Red Thunder

2

IT’S NOT STRICTLY legal to drive on the beach in Florida.

Okay, it’s against the law. Would you believe they used to have car races right out on the sand, not very far north of where we were that night, until they built the big track at Daytona? It’s true, I’ve seen the video. Now they worry about every quart of oil that might make its way into the Atlantic. I’m not saying that’s a bad idea, but if anyone thought Blue Thunder would leave so much as a drop on the clean sands of Cocoa Beach they didn’t know Dak very well. You could cook and eat your dinner right off the engine block, assuming Dak would ever let you do such a messy thing to his baby.

Dak would be spending hours tomorrow hosing off the worst of the salty sand. He would remove wheels and brakes and shocks to clean them with a toothbrush. If you think I’m kidding, you don’t know Dak.

Kelly and I hung on tight as Dak steered through the packed sand and foam, and every time he hit a wavelet spreading across the beach we’d get a fine salt spray in our faces. Looking down through the open moon roof I could hear the throbbing drums of some new South African group Alicia had discovered. I could see the dash lights, including the fuzzbuster unit I’d helped him install. It was supposed to alert us if [14] there was a cop transmitting anywhere within two miles. We knew the cops had seen us out there, we’d heard them talking about us. They were even pretty sure of who we were, and so far hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it. They had to catch us first, and there wasn’t a police vehicle in the whole state of Florida that could keep up with Blue Thunder in the sand.

Kelly had one arm around my waist and one hand on the roll bar, and that felt great. I had my arm around her, too. The wind and the spray blew through her hair and she looked great in the moonlight. Dak was staying close to the water and far from the dunes, because the soft, rolling sands were where nighttime lovers liked to spread their blankets.

Life seemed just about perfect. And that’s when we ran over the guy.

He looked like a piece of driftwood when I first saw him. He was lying on his back looking up at the stars, or what few stars you could see with all the lights of Cocoa Beach behind us. I saw him turn his head and squint against the bright headlights.

Kelly saw him the same time I did, and she shouted something and started pounding on the roof. I looked down.

Alicia straightened up-

Dak glanced up at me-

Kelly hit the roof even harder-

Dak looked forward… mouthed an obscenity… slammed on the brakes.

Blue Thunder’s wheels locked and we began to skid sideways. Dak corrected. He had us straightened out again when we ran over the man’s legs.

We came to a stop. The truck’s engine died and for a moment there was only the sound of the surf. Then everyone started shouting at once.

I don’t remember what anyone said. It wasn’t anything terribly smart, I know that. We were scared.

Kelly and I jumped out of the pickup bed and hurried around to the side of the truck. Dak had his door open, but that seemed to be as far [15] as he could go. He had his arms over the steering wheel and his head buried in his arms. He was shaking.

Alicia hadn’t been able to get out over Dak, so she came around the front. Dak’s running-board lights dazzled our eyes so we couldn’t see in the darkness beneath them. Alicia shined her flashlight down at the sand, then made a little squeaking sound and backed up a few paces.

“We cut off his legs,” she whispered. Kelly turned around and made a gagging sound, then turned back. I knelt close to where Alicia was shining the flashlight beam.

I could see that the man’s legs ended a lot sooner than they should have. Blue Thunder had thrown up some big ridges of wet, heavy sand. I couldn’t see where his legs ended because the sand covered most of them below the knees.

But I saw his shoes easy enough. They were a good five feet away from his kneecaps and three feet away from the truck.

Dak stepped out of the cab, took one look at the disembodied feet, staggered into the surf and vomited.

I felt like doing the same… and then I realized what had happened. I went over to them and prodded one with my own shoe. It rolled over. There was no foot inside.

Alicia knelt and shined the light under the truck. Kelly knelt beside her and worked her hand down into loose sand.

She pulled up a bare foot, holding it by the little piggy that stayed home, or maybe the one who had roast beef. A leg came up with it, perfectly well attached to the foot. There weren’t even any tread marks on it.

First you feel a wave of relief. Then you get angry. I wanted to kick him. What sort of jerk lies in the surf line in the dark?

But I could almost hear my mother’s voice. Oh, yeah? What kind of jerk goes joyriding on the beach in the dark? Okay, Mom. You’re right, as usual.

“Let’s get him out of there,” I said, and grabbed a foot. Dak took the other and we slid him out, where he squinted up into Alicia’s light.

“This salt water ain’t doing your undercarriage any good, hon,” he said.

[16] “It’s my undercarriage,” Dak said.

“Whatever,” the guy said, and belched. Then he sort of passed out.

I say “sort of” because he never went to sleep. He passed into an alcoholic fog where he wasn’t really connecting with what was happening. He was docile as a baby, and in the morning he wouldn’t remember a thing. Right now he’d blow a perfect ten on the lush-o-meter.

There’s a good chance we saved his life. The tide could have easily taken him out to sea where he’d drown without ever waking up.

“What’s your name, dude?” Dak was asking him.

“This dude is down for the count, my friend,” I said. “We’d better get him out of here before the crabs eat him.”

“Drag him back in the dunes?” Alicia suggested.

“Worse than crabs back in the dunes,” Dak said. “Passed-out guy could get raped back there in the dunes.”

“He’d never know it,” Alicia said.

“Maybe a certain soreness in the morning…” Dak rubbed his ass, and we all laughed. Okay, so it wasn’t so funny. I felt a little silly with relief. You think about it, you realize how your whole life can change in two seconds. We could have been gathered around a dead or dying man.

Kelly might almost have been reading my thoughts.

“We nearly killed him, don’t you think we ought to try to take him home?”

“And have him blow chunks all over my upholstery? Let him fight off the fairies his own self.”

“Gin doesn’t come in chunks,” Alicia said. She showed us an empty bottle of Tanqueray she had stumbled over.

“Yeah? Say he ate one of those World Famous Astroburgers an hour ago.” Dak nodded toward the bar in the distance.

“Pretty good gin for a wino.”

“He’s not a wino. He hasn’t been sleeping in back alleys. Look at his clothes.”

It was true, the sneakers sold for well over a hundred dollars a pair, and they looked new. The shirt and pants were expensive labels, too.

[17] “And he don’t drink wine, either,” Dak said. “So what’s that make him? A gin-o? Whatever, it don’t make his vomit any sweeter.”

“So, we gonna take him home or not?”

“Where’s home?” Kelly asked.

We all looked down at him again. He was still smiling, humming something I didn’t recognize. A wavelet hit him and eddied around our feet, then sucked a little deeper hole under him as it ran back out. That must have been how his legs got buried. An hour from now he’d be under the sand, somebody else’s problem. But none of us wanted that.

So I reached down and grabbed the side of his pants and pulled him up a bit, then fished his wallet out of his hip pocket.

It was hand-tooled leather and fairly thick. The first thing I saw was the corner of a hundred-dollar bill sticking out. I opened it and pulled out a wad of cash. I thrust it out to Dak, who looked startled and took it. He counted it.

“Eight hundred big ones,” he said.

“So take out a taxi fee and let’s get him home.”

He handed the cash back to me. “What’s eating you, anyway?”

I didn’t really know. Part of it was that I sure could have used the money. Who would know? Certainly not this whacked-out jerk, lying there pissed out of his mind.

You’d know, Manuel, Mom said. She had this annoying habit of speaking just as loudly when she wasn’t there as when she was.

“We’ll just dump him in the back,” I said. “I’ll ride with him. He barfs, I’ll clean it up.” Dak waved it away, and I looked at the wallet again. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, all platinum, all made out to one Travis Broussard.

“Cajun,” Kelly said, peering over my shoulder.

“Huh?”

“The name,” she explained. “There’s some Cajun families from the Florida panhandle, I think.” I didn’t know what difference that made, unless he lived in the panhandle. That would be too far to drive him. I found the driver’s license, and as I pulled it from its pocket another card fell to the sand. Alicia picked it up. I pointed out the address on the license to Dak and Kelly.

[18] “Is that far from here?”

“Forty-five minutes, maybe half an hour this time of night. Out in the boonies, though. Don’t look at me that way. I’ll take the dude. Won’t even charge him for my gasoline.”

Alicia whistled under her breath. “Look at this,” she said. “The guy’s an astronaut.”

“Let me see that,” Dak said, and grabbed the card. Then Alicia played keep-away with her flashlight for a moment until Dak and I overpowered her.

“This expired three years ago,” Dak said. But before that it had been a gate pass to the Kennedy Space Center, and identified Broussard as a colonel and a chief pilot in the NASA VentureStar program.