Jonas and the Werefish
9

The remainder of the road to Fickle Creek was open and devoid of crash sites, except for one: a single-vehicle accident. One refrigerated eighteen-wheeler had simply veered off the road when the purple haze dropped by the Visitors killed the driver.

The bar ditch alongside the road was deep, and the semi settled in at an odd angle with the front end of the eighteen-wheeler tilted downward into the ditch and the tail end propped up on the road. That seemed to be why the rig stopped rolling: it couldn’t get traction on its wheels enough to keep it moving, and the cab got twisted off at an odd angle. It must’ve drifted for a long while, slowly decelerating and gradually veering until it rolled off the road.

The body of the driver was still in the cab and sort of well preserved, oddly enough: probably because the windows were up and the air conditioning was still working. He’d mounted an AM/FM radio below the dashboard to patch in playlists from his cell phone, and one old tune kept replaying itself over and over again: however, that happens; “In the Year 2525”.

He’d delivered most of his load prior to his destiny with death but had one pallet yet still packed with canned spinach, asparagus, hominy, and some tins of a product he’d never seen before or heard of: Sausages in Lard. The vegetables were not an expensive brand, and the cans didn’t open with pull tabs, but Jonas didn’t have a can opener with him or even a buck knife, so he grabbed as many cans of the veggies as he could and some of the sausages in lard to toss into the backseat of the tow truck. Unfortunately, wild dogs had wandered in from the nearby woods and surrounded the truck.

Mister Pig was freaking out inside his pet crate in the back seat. Even though the wild dogs couldn’t see him, they could smell him, and they were equally as hungry as Jonas, if not more, and wanted some of the pork they knew was somewhere to be had.

Jonas took out his pistol and put his finger on the trigger, and was about to fire at the wild dog closest to him when he heard an inverse sort of whirring sound from above: if there was such a thing actually, and he looked up, and sure enough, it was one of Flying Saucers.

He couldn’t tell if they’d spotted him or not, he figured they had, but he surely did not want to alert them if they had not. But nor did he want to be attacked by the wild dogs, so he fired and sent the dog closest to him spinning. Another of the dogs snarled and slowly crept forward as if it might avenge its pack member but Jonas fired again and dropped the feral cur in its tracks. The rest of the pack fled but in a heartbeat, Jonas found himself awash with illumination from above. Had he been a primitive man, like from the Neander Valley, or perhaps an even more recent fellow like Ezekiel who was flooded with divine light and snatched by his forelock up into heaven, Jonas might have considered the bright blinding lights a good thing. He did not, so he raised Second A and fired a few rounds.

Unfortunately, his grand gesture of defiance was just that, a grand gesture of defiance, and instead of bursting off into the heavens like a firefly farting rocket fuel or the spaceship in a science fiction movie, the alien craft descended slowly like a Portuguese man o’ war onto a blind clownfish separated from his other circus buddies. And Jonas figured for sure then that he was fucked, so he rapid-fired as many rounds of 9mm as were left in Second A and waited for the Visitors to blast him with a death beam or powder him again with another dose of the purple death mist. But to his surprise, the alien craft floated slowly upward like a child’s errant balloon and paused in midair just below some puffy clouds that were visible in the night sky- and then burst off into the heavens like... a firefly farting rocket fuel.

Unfortunately, the encounter with the wild dogs and then the taunting appearance and descent of the flying saucer separated Jonas from his meager plunderage. He wasn’t even certain how he’d become separated from the few cans of veggies he’d snatched and the sausages and lard but they were gone. And he would be forced to resume his trek to Fickle Creek on an even emptier stomach.

His leg had begun to hurt again from the rattlesnake bite and antivenin, and his new passenger was growing more and more disagreeable. He could feel warmth in his thigh and was concerned that the infection might resurrect and deify itself with a vengeance throughout his entire leg and then body. Mister Pig, meanwhile, grunted and grumbled from the backseat almost as loudly as Jonas’s stomach complained about his acute hunger. It was as if Jonas’s injured leg was giving him grief for all the driving he was doing and other activities like scavenging for food and shooting at aliens etc. And Mister Pig was kvetching because Jonas had left him unattended in the back seat of the tow truck at the mercy of the rapacious stares of the pack of wild, ravenous dogs that wanted to eat him.

Jonas considered putting Mister P up front with him after he’d driven several more miles. He thought that maybe it would shut him up, but he didn’t want to stop. So he persevered and kept his eyes on the road and occasionally glanced up at the night sky.

And not much time passed, even though the agony of driving with his damaged leg made it seem like time was limping by before Jonas rolled up on a turnoff to a truck stop. There was one of those road signs that anybody who has ever traveled on a highway has seen: FOOD and LODGING, NEXT EXIT. And Jonas wanted immediately to take that exit but then another road sign materialized in his headlamps, with an arrow that pointed to a different turnoff in a different direction and the words: “Fickle Creek”.

So he had a decision to make, in a hurry. Did he turn off and go to the truck stop and try to replace a can opener, or possibly one of those sandwiches in cellophane wrapping in a cooler that was still cool enough to preserve it, or did he “soldier on” to Fickle Creek and deliver Iris Vandertrout from her personal hell living alone in a mannequin factory?

Boy oh boy was he hungry!

But he also reasoned that Iris Vandertrout was probably sinking further and further into depression as she confronted the genuine possibility that she might live the remainder of her life in the presence of, and then die surrounded by mannequins. His mind wandered for a few seconds. He envisioned Iris giving the mannequins names like Fred and Dolores and Maximiliano and having long intimate conversations with them about how she really would have enjoyed living in the dildo factory instead... but of course only after she’d become angry with them for disagreeing with her point of view or something like that.

“If that’s the way you feel about it,” he envisioned Iris saying to Maximiliano with whom she’d developed a special relationship, “then I wish I’d chosen to live in the dildo factory!”

Jonas rationalized that he might become lost if he took the exit to the truck stop first and endanger the final results of the rescue mission if he did not stay the course true.

He lifted the microphone from the CB radio and put it to his lips.

“Iris,” he said. “Iris Vandertrout, it’s me, Jonas Struthers and I’m on my way. If you can hear my voice, Iris... talk to me... Talk to me, Iris.”

But unfortunately, there was nothing on the other end of the transmission except the quiet of a world that had been silenced by Aliens. However, fortunately, within seconds of his futile attempt to make radio contact with the only living female he knew of left on planet Earth, another road sign informed Jonas how far he was from Fickle Creek and where to turn.

He was closer than he realized and he could feel the excitement rising up inside him.

His longing for human companionship had weighed upon him heavier than he’d realized or allowed himself to even think about for more than a few seconds at a time during his exile from a living breathing human race. The onus of his solitude had been a far heavier burden than Sisyphus himself had born and the weight of it crashing upon him was enough to end him, he was certain of that, especially after the loss of Cara. But now he would not have to bear it any longer alone, he would have Iris Vandertrout... to help him and he could help her as well... mutual it would be... helping each other together.

Mister Pig grunted just then, so serendipitously it seemed for an instance that he had reason Jonas’s deepest most private thoughts and was saying “Hey, don’t forget about me!”