The Demon Drivers BOOK IV - Ch. 5: Esprit de Corpse
The Demon Drivers BOOK IV
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Later that night, Parker knocked on the door of Sunny’s room.
From inside came the sounds of papers rustling, the springing of bed springs as a person scooted off the bed, and then the unmistakable sound of a waterfall of books cascading onto the floor. Sunny cursed under her breath. “Who is it?” The door slowly swung open, pushing a pile of scattered, books out of the way as it went. Sunny looked up from the mess, saw Parker standing there, and smiled. “Hi!” Behind her he saw a puddle of books on the floor. And on her desk. And some still on her bed.
“What’s all this?” Parker asked. “Did you ask General Ramsey if you could borrow the entire Candyland library?”
“What?” She looked over her shoulder. “Oh. No, these are my textbooks. Real books, too! With real paper and everything. I’m so excited.” She took a long drink from a pink and black can in her hand.
“What’re you drinking?”
Sunny held the can up so he could read it. She seemed very excited. “It’s a Go-Girrrl energy drink. Colby was giving them out. He had a Go-Boy drink for you but we couldn’t find you. Why didn’t you come down for chow? These drinks are really good. This is my third one. I think Colby left some in your room. Why didn’t you come down for chow? I don’t normally eat chili dogs but I decided to have one and it was really good.”
“You’re talking really fast.”
“Why didn’t you come down for chow?”
“That’s the third time you’ve asked me that.”
“I have lots of energy. I’m going to need it to study all this stuff. I may pull an all-nighter. I don’t know yet. Do you know Bubba ate five chili dogs? Five! Colby said he could power his Battle-suit off the flatulence he’s going to have tomorrow.”
“Did Bubba get mad?” asked Parker.
“Actually he said Colby was right about the chili making him gassy but he said the chili was so good it would be worth it. Do you want one of my Go-Girrrls?” Sunny thrust the can at him.
“Maybe later.”
“Okay.” Sunny took a long drink, tilting her head back and draining the last of the bubbly pink liquid into her mouth. She swallowed, sighed, and crushed the can in her fist. She belched loudly.
“Excuse you.” Parker was fairly certain he’d never heard Sunny burp. Not like that, anyway.
Sunny grabbed another energy drink off the desk and popped the top. “Take it to the max.” She raised the can into the air, then took a long drink.
Parker forced himself to ignore the fact that Sunny was now imitating Colby Max. He looked again at the mess of books on the floor. “So, real books, huh?”
“Real books.” Sunny picked up a thick hardback. “And they’re heavy.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Igby dropped them off.”
“Oh.” Parker knew he shouldn’t have skipped dinner. First Colby was plying Sunny with energy drinks and now Igby was giving her more real books than he had ever seen collected in one place. “That was very nice of him.”
“Yeah, he is very nice.”
“He must’ve needed his Battle-suit to carry all of them.”
Sunny giggled. “No, he had this motorized, electromagnetic, hovering cart thing. He said it was a new invention for grocery stores. No more wobbly, crooked shopping carts.”
“Cool.” Parker had to admit, it did seem like a good idea, one long overdue.
“He’s really smart. Did you know he actually wrote a bunch of these books?” She looked down at the textbooks and manuals strewn all around.
“No, I—”
“Look at this one.” She held up a large manual. “It’s called Just Walk Away. . . . A Complete Guide to Landings. Just walk away. Isn’t that hysterical?” She laughed and shook her head. “So clever.”
“Is it, um, any good?”
“I’m only on chapter one,” said Sunny, “but so far he’s refuted the old axiom that any landing you walk away from is considered a good landing.”
“Let me know how it turns out.”
“You have to read it, too, silly.” Sunny cocked her head and smiled at him.
“Loan it to me when you’re done, then,” said Parker.
She laughed. “You’re funny.” She took another long drink of her Go-Girrrl.
“So Igby came by to bring you your books,” Parker stated. He wondered if Igby stuck around long enough to chat with Sunny. Or perhaps he and Colby and Sunny all sat in Sunny’s room with the door closed, sipping energy drinks and talking.
“Not just me,” said Sunny. “He brought them for all of us. Haven’t you been to your room yet?”
“Uh, no, I. . . .” He didn’t want to tell her he’d been sitting alone in the conference room, staring at his helmet, trying to think of a way out of this. Trying not to cry. Like a pathetic child.
“He said to read up on landings for ground school tomorrow morning. We’re meeting in the conference room after breakfast. Then, after lunch—”
“You want to take a walk?” Parker blurted, remembering why he had knocked on the door to Sunny’s room in the first place.
Sunny fixed her gaze on him. “A walk? Right now? Can we do that?”
“Sure,” replied Parker. “It’s not like we’re in jail. Besides, we’re in an underground city, surrounded by miles of mountains and desert. Even if we did want to high-tail it out of here, how far could we get?”
* * *
Parker and Sunny strolled down the sidewalk along Main Street. Parker listened while Sunny spoke quickly, jumping from one topic to another, covering everything from the Chocolate Critter Kit to the strange smell in Simulator Fourteen she suspected was some sort of human waste product, perhaps regurgitated clam chowder, most likely the white New England variety, rather than the red kind, the name of which Sunny couldn’t recall but would look up just as soon as she returned to her quarters.
Despite being distracted by searching for a possible escape route, Parker wanted to talk to Sunny, not merely listen to her amped-up, meandering stream-of-consciousness speech, but to have a genuine conversation with her. But he didn’t know what to say. And something about the idea of Igby in Sunny’s room, showing off his fancy, wheel-less shopping cart bothered Parker.
Traffic was light on Main Street. A vehicle or two passed now and then, its electric hum flowing by behind the whisper of moving air. A few people meandered along the street, clustered in groups of two or three. More than once, Parker caught them looking at him. He wondered if Sunny noticed it. He looked up, away from the gawking passersby.
The ceiling that had resembled a vast blue sky when they’d arrived yesterday was now a velvety nighttime black and filled with more stars than Parker had ever seen. He saw no windows through which he could possibly escape, no fire escape ladders leading to the surface. He wondered if Sunny knew what he was doing, what he was thinking, if she could see him searching for a way out. Or searching for a way to connect with her.
“What time is it?” he asked, desperate for something to say.
Sunny checked her watch. “Almost nine thirty.”
“I would never have guessed there were so many stars.”
Sunny looked up. “Igby said the ceiling is holographically generated. It’s an exact rendering of the actual sky for our current latitude and longitude at this time of year. It gets the time of day for our time zone from the U.S. atomic clock in Colorado Springs. Look, there’s Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.” She pointed upward, though Parker wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to be seeing. “Oh, and there’s Cassiopeia, see?”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t know what Cassiopeia was either, let alone where.
“I’ve never actually seen them before,” Sunny said in awe. “I’ve only seen them in books. My dad gave me a book on them. What constellations do you see, Parker?”
Parker surveyed the sky until he located the only constellation he knew. “There.” He pointed. “Orion.”
“The warrior.”
“See, there’s the outline of his shoulders, those stars are his belt, and those three are his sword. Orion is my favorite.” Orion was the only constellation he knew by heart. He hoped he sounded educated, like Igby.
“There’s Polaris,” said Sunny. She pointed. “The North Star. Follow the North Star and you’ll always be headed north.”
“Like the Three Wise Men,” Parker added. Mrs. Black told the story of the Three Wise Men every Christmas. She had most recently mentioned it during the cookie baking marathon.
“Did you know the Earth wobbles on its axis as it rotates,” said Sunny, “and because of the wobble the North Star changes? It won’t always be Polaris. It’s a twenty-six thousand-year cycle. Igby told me all about it. Think there’s other kids like us out there, walking along and looking up at the stars, wondering if they are alone in the universe?”
Parker recalled meeting Carl last night and learning that there are in fact other forms of intelligent life out there. From the corner of his eye he stole a look at Sunny. She was grinning. He considered telling her about meeting Carl. If he asked her not to say anything to anyone else, he felt confident she would not. He opened his mouth to tell her when she said, “Why didn’t you come to dinner?”
He tried to think quickly, searching for the right answer. “Just wanted to be alone, I guess.” He hoped she would believe him.
“The chili dogs were really good. Bubba made them himself. He made an extra one for you. But then he ate it.”
Parker laughed.
“I don’t know where he puts it,” said Sunny.
“My dad used to say Bubba has a hollow wooden leg. Like a pirate.”
“I’m sure your dad’s okay.”
“I’m sure he is, too.” Inwardly he was not at all sure.
“Igby said Dr. Seabrook told him that General Ramsey said he called all of our families to let them know we’re okay and where we are and everything.”
“Oh,” Parker replied, for want of a better response to Sunny’s convoluted statement. “That’s good. I’m sure your mom and dad and Mrs. Black are worried. Probably Colby’s parents, too.”
“Igby asked me if you had any other relatives the General should call. I told him to tell Mrs. Black that you were all right, since—”
“Since she’s the closest thing I have these days to a parent or legal guardian or a person who gives a crap about me?” Parker sensed he was indulging in a moment of self-pity and probably sounded a bit melodramatic, but the impulse was too strong to resist.
“I was going to say since she’s probably as worried about you as she is about Bubba.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Sunny suddenly grabbed his arm. “I have a crazy idea! You want to get some ice cream? You must be hungry.”
“Uh, sure. Where, the Mess Hall?”
“Nope.” Sunny grinned mischievously.
“The last time I saw that look was the time you smeared Super-Sticky Glue on Old Lady Smattering’s doorknob.”
Sunny’s mouth dropped open in mock innocence.
“Mr. Jenkins down the hall found her and had to call the super to come and take apart the door knob but then—”
“—it wouldn’t come apart so they had to take the entire door off its hinges,” added Sunny, laughing.
“To this day she thinks I did it,” said Parker. “I think that’s why she pokes her crazy old head out every time she hears me open and close the door to my apartment.” Parker shook his head. “I keep expecting my hand to stick to the handle.”
“She asked for it,” said Sunny. “She made a crack about my brother. She said he was ‘a rebel without a cause.’ Whatever that means.”
“She had that door knob stuck to her hand for about a week.”
“I know. I was thinking about that yesterday in the elevator when I waved at her.” Sunny covered her mouth and giggled. “You know what they say,” she warned playfully, “‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’”
“I’ll remember that,” said Parker.
“Come on. The ice cream is on me.”
“But where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” She took him by the arm and led him into the street.
“I can see the headline now,” said Parker, holding up his hand and blocking out letters in midair, “Go-Kids arrested for jaywalking.”
Sunny laughed.
She continued dragging him across the empty street. Once on the other side, they strolled past a dry cleaners, a shoe store, an appliance repair company, and a salon. None of them looked particularly remarkable. They looked in essence just like small businesses Parker walked past every day in Sky City South. He guessed even in a super-secret underground city, people had day-to-day business to transact.
They turned a corner and Sunny led him to a building exploding with glowing tubular bands of red, white, and blue neon light. Above the door, brilliant pink neon tubes spelled out the name of the establishment: Mel’s Diner and below this Since 1955. Inside, the bright, stark-white restaurant was about half-full of patrons. Many of the patrons were enjoying sundaes overflowing from tall glasses filled with thick layers of hot fudge and gooey caramel and topped with swirls of whipped cream and chopped nuts. Other customers were enjoying juicy hamburgers with the works, and platters of golden French fries and crispy onion rings. Parker suddenly found himself regretting having missed dinner.
“I saw this place when we drove in yesterday,” said Sunny. She led him to a walk-up window. Nearby was an array of tables and chairs. “What flavor would you like?”
“Anything but strawberry. I’m kind of sick of strawberry.”
“Me, too, actually.”
A man appeared in the window wearing a white apron over a white t-shirt. A white paper hat perched atop his slicked-back hair. “Two chocolate ice cream cones please,” said Sunny. A few moments later, he handed Sunny two cones topped with a large, craggy sphere of brown ice cream. Sunny handed a bright red bill to him.
“What’s that?” asked Parker.
“They have their own money down here,” said Sunny. “Igby and I sat together at dinner and he gave me an envelope full of it!”
“I knew I shouldn’t have missed dinner,” Parker mumbled.
“Huh?” Sunny fixed him with a curious look and handed him his ice cream cone.
“Never mind.”
Sunny received her change from the man in the white hat and she and Parker found seats at a nearby table.
“Want to taste mine?” asked Sunny. “Here, let me taste yours!” She grabbed his hand and pulled it toward her.
Parker watched Sunny slide her tongue across the side of his ice cream cone. “We both have chocolate,” he said.
“I know. It’s a joke. That’s why it’s funny. Do you want to taste mine?” Sunny held her cone toward him. “Let’s do it at the same time.” Sunny took Parker’s wrist and again brought his ice cream cone to her mouth. She held her cone up for him.
Parker pressed his lips to the cold brown ice cream while Sunny did the same thing to his cone, and they tasted each other’s ice cream.
Their eyes met.
Parker all but forgot about the sweet chocolate ice cream cold against his lips.
Sunny’s eyes sparkled with neon light.
He looked at her.
She looked back at him.
He couldn’t be sure how many seconds ticked by.
The tip of his nose bumped the ice cream and he pulled away.
Sunny smiled. She plucked a white paper napkin from the small black dispenser on the table. “Let me get that for you.” She dabbed his nose, wiping away the brown smudge of ice cream.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Parker didn’t speak, and neither did Sunny. They enjoyed their ice cream in silence, and Parker felt an almost odd sensation of calm come over him. He did not feel compelled to make small talk with Sunny. The silence felt perfectly natural. The clenched feeling in his stomach dissolved. He savored his chocolate ice cream and knew there was no place else he would rather be.
“We should get back soon,” said Sunny. “I’m sure we’ll have a long day tomorrow. I’d like to study a bit more before General Ramsey tries to kill me again with another spin.”
“It’s just a simulator. It’s not real.”
“It sure felt real. All that spinning made me dizzy. I was about to grab the barf bag when you crashed the system.”
“It was some first flight.”
“Imagine when we get to fly for real,” said Sunny. She licked her ice cream. Her eyes dazzled in the neon light.
Parker tried to imagine their first flight. Despite having actually been in a real Go-Boy Battle-suit that morning, he had difficulty conceiving of all five of them flying in formation for real, as Sunny put it.
He remembered suddenly the pile of text books he’d seen strewn all over Sunny’s room. That same volume of books and manuals awaited him in his own room. He didn’t want to face the formidable amount of study material. He had always preferred to learn by doing, as opposed to reading about a subject or listening to one of his teachers drone on and on about it.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“I don’t understand why you don’t wear a watch,” said Sunny.
Parker thought of the watch on the shelf in his closet. The one he hadn’t worn since the day of The Attack, since his dad told him to take it off until he was ready to give more than he took, something he still didn’t understand how to do.
“That’s what I got you for your birthday,” said Sunny.
He envisioned the bright yellow package. “You did?”
Sunny nodded and licked her ice cream cone.
“Why’d you tell me? Now it’s not a surprise.”
“If what Colby said is true and we all die a fiery death, you’ll never get to open it anyway. You may as well know what I got you.”
“You’re not going to die a fiery death,” said Parker. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“You’re right, I’ll probably crash head-first into the dessert or get shot by Go-Boy Ultra.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
Sunny licked her ice cream.
“So how do you feel about General Ramsey making you Flight Leader?” she asked.
She had just steered the conversation directly back onto a topic he had hoped they would not revisit. He found himself suddenly irritated. He struggled not to respond unkindly.
“How do you think I feel?” He hoped the question sounded neutral but even as he asked it he knew his tone did more to hurt Sunny than any words he may have chosen.
She licked her ice cream and didn’t immediately respond. He sensed Sunny struggling with herself, struggling to be understanding, to be patient with him. He hated himself even more.
“I don’t know,” she said. “How do you feel?” Her tone gave away nothing. It was merely inquisitive. Parker’s mother used to say the same thing whenever he asked her a difficult question and she wanted him to reason it out for himself, knowing he would learn far better a lesson whose solution was not simply handed to him.
He sighed a long, deep, emphatic sigh. “I don’t know,” he said, meaning every word. “I feel . . . really. . . .” He searched himself for his true answer.
“Hey, Sunny, Park!”
Parker looked over his shoulder to find Bubba and Igby approaching. Bubba was waving excitedly.
“What are you guys doing here?” Bubba asked. He and Igby grabbed two chairs and sat down.
“I could ask you the same thing,” said Parker.
“I brought Bubba his books,” said Igby. “We got to talking about the Go-Boy movies and decided to go out for some air. Albeit re-circulated underground secret-city air.”
Sunny giggled.
“I see you took my advice,” said Igby. He motioned to Sunny’s ice cream cone and looked around at Mel’s Diner.
“What advice?” asked Parker.
“I told Sunny how good the ice cream is here,” said Igby.
“No kidding,” said Parker. He hoped he sounded neutral, indifferent.
“Yeah, he suggested we try some, too,” said Bubba. He held up his own ice cream cone. “Vanilla. I like vanilla. No sprinkles, though. Oh well.” He gave his ice cream a lick.
Feeling saucy, Parker said, “So. Where’s my good friend Colby Max? We may as well make this a baker’s dozen.”
“You mean donuts?” asked Bubba. “Hey, Igby, do they sell Frinkies here?”
“Not at the diner but all the supermarkets carry them.”
“How many supermarkets are there?” asked Sunny.
“Six,” replied Igby. “One near each entrance, one near the Main Hangar, and one near the lake.”
“The lake?” asked Sunny. “You have a lake down here?’
“Sure,” said Igby. “Lake Molasses. Though it isn’t really made of molasses.” At this Bubba seemed to sag a bit. “Anyway, Parker, in response to your question, I believe the illustrious Mr. Max is back at the Mess Hall.”
“Probably staring at himself on that box of cereal,” said Bubba. “You should’ve seen him at breakfast this morning, Park.” Bubba shook his head in disgust.
“Actually, he said he wanted to study,” said Igby. “I think he was a bit perturbed over not being appointed Flight Leader.”
Bubba laughed. “Poor baby.”
Parker didn’t say anything, but if Colby wanted the job of Flight Leader, he could have it.
“You guys don’t know Colby like I do,” said Igby. “Colby sometimes comes off a bit—”
“Shallow?”
“Self-centered?”
“Annoying?”
“Stuck-up?” said Parker and Bubba, taking turns tossing out words they felt best described Colby.
“I was going to say ‘abrasive’,” said Igby, “but you guys don’t know him like I do. We’ve worked together a couple years now. Sometimes we’ll spend eighteen hours a day together. But don’t tell the people at the entertainers’ guild I said that.” He winked at Sunny and she smiled. “Colby is a very hard worker and he’s good at what he does.”
“What’s that?” asked Bubba, “Staring at himself on a talking box of cereal? I could go for a bowl of cereal right now, actually.”
“Bubba,” said Sunny, “you have an ice cream cone in your hand right now.”
“So? I’m saying I wish I had a bowl of Astr-O’s in my other hand. Come on, guys, let’s head back for some cereal. It’s getting late anyway.” Bubba looked up at the starry night sky above them, leaning back so far he nearly fell over backwards. “General Ramsey said we should get our beauty sleep.”
“And we all know you need as much of that as you can get,” said Igby.
Parker and Sunny looked at Igby. Bubba stopped ogling the holographic stars above and turned slowly to Igby.
“Well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?” said Bubba.
“You would know,” replied Igby, “Black is your last name.”
“You’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’, shrimp,” said Bubba.
“Don’t make promises you aren’t willing to keep.”
Bubba stood up, stepped over to Igby, and looked down at him. Igby stood up as well. He stood looking up at Bubba, easily a foot shorter. Igby raised himself up onto his tiptoes. He and Bubba glared at each other.
Bubba threw his arm around Igby’s neck and pulled him into a head lock, holding aloft his vanilla ice cream like a trophy. Igby began howling.
“Get ready to wear this vanilla ice cream as a toupee, Ignatius,” Bubba said, his voice overly dramatic.
“Ignatius?!” cried Parker and Sunny in unison.
“I . . . told you that . . . in confidence . . . Bubba!” said Igby, struggling against Bubba’s hold.
“I know,” said Bubba. He released Igby from the headlock. “But it’s so cute that I just couldn’t resist letting the cat out of the bag.” He and Igby grinned broadly. Parker realized they were merely having a bit of fun, though exactly when or why the two of them had gotten so chummy remained a mystery.
Igby turned to face Parker and Sunny. “My full name,” Igby explained, “is Ignatius Byron Fry. The first two letters of my first two names spell Igby.”
“Ignatius?” said Parker.
“Byron?” said Sunny. “As in Lord Byron?”
“Ignatius is my grandfather’s name, Parker. And yes, Sunny, as in Lord Byron the literary genius.”
“So not only can he build you a flying machine,” said Bubba, “he can recite a sonnet at the same time.”
“How do you know about sonnets, Bubba?” asked Sunny.
“I am not as dumb as I look,” said Bubba. “Now hurry up. There’s a bowl of cereal with my name on it.”
“You better watch out, Bubba,” said Igby. “General Ramsey will have you running laps around the perimeter of the Main Hangar.”
“That’s okay,” said Bubba, “Park and I have had to run laps lots of times. Remember, Park?”
“I remember,” Parker said with a sigh.
“The General will have all of us running,” added Igby, “in order to build esprit de corps.”
“That means ‘group spirit’,” said Bubba. They all looked at him.
“See? I told you I’m not as dumb as I look.”
“I’ll remember that in the sim tomorrow,” said Parker, “when you’re falling from the sky like a rock and don’t know what to do. You’ll have plenty of esprit de corpse then, because you’ll be a corpse. That means ‘dead body’.”
“Please don’t say that,” said Sunny.
“Don’t worry,” said Parker. He turned to face Sunny. “The next time you have a problem, I’ll be there.”
Parker smiled.
Sunny smiled back at him.
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