Made in China Chapter 17

I was going about 120 mph, I think, though I can’t be for certain since the speedometer was disabled by the mechanic that was Charlie Lust who is now in places unknown with a safety deposit box full of me. There is no sense in caring how fast I am going being that it is utterly inconsequential. Yet, I think randomly of speed, if only to amuse myself through the doldrums of the road. “Preoccupation with the speedometer,” Charlie said sagaciously, “may cost you your life, Blatz.” That of course was before the grease-monkey revealed himself as herself and my life became much more complicated. Kansas is an abysmal Hell. Forget fire and brimstone and devils with pitchforks and tails. Hell is a Kansas field on an eternal plateau of utter nothingness. It is like looking at a naked woman blown terribly out of scale and not knowing where her thigh ends and her lady parts begin. There are no good lady parts in Kansas. It is a giant meaty thigh of dead flesh. Dead rat carcasses lay in the outlying fields of swaying limp grass that are neither brown nor green. They look as though they are afraid to be either. Everything around here is afraid to be anything. The rats are the gray hills with vultures in feast stuck in them like black banderillas. Along the road are the burning wreckages of other Death Race 666 MIC cars, the only difference is in how their frames are twisted, or how they burn, hundreds of them. There are no bodies. God only knows what they did to the bodies.

Then there are the old-rusted frames of ones that had been pirated and stripped for every ounce of worth by the ruthless, no-good, marauding, raping, murdering, degenerates known as “road pirates.” They go by names such as Highway Hellkats, Ray Purefaces, or Scum of the Earth. But as bad as they are The Dead Babies are by far the worst of them. They kill anyone, anytime, anywhere, to get back at the world for their existence. They are not even concerned at all with the piracy of wealth or material value. Their piracy is that of human life and worth. Most road pirates operate with at least a semblance of a code of ethics, but not The Dead Babies. They claim to be abortion survivors, angry because of the botched abortion that made them live in such a miserable world. Of course, whether they in fact survived an abortion cannot be proven. Much is known about road pirates due to documentaries and reality TV shows based upon them in the last decade until The Dead Babies killed all the documentary makers and film crews.

I smash through debris with no fear of explosives or things that might damage Ruby. Her front is fortified by the small steel plow and armor-plating and impenetrable tires. She is an extension of me and thus, invincible. I have no fear of any road pirates as clever as they are in shanghaiing even the most road-savvy of travelers. Possessing useless trepidation is like living with a mouthful of poison. It is admitting that you are a prey in a world of predators. If I am to be killed I want to be so fearlessly, so not to give any satisfaction to my killer, to death, or the Devil. I want to give no one watching me through the dash-cam any satisfaction in seeing me squirm in fear or grimace in pain. I know that I am vulnerable, but even in so being, a person should not lose his sense of confidence in his ability to weather the storm, in surviving the greatest of odds against his life. I had done so well in surviving the Turk that the feeling of my purpose beyond human comprehension has manifested in me and given me a wealth of audacity. It is as though to be splattered along some Kansas highway by degenerates is beneath me, and not even possible. I have my two Colts, a twelve-gauge shotgun, sixteen sticks of dynamite and four knives concealed on various parts of my body, but other than that, I am completely unarmed. Oh, and my love gun, which is in the glove compartment but that would hardly be of use against road pirates.

There were no signs of life around me, only death, miles of death and despair, but suddenly there is a black blur on the side of the road that appears to be moving in the distinct way a human moves walking backwards. The sun is blinding and through my Ray Bans I can see that this black blur has an arm, one arm, which it holds out towards the road. And at the end of that one arm there is a hand, and from that hand there is a thumb sticking straight up into the air. I slow down even though in the advice of the Death Race 666 Rulebook, a pamphlet that I briefly perused waiting between Yonkers and Palisades Park, it suggested not slowing down for anyone you might encounter along the road. I would normally never think of stopping but for whatever reason I did. The thumb in the air, it explained in a “fun fact” section, is how people once made it across the country before the psycho-killers outnumbered the good Samaritans. That seems like a million years ago. They called it “hitchhiking...”

Regardless of any warnings, I stop. To my surprise the hitchhiker is a Catholic Priest, at least, he is wearing the right attire to be a Priest. He could be anyone. Sure enough, my perfect vision didn’t betray me from the distance and indeed he has only one arm. On his left side there is only a dangling black sleeve which falls uncomfortably in my sight. Missing limbs always give me the heebie-jeebies. “I don’t pin it,” he says, “in case it decides to come back.”

“What?”

“You were thinking about my arm... In case it comes back, I don’t pin the sleeve to the side.” He winks.

“Oh.” Maybe I was thinking that. I don’t know. He looks around at the nothingness in front and behind us and approaches the car casually, leans in through the open window. “Where are you going?” I ask directly.

“Nowhere fast, it appears.” And as though he were in some old movie made in the heyday of hitchhiking, he smiles and adds...“I guess that depends on where you’re going, stranger.”

“I am in the race. Look, I don’t have time for chitchat. You want a ride?"

“Fair enough, fair enough.” He opens the door and slides in. “Wow. It has been a lot of years since these old bones have been in a Ford Mustang. What is this? A twenty-twelve?”

“Yes.”

“A Shelby?”

“Yes.”

“5.0 V8?”

“5.8 supercharged.”

“Impressive.”

“Buckle in and hold on,” I say firmly. I push the button and his window rolls up. The radio announcer with the patois of someone calling a tight horserace stops with a “Wait a minute! Wait-A-Minute!” to say, “The American, placing 812^th currently, picked up an unidentified hitchhiker.” It isn’t at all against the rules. I slam Ruby into sixth and the Priest grabs the door, gripping it tightly with his right hand. There are many driving teams which makes me wonder how they plan to split the prize, being that the prize is one woman. But then the radio announcer declares, as though to answer my thoughts, that there is a 3.5 million dollar purse due to so many racers already being killed or deserting. Bernard has more money than he could ever spend so he wanted to inspire some utter wickedness, and the best way to do so is by adding another deadly sin. Lust wasn’t enough, not even in this world. So enter greed. There were under 1700 racers remaining with half the race still to go.

I didn’t say anything to the Priest for twenty or thirty miles. I just drove. I thought of Rogers who lost both his arms in the Turk—the old curmudgeon who I suggested read Farewell to Arms inadvertently. I wonder where he is now, what he could possibly be doing. I wonder if there is a Heaven and if Jana Olavstrauss is dancing in it, and dead soldiers are dancing with her, playing flutes and tambourines. I wonder about the Devil in the hotel room; was that something I dreamt? I wonder about Chloe Lust, and Zula Zane, and what I could do with 3.5 million dollars. Kanas will do that to you. It will lull you to sleep in the miles and miles of nothingness, drowning you in introspection. Finally, after he became acclimated to the speed, which was regularly between 120 and 200 mph, if I had to guess, he spoke up. “The name is Michael Flynn, or Father Michael... And I was run off the road by some pirates a ways back. That burning heap you might have seen on the Missouri-Kansas border was my Dodge Omni. I knew you were going to ask.”

“How did you know?”

He only smiled. He had good teeth—yellowish, but good. He was older, maybe sixty something, a gray comb-over, pinkish skin, a red bulbous nose and bags under his eyes from a lack of sleep, or maybe a hard life. He is thin and tall with the features of an actor, or some magazine model who got old fast. He doesn’t look to be a man in costume. He is genuine, I can tell. I notice then the little black bag that is on his lap. I wonder how he survived them and how that black bag is still with him. How is it that he still has clothes and doesn’t seem to be visually injured. No blood. There are no signs of torture. There is nothing apparently wrong with him other than a missing left arm that surely has been missing for many years. He doesn’t even seem psychologically bent.

I focus on the road. I never thought too much about it, but having another person in the car would be beneficial in case pirates attack. Someone would have to light the dynamite and man the twelve-gauge. I look over at Father Michael’s thin physique and his missing arm. His sleeve that hangs limp like a ghost. “Sure,” he says, “I’ll do it, Blatz. I was in The War.”

“You’ll do what?” I ask skeptically.

“Light the dynamite. Man the twelve-gauge. ”

“Wait. The War?” None of us Turk War vets call it "The Wild Turk War" as it is officially known. That is gauche. It is either "The Turk" or "The War." One or the other.

“Yes. Served two tours,” he says casually. “Well, sonofagun, you were a Blue Eagle? Captain Bowie? Oh, I heard of you! You’re a legend. As legendary as Captain Jumping Jack Flash if you ask me!”

“How did you know my name or that...?”

“You told me,” he smiled again. Tapped a finger to the side of his head. “In here. I read minds. Yes, I do. And I do exorcisms, too. It’s a gift that I have no idea how I came to possess. The mind reading thing, that is. Telepathy, if you will. Exorcism? I was taught that. Learned through the Church."

“There are no demons here, Father.”

“Oh, there are demons everywhere, Blatz.”

“I have to admit, it is an uncomfortable feeling that you can read my mind.”

“Would you prefer that I don’t?”

“Maybe. But I guess it might come in handy.”

“Well, if so, I will not...”

“How do I know?”

“You have to have faith.”

“Faith?” I grimace.

“Your old bugaboo?”

“Interesting word there.” He picked it from my head.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “I will stop. But faith is a beautiful thing, Blatz,” he smiles. Suddenly, a dirtball appears out of nowhere with a scruffy black beard outside of the passenger window behind the Priest. He is wielding an axe and riding a chopper with giant handlebars that make him have to reach a foot above his deformed-looking tattooed head. As he rears back with the axe I quickly pull a pistol and shoot him through the passenger window. Glass shatters and falls in a million pieces all over the Priest’s black suit. Perfect shot. He flies off the bike and bounces to the vultures and in the rearview I watch the metal monstrosity he rode spin to a rest.

“Sorry about that,” I say. The Priest rubs his ears and winces.

“No, no, no! Quite alright! Quite alright! I would prefer to have busted eardrums than an axe buried in my forehead.”

“You’re welcome,” I reply. There are no signs of anyone else in the rearview. “That scumbag was the spotter. Others will come.”

“Ha,” he laughs. I look at him. “You know you said ‘you’re welcome.'”

“So?” I reply.

“You see, I didn’t say thank you. I only thought it. Telepathy is innate if you’re tuned in to the right frequency.” I slide Ruby back into sixth and open her up. 200 mph easy. Kansas makes me think again. I remember on those ridiculous handlebars that there was an impaled baby-doll head, a tell-tale sign of The Dead Babies Motorcycle Club.