Be Nice Read online

  Janey flicked the tent box with her finger. “Get out. You were serious?”

  “What, we have to sleep somewhere.”

  “In a tent?”

  “Please. I know all about tents.”

  “How do you know all about tents?”

  “Because The Heroes Unlimited squad, they went camping this one time and—”

  “Wait. We gonna live out in the heat and the sand and the rocks cuz some fake-ass people in one of your comic—”

  “Check it out.” Wallis pushed the shopping cart to a nearby counter. Shock wands were set in a glass case. A sign read BE NICE ONLY.

  Wallis shattered the case with his elbow and took two shock wands.

  “I just thought of somethin’, baby,” Janey said. “What about John Tom an’ them?”

  “We won’t be seeing John Tom or anybody else—”

  “But they’ll think we’re bad, that we’re, like, crazy and messed up. And what happens if Be Nice comes after us?”

  “Not where we’re goin’. No way anybody’ll leave here to try and find us.”

  Wallis stopped at the GAS OR ZAP convenience station. The hog was loaded with stolen gear; duct taped to the sides and piled high on back. Janey was packed in tight.

  Wallis swiped his father’s bank card through Gas Pump No. 2’s card scanner.

  A telescreen on the pump relayed sports and entertainment news; a ditzy, large breasted brunette read from a teleprompter.

  Wallis entered the words: FILL ‘ER UP into a keypad on the pump. “Girl, we need snacks and a digi-map.”

  Janey squirmed free of the hog and hurried to the station.

  Wallis clicked open a square panel on top of the hog’s engine. A solar power monitor registered full.

  Janey arrived with an armful of snacks and a digi-map. Wallis took the polythene map and unrolled it. He tapped his finger on it twice, causing a map of the United States to appear. He tapped California and a destination in Arizona.

  “Arizona?”

  “The Heroes Unlimited squad, they had a top secret base in a place called Monument Valley.”

  Janey gave him a look.

  “Monument Valley, it’s a real place. And if we stay off the main highways and only take the back roads—”

  “But there’s nothin’ out there.”

  “Right. There’s nothin’. Just the desert. That’s why it’s perfect. But it’s gonna be hot as all shit…” Wallis tucked the digi-map under his shirt. He reached into a side pouch on the hog, took out two black, tennis ball sized orbs, and squeezed them. They expanded into motorcycle helmets. He handed a helmet to Janey and went back to the pouch and snagged two pairs of riding gloves. “We wear these, the helmets, and no one can tell who we are or even what race we are.” He pressed a button on the hog’s gas tank. The hog’s exterior changed color from jet black to deep red.

  The sports and entertainment news shut off on the pumps. The ditzy brunette was replaced by a man wearing a black suit and a yellow and red tie.

  “Emergency news break,” the man said. “Top Be Nice officials in the city of Santa Monica, California, are on the lookout for two fugitives.”

  The high school ID photos of Wallis and Janey digitized on screen.

  “Shit!” Janey exclaimed.

  “Shhh!”

  “…Wallis David Barber and Jane Elizabeth Typermass are said to be former Be Nice members. It’s also been reported, and this is terrible news, that Mr. Clay Beams, the head of the Brennan Learning Center in Santa Monica, was allegedly murdered by these individuals only a few hours ago.”

  A viddi popped up. Be Nice members, wearing masks and black suits, carried a black, red, and yellow coffin out of the entrance to the Brennan Learning Center.

  “Be Nice officials also report that Barber and Typermass violently attacked their parents and robbed them of their bank cards and other valuables.”

  Wallis’s parents and Janey’s mother were shown in hospital beds. The three of them were horrifically beaten.

  Janey clawed at the screen. “Look what they did to them!”

  “And, according to Brennan therapist and top Be Nice official, Janika Fallings, Barber and Typermass have a history of anger issues, and are also thought to be spies who were planted inside the Be Nice organization.”

  Ms. Fallings appeared. She held up a drawing of Wallis’s superhero, Morphon, and Janey’s charcoal rendering of the burning sun. “I received a call from an art teacher at the Brennan Learning Center who showed me these drawings. As you can see, both Barber and Typermass are consumed with blind rage. They act out of hate, they seem driven by the old ways, and Director Beams, after trying to peacefully reason with them, met with an unfortunate end.”

  Wallis saddled the hog. “Let’s go.”

  Ms. Fallings leaned for something off camera.

  “Hold it!” Janey said.

  Ms. Fallings exhibited two light blue ski masks. “Be Nice also believes that Barber and Typermass were undercover double agents. Not only were they once members of Be Nice, but they were also members of a terrorist organization that calls itself The Blue. We’ve been keeping tabs on this organization for quite some time, but, as we didn’t wish to cause a panic, we withheld our intel. The Blue are said to be fanatics; committed worshippers of the old ways. These are people who accept what is given to them, but show no gratitude in return. They hate their lives, they hate the corporations, they hate their parents…”

  Janey removed her shock wand from the sleeve of her jacket and batted the telescreen off the gas pump.

  In an office at the Sports and Entertainment building, Ms. Fallings nursed a cup of coffee and listened as Mr. Dylon finished a selli call. He pocketed the phone and smiled. “The alert just went out over every telestation, internet site, and commercial viewing port.”

  Ms. Fallings played with the blue ski masks in her lap. “You told me you’d come up with something.”

  “A long time ago, ma’am, if you wanted to succeed, or if you wanted to have any type of influence, you needed an enemy. You needed an enemy that would scare the shit out of people. And, if you didn’t have one,” he laughed, “well, all you had to do was make one up. It’s something the golden oldies used to call…politics.”

  “Mr. Dylon?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “How would you like to be my second in command?”

  “I go on the meds in three years. What can you do about it?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I think you know exactly what I mean.”

  Ms. Fallings discarded the blue ski masks in a trashcan. “Once they’re in custody, we’ll talk.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The ride was tough.

  Despite Janey’s fervent pleas to pull over, Wallis stayed off the main roads and the public highways while avoiding Joshua National Tree Park and Lake Havasu City.

  The hog’s tires chewed through miles of dirt and underbrush.

  The heat was staggering: 119 degrees by midday.

  It was nightfall in Sedona, Arizona, when Wallis maneuvered the hog across the desert.

  He stopped the bike beneath a cliff of overhanging shale and dismounted.

  Janey unstrapped her helmet, removed it, and joined him.

  Wallis stretched and arched his back.

  He took off his riding gloves and wrapped them around the hog’s handlebars.

  Janey kneaded her buttocks, barely able to stand erect. “You couldn’t do more than just a few pee stops?”

  Wallis pressed the buttons on their helmets. They folded into the tennis-ball-sized orbs. He threw them in the side compartment on the hog and unpacked the gear.

  “I don’t see why we couldn’t stop in Joshua Tree or go up to check out Lake Havasu City.”

  Wallis untied the c
amping tent and placed it on the ground. While he unpacked, Janey glanced at the sandstone formations of Monument Valley. Alone in the middle of the desert, they looked like colossal, deformed fists rising in protest.

  Janey looked at the sky. The stars were coming out.

  Wallis thumbed a button on the tent box. The box vibrated. The tent, fully assembled, sprung up off the ground.

  “I guess, you were right,” Janey said. “It’s perfect out here. On the hog, I was too tired to see it. Y’know, we shoulda brought our drawing pads and artsy stuff.” She kept her eyes on the stars. “Baby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Billions of people in the whole wide world…and no one’s out here?”

  Wallis pushed the tent under the cliff and noticed something. A clump of tumbleweeds was latched to a wooden post. He cleared the weeds with his foot. “Check this out.”

  An ad sign was attached to the post. It depicted a shopping mall and thousands of living pods surrounding the Monument Valley cliffs. MUMBAI REALTY CORP. was stenciled below.

  “I knew it,” Janey said with a sigh. “And you told me we could live out here and sleep under the stars.”

  Wallis kicked the sign into bits of kindling. It burned along with the tumbleweed.

  Munching on snack food and nursing a can of Dawg beer, Janey squatted in front of the tent. “That’s wrong. Burning artsy, even stuff like that, it’s not right.”

  Wallis fed the fire with kindling.

  “What do you think? Maybe we should call John Tom an’ them—”

  “No.”

  “Baby?”

  “What?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Am I sure?”

  “Are you sure no one’s gonna come after us?”

  Wallis put his arms around her.

  “Well, we have to go to a city, or find a city. No way can we live out here forever.”

  Wallis walked over to the hog. He scavenged through what was still tied on back. He returned to Janey with a plastic bag and emptied out the contents. Hair products, shavers, creams, and lotions fell in the dirt.

  “We’re gonna have to look brand new,” he said, as he opened a jar of face cream and spread a generous amount of the contents over his jawline. With his foot, he nudged the shaver and shaving lotion to Janey.

  Janey picked up the shaver. “Boy, I know you done lost your mind.”

  Wallis opened a bottle of yellow liquid and poured it over his head. “If we have to go to a city, we’ll go separate. That way, nobody’ll know we’re together.”

  Janey kicked away the shaver and sat with her knees pulled to her chest. “I told my mom I was pregnant.”

  Wallis looked at her, his hair dripping wet.

  “And I also said…praise the Jesus.”

  Wallis massaged the yellow liquid into his scalp.

  “She prolly won’t remember, I mean, after what Be Nice did to her…but, at least, she was happy.”

  Late morning.

  In the tent, Wallis scratched his fingers over his jawline. A light blond peach fuzz had grown where he had applied the face cream the night before. He tugged a strand of hair over his eyes, it was blond too.

  Janey was wide awake, glaring at him from the back of the tent…and bald.

  Wallis fought back a smile. “You, uh...you look ice.”

  Janey angrily kicked the shaver.

  Wallis said with a nervous grin, “Seriously, who is this hotness all laid up here right next to me?”

  Janey rubbed her shaved head. “You better say you like it.”

  Wallis laughed, unable to hold back.

  Janey grabbed the shaver, turned it on, and jumped on top of him.

  Shirtless, with a piece of cloth tied around his head, Wallis studied the digi-map. Janey crawled out of the tent and shielded her eyes. Wallis felt in his shirt pocket and flipped her his rose-colored shades.

  He tapped the digi-map. “There’s a lake. It’s pretty far. It’ll take a while to get there. But we’re gonna need more water and we def need to wash up.”

  “Baby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think we should call John Tom.”

  “No. And don’t ask me again.”

  “But I thought that maybe—”

  “I only wanna use the selli if we have to. Be Nice could track us on it.”

  Janey put on the shades. “It’s hot.”

  “No shit.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We wait until it cools off. `Sides, it’s a lot safer if we move out at night.”

  The hog rumbled to the edge of a steep embankment. Below, the lake water was still and black. The moon’s elongated reflection shimmered across the surface.

  Three river boats were moored on the far shoreline. A small group of under-thirty-fives danced and drank and partied on the lower decks.

  Wallis unfurled the digi-map and double-checked the lake’s coordinates.

  Janey watched the partiers on the river boats. Dismayed, she said, “Well, I guess we ain’t alone out here.”

  Wallis rolled up the digi-map.“We got no choice. There’s no other water around anywhere.”

  “Baby, we didn’t go out far enough. I say we should just keep goin’ until we find—”

  “Look, whoever they are down there, it sounds like they’re partyin’ pretty hard. If we keep quiet, they prolly won’t even notice us.”

  Wallis rolled the hog forward. He and Janey skidded down the embankment.

  Keeping an eye on the three boats, they removed their clothes, carried them to the lake, and quietly eased into the water.

  Flash wands suddenly illuminated on one of the boats. They appeared to float on the lower deck and then drop toward the ground.

  The wands bobbed around the side of the lake in the direction of the hog.

  Wallis and Janey froze.

  The wands moved closer.

  Wallis put his hand on Janey’s shoulder. They sank eye-level in the water.

  Two men and two women drunkenly stumbled to the shoreline. The men unzipped the fronts of their swimsuits and loudly urinated. The two women pulled their bikini bottoms down and squatted.

  A shaft of moonlight settled on the hog.

  The two men and two women reacted to a glint of red metal and chrome. They aimed their flash wands…and caught the reflection of Wallis and Janey’s eyes above the waterline.

  Leaving their clothes in the lake, Wallis and Janey grabbed their boots off the shore and quickly mounted the hog.

  Hollers from the men and women as the bike careened over the top of the embankment.

  Dressed in the clothes they had stolen from the mall, Janey scribbled in the dirt with her finger. In the tent, Wallis slipped on shorts and a T-shirt. He crawled out and sat beside Janey.

  She threw a handful of dirt at him. “That was stupid!”

  “Like it’s my fault? There wasn’t supposed to be anyone out here!”

  “But we changed, we look totally different! We shoulda just played it off!”

  Wallis went over to the hog and examined the fuel gauge. “Shit. We need to get gas. We can’t drive too fast on solar bats.”

  “And where are we gonna get gas way out here, late at night?”

  The whinnies of horses and the pounding of hooves.

  Wallis and Janey spun around and looked out across the desert.

  A group of men, waving torches, rode up behind them on horseback. They were a foot-soc field away.

  The hog jostled across the desert at a quarter speed; 50 mph on its solar bats.

  The horses closed ground.

  Janey wrapped her arms around Wallis’s waist and yelled, “Who the eff is it?”

  Wallis glanced over his shoulder. He made out the riders in th
e torchlight. It was a group of six men wearing Be Nice masks.

  Wallis gunned the hog and steered for one of the Monument Valley edifices.

  Janey shouted, “Is it Be Nice?”

  “Get out your shock wand!”

  “What?”

  “I said, get out your wand!”

  Janey pulled her shock wand out of the hog’s rear pouch.

  “Okay, baby, get ready!”

  Three horses came up on each side of the hog. The riders wildly swung their torches at Wallis’s head.

  Janey activated her shock wand and jabbed it at the horses. An agonized whinny as one of them was struck by the wand. Stunned, the horse tumbled forward and flip-flopped to the ground.

  Two of the horses ran over the downed horse and collapsed on top of it.

  Wallis pressed the hog toward the Monument Valley formations.

  The last three riders followed.

  Wallis jetted onto the base of the cliffs and descended into a narrow underpass.

  One of the horses tripped on the gravelly sandstone.

  Wallis whipped the hog around in a one-eighty and hit the gas.

  The incoming horses panicked and reared, losing their riders.

  The hog leapfrogged back to the desert.

  Janey looked behind her. “It was Be Nice!”

  The riderless horses galloped in different directions.

  “But where’d they come from? And on effin’ horses?”

  “If they got boats too, pods can’t be far! There must be a town somewhere!”

  Janey dropped her head on Wallis’s shoulder.

  He cranked the throttle and sent the hog into the darkness.

  The hog’s solar meter read F. The fuel gauge read E. The tent was hidden in a field of tall cacti. Janey’s face winced at the sunlight as she peeked outside.

  Wallis kicked sand on the remnants of a fire. “I checked the digi-map. But there’s no towns or cities anywhere. There’s nothin’ around out here. I don’t get it.”