The True Lies of the Once Fabulous Killjoys

The sun was just starting to rise; they had been on the road for eight hours. Frank reached for the Aviators hooked on the collar of his shirt, putting them on to combat the blinding sun. He realised they were actually Gerard’s, and smiled, thinking about how pissed Gerard would be when it hit him that Frank had his sunglasses. With Mikey asleep beside him and Ray stretched out across the backseat of the Mustang since his shift ended at 4 a.m., he’d had plenty of time to think. His main thought? How much he was missing Gerard already.

The group had only done one change over so far, and the next wouldn’t be for another four hours. He had been asleep for most of the change over, energising himself for his own six hour shift, so by time he woke up the Trans-AM was turning back onto the highway with Gerard falling asleep across the back seat. When was the last time they’d been apart for eight hours? It would had to have been months.

Mikey stirred next to him as the Mustang hit a bump in the road. There was a slight groan, his head lolled side to side, and then he was blinking his eyes open.

“Shit – that sun’s bright!” Mikey exclaimed, attempting to shield his eyes with his hands when the visor failed.

“I know,” Frank agreed; the Aviators were only just working for him. “Lauren’s probably got a pair of sunglasses in here somewhere.”

Mikey riffled through the glove compartment; registration papers... manual... seriously outdated map of California... spare house keys... a pacifier... gas station receipts... shopping list... photo of him... notepad... electricity bill – wait! Photo of him? He located the photo again, trying not to raise the suspicion of Frank, and inspected it as closely as he could.

It couldn’t be, but it was.

The photo had been taken the day she’d left for medical school – there was no other time it could have been taken – yet he didn’t remember her taking it. His back was bare, the maroon sheets of his bed only just covering his rear, his right arm bent under his pillow, his left stretched out across the bed, the venetian blinds cast a striped shadow over the room, and his Rolling Stones t-shirt could be seen in the bottom left corner of the photo – the same shirt he’d been wearing the night he and Lauren had slept together. She had obviously taken the photo before returning to her own bedroom, because he remembered all too clearly the stabbing pain in his stomach when he realised she wasn’t there when he woke up.

He stuffed the photo back into the glove compartment and finally located a pair of sunglasses after a little more rummaging. Purple Fendi knockoff sunglasses – really, Lauren? he thought to himself as he looked at the sunglasses in disgust. He slipped them on all the same, but felt entirely ridiculous as he caught his reflection in the side mirror.

“Love the look, Mikey,” Frank joked.

“Mikey may look like a douche, but Kobra Kid is completely comfortable with his sexuality,” Mikey justified. He decided to change topics. “Where the hell are we anyway?”

“Somewhere in Wyoming,” Frank replied. He tapped the GPS screen a few times. “We’re there apparently.”

The red pin point on the screen merely indicated that they were on a highway. They decided to just trust Bob’s judgement and follow the route he’d picked out for them.

Meanwhile, in the Trans-AM, Lauren, Bob, and Gerard were continually picking up speed as the moved through Wyoming. At 6 o’clock they were rarely passing anyone on the back roads they were taking as it was, let alone any police there to catch them out for speeding. Lauren was behind the wheel, reassuring herself that she was breaking the law for a very good reason even though she felt sick to her stomach every time she pushed the accelerator closer to the floor. Bob was asleep next to her, his PDA clutched tightly in his hand, and Gerard laid behind her; she wasn’t entirely sure if he was asleep, but if he was, he had definitely been having some bad dreams – he’d been tossing, turning, and groaning the whole time.

She wasn’t enjoying the quiet; it gave her too much time to think. Times were dark when she was dating Benjamin’s father. He was rough and violent and abusive, and she let him treat her in that way. The first time he brought drugs to her home and got high in front of her he asked her to “join the buzz”. She was hesitant and refused more than once before he finally convinced her to do it. He lined the pure MDMA out on her coffee table and pushed her head down. He told her what to do and wouldn’t let go of the back of her head until she snorted it all. It burnt her nose and left a horrible taste in her mouth. She felt the ‘buzz’ about fifteen minutes later. It wasn’t too bad while she was actually intoxicated, but it was horrible while she was coming down from her high. She had a severe headache, vomited, her whole body was shaking. It took her a few days to fully recover. He witnessed it all, and yet he still forced her to do it again, and again, and again, until she learned to do it on her own.

Lauren wiped at the tears forming in her eyes. How could she let him do that to her? Why was she so weak when before New York she used to be so strong? Why did her son and her friends have to pay for her mistakes?

“Kill?” Frank’s voice called through the radio. They had reverted back to calling each other by their killjoy names.

“What’s up, Ghoul? Over.” Lauren was glad for the distraction.

“Kobra and I were just looking over the map – any idea why we seem to be taking a very long detour through Wyoming? Over.”

“Bob knows someone, who knows someone, who lives out this way that can give a few bits of high-tech gear that might come in handy so we’re going out there to pick it up. Over.”

“I thought you were against involving anyone else in this,” Frank pointed out. “Over.”

“Unfortunately, this isn’t optional; we need the stuff,” Lauren said regretfully. Frank was right – she was against involving outsiders. “Wish me luck. Out.”

Switching channels was something new they were trialling. If Benjamin could be taken so easily and completely unnoticed, then it was plausible that someone could be watching them, tapping into their conversations, or even tailing them across the country. For that reason, they had begun switching down through all the odd channels and then switching up through all the even channels once they’d reached one. ‘Wish me luck’ was their code for switching channels, and it seemed to be working quite well.

Lauren checked the time; they wouldn’t reach their tech guy for another hour. She glanced over to Bob; he was snoring. In the rear view mirror she could see that Gerard was still as a log and, she assumed, deep in sleep. It would be a long, lonely drive.



Frank manoeuvred the Mustang off the highway onto a winding dirt track. They drove two miles before the Trans-AM came into view just off the track. There was nothing else around – no houses, no other cars, no sign of life other than themselves. As they neared the car he spotted the bright red hair of his boyfriend; he was suddenly feeling very perky. Finally, he would be able to hug Gerard.

He slowed down and pulled in behind the Trans-AM. The car had barely stopped moving before Mikey had flung himself out of the car and made his way hastily over to Lauren and pulled her into a hug. Man, he’s got it bad for her, Frank thought as he observed the scene before him.

“Jet Star, rise and shine,” he called, roughly shoving Ray’s sleeping form on the backseat before he headed over to Gerard.

Gerard held his arms out, waiting to embrace Frank. He held him tight and kissed the top of his head. It’d only been a few hours, but he’d missed Frank like crazy. Frank shifted in Gerard’s arms so he was able to place soft kisses on Gerard’s pale neck.

Gerard took Frank’s cheeks in his hands and lifted Frank up onto his toes so he could kiss his lips. “I missed you. I love you. Kiss me again,” he mumbled against his lips.

Lauren broke away from Mikey’s embrace. “Okay, enough cutesy crap you two,” she said to Frank and Gerard, “we’ve got to get this stuff and get back onto the road as soon as possible. Bob, lead the way.”

The blonde haired man cut across through the thick vegetation. Crunching leaves echoed in the silence as everyone made their way through the dense forest. They stepped over logs, through puddles, underneath branches, and around bushes; it felt like they were literally on the road to nowhere.

“Baby, where the hell is this guy?” Ray asked Bob bluntly.

“Just a few minutes away, come on.”

“How do you even know this guy?” Frank asked.

“He worked in the same department as someone I knew at BL/IND.” Bob heard everyone stop walking; he turned to face them. “Relax, he’s a rogue now. They think he’s working for them, but really he’s using the information they give him to help those against the corporation.”

“How do we know we can trust him?” Lauren asked.

Bob looked at her. “How did you know you could trust me?

“Instinct.”

“Right,” Bob said softly, “so trust mine.”

They continued to follow Bob through the vegetation until a small wooden shack came into view. It looked as if it were uninhabited, but they trusted Bob enough to know it wasn’t. They approached the front steps but were stopped a few feet away by Bob. He wandered around behind them until he found a flat stone. He rejoined the group and threw the stone at the ground just in front of the stairs.

“Duck!” he yelled.

They did so, just as a dozen coloured laser beams flashed out and soared above their crouched bodies.

“What the fuck?” Frank asked, breathing heavily in shock.

“SORGs.” Bob replied. He got to his feet and brushed the dirt from himself. “Sensor Operated Ray Guns – they’re his specialty. They’re quite a unique form of home security.”

“If we die before we reach that door, Neon Nightmare, I swear to a God that I don’t believe in that I will kill you.”

“Okay, Poison, you do that,” Bob replied. He started moving toward the shack. “Walk around here on an arc and then climb up over the banister. If you touch those stairs, you will be shot, and you will be killed.”

Bob lead the way and climbed onto the small porch. While the others made their way onto the porch, he knocked three times on the door, tapped the gold door knocker twice, and pulled the string of an overhead bell once.

“A secret knock, really?” Gerard deadpanned. “A bit childish for a tech expert, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t need to be high-tech – most people would be dead by now.”

They waited patiently as heavy footsteps neared them on the other side of the door. Latches clicked and small chains rattled until the door finally opened. Before them stood the most unlikely tech expert you would ever expect to see. He was lanky, dressed in faded blue jeans and a white singlet, his mullet was pressed down by a truckers cap, his jaw covered by stubble that surrounded his bushy moustache; he swiped the back of his hand across his nose and sniffed.

“Bobbert.” He acknowledged Bob with a nod of his head and looked perplexed at the hoard of people behind Bob who were giggling, to him, for no apparent reason. “Stuff’s in the back.”

They trailed after Bob and their redneck tech expert. The shack looked like a hunting lodge on the inside – very well suited to its owner’s appearance – until they reached the backroom; all you could see was monitors, laptops, chords, charts, and graphs – no walls, barely any floor. A box of little technological devices was extracted from beneath one of the paper laden desks. Bob pulled out various things, recognising some and questioning others.

“Chester, you’ve done well,” Bob commented. “And BL/IND won’t find out about this, right?”

“I ‘spose,” Chester replied. “Then again, 'spose they could do. I don’t make promises.”

Gerard drew his ray gun from its holster, stepped forward and pressed it to the centre of Chester’s forehead. “You won’t be telling them anything about this.”

Chester held eye contact with Gerard and smiled a sinister grin, of which three of his teeth were missing from. “Try it, buddy boy. I c’d blow you an’ yer friends t’ pieces befo’e you even think t’pull the trigger.”

Gerard slowly lowered the ray gun and stepped back into line. He kept telling himself that he only didn’t kill him because he was protecting Benjamin, Frank, Mikey, and his friends.

Chester chuckled. “Good choice, pretty boy.”

Frank and Lauren, stood on either side of Gerard, clutched either one of his arms. They would keep him close and keep him from doing anything stupid. Only Bob knew what they were dealing with, and even then, he wasn’t all that familiar with this sort of person.

“Now,” Chester said, “Bobbert, take that there stuff, do with it what you need to, and if you get caught, don’t mention my name.”

He took a seat at the least cluttered desk where a program was running on the computer. He clicked the mouse a few times. Fiddled with some buttons. Apparently their session was over. Bob hauled up the box into his arms and gesture to the others to start walking. Mikey held the door open for everyone else as they came out after him. Gerard jumped over the side of the banister first, followed by Lauren, who jumped into Gerard’s arms, followed by Frank who also jumped into Gerard’s arms, Ray next, then Mikey. Bob passed the box down to Ray and then made his jump.

The group made their way back through the vegetation until they reached their vehicles again. Bob started setting up some of the devices in the box straight away. Gerard, who was leaning up against the Trans-AM, pulled Frank into his side and hugged him tightly. Mikey also hugged Lauren to him; he’d missed her, and he knew that she was really taking all this hard.

Ray followed Bob over to the Mustang and sat down next to him. He watched his boyfriend’s nimble fingers type in codes on his PDA while holding down buttons on various devices.

“What’s this little thing?” he asked, picking up what looked like one of those flat batteries and flipping it over in his fingers. There were four of them in total.

“Tracking device,” Bob replied. “I’ll stick one in both of the cars so we can always find each other. I’ve got two screening devices for it, so I’m going to connect them to my PDA so we have a spare in case we ever need to pair off. We’ve got to be prepared for everything.”

“Strong, smart, and beautiful – I really picked a winner as my boyfriend,” Ray smiled at Bob. He took Bob’s chin between his fingertips and tugged him in for a kiss. Softly, he said, “I love you.”

“I love you.” Bob kissed his cheek and went back to his work.

Fifteen minutes later they were back on the road. They were eagerly awaiting nightfall, when they could finally put up the tents and have a decent night’s sleep.