Traveling Salesman: Astronomgonist

Chapter 5

  Seventeen-year-old Watch, nineteen-year-old Jinger, and twenty-year-old, Gerry kept Phenny and Reign captive in the back of Gerry's Chevy El-Camino. They were both tied to each other. Watch looked through his binoculars and then handed them to Jinger. She looked through them. Afterward, she handed them to Gerry as they stood on the mountain pass overlooking their hometown of Colorfed.

"That chick is outta sight," Gerry said looking through the binoculars grinning toward Harrodean down below.

"What'd you think she'd go for, Gerry?" Watch asked.

"I don't know yet, Watch. I'm thinking of keeping this prize for myself."

"Hey, I thought I was your main squeeze." Jinger nudged Gerry in his ribs with her elbow.

"Sure Jinge, babe."

Colorfed has no color like being inside white noise in a tunnel. No seasons or weather exists in this town. No months of the year. A year is thirty-six days. A day is the length of a month. The temperature always stays indifferent. The people literally eat diversity. Colorfed once flourished with so much color it was almost painfully beautiful. The town suffers from a biological blight, which leaves their land and food supply void of color. Colorfed's people live off the land and because of this they look like corporeal snowmen. The townspeople of Colorfed believed by selling people from diverse races and ethnic backgrounds, they could afford to import colorful foods from other farmlands. Thinking this theory would lead to restoring the people's pigmentation.

"I can't believe you'd do this to my sister, to me," Phenny said to Reign, through clenched teeth. They were both hogtied in the rear of the car.

"I told you before, kid it was out of my hands. They made me call you. I had to lie and say I was in jail. If I didn't they were goin' burn me at the stake. Look, we just give them what they want and everything will be copacetic. Just chill, alright."

"You think they'll just let us go like that, huh? Bozo." Phenny said a little irritated.

Reign shrugged.

Teerkedas had been feeling weaker when he and Harrodean entered the city limits of Colorfed. He stared at the map she'd taken from the glove compartment of her car. His focus blurred even though he was wearing his glasses. He handed the map to her.

"Reign hangs out here in this area a lot." She pointed over the mountain ridge. "From what I remember this is usually the route tourists take just before they're lost. That's the route we should take. I haven't used this map for a while, but everything seems the same here." She folded up the map and tucked it into her pocket.

Glaring through the binoculars, Gerry gloated at the thought Teerkedas and Harrodean were so close.

"Let's flee the scene," Gerry told Watch and Jinger. Jinger rode shotgun and Watch got in the back of the El-Camino with Reign and Phenny. Hazeldine and Teer were close enough to hear the car speed away.

"Maybe he hitched a ride." Teerkedas shrugged. "The sheriff said he'd let Reign out of jail yesterday after he slept it off."

"Reign wouldn't hitch a ride not when he feels safe here on the mountain."

Harrodean and Teerkedas ran towards the sound but only saw the rear of the car driving over the beaten path. Reign's tent was nearby. She ducked inside while Teerkedas kept on the lookout. The shade from the tree gave him a modicum of relief from the digital sunlight, which had him breaking a sweat.

Reign's Fender Stratocaster, a model of an electric guitar designed in 1954, got left behind in the tent next to its case.

Harrodean picked up a pack of cigarettes not yet opened. There was an empty bottle of wine, a book of simple magicks, spells and rituals, lots of beef jerky, two backpacks with clothes.

"Phenny was here."

"How do you know?" Teerkedas asked.

She took out her pack of cigarettes and held up Phenny's pack side by side. "Phenny smokes Luckies and I smoke Philip Morris. Reign doesn't smoke. He must've crashed here in Reign's tent." Harrodean put the packs of cigarettes in her pocket.