To Pull Us From the Wreck

-1-
“Got everything?” Ray hissed, waiting by the trunk of the car parked outside the house. The two moons would have risen long ago, had they not been in the dark phase of their cycle. As it was, the scant lighting from streetlamps wasn’t close to enough to expose the operation taking place.
“This is it.” Frank replied, surprisingly quiet for once as he tossed a duffle bag from the doorway into Ray’s waiting arms. Mikey and Gerard appeared in the dark doorway behind the short man, each with a backpack slung across their shoulders, ray guns holstered by their hips. All four men wore masks, and vibrantly colorful clothing.
Frank and Gerard bounded down the steps, fighting briefly outside the driver’s door of the vintage car, before Frank slid into the backseat next to Ray. Mikey lagged behind, closing and locking the building’s door behind him, looking for a moment at the spider carved into the wood. It had been painted onto the hood of the car so everyone would know who was coming, but Mikey didn’t want to leave the Killjoys’ mark on this door. This house was for the authorities, the ones who were supposed to keep the peace but really only enforced conformity. Lately, the Killjoys had been abused to quash the unique people and traditions of the underworld, bleaching everything safe and monochrome.
Needless to say, the Killjoys were quitting.
Mikey narrowed his eyes behind his helmet, then pulled out a knife, carving a scar into the door as he chipped and hacked the bit of wood bearing the arachnid’s likeness away. He gripped the splintered carving tightly in his fist as he slid into the passenger seat, staring straight out the windshield. The other Killjoys nodded approvingly; they didn’t belong to the city anymore.
“I think it’s time to find out what’s outside the city limits.” The voice was so clear and fresh in Gerard’s mind, he almost believed he heard it. When he glanced around for a source, however, all he found were sleeping Killjoys and the soft static of a radio that would never work – music was not condoned in the underworld. Hell had been a bit of a letdown in that respect – sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll were even more of a taboo than when he’d been alive. Gerard sighed, lamenting his misfortune in death, then pressed the pedal even harder against the floor, as if the car could go any faster.
The four men took turns for days, each driving for as long as they possibly could before switching out for the next victim. The shifts weren’t always even, but they got farther faster that way. Surprisingly, Frank was the one who got them farthest, not following the curvatures of what was a road through the dust to an imaginative eye, but driving straight for the horizon as if racing to catch the scarlet sun. Outside the city, the Killjoys had found a slim ring of fields like the one Gerard had shared with Kel what felt like lifetimes ago, before the narrow belt ended and gave way to the desert.
The sand was so bleached by the strange sun and twin moons that it was nearly white, sending needles of light to blind the Killjoys as they tried not to bake in the oven that was their car. They had packed water and food enough to last a long time, as well as several cans of gas, but supplies would only last for so long.
This is more of what I imagined Hell to be. Gerard thought as he drove, the silence deafening him to the roar of the car’s engine. Endless, brutal, merciless heat, stretching in endless, brutal, unforgiving miles in every direction beneath a homicidal sun. Without thinking about it, he started humming a song that felt like home, though he didn’t remember it at first, not even the name, though the melody was like an old friend.
…I’ll let you know just how much you mean to me, as snow falls on desert skies until the end of everything… The words started coming, matching the melody. Gerard didn’t think about the words, though it puzzled him as to why they felt so familiar, so right to him. He just continued humming along, knowing that this moment of insanity was all that kept him sane. …Like a bed of roses there’s a dozen reasons in this gun, and as we’re falling down, and in this pool of blood, and as we’re falling down, I’ll see your eyes… They reminded him of something, maybe someone he’d met, but it felt like so long ago... “I think it’s time to find out what’s outside the city limits.” There was the voice again, but Gerard made the connection that time. Kel. He hadn’t thought about Kel for years. It had been years, but not much had changed. She had left, and he was forced to move on. And in this pool of blood I’ll meet your eyes, I mean this forever The song was his, the words were his, everything. It was from before, when he was still alive, still picturing life in Hell as a Demolition Lover.
-
After days of driving, the car finally gave up, coughing and rolling to a stop in the dust. Ray sighed decisively, then pulled the key from the ignition and climbed out. “I guess this is our stop; there’s no gas left.” He was followed by his fellow Killjoys, all of whom mumbled unhappy agreements that this was the end of the line for their beloved Trans Am. They collected what supplies they had left, then trudged off into the horizon, their backs to the sun.
“Are we… there yet?” Frank coughed, wishing they hadn’t finished the water so quickly. It felt like lifetimes had passed, but at most it was a day, give or take a few hours.
“Ask again… and I’ll maim you.” Gerard growled, the only one who continued to respond to Frank. Ray and Mikey had quit long ago, hoping that without a response, the short man would finally shut up.
“But Gee, I just wanna know-” Frank began whining, but was cut off when he tripped and fell flat on his face. His friends stopped and stared in surprise for a moment as he just lay facedown in the dust, then burst into laughter. Frank, however, was feeling around on the ground. “What the fuck?”
The three laughing men shut up abruptly as Frank sat up, gripping something sticking out of the sand as he spat grit from his mouth. The Killjoy winced, the hot metal burning his hand, but tugged anyway, perking up when he felt something move. Another yank, and he saw a large shape shifting beneath the dust, which only made him more eager to uncover what lay there. Gerard joined Frank on the desert floor, grabbing hold of the smooth metal and pulling with him.
“Feels like… a handle.” Gerard grunted, the two heaving as much as they could. There was a grinding noise loud enough to wake the dead, and the two suddenly fell backwards as the mass slid toward them.
“It’s a… door?” Mikey said incredulously, peering down into the hole exposed by the slab of metal. There was a spidery ladder vanishing down into the darkness, and an echoed dripping sound drifted out of the cool, moist air.
“I vote we go down.” Ray said immediately, and the others nodded, eager to escape the sun and the heat. He went down first, forsaking the footholds and holding the sides to slide down. “It’s good.” He called up, after having disappeared into the darkness for an instant. “And it’s a tunnel.”
Frank, then Mikey followed, with Gerard bringing up the rear and closing the door behind him.
The trio began a trek down the tunnel, thankful for the light cast from the core of their ray guns, exposed when they removed the barrel. The silence was broken by the steady yet faint dripping sound, and finally by Gerard.
“You know, we suck.” He said, not waiting for someone to ask him to elaborate. “We’re dead, we took off instead of trying to fix what was wrong in Hell, and now we’re fucking hiding. We’re disgusting.”
“Gee, it’ll be okay.” Mikey sighed. “We’ve gotta settle down and get a game plan together, then we can focus on fixing Hell, if that’s really what you want to do.”