Squirrels: Chapter 8: Part 02: Get In The Van

Please enjoy the next post in Murdertrout, Chapter 8 of Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels. Comments are welcome. Tips via the PayPal link to the right are also welcome but always optional.

Merry Christmas and happy reading.

Cindy Leachman tested the performance envelope of her recently acquired “News Van” in a manner that would make Chuck Yeager proud. The 1989 Ford Econoline was both a relic and an homage to a long forgotten world. In Cindy’s eyes, it was a war machine with which to fight the creeping dullness of modern life. With four on the floor, 3rd generation styling harking back to 1975, and a Gaia killing 351 Windsor V8 it was unlike anything on the road. Cindy loved it. The uninteresting puffballs that are modern vehicles might be suitable for clueless soccer moms, but Cindy still had the heart to yearn for more. And “more” was precisely what she was demanding of the aging van. It was holding up to everything she threw at it… barely. Brett, who had no complaints about modern cars, was unaware of anything in Cindy’s thoughts.

“Why does it sway when we take turns like that?” He shouted over considerable road noise.

“Because it’s a fuckin’ van!” Cindy enthused.

The beast swayed from centrifugal force as they whipped up a highway on-ramp and Cindy wondered how hard it would be to get it up on two wheels. They lurched off the ramp and into traffic where progress was slowed by an unremarkable minivan. It was driven by an unremarkable Karen who had just enough skill to keep her snooze machine between the lanes while texting. Cindy sneered as she stomped the clutch, downshifted into third, floored it, and overtook the wheeled mediocrity like a runaway steam engine about to flatten a dandy on a pennyfarthing. Brett, who was into steampunk, considered explaining the analogy to Cindy. “You see a pennyfarthing is a kind of bicycle and steam engines used to be the most powerful things of their day…” but he thought better. He liked steampunk as a theme, but was only vaguely aware of actual machines. Steampunk was imagination, not reality. Reality is where Cindy reigned supreme. Also, her views about traffic were decidedly militant. If he joked about a pennyfarthing in hopes of reining in the beast behind the wheel, it would surely backfire. Cindy would spend the rest of the trip bitching about bicycles and explaining why spandex clad nitwits should stay off the goddamn road.

The forgettable nobody driving the unremarkable minivan pointed accusingly at Cindy; as if this would somehow shame her. Cindy had no such shame. She was a real driver at the wheel of a real van and secretly believed she should be allowed to shove slow vehicles off the road… ideally off a cliff. She shouted “hang up and drive”, upshifted and stomped the gas harder.

“Shame this is injected.” Cindy explained as Brett clung to the seat. “Probably could retrofit for a four barrel carb. Wouldn’t it be classic? That would really get the party started.”

Brett understood virtually none of what Cindy said, but he was pretty sure he wanted nothing to do with any party that was started by a carb. He also resolved to never mention steampunk in her presence. Secretly, he wished he could drive like her (or at least he should know what a clutch did). Also he was afraid if she didn’t slow the damn thing down the van would shake itself to death. It swayed like a garden shed on wheels!

“Dude, we got a van!” Cindy grinned. “I wanna offer candy to children and make bad decisions! I’m gonna’ hook up a tape deck and play loud shitty music. I should be swigging a 40 right now!” Brett decided “van” was shorthand for a cult of some sort. Meanwhile he was trying to read his map, an act rendered nearly impossible by Cindy’s core philosophy of “drive it like you stole it”. Brett had carefully calculated buffer zones with likely stream characteristics and ran an intersection join on his GIS system to isolate preferable water access and boat ramps. It was a delicate navigational challenge, which Cindy was completely ignoring. He wanted to point out a necessary right turn but then judged against it as Cindy blew past the exit.

“Hey, remember that old show with Mr. T?”

Brett had no idea who this T fellow might be.

“I pity the fool that messes with my van!” Cindy voiced in a deep and rumbling growl.

Brett wondered if T was the guy from RoboCop?

“The A-Team!” Cindy grinned wolfishly. “We ought to paint this thing black and shoot stuff with machine guns!”

“Turn right here.” Brett shouted, having decided that sooner or later he’d have to get her off the highway.

Cindy downshifted, slammed on the brakes (which seemed to have no effect at all), swooshed down the ramp, thundered over a cattle guard, and came to a halt, four wheels locked, at the stop sign. Even before the bulk of the van had shifted back on center and let the aging shocks rest, she was off again. It was a dirt road, and this bothered Brett mightily. Formerly they’d been traveling at an unsafe speed, now they were traveling at an unsafe speed on a suboptimal surface. Cindy felt the need to take turns doing what she called ‘powerslide’.

“Let’s see if those Duke boys can get out of this one.” Cindy was narrating aloud.

Brett wondered if T had a brother that was a Duke?

There was a fishing access point ahead. Brett pointed and hoped to God she’d stop the beast before they were in the water. Cindy reeled it in and came to a halt in a cloud of dust. She’d generously allowed a foot to spare between the van’s front bumper and a six foot drop to the water.

In short, they arrived with the subtlety of an anvil dropping from the sky.