Chapter Twenty Five

Mr. B. told Thomas that he should really try to sleep, but Thomas was unable to even lie still for more than a minute at a stretch.  So, instead, he’d spent most of the night watching as Mr. B. turned a van full of stuff into a bomb powerful enough, apparently, to take out the Golden Gate Bridge.

Bomb-making, it turned out, was not terribly exciting to watch.  At least, not until the realization that if something went wrong they’d be blown into tiny little fragments before they knew what had happened.

Upon further reflection, when it came to dying, Thomas thought perhaps fast and messy might not be the worst way to go.

At some point exhaustion and boredom overtook him, and he fell asleep sitting up in a folding chair.  He had uneasy dreams about vaguely unpleasant things happening to him.

He woke up when Mr. B. poked him in the shoulder, not unkindly, and asked him if he wanted some coffee.  He declined, and wandered over to a window.  The sun had come up, and it looked like it was going to be a nice day.

At least, apart from the whole road trip in a van-bomb thing.

His neck and back were killing him.  He made a mental note to try and avoid sleeping in a folding chair ever again.

When turned away from the window, Mr. B. was waiting next to him with a cup of coffee and a bottle of aspirin.

“Here,” Mr. B. said. “I think you probably are going to want both of these.”

Thomas took the coffee and aspirin, and used one to wash down the other.

“Ordinarily, I’d ask where you were headed,” Mr. B said.  He’d apparently resumed fiddling with his toaster after he was done building the bomb, and was once again poking at the toaster’s innards with a screwdriver.  “But I suspect I don’t want to know about it.  At all.”

Mr. B. looked up at Thomas to make sure his last two words had sunk in.

“I hear you, loud and clear,” Thomas said.  “Hell, I wouldn’t want to know where I’m going.”

Mr. B. said nothing, and continued working on his toaster.  When Thomas had finished his coffee, he stretched a bit, then held out his hand to Mr. B.  

“I guess I might as well get on my way.  I figure I’ve got about a six hour drive today.  See you around,” Thomas said.

Mr. B. took his hand and shook it.  “I hope you don’t.  I’m hesitant to say good luck, but I hope things work out well for you.  Good bye, Thomas.”

“Good bye, Mr. B.”

The realization that he wasn’t just climbing into a van, but a bomb as well, terrified Thomas.  He worried about what might happen should he be rear-ended on his way to the Golden Gate Bridge.

His conscience was screaming at him to stop what he was doing.  The best thing to do would be to just blow it off and let Eris do what she was going to do.  But he couldn’t bring himself to stop the van and, for example, start hitchhiking east.  He couldn’t bear the idea of his family getting killed when he could do something, even a bad something, to stop it.

He stopped at a truck stop diner to have some breakfast before he’d been on the road for too long.  The waitress took one look at him, and said “I’ll get you some coffee right away,” just after she’d shown him to a table.  She had a ton of energy, and seemed like the kind of person who was enthusiastic about everything she encountered. He felt more tired than he’d ever felt in his life.  What he really wanted to do was leave the van in a field somewhere and find a place to curl up and sleep for a week or so.  

“This weather is the bomb, isn’t it?” she said to him when she brought his cup of coffee.

Thomas jumped a bit, and said, “Sorry, what?”

“This weather.  It’s perfect!” the waitress said.

“Oh.  Yeah.  I guess it’s pretty good,” Thomas said.  He ordered, and tried to calm down.  It was a wasted effort.

When his food arrived, he ate his breakfast with little enthusiasm.  He barely even tasted it.  As much as he wracked his brain, he couldn’t think of a way out of his situation.  He wished he had just thrown the binder Eris has left him away.  Or, hell, just left it where it was, to rot on the porch until the weather claimed it.

He paid his bill and left.  Soon he was headed north towards San Francisco once more.

***

Death stood along the side of a lonely northbound highway in California.  She had her stopwatch and her notepad ready.  All she had to do now was wait for the guest of honor to arrive.  She expected him practically any minute.

***

Thomas had been driving for a few hours, and if he’d been in the middle of nowhere before, he was in a place even more remote now.  He hadn’t seen another car on the road for probably twenty minutes.

He fiddled with the radio a bit, but couldn’t find anything he really wanted to listen to, so he just left it on the station that seemed the most likely to play some AC/DC.

When he looked up again, he saw someone standing on the side of the road, far ahead.  There was a low, black motorcycle parked nearby, and whoever it was up there was dressed all in black.  As he got closer and closer, he realized the biker was a woman.

When he was about fifty feet away, he saw she was simply standing there, looking directly at him.  Calm, direct and unmistakable.  She had a clipboard.  It was Death, come to collect him.

“Oh thank God,” Thomas said to himself as the van rushed past her.  A few seconds later, a loose wire in the detonator Mr. B. had built caused a spark, and the explosives ignited.  The van exploded in an orange and black fireball that would have singed any nearby trees.  Thankfully, he was in an open plain.  The bits of the van that survived the explosion rolled off the road, in a couple of different directions, before coming to a stop.

Thomas’s remains would not be identified because, frankly, there weren’t many.  Dental records aren’t especially useful when all the detectives could find was one flawless tooth.  His family and friends would not mourn him, because they thought he was already dead.  But that would be in the coming days.

Right now, Thomas’s soul stood next to Death on the side of the road.  He smiled at her in an embarrassed kind of way.

“Hi.  I’m Thomas Swinton,” he said.

“I know,” Death said.  She smiled at him, and asked him to take her hand.

He did.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?” Thomas asked.

“No.  I just got to blow you up.  We’re good.”

***

After dropping Thomas off at the gateway, Death decided it would be an excellent idea to visit Ares and see if he might know how to find Eris.

She arrived at Ares’s house to find him in the living room, keeping an eye on Eris, who he’d handcuffed to a chair.  Eris seemed rather thrilled until she noticed Death.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” Eris demanded.  Ares ignored her.

“Hey Death!” Ares said.  “Hep and Scroat will be back in just a minute.  They went to get beer.”

“Great!” Death said.  “So, uh, I see you’ve got Eris handcuffed to a chair.”

“Yeah!” Ares said, “Hep and Scroat caught her skulking around while they were guarding that lady and her kid.  Somehow they managed to catch her...” 

Ares paused and asked Eris, “How exactly did they catch you again?”

“Fuck you,” Eris said.

Ares continued talking to Death. “Yeah, they caught her somehow or other, and figured they’d bring her here so we could all keep an eye on her.  Man, was I shocked when Hep, Scroat and Eris showed up in my living room, apparently having a group hug.  Then Hep collapsed groaning about his head, and Scroat was left to wrestle Eris.  She was winning, too, until I stepped in to help him out.”

“Wow, sounds like things have been exciting around here,” Death said.

“Nah.  Not any more than usual,” Ares said.  “What have you been up to?”

“Well, I just caught Thomas Swinton driving a van full of explosives, so I blew him up,” Death said.

Eris slumped in her chair a bit.  

Ares, looked disappointed.  “You blew him up?  And you didn’t invite me?”

“Sorry.  It was a spur of the moment kind of thing.  Weird that he’d never done anything like that before, yet somehow he decided to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge for no real reason.”

“That is weird,” Ares said. “But, you know... People.”

“He told me he was coerced in to it.  He was actually relieved I caught him, if you can believe it.”

“Crazy,” Ares said.  He looked like he was losing interest in the story already.

Hep and Scroat came into the house then, carrying a couple cases of beer.

“Hi Death!” Hep said.  “You want a beer?”

“No, thanks.  I actually came to see if you guys could help me track down Eris, but, well, here she is.”

“Yeah!” Hep said. “It was nuts!  We were watching Sandy and Junior and Eris just kind of showed up looking ticked off.  I don’t think she even realized she was standing right next to us.  So we grabbed her, and then we thought Ares might know how to keep her subdued so we came here.”

“Awesome,” Death said.

“Yeah, I know,” Hep said.

“So...” Ares said.

“So?” Death said.

“Well, what do you want to do about Eris?  I mean, she made a hell of a mess of things for you.  If I was you, I’d probably want to kill her, her family,”

Death interrupted, “And anyone who looked at you funny along the way, yeah.  No, I don’t think I’ll kill her.  I figured out that this was all over you, Ares.  Eris seems to be a little jealous of me.”

Eris spat on the floor.

“Now, that’s just fucking rude,” Scroat said. “Don’t you have any class?”

Ares tried to pretend he had no idea what Death was talking about.

“So, I think I’m just going to make her invisible.  To you.” Death said.

“Wait, what? No! Wait!” Eris said, shortly before vanishing.

“Why can’t I see her?” Hep said.

“Consider it a favor to all of us,” Death said.  “She’s hidden from us, and she won’t be able to bother us again.  Well, not until she figures it out.”

Ares looked a little freaked out.  “So, uh, is she still here in my house, only invisible?”

“Nope,” Death said.  “I sent her to North Dakota.  She should have a good time there.”

“So what now?” Hep said.

“I don’t know,” Death said.

“Want to get a pizza?” Ares said.

Death looked at him, and said, “You keep talking like that and I might just fall for you.”

Ares smiled and said, “You know what? Let’s just be friends.” 

The End.




[Author's note: Woo hoo! 50,273 words in one month.  Catch you next November, all you Holy Rollers.]

Chapter Twenty Four

The inside of the shed was pretty well appointed, though function had definitely won out over aesthetics.  There was a bed with a grey wool blanket, a kitchen area, a closet Thomas assumed housed a toilet, and a workbench that obviously doubled as a dinner table.

The man who apparently lived here had given him a cup of coffee, and otherwise hadn’t said a word.  He was tinkering with something on his workbench.  Thomas didn’t recognize it, but it looked like it had a lot of levers and springs inside.  He hoped it was just a clock.

“So,” Thomas said after several minutes of silence, “how do you know Eris?”

“I don’t,” the man said.  “A colleague of mine told me you were coming, what you were bringing, and what you need.”

“OK,” Thomas said, and was quiet for a few more minutes.  When he couldn’t take it any longer, he said, “So have you got a name?”

“Not for you,” the guy said.  “But, I guess, you can call me Mr. B.”

“OK, Mr. B.” Thomas said.  “Why all the secrecy?”

Mr. B. stopped what he was doing and looked Thomas in the eyes.  Although he looked like he’d been living a rough life for a while, he did not look stupid.  Whatever he was wrapped up in, this guy was clearly the brains of the operation.

“Too many questions, Thomas,” Mr. B. said. “I don’t want to know a damn thing about you, and I don’t want you to know about me.  There aren’t many peaceable uses for a fertilizer bomb in the back of a cargo van, you know.  Assuming you survive whatever it is you’re going to do, I don’t want you to have any information about me, because I assume, if you survive, you aren’t going to evade capture for long.  The United States government takes large improvised explosions very seriously, you know.”

“OK,” Thomas said.  “So, why are you helping me out?”

“Because I have no choice.  I assume you’re in the same situation.”

Mr. B. went back to his tinkering.

“So, what are you working on there?” Thomas asked.

“My toaster,” Mr. B. said.  “Hasn’t worked right since I bought it.  So I’m fixing it.”

A toaster, Thomas thought. Of course. I should have known. What else would a mad bomb builder be working on in his shed?

“Can I give you a hand in any way?” Thomas asked.

“No,” Mr. B said.  He looked at Thomas again. “I’ve got it under control, and I suspect you think righty is loosey.”

“Huh?”

“Exactly.”

Thomas didn’t know what this guy was talking about, but he did know when he’d been insulted.  He hoped he wasn’t going to have to wait around too long.

“So, want me to bring in the stuff I got at Radio Shack?  You can get started on it, maybe?”

Mr. B kept working on his toaster.

“No.  We’re not going out to the van again for a good while.  You’re here, visiting, and I’m working on my toaster.  It’s best to assume, you see, that we’re being watched.  And bringing a windowless van to a run down shed in the middle of nowhere is kind of suspicious behavior.”

He saw Thomas take a breath to say something, and held up a finger to keep him from doing so.

“Meeting here wasn’t my idea.  Some other poor bastard presumably had no choice in loaning us his cabin.  If it was up to me, we would have taken over the utility room in a parking garage in the middle of a city.  No one would even look twice at your van there.  Stupid.  I tried to argue, but no one ever takes the advice of the person they’re in the middle of ordering around.”

“So, what, you think there’s cops out there watching us?”

“Cops, Feds, NSA... someone is probably watching us.  Heard any planes go by lately?  If not, that’s a good sign they’re right outside.”

Thomas wasn’t sure if he’d heard any planes, helicopters or an M1 Abrams for that matter.  He was fairly sure, however, that this guy was more than a little crazy.  Smart, obviously, but also crazy.  

He heard some rustling outside and nearly jumped out of his skin.

Mr. B. laughed out loud.

“Calm down Thomas.  That’s not them.” 

“How do you know?”

“Because when they’re coming to get you, you don’t hear them until they’ve got a foot planted on the back of your neck.”

“Oh.  That’s reassuring.”

***

Death had been having an unusually slow day.  It gave her plenty of time to think.  She’d called Hep to see how things had gone with protecting the Naughty Gnostic’s family from Eris.

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy,” Hep said.  “There was a fire, a couple of car crashes, even a tornado.  That one was pretty unexpected.  Some guy tried to mug us.  I’d say the worst part was having to ride the bus, though.  Man, I hate buses.  They’re just too claustrophobic.”

“Wow,” Death said. “Sounds like a wild ride.  How have things been since then?”

“Pretty quiet, actually.  All the chaos just abruptly stopped.  One minute we couldn’t drop our guard for a second, and the next minute everything was just normal, business as usual, you know?”

So either everything was back to normal, or what had been chaos had just become the new normal.

Since that seemed to be under control, she got off the phone and turned her mind to the issue of Eris.  Eris was helping Thomas.

But why?  She and Eris had never been best friends, but then, they never really got in each other’s hair before either.  What could she possibly be gaining from keeping some random asshole alive?  It just seemed so... petty.

Petty.

A little light flickered on in Death’s mind.  It seemed petty because it was petty.  She’d crossed Eris somehow.  But what could it have been?  She hadn’t even seen Eris until she bumped into Ares that one time...

Ares.

Eris was jealous.

Death suddenly wished she could just call Eris and explain that she had no interest in Ares, but had to admit that might be a little hard for her to buy.  Especially since he’d given her his motorcycle.

OK, so Thomas was a pawn to aggravate her, as revenge for Ares’s interest in her.  That kind of made sense, in a crazy kind of way.  But how had she managed to teach Thomas how to hide from her?  That kind of magic was way beyond the average random asshole, and almost never worked even for experts who had spent years studying it.  The usual result was a very visible, very dead, magician with a very surprised look on his face.

It had to be something simple.  Most people were simple.  Hell, simplicity is what kept people from seeing her most of the time. She’d heard about a study done at some university, where volunteers were asked to watch a video and count the number of times the people in the video passed several basketballs to one another.  In the middle of the action, a person in a gorilla suit strutted into the middle of the screen, waved at the camera, and strutted back off camera.

No one ever saw the person in a gorilla suit on the first viewing.  Some people didn’t see it until it was specifically pointed out, even after telling them to look for the person in gorilla suit.  The effect was called perceptual blindness.

It wasn’t because they were stupid.  It was because they just really, really weren’t expecting to see a person in a gorilla suit.  Simple things escape complicated minds.

People didn’t expect to see Death going about her business so, for the most part, they didn’t.  And on those supremely rare occasions when someone did see her, they could point and scream all they wanted, and still no one else would see her.  And it was simply because they weren’t expecting so see Death, incarnate, there to collect the newly dead.

Another little light turned on in Death’s mind.  Sleight of hand was a lot simpler than magic.  Making a quarter travel through space from one hand to another by magic was very, very difficult.  Throwing it too fast to see was a piece of cake.

A third light turned on, and started flashing brightly in Death’s mind.

Thomas had used some kind of stage magic to vanish the first time, and since then had been staying precisely where she wouldn’t expect to find him.

With that, she knew exactly where Thomas was.  All she had to do now was arrange a few things, and she’d have his Death all wrapped up by lunchtime tomorrow.  She could practically see him, sitting in a shed in the middle of nowhere, building a...

Wait.

What on Earth was he doing building a bomb?  Although she couldn’t see it, she knew about the van.  She new about the fertilizer and the other bomb makings.  She knew about the ex-Army demolitions expert helping him turn a van and a bunch of fertilizer and fuel into a bomb.

And she knew he was going to have to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Oh, shit,” Death said.  It looked like Eris needed a little extra Chaos-rush on top of all the petty revenge.  She was going to have to get involved before Thomas was able to finish his mission.  A freshly fed Eris would be a heck of a lot harder to put back in her place that she would be right now, subsisting on the day to day chaos of modern life.

She had to stop this right now.

Chapter Twenty Three

Thomas hadn’t been feeling so great before Eris told him he had to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.  Now, however, his mood was abysmal.  If he had stopped to think about it, he would have been forced to admit that he probably couldn’t feel much worse.

At least, not until after he’d blown up the bridge.  So it was still possible to feel worse.  But not much worse.

In the back of his mind, a train of thought about the greater good was running around and around.  If she was going to kill his family, he couldn’t do much about it, and that would be better for the world than for him to kill a whole bunch of people he didn’t even know, just because some goddess was feeling petty and vengeful.  He was certain he’d read some story, at some point, about a drawbridge operator, his trapped son, and a train, and that the story somehow applied to his situation.

On the other hand, they were his family, and he couldn’t stand by and let something bad happen to them.

As such, he’d taken the binder Eris had given him, read through it, and set about gathering the bomb making materials she’d arranged for him to pick up.  She’d provided a map, and even step by step directions for how to gather everything.  And the first item on the list, a cargo van, was only a mile away.

Thomas half-remembered a lyric he’d heard about the road to Hell being paved with least resistance.

He’d driven to the address provided, and parked.  The van was waiting for him, with the keys in a little magnetic box hidden under the right rear rocker panel.  The van was white, windowless and otherwise nondescript. It looked like every other white cargo van on the road.

Thomas unlocked it and climbed in to the driver’s seat.  The back of the van was empty, and immaculately clean.  He put the key in the ignition, and the engine leapt to life, as though it had been waiting for him to show up.

He checked his binder to see where he was supposed to go next.  Apparently it was a nursery just about ten miles north of where he was.  There was a pallet of fertilizer waiting for him there.

He wondered where he’d gone wrong in life to end up in the situation he was in: driving a van to pick up supplies to make a fertilizer bomb.  It was like a bad movie plot.

The van shifted into gear with an affirmative clunk, and Thomas pulled out of the parking spot.  A few minutes later, he was accelerating easily on to the freeway and heading north.

The nursery appeared to be closed.  Long closed, actually.  The only building still standing looked like it wouldn’t be for long, and there weren’t many plants to be seen.  There were a few pots here and there, but the plants in them looked to be weeds, not flowers.

All the same, Thomas drove around to the back side of the building, and there he found the pallet of fertilizer, as promised.  There wasn’t anyone around, so he guessed he was going to have to load the van himself.  He backed the van up to the pallet, and jumped out.  On top of the bags of fertilizer was a pair of brand new leather work gloves.

Well, that’s a relief, he thought. At least I won’t have to tear my hands up.

Thomas opened the back doors of the van, and started heaving bags of fertilizer in.  None of it seemed quiet real.  He couldn’t quite make himself believe that he was going to make a bomb out of the fertilizer he was tossing around.

About half of the pallet was loaded in to the van when Thomas heard the crunching of tires rolling on gravel.  He looked up to see a police car approaching.

Oh shit, Thomas thought. I’m not going to blow up a bridge, I’m going to go to jail for a very long time.I

He thought about that possibility for a couple seconds, and then thought, What a relief.

The police officer parked his car, and sat inside for a moment.  Thomas realized he was probably running the license place of the van, and hoped it wasn’t stolen.  Then he remembered he was going to jail anyway, and figured stealing a van probably had less of a sentence than trying to build a bomb to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

Since he was going to get arrested any second anyway, he tossed the bag of fertilizer he was carrying in to the back of the van (that’s another two years, I bet, he thought.), and took off the work gloves he was wearing.

The door of the police car swung open, and the officer stepped out and looked at Thomas.   He shut the door of his car, and walked over.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the officer said.  His name tag said “Billen”.

“Good afternoon, officer,” Thomas said.  He wondered if a swarm of officers were going to charge out of the nearby woods to subdue and arrest him.

“What are you doing here today?” Officer Billen said in a conversational tone, looking at the bags of fertilizer.

Thomas considered telling him outright he was getting ready to build a bomb, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.  His self-preservation instincts wouldn’t let him mouth off and admit to what he was doing all at the same time.

“Just loading up some fertilizer, sir,” Thomas said.

The officer seemed like he would really rather be somewhere else instead of standing there talking to Thomas.

“I wouldn’t expect to find any fertilizer here,” Officer Billen said, still trying to do his job, despite his inexplicable discomfort with talking to Thomas. “This place has been closed for years.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is.  This is just where my boss told me to come and pick up a bunch of fertilizer.  I wasn’t expecting to find any when I pulled up and saw how run down it was here.”

“So your boss sent you to pick this up?  Are you a farmer?”

“Nope, but my boss is,” Thomas said.  Any second, a swarming S.W.A.T. team was going to appear out of nowhere and arrest him, Thomas suspected.  He wished they’d hurry up and just do it already.

“Well, I guess that works for me.  We got a call about a suspicious person out here, but you don’t seem too suspicious to me.  You have a good day,” Officer Billen said.

“Thanks, you too, sir,” Thomas said.  He watched in amazement as the cop walked away, got back in to his car, and drove off.  For a minute, he suspected it was a trap, but when the S.W.A.T. team failed to emerge and arrest him, he realized that nothing was going to happen.  Damn it.

He’d gotten away with a lot of stuff since he was supposed to die, but he’d never had a cop notice him doing something as blatantly suspicious as what he was doing right then, and wouldn’t have expected a cop to walk away so easily.

Frankly, it made him feel a bit rejected.

He put the gloves back on, and continued loading fertilizer into the truck until the pallet was empty.  Then, since he wasn’t sure if he should leave it there or what, he threw the pallet into the back of the van as well.  If he didn’t need it, maybe he could use the wood to have a bonfire.

Thomas closed the back doors of the van, looked around to see if anyone had been watching him, maybe a S.W.A.T. team waiting for just the right moment, and finally got in to the van and started it.  He took a look at the binder, and saw that up next he needed to go to a chemical company of some sort and purchase a few hundred gallons of methanol.

The instructions didn’t specify how he was supposed to carry that much of a volatile liquid, but he assumed it would become clear by the time he needed to know.

He pulled out of the nursery’s driveway on to the main drag, and started driving towards the chemical company, some twenty miles further north.

It was five minutes before the customer service desk closed for the day when Thomas arrived at Arriba Chemical Company.  The woman behind the desk, her name tag said “Susan,” seemed less than thrilled to see him.

“Can I help you?” Susan asked in her least helpful voice.

“I’m here to pick up some Methanol,” Thomas said.

“I hope you’ve got an order waiting, because it’s a little late for us to be pumping methanol for a walk up.”

Thomas looked at his notes, and saw that there was indeed an order for ethanol, for one Eris Limited Liability Corporation.  He gave her the order number, which she typed in to her computer.

“Have you got a truck that can carry a three hundred gallon tank?” Susan asked.

“Well, I’ve got my van out there,” Thomas said. “Will that do?”

“I hope you’ve got strong springs,” Susan said.  “I’ll have one of the guys roll it out on a forklift for you.”

Thomas went back to his van and hopped into the back to make room for what sounded like an enormous tank.  He hoped there would be room in there.  Then he remembered that he should probably hope there wasn’t room for the tank in the van.  That would delay things quite a bit.

He heard a forklift roll up next to the van, so he poked his head out.  The forklift was carrying a tank that looked smaller than what he was expecting.

“I’m just making room for that tank in here,” he said to the forklift driver.

“Do you need a hand?” the forklift driver said.  He was eager to be done for the day, and he was going to be done for the day once this guy was loaded up and out of his hair.  The sooner that happened, the sooner he’d have a delicious beer.

“Nah, I’m good,” Thomas said, but the forklift driver had already shut down his forklift and climbed down.  He poked his head into Thomas’s van to see what was in there already.

“Whoa, that’s a lot of fertilizer you’ve got there.  Are you making a bomb or something?” the forklift driver said in a good-natured way.

Thomas went pale, and scrambled to think of something to say.  The forklift driver saw this.

“Whoa, easy fella,” he said.  “I’m just messing with you.  I know how much you farmers love your sprint car racing.”

Thomas smiled, weakly, and laughed.  “Yeah, for the sprint car.  Best to get all the heavy lifting out of the way on one trip, you know?”

The forklift driver picked up a back of fertilizer and stacked it on top of the others.  

“You know,” he said, grabbing another bag, “I used to do a bit of sprint car racing myself.  I got out of it because I couldn’t afford a new engine when the old one died.  Blew a piston right through the goddamned cylinder head, up and out through the wing.  Can you believe that?”

“Whoa,” Thomas said.  Sprint cars sounded like risky business.

“Yeah, total drag.  I’ve still got the chassis in my pole barn. If you know anyone that might be interested in buying it, have them give me a call.”

“Sure thing,” Thomas said.

“So what kind of carburetor are you running?”

“The one that came on the engine?” Thomas said, hoping he was roughly correct.

“Not having a winning season then, huh?  Well, a bit of practice is always good.  One thing I always wanted to try was one of them coffee can carburetors.  I was never able to get one to work, though.  Thought maybe you’d had better luck.”

“I’ve never even heard of such a thing,” Thomas said.

“Well, maybe that’s why it didn’t work,” the forklift driver said, and winked at him.  

The bags of fertilizer were all stacked to the roof of the van now.  The forklift driver hopped out the back of the van.

“Let’s get this tank loaded in there, and then I’m going to get me a frosty cold one,” he said.  

He climbed up in to the forklift again and started it.  Five minutes later, the tank was secured in the back of Thomas’s van, which apparently had strong enough springs to support the tank and all the fertilizer after all, and Thomas was ready to continue on his way.

“Hey, you have fun blowing some shit up!” the forklift driver called, and then waved as he drove his forklift back in to the warehouse.

Thomas’s heart leapt up in to his throat before he realized the guy was just messing with him.  He waved back, and started the van.

According to the information in his binder, the next stop was a Radio Shack, fifteen miles away.

Thomas tried to remember the last time he’d even been in a Radio Shack.  He was pretty sure it had been back when they still sold their own brand of computers.  Then he remembered he’d stopped in one a couple years ago, very briefly, to see if they had anything in the way of a remote controlled truck that would appeal to a ten year old cousin of his.  He never found out about the truck, because the doofus working had been so insistent on trying to sell him a cell phone and a credit card that he never even made it more than ten feet in to the store.  The guy hadn’t even noticed that Thomas had asked about a remote controlled toy, much less offered any information about one.

Damn it, I’m really not in the mood to deal with a desperate phone salesman, Thomas thought.

The directions Eris had provided led him to a brand new strip mall that already looked kind of run down.  There was a soft-serve ice cream place of some sort, a nail and waxing salon, a check cashing store, and the Radio Shack.

He parked the van, and went inside the Radio Shack.  It looked just the way he remembered Radio Shack - poorly stocked shelves and employees that looked like they didn’t know what any of this stuff did, and they were bothered he’d interrupted their attempt to set a new world record for vacant staring.

“Hi, can I help you find something?” one of the employees asked, barely opening his mouth enough to speak.

“I need, uh,” Thomas looked at his shopping list, and barely understood what anything meant. “Uh.  I need some of these components,” he said, and held out the list to the employee. 

The employee glanced down at the list, took a deep breath, and led Thomas over to a set of drawers in the far corner of the store.  “All our components are in here.  Holler if you need anything.”

Thomas really didn’t have any idea what he was looking at, but tried to match up the list with the product details on the packaging.  He, slowly, gathered almost all of the pieces he needed.

“Hey,” Thomas said, “Do you know what a solderless breadboard is?”

The employee who’d helped him earlier sighed, Thomas could hear him from across the store, and made his way over to where Thomas was standing.

“Pick one of these three,” he said, and pointed at a few boxes with pictures of what looked like high tech, white plastic cribbage boards.

Thomas wasn’t sure what the difference was, so he got the biggest one.  That wrapped up his list, so far as he could tell.  He checked everything over, then again in order to be sure he wouldn’t have to come back, and brought all of his stuff up to the register.

When he set everything down on the counter, the employee looked at him as though he’d dropped his pants and crapped on his front lawn.  He looked over the components Thomas had picked out, then at Thomas.

“So,” he said, “You building a bomb?”

Thomas nearly did drop his pants and shit.

“Huh? No!” Thomas said, before he noticed the other employee was snickering.

“Making a bomb. Good one,” Employee #2 said.

“Easy, Killer, I’m just messing with you a bit.  What does this stuff do, anyway?” Employee #1 said.

“Funny,” Thomas said, and faked a smile.  “Just a personal project.”

“OK, don’t tell me,” Employee #1 said, as he scanned each item in to the register.  When he was done, he said, “That’ll be eighty dollars.”

“That can’t be right,” Thomas said, looking at the pile of components.  Apart from the cribbage board thing, nothing looked like it should have cost more than a dollar.

The employee sighed loudly and turned the register’s monitor so Thomas could see it.  

“Look for yourself.  Everything is there.  It’s all correct,” he said.

Thomas looked, and wondered what the deal was with these resistor things that they were worth twenty dollars for one hundred of them.  Must be some kind of low grade unobtanium, he thought.

“Fine,” Thomas said, and got out his wallet.  He paid for the parts, and was relieved when the employee didn’t ask him if he would be interested in a fantastic deal on a cell phone or credit card.

He left the store, and heard one of the employees mumble, “have a nice day,” just as the door was closing.

Thomas got in to the van, tossed the Radio Shack bag on to the passenger seat, and looked to see where the last stop for the day was.  It looked like it was a residential address, somewhere out in the sticks, about thirty miles away.

Thomas checked his fuel level, and decided it might be an excellent idea to top up the van, and maybe grab a snack and some coffee for the ride.  There was a gas station just a couple blocks away, so he stopped there.

The woman working inside had the friendliest face he’d seen all day.  

“Are you doing OK?” she asked him as he paid for his beef jerky, twinkies and coffee.

“Huh?” Thomas said.  “Oh, yeah, doing great.”

“You’re not looking to hot,” she said.  Thomas looked at her and saw nothing but sympathy in her eyes.  “You be sure to stop and get some rest tonight.  It’s not safe to drive when you’re sleepy.”

“OK, I will,” Thomas said.  “Thanks.”

He definitely felt ready to sleep, for a long, long time.  He’d like to just go to bed right then, and maybe wake up sometime around two o’clock in the afternoon the following Monday.  It had been kind of a crazy day.

He got in to the van, and set off for the last stop for the day.

Thirty miles later, he arrived at what looked like a home-built shed with a satellite dish and a 55 gallon drum of fuel oil plumbed in to the side.  A man in worn, but sharply pressed and starched, clothes came out of the shed and watched him as he parked the van.

Thomas hopped out of the van.  Before he could introduce himself, the apparent shed-dweller said, “Are you Thomas?”

“Yes, who are you?”

“And this is the van?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.” 

“OK, come inside.  I’ve got some coffee going, if you’re interested.”

Chapter Twenty Two

Thomas was siting at a picnic table in a park, eating a sandwich and reading a book, trying to enjoy the day.  Enjoying the day had become a bit more difficult since Eris had shown up and declared him to be in debt to her.  He’d been reduced to just waiting for her to show up and explain how he was going to have to repay her for the favor of showing him how to hide from Death.

Avoiding dying wasn’t so great when the people he talked to all seemed as though they couldn’t get away from him fast enough.  He was afraid for his family and friends, if Eris decided to mess with them, but he hadn’t actually talked to any of them in weeks.  Months, really.

“Hey buddy, why the long face?” Eris said from the other side of the picnic table.  Thomas jumped, and looked up quickly.

“I was just wondering when you were going to show up again,” Thomas said.

“And here I am.  How convenient!” Eris said.

“Very convenient, yes,” Thomas said.  He set down his book and the half of sandwich he was holding.  “So.  What do you want me to do?”

Eris looked offended, “What, do you think I’m just visiting in order to ask for favors?”

Thomas looked at her, for a moment, then down at the table. “So are you here just to torment me for a while?”

“You have a very dim view of me,” Eris said. “I thought we were going to be pals.  I guess I’ll have to turn the charm up a bit.  Now that you mention it, though, I have come up with a way for you to repay that favor I did for you.”

Thomas took a deep breath.  He suspected whatever it was, the favor was not going to be something he wanted to do, or would feel good about doing.

“OK.  What is it?” Thomas said.

“I want you to build a bomb and blow up the Golden Gate bridge,” Eris said, as though she were asking him to go pick up some ice cream from the corner store.

Thomas gasped, then choked a bit.  When he’d regained his composure, he said, “You’re joking!”

“Nope.  I’m completely serious.  And you know what the consequences will be if you don’t do it.”

“Why on Earth do you want me to do that?  What good is it going to do?”

“Good?” Eris said, and laughed.  “It’s not going to do any good.  It’s going to cause complete chaos.  It’ll disrupt thousands of people’s lives, which will cause even more chaos to spread out as those people react to it, and so on.  The sheer idea of it is kind of turning me on already.”

Thomas shuddered a bit at the idea.

“That’s it?  You’re not advancing a cause, you’re just fucking things up for everyone?”

“Yep.  Goddess of Chaos, remember?  And you owe me a favor, so you might want to get to work on this.”

“I don’t want to do that.  It’ll kill hundreds of people!  It’ll keep killing people afterwards too, since ambulances won’t be able to get to them.”

“Yeah!  That’s a bonus!” Eris said.

“I can’t do that!  It’s just wrong,” Thomas said.

“You cheating Death and disrupting the natural order of things is also just wrong, but that didn’t stop you.  And you don’t have a choice.  Do it, or I kill your family.”

“Isn’t there something else I can do?  Maybe clean your apartment?  That’s gotta be a chore, huh?”

Eris glared at him, “What are you implying?”

“Um. Nothing.  Just saying cleaning is a lot of work.”

“My home is perfectly clean, and that’s hardly repaying the favor I did you.  You get to live forever now.  I think that’s worth more than a hasty tidying of my house.”

“It’s hardly living.  Everyone I meet is repulsed by me.  This is a half life.”

“Are you sure people are repulsed by you now more than they were before?  I mean, you’re hardly the most appealing person I’ve met.”

“Look, I can’t blow up the Golden Gate bridge!”

“Sure you can.  You just build a bomb, put it where I tell you, and BOOM, no more bridge.  It’s totally do-able.”

Thomas ran a hand over his face, and scratched at his cheek.  “I mean, I can’t blow up the bridge and live with myself.”

“Well, that’s fine.  But if you doing, your family isn’t going to be able to live with you either.  They won’t be able to live at all, really.”

“Look, even if I wanted to do this, which I don’t, I couldn’t do it because I don’t know how to build a bomb.”

Eris produced another three ring binder and set it in front of him.  

“Now you do,” She said.  “I’ve even arranged things so all you have to do is pick up the raw materials you need.  All the details are there in the binder.”

“I’m not touching that,” Thomas said.  “I’ll end up owing you another favor.”

“OK,” Eris said.  “You don’t have to use the information I’ve provided for you, you can find your own way to make a bomb, source the materials, and blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.  But the end result is that you are going to blow up that bridge either way.

“Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

Eris paused and thought for a minute.  

“You could blow up the London bridge instead.”

“What? How is that any better?” Thomas said.

“You didn’t say anything about not blowing up the London bridge.  Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.”

“OK.  Is there anything I can do that doesn’t involve blowing something up and killing a lot of people.”

“What fun would that be?” Eris asked.

“It would be better than the alternative,” Thomas said.

“I see,” Eris said. She thought for a minute, staring at Thomas the entire time.

“You know what?  I can’t think of a darn thing that isn’t blowing up a bridge.  Now if I was you, I’d take those instructions there and make things easy on myself.  Because that bridge needs to blow up in two days, and that’s not much time to get bomb-making materials together in the kind of quantities I”m talking about.  And this binder,” Eris tapped the new binder on the picnic table,” well, this binder will be a much easier favor to repay than the other one was.”

“Oh yeah?” Thomas asked.  “How much easier?”

“Oh, way easier.  You might just have to blow up a car somewhere.  Car bombs create a lot of chaos too.”

“I don’t want to blow anything up!  Why does every favor you do for me require me to blow something up?”

“Because I like it when things blow up,” Eris said.  “And it’s better that a bridge and a car blow up than, say, the house you grew up during Sunday dinner. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“You really suck,” Thomas said.

“I think you’ll learn to love me in time,” Eris said. “Well, I’ve got to run.  Why don’t you just hang on to this binder.  Take a look through it.  Then when you’ve decided you’d rather blow up the bridge than watch your family suffer and die in a freak ham dinner explosion, you’ll be ahead of the curve in figuring out how to demolish that bridge.”

Eris vanished, leaving Thomas with his book, sandwich, and a new binder he really didn’t want.

“Well, shit,” Thomas said, as he picked up the binder Eris had left.