Like Sewing With Fire

or: Hot Rope It, Brick Hook!

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"Shit, I drove too far!"

"There's some turrets, we could climb up and do some shooting." Jojo looked around. He hadn't been paying attention. There were chain link fences with barbed wire hoops attached to their tops. "Where the hell are we?" Scooter had turned the truck around. "Oh, an airport."

"West Leb Helicopters." Scooter was reading the business sign. He drove back down the hill. He took a left and pulled into the parking lot of Neil Industrial Supply. He parked the car and the both of them got out. They walked into the store. A moment later they were standing at the back of Scooter's pick up with the sales clerk and a hand cart. Jojo reached into the truck bed and pulled a medium sized tubular metal tank out and put it on the hand truck. They went back inside the store. Jojo tried on welding hats while Scooter and the sales clerk went to the warehouse. When they came back they had replaced the medium sized metal tank with another medium sized metal tank and a very large metal tank.

"Okay, a magnum of argon and a pony of acetylene. The rod. Anything else?" The sales clerk made joke after joke about how slow and inefficient the computer was. How they were supposed to be saving time by having upgraded, but the computer didn't work very well and it took forever for it to talk to the printer. Jojo watched the sales clerk closely. He was an odd member of society, clearly competent and charming, but awkward and Jojo couldn't tell, but the guy seemed to be missing quite a few teeth. He hoped he would smile so Jojo could see. Even though the guy made a million micro jokes, he never smiled. Scooter paid and signed the receipts. They were standing behind the truck again moments later. The two tubes of welding gas standing vertically and the sales clerk wishing them a good day.

Jojo and Scooter both grabbed onto the magnum of argon. Both wearing gloves. The tank was much heavier than either of them expected. Halfway up from the ground to the truck bed Scooter said, "I hope you have it, because I don't!" Jojo barely had it. It was slipping away from him. Scooter repositioned and they were able muscle the unruly tank into the truck bed. Jojo said, "Boom!" Scooter laughed and helped him turn the cylinder parallel to the truck bed. Scooter said, "This one won't explode, its the other one you have to worry about." They tried to close the tail gate. The magnum tank was too long. Scooter's truck bed was shorter than a full sized truck bed because it had a back seat . He angled the tank and shut the tail gate. "Its okay. We can put the plywood on top. They won't go anywhere." Jojo put the pony tank into the truck bed, making sure not to jostle it. Scooter's warning that that tank was the dangerous one made him cautious.

At the lumberyard they pushed a flat dolly into the store they laid ten sheets of three quarter inch plywood on the dolly. Scooter went to bathroom. Then Jojo went to the bathroom. They paid and pushed the plywood sheets into the parking lot. In the parking lot they arranged the gas tanks in a way that allowed them to place the plywood on top, trapping the tanks of gas with a 500 lbs of wood. As they were loading the truck with the plywood a car was turning down the parking aisle they were in. The driver, seeming like she was unwilling to back up and reorient the car in order to get past them, honked. Jojo looked up and said," What the fuck? Go around!" It was then that he noticed she was there to pick somebody up and the person she was picking up needed to come to where she was. He didn't come to where she was. She backed up and navigated the space behind Scooter's truck and the stack of plywood on the flat dolly. Jojo felt like a jerk for yelling at her.

Scooter strapped the plywood down with a ratchet strap while Jojo bounced the wood making sure it settled properly on top of the gas tanks. Everything seemed fine when they drove out of the parking lot.

On the way to the interstate Jojo noticed that gas at Boji's was thirty cents cheaper than the gas back in town. "I got a card, ya know?" Scooter looked at the fuel gauge and said, "Well, I could use some gas." He pulled in and pulled up to the gas pump. They both got out and Jojo went around and took the card from his wallet and scanned it. A moment later the gas was flowing into the gas tank. A moment after that, they were heading towards the interstate. It was nearly thirty miles from West Leb to the Bethel exit. The sun was setting and it was mid December. They had a full tank of gas, two cylinders of welding gas, one inert and one flammable. Ten sheets of three quarter inch plywood and it was snowing. There was no rush to get back, but once they dropped the plywood and welding gas off at the shop the day would be over. Scooter turned on the radio and started driving back.

The traffic wasn't heavy but because of the snow and the dusk it was moving slower than it normally would have been. The roads were not icy though. The temperature was thirty two degrees, just at the freezing point, but it had been snowing for days so the roads were covered in salt. Scooter was not driving cautiously. There was no reason to. He didn't think there was a reason to. His truck was new. Specifically new. Modern. On the way to West Ham, when they finally got onto the interstate Scooter had bragged about how new his truck was. "Watch this." he had said while closing his eyes. The truck had sensors that would keep it centered between the lines on the highway. It would slow down if it got too close to the car in front of it. It would maintain speed like cruise control as long as Scooter kept his hands on the steering wheel. Jojo didn't know what he was supposed to be watching. "Watch what?" Scooter squinched his right eye open and looked over at Jojo. "No! You have to watch me, what I am doing." Jojo looked over and saw Scooter had his eye closed. "Whatever, I know that trick, you have your left eye open." Scooter looked over at Jojo with both eyes closed. "What are you doing!" He put his hands on the dashboard and watched as the truck drove better than Scooter would normally drive. He looked back over and saw Scooter's head turned to him with his eyes closed. "As long as I keep my hands on the wheel, this motherfucker is on auto pilot! Can you believe it?!" Jojo could not believe it. But he could see with his own eyes what was happening. He did not like what was happening. "Okay, that is good enough, go back to driving please." His hands were on the dashboard and he was certain the truck was about to crash. Scooter made a sound like air leaving a bike tire, "Jojo, you're no fun, you need to live a little." Jojo relaxed a little when Scooter opened his eyes. He was certain that he would pull some sort of tricks later but he would deal with them when they came, the same way he always dealt with Scooter. Jojo scoffed, "Yeah, living is exactly what I should be doing."

Scooters confidence was misplaced. Even with a specifically new car something was happening that he had no control over. He didn't know that because of the differing sizes of the tanks of gas in his truck bed the plywood was putting nearly five hundred pounds of weight on the inert argon gas. That the volatile acetylene gas had become wedged between the far edge of the plywood and a cleat he had installed for the purpose of moving materials around. That the tank was very close to falling out of the trunk and onto the interstate.

A few miles down the road the traffic grew sparce as they were far from the city center of West Leb. Scooter was in the left lane passing a slower car when a dead raccoon appeared. He had no choice but to run over the corpse. Jojo yelled, "Oh no! I guess your fancy truck doesn't dodge raccoons, Scooty." Scooter said, "Things are bound to happen." There was a slight metallic sound that came from the back, but neither of them heard it because the salt on the road melting the snow was blasting salt water into the wheel wells, and there was music playing. A few hundred yards later a live raccoon ran onto the interstate. Like before, Scooter didn"t have a chance to avoid it. He squashed it with the left rear tire, the left rear tire right above where the acetylene gas was bouncing loose from under the plywood, but also getting crammed further and further into the cleat Scooter had installed to help him move things around with his truck. The sound was deafening but neither Jojo nor Scooter heard it. The blast from the tank exploding moved faster than sound. They also felt nothing even though the blast blew out Scooter's rear window entirely and sent shards of glass into the back of both of their heads and necks. The concussion was profound. It rendered them both unconscious immediately.

The explosion pushed the car they were passing towards the shoulder. The driver saw the flash of light and heard the noise, but didn't understand what was happening. Luckily for her it happened so quickly that she didn't have a chance to respond and therefore she didn't overreact. She felt her tires on the rumble strip and pulled back onto the interstate while bellowing, "What the fuck was that?!" She had instinctively removed her foot from the accelerator and could see Scooters truck in flames ahead of her. The plywood, now on fire and the truck driving in the left lane like nothing new was happening, like it was just carrying a load of burning plywood on purpose. She had no clue that Scooter's truck was specifically new, modern, and that even though he was unconscious his hands were still on the steering wheel, which meant that the truck would continue to drive on auto pilot.

A few hundred feet back a state trooper and his partner had seen the explosion. Like the driver next to Scooter's truck, the state trooper, a man named Manny and his partner named Marge, had both bellowed at the same time, "What the fuck was that?!" Instead of slowing down and getting away from the burning truck, Manny turned the siren on and sped up. He and Marge were now right behind Scooter's truck. Close enough to see that the plywood was burning red hot and that there was a tank of gas under the pile of burning plywood. When Manny noticed the second tank of gas he pulled back while Marge made use of the cruisers megaphone and barked into it receiver, "Pull over! I repeat, pull over!" Scooter did not pull over. He could not hear the siren or the megaphone. He was unconscious.

Manny drove into the right hand lane and drove along side Scooter's truck. Jojo was slumped over with his head on the dashboard, blood running down his neck, but because the truck was taller than the trooper cruiser, he could not see Scooter. Marge repeated, "Pull over! I repeat, pull over!" They didn't know that Scooter's truck was specifically new, modern. They had received training about modern cars, about how to deal with things like this, even the cruiser had features like Scooter's truck had, but their training did not cover how to deal with a truck on auto pilot with a bed full of burning plywood and what appeared to be a tank of volatile gas underneath. They did not know what to do. Manny asked Marge, "What do we do?" Marge shrugged. Manny saw her shrug from the corner of his eye. "Do you think the driver is doing this on purpose? Are they terrorists?" Their training, as modern police officers was to assume that everyone was a terrorist.

Manny drove ahead of the burning truck and pulled into the left lane. It didn't occur to him that at this point he was in control of Scooter's truck, that had he just relaxed and stopped thinking that something evil was happening and that the truck was just specifically new, modern, he could have slowed down to a stop and hopefully all the other traffic on the road would see the burning truck and move aside and they could safely, albeit dangerously safely, remove the truck from traffic and get both of the men out of the truck before it surely blew up. Instead he was confused when he got in front of the truck and noticed it was slowing down. He assumed he was being out maneuvered. He asked Marge to look back and see what was going on with the driver. From her perspective he looked like he was driving normally. Snow was still falling and dusk was turning into night. "I think he has your number! He looks like trouble!" Manny sped up. He was nervous now. "Is he White?" Marge couldn't tell. She didn't know that Scooter was driving a ghost ship. Unconscious and bleeding. "I can't tell! I think he might be wearing a turban!" Scooter was not wearing a turban. He wasn't even wearing a hat. The flames from the burning plywood were back lighting him which gave him a glow. Manny yelled, "Holly shit! Get on the horn to dispatch stat!" He then pulled into the right lane and slowed down letting Scooter and Jojo and their flaming ghost ship barrel down the interstate ahead of them.

"Dispatch! Come in, over!" Marge's voice was suddenly very high pitched.

"This is dispatch." Marge handed Manny the citizens band microphone. Manny's voice was suddenly high pitched as well.

"Dispatch! This is Officer Aorms and Officer Hammor, Unit Delta Three Niner. We have a possible terrorist attack in progress on I-93 just north of West Leb Center, over!"

They were now driving through mountains and the radio stopped working. Manny repeated his high pitched declaration, but received only static. Manny turned grim. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, "Looks like we're on our own now, toots."

Manny pulled into the left lane about a hundred feet from the burning truck. The burning truck looking like a mobile bonfire. Manny and Marge began to debate their options:

"We could shoot out the tires." Marge was trying to remember her terrorist training. She had received very little. It was mostly just profiling anyone with Brown skin, preferably a Muslim. In the excitement she mixed up the training she received about how to deal with a vehicle that refused to stop. Which was not inappropriate, but was irrelevant at the moment because they were not dealing with a vehicle that refused to stop they were dealing with a vehicle on fire on the interstate that was incapable of stopping, a thing that was essentially a nuanced interpretation of events, independent from motive an perspective. Treating Jojo and Scooter as hostile was in nobody's self interest. Especially the other drivers on the road. Manny, having received the exact same training at the same time Marge had, and also mixing up the terrorist training with what was known as Rogue Motorist training, was thinking the same way.

"What if we just shot the driver?"

"What if we shot the passenger forcing the driver to pull over so he could help his friend?"

"Are you crazy? They're terrorists, they don't care about anyone but Jihad!"

"Right, right, good point, guh! What if we just ran them off the road?"

"We could do that, but what if they drove across the median and tried to blow up oncoming traffic?"

"Excellent point, Manny. You are so much better than me at this! I am so stupid!"

"Don't say that! You're super smart! I just have more experience than you do."

"We graduated from the same class."

"Yeah, but I'm a man, I have been protecting society and women my entire life." Marge thought about what he said. She had to admit he had a point. As galling as it was.

"Sorry, I forget I am a women sometimes."

"it's okay, it's only natural, because you are a woman, you forget things sometimes."

"Good point."

"What if we shoot the tires?" Marge remembered suggesting this a second ago, but it sounded better coming out of Manny's mouth.

"I never thought of that. That way nobody would be injured, hopefully." Manny didn't like the idea of not hurting anyone. He dismissed his own idea that he had stolen from Marge to begin with because he thought Marge was being too liberal now. The words "bleeding heart snow flake" flashed across his mind. Women, he thought. He looked over at Marge, the fire glowing on her face. She was pretty. He thought he would let her suck it if she wanted to. He started to fantasize about Marge unzipping his pants and...

"What are you thinking about?"

"Damn, really? I can't have a fucking moment of peace! Why do we always have to nit pick my emotions?" Marge was confused. She assumed that Manny was coming up with a brilliant solution to the terrorist attack.

"I was just thinking that..."

"That's your problem, you don't think. I spend all my time working and trying to bring home the bacon and all you do all day is whine and complain about how I am not doing enough to raise our..." Manny had been fighting with his wife quite a bit lately. He hadn't been sleeping well and the wires in his brain became crossed. He snapped out of his distracted state just as the sound of snake hissing through a megaphone blew a twelve inch hole through the windshield and out the rear window. Manny didn't register what happened, his right ear was ringing and he watched the magnum canister of argon gas shoot sparks as it bounced down the interstate in the rearview mirror.

"They're shooting missiles at us!" Marge yelled, snapping Manny back into reality. Wind and snow was blowing through the perfectly round hole. Manny pushed up on the windshield wiper lever. It had been acting periodically because the snow wasn't falling very fast, but he thought somehow that wipers would fix the hole. The wipers did not fix the hole. "Shouldn't we do something!" Manny looked over at Marge. She seemed very upset.

"Oh, right." Manny adjusted the controls on the air conditioning and turned the defroster up. "There ya go."

"No, you idiot! They just shot a missile at us! We need to act, now! Pull up next to them and I'll take a shot!"

Manny was distracted. He didn't realize how much trouble his marriage was in. Confusing Marge with his wife freaked him out. He thought he was losing his mind. He wanted to pull over, to let Marge drive so he could have a moment with his thoughts, but there was no time to do that. Or maybe there was. Manny drove up next to the burning ghost ship. Marge was yelling at him to roll his window down. She had her pistol pointed at the window. At the truck. She could see Jojo knocked out, his head on the dashboard. She had a clean shot, she thought. Manny didn't roll the window down, he sped up instead. Marge unbuckled her seatbelt and sat on her knees facing backwards, her firearm pointed through the hole the magnum cylinder of argon gas made in the rear window. She had a clean shot Scooter's head, she pulled the trigger just as the cruiser hit a bump. The bullet put a very small hole in the glass and disappeared into the woods. Manny screamed. Now both of his ears were ringing. Marge's too.

"Why did you do that?!" he yelled.

"I thought that was what we were doing!" she yelled back.

"God! My ears! Did you get 'em?"

"It doesn't look like it!"

Manny sped up. He kept speeding up. Soon they were going 120 mph down the highway. Ears ringing. Passing cars that had no idea a burning ghost ship was heading their way. Marge turned back around and put her seatbelt on. She put her pistol back into the holster.

"What are you doing?! We can't just leave them back there!" she was yelling.

"I need you to drive. I am not feeling well!" he was yelling.

"You got a sour tummy?!" she yelled.

"What?! No, I do not have a sour tummy, woman! I just need you to drive is all!"

When Manny thought they had made enough distance between themselves and the mobile bonfire, the terrorists on wheels, the burning ghost ship, he pulled over. He got out and ran around to the other side of the cruiser. Marge didn't really understand what was happening so she was not in any hurry to get out of the car. Manny ripped the door open and yelled, "Move it or lose it, toots!" Marge unbuckled her seatbelt and got out. She ran around the back of the cruiser while cars whizzed by. She got into the driver's seat and adjusted the seat position, the mirror, she checked the sideview mirrors. Meanwhile Manny was yelling, "Go! Go! Go!" Jojo and Scooter zipped by just as Marge was about to pull onto the interstate. There were headlights that she couldn't judge the distance of because of the darkness and the snow. She was being cautious. Manny yelled, "What the hell are you doing! They are getting away! Get going! Go!" Marge gunned the cruiser just as the headlights reached them. The car had to swerve and slam on the brakes. It was a near disaster. Marge yelled, "Why doesn't anyone pull to the side for emergency vehicles anymore?! Society has lost its way!" A moment later she was driving faster that Manny had been driving. She caught up to the burning truck and saw that there were arms now waving out of the passenger side window. Jojo was trying to get them to pull up. Marge didn't trust it. She was sure he was a terrorist even though she could see now that he was not brown colored. The snow started falling heavily. A tube of snowflakes were coming into the cruiser through the missile hole. Marge looked over at Manny who was leaning his head against the window. He'd become distraught. All the immediacy he had been projecting before seemed to have left his body. Marge didn't know how to interpret what she was seeing.

"What do we do?!"

"About what?!" Manny yelled, but his yelling sounded more angry than urgent.

"What do you mean?! About these guys!"

"What the hell do I care?! Nothing matters anymore!"

Marge, not sure what to do about anything, especially about Manny, no longer scared of the terrorists because Jojo was White, pulled up next to the burning truck and rolled her window down. The sound coming from the rolled down window was deafening, the sound coming through the hole the magnum cylinder of argon gas made was deafening, the siren blaring was deafening, the hearing damage from shooting her firearm inside the cruiser was still deafening. She could see that Jojo was yelling at her, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. There was blood running down his neck and he kept pointing to the front of the truck and to the right side of the road.

"What do you want to do?!" Jojo was trying to tell her to pull in front and slow the truck down by slowing down and then he could pull the truck over. She didn't understand at all. Snow was collecting everywhere inside the cruiser. Manny became irritated with snow and sat upright again. He yelled obscenities at Jojo and then yelled at Marge to just shoot the fucker. He crossed his arms and stared out the windshield, occasionally brushing snow off of his shoulder and leg. Marge yelled, "Do you want me to shoot the engine?!" She removed her service revolver and waved it at Jojo. He made an action that meant that she should not shoot her weapon at them. He pointed to the front of the truck, yelling, "Pull up! Pull up! Get in front! The truck will slow down if you just pull up!"

Marge didn't understand. She continued to wave the gun at Jojo and the burning truck. Jojo grew frustrated so he rolled the window up and tried to wake Scooter up. The heat coming through the exploded window was hot. His neck hurt and he was nervous to feel what was causing the warm feeling of water running down his back. Scooter refused to wake up. Jojo could see him breathing, so he assumed he wasn't dead. He tried to remember what Scooter had said about the specifically modern vehicle Scooter had bought. What the rules were about the auto pilot Scooter had been bragging about. He remembered that he needed to keep his hands on the steering wheel in order for it to work, but that was it. Jojo didn't know what would happen if he removed his hands from the steering wheel. If the truck would just come to a screeching halt, or if the truck would just coast or what, really. The snow was falling immensely now and the asphalt was starting to turn white. They were very near the exit they needed to take, which Jojo was not concerned about taking, but was concerned because it was under construction and the two lane road became a one lane road at that point. A very curvy one lane road that they would need to be going slower in order to navigate it. As it was, Jojo could see the speedometer and they were very much going to fast.

Jojo screamed at Scooter again. Hoping he would wake up. He did not wake up. Jojo rolled down the window again. The sound of the siren blaring was making communication impossible. The flashing lights were not helping either.

"Turn off the siren!" Marge rolled her window down.

"What?!" She waved her pistol at Jojo. "What do you want me to shoot?!" Jojo could hear her. Only enough to get a gist of what she was saying, but he could hear her.

"Don't shoot anything! Turn off the siren!"

"I can't hear you! Should I shoot your tires?!"

"No! No!" Jojo was waving his arms now. The truck skidded a little as the road became slippery. "I'm going to try something!"

The cruiser pulled back. Jojo thought it was because the police officer understood he was going to try something. Instead, he looked over his shoulder and saw an arm come out from hole in the window holding a pistol. Manny had broken free from his stupor and had grown impatient with the woman, Marge, negotiating with terrorists so he decided to take things into his own hands. He started shooting at the burning truck. Jojo rolled up the window thinking it would protect him. He saw in the side view window that the cruiser was fishtailing, that the cruiser was out of control. A moment later the cruiser began rolling off of the side of the interstate. Jojo was stunned. He was about to rip Scooter's hands from the steering wheel and see what happened. Their exit appeared through the falling snow. The street lamps were quite bright. Signs began to appear warning them of the construction, how the two lanes would become one lane in one mile. That they should slow down.

Scooter woke up before Jojo could knock his hands off the steering wheel. He blinked and rubbed his neck. He felt wetness and looked at his hand, there was blood on it. He frowned and glanced at Jojo.

"Why am I bleeding?" He looked in the rearview mirror. "Why is the truck on fire?" He tapped on the brakes. "Its really coming down now!" He looked through the snow and said, "Oh, our exit!"

Scooter turned slowly off of the interstate and stopped at the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. He looked both directions before turning right, Jojo understood that Scooter was concussed. That he was not clearly aware. Jojo told him that they should probably pull over. Scooter agreed and pulled over. He put the truck in park under the interstate overpass. They both got out of the truck and Jojo walked around to where Scooter was standing and urged him to walk away. In the distance they could hear emergency vehicles approaching. Scooter smiled as he watched the plywood burn, snow collecting on his shoulders and head, blood running down his neck, a blank expression on his face, his eyes black and unfocused. He held his hands out to warm them by the fire.