Black Helicopters by Blythe Woolston

kachunk-kachunk-kachunk on the seams in the road. We are moving closer to wherever we need to be. The gears are all turning. The pieces are all moving. I say, “You are a part of it now. You should know that. Even if you are afraid, you are a part of it. Someday, when people understand, they will remember you. They won’t remember that you were afraid; the only ones who know that are you and me, and we will both be dead. They will remember that you were brave. You were brave, and you were a part of it. They will know that you helped me when I needed help. You will be a hero, Eric the Boneless. How about that?”

“We should kill him,” says Bo, “for what he did.”
    “No,” I say, “I’ve thought about it, and there is no good plan for killing him. Not right now, anyway. Later maybe, but not now. Not when we get back. He’s got to expect we might try, so he’ll be ready.”
    I can see the thoughts crawling behind Bo’s eyes, crawling and squirming and hatching like mites and maggots. I can see them, and I know them because my own brain has been itching in the same way.
    “Not now. He’s a person who knows people. If he turns up dead, some of the customers will remember you. When that happens, it will be just like he said. They will think you are dirty and the word will get around. Much as I hate it, killing Captain Nichols, that’s a thing we can’t do. We need a different plan.”
    Bo is still not ready to think about anything but blood.
    “What do we have for assets?” It is a direct question that has a right answer, no guessing. It requires thought. I can see Bo’s eyes move while he thinks to answer.
    “We have the emergency cache. The truck. My gun.” I can tell he’s thinking about putting a bullet into Captain when he says that.
    “What about money? The money you’ve been earning on the jobs? Is that on you?”
    “Captain’s holding it. We had a ledger where we kept track. He gave me what I needed for operating expenses. I still got a little of that. The customers, they paid him. I never touched the money.” Bo can’t believe how stupid he’s been. I don’t need to mention it.
    “The stuff we had, that’s all still in the bus?”
    “Yeah. I never touched that. It’s still where we hid it the day we came down to the Captain’s. But right now, we don’t have the bus or anything inside it. And I don’t see how we can get that back unless we kill him.”
    “Not the option,” I say. “How long do you figure we have before he knows we aren’t coming back?”
    “A day, maybe,” says Bo. “We made real good time on the run. But the customers, he’s probably talked to them, so he knows we made the drop. If we don’t show up in a day, he’ll know something’s up.”
    “Can we go back to where the bus was? We’ve got the emergency cache there. We could get that and then live out of the truck.” Even while I ask the question, I know that would be hard. The world’s just not full of food and comfort. It’s full of sagebrush, rocks, and weather.
    “I don’t know if the Captain knows about that property or not,” says Bo.
    “If we don’t know, then it’s not safe,” I say. “The one thing we have going for us is he doesn’t know, right now, this minute, where we are.” I look out the truck window as the wind rattles past.
    “Valley, I think I do know a place where we could go. They’re customers, so the Captain knows about them, but — I don’t know. They treated me good. They trusted me when I brought the delivery. Gave me some food and beer. We even did some target practice together with the guns I brought. They were good guys. I just felt it. They were good.”
    Trusting Bo’s gut might be the stupidest thing I ever do. It might even be one of the last things I ever do. But I’m going to do it. Because if they kill us, it will be both of us. If they kill us, it will be quicker than starving. If they kill us, I don’t have to see the Captain. I don’t have to