Sanitation Run

Chapter 14: Visitation

PICKUP TRUCK, STREETS, CITY (NOON)

They pick their way through thinning traffic heading out of the city.

VALERIE: They follow it.

BRUCE: They follow what?

VALERIE: The phone. I think. I went to the ladies’ room...

BRUCE: (looks over)

VALERIE: That was written on the mirror. I thought I’d followed this woman inside but no one was there. Just that message. (shaking the pill bottle) And some pills.

BRUCE: What woman?

VALERIE: She was wearing a red dress. Familiar?

BRUCE: Actually...

It’s Valerie’s turn to look over.

BRUCE: At the diner. So she left you some pills.

VALERIE: More like led me to them. Like I said, no one was in there.

BRUCE: You checked every stall?

Bruce glances in his rearview.

BRUCE: Hold on to something.

He shifts down, engine roaring as he cuts across traffic and accelerates through a series of corners.

BRUCE: Call me paranoid. One of those cars was trying too hard to be an Auto.

VALERIE: Of course they know your truck.

BRUCE: We gotta get off the road.

VALERIE: We also have to keep moving. Take your pick.

Valerie checks her phone.

VALERIE: I don’t think my handler can reach me.

BRUCE: Still on about that?

VALERIE: (shaking her phone) I’ve got to deliver this thing. Then maybe this bad dream will end.

BRUCE: What if we just destroy it?

VALERIE: Over my dead body.

BRUCE: (coldly) You know what I’m capable of.

VALERIE: You’re hard, Bruce. Not evil. (no answer) We’re working the theory we’re traversing multiple realities. What’s common to all them?

BRUCE: Your point?

VALERIE: Who’s to say that this app isn’t the source of these realities? That they only exist because it’s touched them?

BRUCE: And?

VALERIE: There’s a reality where your family still lives. We saw evidence of that.

BRUCE: (eyes staring hard at the road)

Check-

VALERIE: If we slam the door shut on them they might stop existing. You won’t kill your progeny. Even if...

BRUCE: (eyes red and refusing to water)

VALERIE: Even if she’s not yours.

-mate

PICKUP TRUCK, GRAVEL ROAD, FOREST, CITY OUTSKIRTS (TWILIGHT)

Bruce drives his pickup truck off into the bushes and kills the engine. He takes the burlap bag out of the glovebox but leaves the key under the driver’s side floor mat.

MOTEL ROOM, CITY OUTSKIRTS (TWILIGHT)

The room is little more than a pair of single beds, a nightstand, an ancient TV, and a torn armchair on threadbare carpet. The wallpaper is peeling. Tobacco stains mar the ceiling. A table bears the exoskeletons of instant ramen and power bars.

Valerie sits on the edge of a bed, staring longingly at the bottle of pills.

VALERIE: I’m dealing with quite a headache.

BRUCE: Welcome to the club.

VALERIE: What if I take one?

BRUCE: We don’t know what they do. Could be suicide. Could send you higher than a kite. (pause) The bird, not the toy.

VALERIE: Why would she want to kill me?

BRUCE: We haven’t established there even was a “she.” These are pills you found in an alternate restroom.

VALERIE: I don’t feel safe here.

BRUCE: We aren’t safe anywhere. We can’t hide from them. Either of them. Not for long, anyway.

Valerie peeks through the curtains on a parking lot peppered with pot holes. The only two cars have fused to the asphalt and the lone lamp is spotty.

BRUCE: You need sleep.

VALERIE: Remember what happened last time?

BRUCE: Thought we established I ain’t gonna destroy it. Bonus: won’t even touch it.

VALERIE: Good enough for me, I guess.

BRUCE: (throwing Valerie a lumpy plastic bag) Get changed first. Sleep ready to run.

VALERIE: As ever.

MOTEL ROOM, CITY OUTSKIRTS (MIDNIGHT)

Valerie awakes in darkness to the sound of the door latching.

She kicks away the covers and rolls over onto the floor, wincing as she is reminded about her myriad aches and pains.

Valerie listens beyond the throb of her heart and hears Bruce’s snoring and the drip of the bathroom faucet.

She army-crawls up the valley between the two beds and tries to make out anything. The parking lot lamp winks back on, piercing the curtain with the faintest of light and igniting the silhouette of Bruce in the armchair but little else.

She gropes around the top of the nightstand for her phone and snatches it with not a little relief.

Valerie turns on the phone’s flashlight and illuminates the doorway half of the room. Bruce stirs but does not wake up.

She pads forward along the wall, picking up the TV remote, and directs the light from the bathroom door to the closet. The chain hangs from the door, loose and still.

Valerie decides on the closet first. She inches her fingertips to the knob and accordions the door open. A black torso materializes and then settles into the flat shape of a jacket.

Valerie (wiping sweat from her forehead) turns toward the bathroom. The light switch is on the outside wall. She flicks it on and off rapidly and then yanks open the door.

The light is BLINDING. She flicks the harsh light back off, but her eyes are already scarred by what she’s seen: the WRITING on the mirror, more red lipstick scrawl, the drip drip drip of the bathtub faucet leaking ink into the tub.

VALERIE: (hissing) Bruce!

The big man jumps awake, fat pistol cocked and in hand as he rounds on the bathroom.

VALERIE: (hissing) She was here.

Bruce spares the bathroom a glance and starts at once for the door, touching his eye to the peephole before cracking it open and looking long down the sides of the building.

BRUCE: (coldly) Never again.

Bruce slips out into the night.