with the lapel of a pale blue nylon police jacket.
The plainclothes cop next to him withdraws from the bathroom, escaping the overpowering smell of the rotting corpse inside. It’s a dimly lit room, the only light coming from the desert sun outside, illuminating the crime scene and heating it up like a sauna. Ramos hears the officer throw up outside as he bends down and takes the wallet from the dead man’s corpse.
“Wesley Garder,” Ramos reads outloud, pocketing the wallet. “Poor bastard.”
The naked body is propped up on the far side of the bathroom, next to a piss filled toilet. It was mutilated, multiple puncture wounds in a random pattern cover his face and neck. The man’s bare chest is coated in blood, streams running down from his nose and mouth form ravines on his stomach that end in lakes of red on the tile floor under him.
Worst of all, someone cut Wesley Garder’s cock off and set it on the ground in front of him.
Ramos writes all of this down as the Assistant on his wrist takes pictures of whatever the algorithm deems necessary. The small screen embedded in his wrist the cops call, “Assistants,” will send all necessary notes and documentation from the crime scene, alongside the photos, to headquarters in a matter of milliseconds.
Something personal, He writes.
Ramos is oldschool, he takes his own notes on a small yellow flip pad. A teacher had told him 20 years ago that writing things down makes you more likely to remember them. Hasn’t failed him yet.
Dead since last night, He writes, finishing off the note and flipping the pad back together.
“Detective,” The puker is back. “The android is ready inside.”
Ramos follows him around to the front of the building, skid marks in the gravel show whoever left here was in a big hurry.
The air conditioner blasts Ramos’ face with a fury as he steps inside the gas station’s cheap excuse for a convenience store.
“Welcome to Shale Stop n’ Shop! Restrooms are for customers only.”
Ramos holds up his Assistant towards the blonde haired android behind the counter.
“Detective!” It suddenly exclames, “How can I help you?”
“Give me the footage of the camera out back around sunset last night,” Ramos says, taking out his notepad.
The android flips the electronic tablet constituting a register towards Ramos, the screen plays a clear security feed from the night prior.
Ramos fast forwards until he sees a figure come into frame.
A young girl, no older than 20, walks from out the back of the shop into the restroom alone. A minute passes.
“You think it happened later? No way some little girl did this.” The cop next to Ramos asks, his breath stinking of puke.
As if on command, the man Ramos recognizes from the bathroom floor appears on the screen and knocks on the door. No answer. He knocks again, this time pulling a long bowie knife from the waist of his pants.
He kicks down the door and exits the range of the security camera.
“Did the girl walk back through here?” Ramos asks the android without glancing up from the feed.
“No officer.”
“She walked around then?”
“No officer, the only person that exited that bathroom was-”
“The same man that went in.” Ramos finishes for the android, watching in awe as Wesley Garder exits the bathroom on the old security footage, leaving his dead body behind.
“Wesley Garder.”
“What in the fuck?” The officer asks, leaning over the screen, mouth agape.
***