Fallout Dreams

mia 01

thirty-four days left.

trevor shifted his weight rhythmically from side to side, braiding the motorcycle between white dashes in the center of highway 49, peeking in car windows for the ideal accomplice.

the helmet and sunglasses were for appearances only. the douchey leather jacket was two-sizes too small with arms so short he could read the grocery list penned on his wrist: "protein bars, charcoal, sugar, knife, hard drive."

he settled in the right lane and let a blue chevrolet pass on his left. male driver, female passenger, mid-forties, bitchy middle-class scowls...

they were perfect.

he matched the chevy's speed, used his teeth to pull off his glove, and removed the phone from the jacket. he opened the contact list and clicked "dad."

the woman's eyes doubled in size as she watched trevor balance the handlebars with his wrists while simultaneously thumbing a one-handed text.

he had already studied previous messages sent to "dad" to nail down the millennial writing style, colloquial word choice, lack of curse words (that saturated texts to friends), and nicknames. the kid used proper punctuation, no emoticons, no abbreviations, and an occasional "hahaha."

"hey, old man," he typed while soaring south at eighty miles per hour. "school's been bringing me down and i need to get away. tell everybody i'm sorry and i'll see them soon."

the man driving the chevy gawked over his wife's shoulder as trevor sent the message.

trev glared at them through tinted glasses, then leaned left, HARD, and barreled the bike toward the chevy—almost INTO to the chevy—before clutching the handles and jerking it back.

the stunt worked. the man swerved halfway off the road as his wife snatched her cell and began dialing.

"report me, shithead!" trevor shouted, but knew they couldn't hear.

he grinned, squeezed the accelerator, and veered in front of the car just long enough to flaunt the plate. then he leaned right, careened to the off ramp, and watched the couple speed away.

at the first stop light, he tore off the jacket and glasses and shoved them in the motorcycle's saddle bag... but he pocketed the phone. he turned the bike north, accelerated toward his next destination, and gladly accepted the cold on his bare arms.

trevor's storage unit was a simple grey garage in the midst of a thousand grey garages like a tightly-packed, grey-garage suburbia. the dilapidated nature of the storage yard was part of its appeal; no security cameras, only one employee at a time, and a hundred grey-garage hillbilly neighbors far shadier than trev. he wouldn't be surprised if half the units held meth labs.

trev's garage was special. he unlocked it, knelt to the ground, worked his fingers between the cement and the rubber seal, raised the door, then rested it on his knee. he reached inside, stretched, felt around for THE SWITCH he installed a year ago, disarmed it, and threw open the door.

sunlight illuminated the can of gasoline sitting in the dead center of the unit. two wires connected the switch he just disarmed to a car battery, which was connected to a spark plug taped to the can's open spout.

trevor had never been a collector of THINGS, but his home was small and his plans were big. in the storage unit: a rusty toolbox, a dozen bulging garbage bags, three full jewelry boxes, THE filing cabinet, a pallet stacked tall with unopened boxes of m&ms, a massive, circular game console called "cyclone" from an out-of-business arcade, and pristine bolt cutters. (how easy it would be to cut his way into the un-guarded storage units...)