Tamberlin's Account Read Online Free Page A

gone—even though our vehicles were there.
    We were saying our goodbye’s and I threw out a few, I felt necessary, jabs at my friends—only the friendly jack-assed kind—when the lady came out on the office steps.
    I thought she looked horrible. Half dead. I’m guessing Marie thought we’d never see her.
    “Good luck,” she said sincerely and gravely, I felt. She said it like she meant it because she knew the consequences of no luck.
    I caught a glimpse of her husband, Chuck, when she went inside. He had a kitchen towel over one of his huge, thick hands. There was blood on the towel—a crescent moon was cut into the fatty ball of flesh under his thumb knuckle—like he had cut himself on a glass.
    But we both know it wasn’t glass, right?  
    I think I knew it then, but it was too weird to recognize. Or acknowledge.
    I felt like crying and puking as I chucked my stuff in the trunk. My purse went on the front passenger seat.
    I was waving to my friends and we were calling out goodbyes and smiling. I didn’t have to force any of this.
    Then I watched their taillights come on and I followed them out. I was behind Lindsay to the first highway entrance. Then it was me and the road and a shitload of dark. That’s when I remembered I’d left my Dr. Pepper on the coffee table. I had the strangest impulse to go back for it. I ignored that.
    It didn’t surprise me to see vehicles during bar hours. I didn’t know what to think of how many I saw because I wasn’t local. It was June—vacationers everywhere.
    But it stayed busy and actually got worse when I skimmed the city limits of a large town—there were a lot of police cars. A few military vehicles. A few civilian vehicles on the side of the road. There were probably a lot of indications of what was really wrong and how bad it was that I just couldn’t see and I wouldn’t see until I was forced to deal with a situation head on. Then I saw . But that was later.
    At that time I was more concerned with dealing with the hours on the road. I never count on finding channels with enough music I like to bother listening to the radio. So, like on the way there, I was listening to my iPod and didn’t think about checking news—maybe I wasn’t concerned about hearing it, I can’t remember.
    The first song that played, Embryo by Dir en Grey, seeped almost more from the dark than from my speakers when it started. When I love a song, it’s almost parasitic – I let the music take me, sink its teeth in. I let the song devour me. Sometimes it feels good to just put in the earbuds and spread out on a bed or the carpet and be eclipsed in a perfect song.
    In this case, the songs were eating the miles and I was gladly losing time.
    Later, my cell phone rang once, but the bars were low and the sounds I got didn’t add up to words. It was Marie.
    I was at about ½ a tank and was compelled to top off. That probably had less to do with some intuitive fear of whatever bad thing I was sensing, than just knowing I was crossing South Dakota and I sure as hell didn’t want to run out of gas between towns… in the middle of the night. The service station was busy and I had to wait behind four other vehicles for my turn.
    Out in the orange lights of the Cenex, everyone was talking excitedly—no, hysterically . I wanted a cold drink, so after I filled up I went inside. The shelves were nearly picked clean. There were no drinks to buy, but people weren't ravaging the "to-go" food as badly—so I settled for a 32 oz vanilla soft serve with a straw and paid for my gas. I didn't take all I could of the goods there. I didn't even buy chips.
    The clerk looked exhausted or scared. When I checked out we shared a look of confusion.
    "Anything else?" she said.
    Behind me someone said something about "...nurses treating people on the sidewalks."
    At the next register someone was buying a spare gas can. Its redness seemed brilliant. Beckoning. My ears were ringing. I felt like they were going