“Where did you see him?”
“He was on the road that goes to the monkey lady. He was in a big, black, jacked-?up truck. I mean, it was bad, dude.”
“Does that road connect to your road here?”
“No. I got a friend who grows some primo shit back there. I was on a shopping trip.”
A monkey with a hat ran out of the woods and stopped inches from us.
“Whoa,” the skinny guy said. “Do you see a monkey wearing a hat?”
“Yeah,” Diesel said.
“Shit, that’s a relief,” the skinny guy said.
We returned to the ATVs.
“I’m thinking he was Unmentionable,” I said to Diesel.
“Not in a good way,” Diesel said.
We backtracked to a road that led to the second house on Diesel’s list. It had started to drizzle, and I was wishing I had a hat. It wasn’t bad when the dirt road narrowed and the pines gave us some cover. It was a misery when the pines parted and the rain soaked into my sweatshirt and jeans.
By the time we got to the second house, it was pouring. My hair was plastered to my face, I was squinting to see through the sheets of wind-?driven rain, and I was cold clear to the bone. The dirt road was mud. The mud clung to the wheels of the ATV and splattered everything in its path, including Diesel and me.
We got off the ATVs, slogged to the house, and looked in the front window. The house was empty. No furniture. The inhabitants had moved on. Diesel went inside, did a fast pass-?through, and came out.
“Zero on this one,” he said. “We can cross it off the list.”
“It looks dry in there,” I said wistfully.
“Yeah, it would be perfect, except for the dead raccoon in the kitchen and the forty rats trying to figure out what to do with it.”
The yard in front of the house was a quagmire, and on the way back to the ATV I lost my shoe in
the mud. It sucked it off me. I took a step, and next thing, I was wearing only one shoe.
“Fuck!”
Diesel turned and looked at me. “I don’t hear you using that word a lot.”
“I lost my fucking shoe! The fucking mud fucking sucked it off my fucking foot.”
Diesel gave a bark of laughter and retrieved my shoe. We were both ankle-?deep in mud, the difference being he was wearing his beat-?up boots, and I was wearing sneakers. He swept me off my feet and carried me to the ATV. He set me on the seat, knocked most of the mud off my sneaker, and laced it back on my foot.
“Follow me,” he said. “We’re going to the Subaru.”
It was slow going in the mud and rain. If it had been warm, it might have been fun sliding around on the slick, rutted road, but it wasn’t warm, and I wasn’t having fun. We reached the car, and I dragged myself off my ATV.
“I lied about neither sleet nor snow, blah, blah, blah,” I said to Diesel.
“You gave up your shoe for the cause,” he said. “You can’t ask for much more than that.” He released the hitch on the ATV trailer and handed the car keys to me. “You’re going home, and I’m staying here. Call Flash when you get cell-?phone reception and tell him to meet you somewhere and swap out the Subaru. And then send him back here to wait for me.”
“I feel like a wimp.”
“Yeah, but you’re a cute wimp. And I’m an awesome superdude. Just don’t forget to send Flash.”
He took my phone and programmed Flash’s number in. Then he reached into the SUV and took a granola bar and the gummi bears.