Chapter Twenty-Six

In which Stimpy, on the road to Revelation, reveals Ren’s real name.

At seven in the morning, having each suffered a bad night’s sleep, Lorinda and Stimpy were heading east again in the Lada. Stimpy finally broke the silence, saying: “Yeah, I’m here.” Lorinda jumped. “Right. That’s great. Thanks.”

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Bill set up a car-switch for us.”

“That’s good, I guess.” She reflected for a moment. “I like his record-player thingy. Does it really work like that? With the needle and the little bumps and everything?”

“Yep, believe it or not.”

“Amazing.”

“The latest in twentieth-century technology. Or maybe nineteenth.”

A few miles down the road he slowed and turned off at an abandoned exit ramp that led to a derelict weigh station for trucks. Pieces of the massive scale were still there, some standing, some scattered about. There was also a crumbling little structure that, before The Split, provided shelter for the civil servants who worked there. It was as if she and Stimpy had arrived at the remnants of an isolated outpost of an ancient civilization. (The Split put an end to deep-state truck-weighing, of course. Why impose such burdensome regulations on transport companies when there were no taxes or fees to be collected, and no nanny-state weight limits on commercial vehicles?) A faded-blue Lada stood next to the ghost structure. As the gray car pulled to a stop, a man and a woman jumped out of the blue car and ran over to Stimpy’s door. The man flung the door open and started hugging Stimpy before he was halfway out of the car. “So sorry, man,” the guy said. “So, so sorry.”

The woman joined the hug, saying, “We love you, Stimpy. So terrible. Bill told us….”

“Fucking hideous,” Stimpy said, his words muffled by the hugs. When he finally stepped back, there were tears in his eyes as he looked over to Lorinda, who was now standing a discreet distance from the huggers. “Margaret, these are my friends and colleagues, Popeye and Olive.”

“Hi, Margaret,” they both said.

“Please take good care of him,” Olive said.

“I’ll do my best,” said Lorinda.

“We’d better get this show on the road,” said Popeye, scurrying over to the blue car and grabbing a couple of bright plaid shirts from the back seat, lots of reds and yellows and greens. “Just to change your looks,” he said, tossing the shirts to Stimpy and Lorinda.

“Just what we need,” said Lorinda. “More plaid.”

“I left an old atlas in front,” said Popeye. “In case our great nation’s GPS network conks out just when you need it. Oh, and Bill hacked the billboard thing on this car a few months ago, so you won’t have to listen to that shit. Don’t forget your guns.”

After bidding good-bye to Popeye and Olive, Lorinda and Stimpy changed into the hideous shirts. Lorinda decided the two of them now resembled a brother-sister hillbilly country-western act her mother used to like on television. Sitting in the passenger seat next to Stimpy, on the verge of grousing about the shirts, Lorinda realized that this get-up was pretty closely related to the cowgirl duds she wore at PumpJack’s another lifetime ago. If it made her unrecognizable to cameras and government agents, they were now her favorite shirts in the whole world.

She picked up the tattered, oversized paperback atlas Popeye had left in the car. “I’ve never seen one of these,” she said, paging through it.

“It’s called a ‘book’,” Stimpy said, keeping his eyes on the road.

“Thank you, Professor Wiseass. No, I mean maps from before The Split. When it was all one big country. And, yeah, I like that it’s on paper. In a real book.” Her finger traced a line from the middle of Texas to Georgia. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

“It’s even longer than that, since we’re not going in a straight line. We need to zig and zag to stay safe. And stop to switch cars and change how we look.”

“And what happens when we get to Georgia?”

Stimpy sighed. “That I don’t know. I’m sure Bill and Hillary are sending the word out. Sooner or later someone will get back to me and tell me where we’re crossing the border and where to drop you off.”

Although Lorinda realized that of course that’s how it would happen, the words came as a gut punch. “Oh,” she said. “Right. And then you go back and help someone else.”

“Something like that,” said Stimpy, who was unsettled to find that the idea of dropping her off in Georgia didn’t sit easily with him, either.

A dense cloud of silence settled over them. Finally, Lorinda spoke: “What’s our next stop?”

Stimpy jumped on that, glad to have a change of subject. “We’re making a pilgrimage to the holiest of holies, the enclave they call … Revelation! Also known as —”

“Rapture Town!”

“You’ve heard of it!”

“Are you kidding? Of course! I’ve always wanted to go on that Rapture Ride.” 

“Well,” said Stimpy, “you might just get your chance. We’ll see how it goes.”

“Great.” She sighed. “It’ll help me get my mind off —” 

“Roger.”

“Roger?”

“Roger. That’s Ren.”

“His real name?”

“His real name,” said Stimpy. “Roger Winters. I guess it’s a little late to worry about keeping it a secret.”

Lorinda teared up. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but knowing his name, his real name….”

“I know what you mean,” Stimpy said.

Lorinda drove. The road wasn’t great. Nothing like the semi-well-maintained boulevards and streets of Perfecton. Or even Austin. The four-lane highway was pitted and crumbly from weather extremes — especially tornados, Lorinda thought — and not enough Citizens Construction Corps recruits to stay ahead of the assaults of nature. Yet another reason to Maintain the Population. The electronic billboards, mercifully silent thanks to Bill having hacked the Lada’s sound system, were poorly maintained, with lots of dead spots, and featured low-rent ads for hundred-dollar stores, pawn shops, gun shops, and personal-injury lawyers. Then Lorinda saw, popping up on the horizon, a billboard that was noticeably bigger and brighter than the others.

“Speak of the devil,” Stimpy said. “You see it?”

“That billboard? I can’t read it. I’m trying to drive.”

“Give it a minute.”

As they approached, Lorinda realized it was an ad for the Rapture Ride at Revelation. YOU’VE WAITED YOUR WHOLE LIFE FOR THE RAPTURE RIDE! it said, with an animation of a roller-coaster speeding down a steep incline and passengers young and old waving their hands in the air, with bright lightning bolts flashing above them.

“For once I wish we had the billboard sounds,” Lorinda said.

“Believe me, you don’t.”

Around the next bend another bright new billboard appeared. This one was flashing garishly colored words, in sequence, each one quickly blossoming from tiny to gigantic:

I

WILL

MAKE

MASTURBATION

ILLEGAL

Lorinda and Stimpy briefly made eye contact: Whaaaat? Then the face of Oliver M. Waldrip, the Divine Party’s candidate for CEO of the nation, filled the screen, seemingly yelling at the approaching motorists. Without missing a beat, Stimpy supplied the soundtrack, a surprisingly accurate rendition of Waldrip’s angry, guttural voice: “I have never once in my life masturbated! And I don’t plan to start now!”

Lorinda burst out laughing.

“Masturbation is the wholesale murder of precious sperm! Each sperm is a baby! A beautiful human baby who looks exactly like God! Masturbation should be called mass murder, because that’s what it is!”

“Stop!” begged Lorinda, who was afraid her laughter would cause her to lose control of the car.

“Elect me and the punishment for masturbation will be at least five years in prison — aww, hell, make it ten! — with the masturbater’s masturbatin’ hands tied behind his back! Or death! Whichever comes first!”

They passed the billboard. Lorinda heaved her final hoot. “You are really funny, mister,” she finally said.

“Monty Python, The Meaning of Life,” he said, under his breath. She didn’t bother asking what he meant by that, and he didn’t bother pursuing it.

NEXT: Chapter Twenty-Seven. In which our heroine manages not to crash the car as she learns more about CCSA enclaves.

PREVIOUSLY in THE SPLIT!

Chapter One. In which we meet our heroine and her dainty little gun.

Chapter Two. In which Lorinda demonstrates her bartending virtuosity.

Chapter Three. In which our heroine receives a promotion and prepares to celebrate.

Chapter Four. In which our heroine proves herself an immoral citizen of the CCSA.

Chapter Five. In which our heroine goes to church.

Chapter Six. In which Lorinda contemplates her future, ignores Pastor Doug, and gets something unexpected from Emmie.

Chapter Seven. In which Lorinda learns something that threatens her big dream.

Chapter Eight. In which our heroine freaks out.

Chapter Nine. In which our heroine says the forbidden word as an unwelcome visitor arrives.

Chapter Ten. In which two unpleasant men perturb our heroine.

Chapter Eleven. In which our heroine seems to have found a solution to her problem.

Chapter Twelve. In which that black truck follows our heroine all the way to Austin.

Chapter Thirteen. In which Lorinda lashes out.

Chapter Fourteen. In which our heroine gets a taste of life in the big city.

Chapter Fifteen. In which our heroine meets a fellow bartender and has a drink.

Chapter Sixteen. In which Lorinda once again takes a swing with her little pink gun.

Chapter Seventeen. In which our heroine prepares to escape.

Chapter Eighteen. In which our heroine gets in a truck with a couple of slightly scary strangers.

Chapter Nineteen. In which our heroine learns that she’s got a long way to go.

Chapter Twenty. In which our heroine spends a night in a gas station.

Chapter Twenty-One. In which our heroine learns about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Two. In which our heroine learns way too much about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Three. In which our heroine experiences liberty run amok.

Chapter Twenty-Four. In which our heroine’s escape is disastrously derailed.

Chapter Twenty-Five. In which our heroine finds herself back at the gas station.

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