“Damn,” said Diller. “Life is weird but beautiful.”
They sat there a couple of minutes longer, watching nature’s light show.
“I hate to break the moment,” said Smithy. “But there appears to be a large monkey staring at us.”
Diller looked across. “Oh, hey, fella. Hungry?”
Shitshow bared his teeth in what could’ve been a smile or a threat. “Ook.”
Diller pulled a packet of the imitation-cheese spread that came with the MRE from his pocket and tossed it across to him. “There you go, big guy.”
“Ook.”
They watched as the orangutan ripped open the packet and squeezed it into his mouth.
“You made friends with Shitshow the monkey?”
“He’s an ape and you know it. Did you also know orangutans are the only great apes – except humans – that can talk about the past.”
“Is that so?” said Smithy. “I bet Shitshow here could tell some tales.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Alright,” said Smithy. “How did you even get the time to …”
“When I was out, y’know, getting us equipment and info. I saw him hanging out behind one of those shipping crates. Everyone around here is throwing beer cans or shooting at him. I gave him the cheese-spread stuff from my MRE. He loved it. Poor guy probably isn’t eating well.”
“No,” said Smithy, “I can’t imagine he is. Here …”
Smithy had saved the apple turnover from his MRE. He handed it to Diller.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m not much of a dessert guy.”
Diller held it up and the orangutan beat a hand against its chest excitedly.
Diller tossed it to him. “There you go, Bunny.”
Smithy laughed. “Wait a sec, you call him Bunny?”
“Yeah.”
“But he doesn’t look anything like …”
As they watched, the orangutan ripped open the second packet with his teeth. He shoved the contents into his mouth with one hand, while scratching his ass with the other.
“Oh, yeah. I see it now.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“OK,” said Muroe for about the fourteenth time in five minutes. “Is there anything else we need to worry about?”
“Well,” said Smithy, “I am missing having a phone. I’d really like to google if caffeine overdose is a real thing, because if it is, we might need to get you to a hospital.”
“Hilarious.”
“Relax, doc,” said Smithy. “You’ve done all you can for the patient.”
The car was unrecognisable from what they’d started with. Somewhere, under the armour they’d ripped off that idiotic Dragonzilla robot, was the skeleton of a Volkswagen Beetle the good people at Volkswagen would happily disown. The shell of the station wagon sat beside it, its bodywork having been stripped away. It had still fared better than the Chevrolet, which had been gutted for its engine and then used for scrap.
They’d used the armour on the Beetle to jury-rig something that resembled a metal military pillbox, complete with slots at the front and sides that offered a very limited field of vision. Mirrors were strategically positioned in the side-slots that offered Smithy some kind of view of what was going on behind him. The metal plates stretched down over the top half of the tyres and sat four inches above the ground. Ideally, Muroe would have liked to cover them a little more, but any lower and the thing would get stuck if it hit soft sand.
The top of the car was considerably less well armoured. The Beetle’s hood and trunk had been removed and welded together to form a fairly soft shell. It clipped into place thanks to some clasps Wilkins had begrudgingly given them from the packing cases in which he transported his beloved collection. Any serious blows to the top and it’d crumple fast. It wasn’t ideal, but there was only so much armour and so much weight that the chassis could take.
They’d also ripped out all the furniture and left Smithy with one pilot’s seat bang in the middle. It wasn’t as if he would be picking up hitch-hikers anytime soon.
Diller had christened their vehicle ‘the Bug’ and nobody had bothered to argue.
“OK,” said Muroe again. “Remember, go easy on the engine. I’ve over-extended it to all hell, so it will not last that long.”
“I know,” said Smithy, strapping on the helmet he still had from his brief stint in the competitive lawnmower-driving business.
“And, just, y’know …”
Smithy smiled at her as he clambered up over the side armour. “Ms Muroe, stop now, before you do any irreparable damage to your reputation for being a stone-cold bitch.”
She laughed. “Screw you.”
“Not right now, I’m busy.”
Smithy jumped down into the cockpit and buckled up. Diller climbed up and looked in.
“You in?”
“I’m in.”
Diller paused. “This is the bit in the film where one of us should say, ‘Hey’, before leaving an emotion-filled pause. And then the other looks up at him and goes, ‘Yeah, I know. Me too.’”
“Yeah. Let’s assume we did that.”
“Cool.”
Diller reached down, and they bumped fists.
“Break a leg.”
“See you on the other side.”
Smithy sat there as Diller pulled the makeshift roof into position and then reached up and flipped the levers to clamp it in place.
All alone inside the Bug, it struck Smithy how little light got in. In the gloom he double-checked the clamps and then made sure that the wooden box to his right was securely in place. It was very definitely something you did not want to have sliding about the car. They had precious few cards to play, but that was one of them.
He ran his hands around the steering wheel. One way or another, this was going to be the drive of his life.
He heard a fist pound against the garage’s roller-shutters, and a voice roared, “It’s time.”
Chapter Forty
As the roller-shutters opened, Diller, Muroe and Wilkins had to shield their eyes from the blinding midday sun. Junkyard Elvis was standing there with a quartet of his men.
“C’mon. Time to party.” Elvis looked over Diller’s shoulder and grinned. “Damn. Is that it? Ugly piece of crap, ain’t she?”
“If you’re going to start passing aesthetic judgements,” said Muroe, “just bear in mind the fact that everyone here has heard you sing.”
Elvis’s head snapped around sharply as one of his men sniggered. “Shut up, dummy.” He turned back to Muroe. “I want you to know, when we discussed the options for what to do with you, I was the one who suggested the raffle.”
“Did I tell you,” said Wilkins, as if speaking to nobody in particular, “I met Elvis Presley once?”
“Really?” asked Diller.
“Yes. He was the guest of honour at this big fancy function that was being held by the family I worked for. They had managed to get him there because of some link with his record company, or something like that. Money always finds a way. You could see them watching him as if he were an exhibit in a zoo. He clearly didn’t feel like he had much in common with the guests.