Dale Jenkins snored like a wild animal on the prowl. At first he chuffed in great swells of exasperated grumbles, mounting and climbing those scales of throaty growls until, as if spying his dream prey, he peaked with a gargantuan, heart-stopping roar. At the apex of this outburst, his snore would stall, his sleep engine seizing as Dale choked and sputtered. After this minor struggle, he would settle down again, and the whole process would recess for a few moments of blessed peace. Before long, the grumbles would begin anew, escalating into growling, and so on and so forth. Windows shook in their sashes, neighbors beat upon the walls, small animals wailed in the streets, and Dale always snored on in utter, somnolent bliss.

Jonah eyed the slumbering giant seated beside him in the car, and wondered how he was going to stand a whole week of being so close to that racket. Dale snored and snored, drawing deep, rattling breaths that drowned the sound of the car’s engine with their magnitude and power. Tired of the perpetual motion of this snoring machine, Jonah sighed—extra long and extra loud—but it was no good. Dale, dead to the world, as it were, sat with his arms crossed, shoulders slumped, and head resting to the left. This put the sleeping man’s mouth—that terrible instrument of throaty bellows—aimed directly at Jonah’s ear. Unable to stand one more snort, Jonah poked the sleeping beast in the ribs, mid-roar. Dale coughed and sputtered, then shifted his weight from one rump cheek to the other as he rolled away from Jonah and returned to his slumber unperturbed.

“Wake up!” Jonah shouted, and gave Dale a punch on the arm for emphasis.

Dale awoke with a start, leaping in his seat far enough to bang his head—which wasn’t very far, considering the few scant inches between the tall man’s crown and the Focus’s roof. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Jonah shrugged. “I’m just … lonely.”

Rubbing the top of his head, Dale winced and asked, “Lonely? Jesus, Jonah. I thought we were going off a cliff or something.”

“This is our first official out-of-state gig. Don’t you want to be awake for at least part of the trip?”

“I think I’m bleeding.” Dale stopped rubbing his head long enough to stare at his palm before returning his fingers to the wound. “I’m definitely bleeding.”

“You’re not bleeding, you idiot. And you’re not listening to me, either.”

“I’m listening. And I reminded you before we left that I fall asleep on long trips. You’ve been around me long enough to know that.”

“We left the house ten minutes ago. You drive longer than that for a beer run. This duo thing is never going to work if you don’t take it more seriously.”

“Band,” Dale said, following this with a wide, cavernous yawn. “Stop saying duo. We’re a band, not a duo. Duo sounds gay.”

“I said duo, and we are a duo because the word ‘band’ implies a lot more members. Not just two morons playing guitar.” Jonah lowered his voice as he mumbled, “And not very well.”

“Hey!” Dale protested. “We play plenty good between us. If you’d practice more instead of spending so much time at work, we’d be even better.”

“One of us has to have a real job making real money, or we’d be out on the street in a month.” It was an old argument, and one Jonah knew neither of them would win anytime soon. But he fell into the routine all the same. “We can’t all be professional bums.”

“I’m not a bum.” Dale straightened, ever so slightly, again a hard feat given the small space between his head and the car’s roof. “I’m a musician. It’s just hard to find work.”

“Not if you are willing to actually work. As in
work
work. As in get your hands dirty washing dishes or cleaning out toilets work.” Jonah watched as Dale yawned yet again. “Speaking of not working, why are you so tired?”

Dale looked away, unable to face Jonah as he confessed, “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Ah, truth will out!”

“And here comes the lecture,” Dale grumbled.

Thanks to the sixth sense that comes from spending so much time with a person, Dale was correct. Jonah was about to deliver a lecture, though he didn’t know why. Dale never seemed to listen or learn from the exchanges. But these little sermons tended to leave Jonah with a vague sense of accomplishment. (Either that or superiority, Dale could never be sure.)

Jonah drew himself to his full righteous-fury height. Which wasn’t much, since he was sitting. And very short. “Once a year, Dale. I only get vacation once a year.”

Dale ignored Jonah, staring out the window at the passing scenery instead. “How far are we from Nevada, anyway?”

“But instead of spending it at home like I wanted to this year, I agreed to go all the way to Reno with you.”

“Like you would have had fun at home for a week.”

“And in light of the situation,” Jonah pressed on, “I got a full night’s sleep, like a responsible person.”

“Blahdy, blahdy, blah.”

“But once again you decide to party the entire night before we leave.”

“God, don’t you ever stop talking?”

“I asked you to get some rest so we could share the driving for once.”

“Look, Carla wanted to give me a going away blow job, and before I knew what was happening, it turned into a going away fuck. Not that I’m complaining.” Dale smiled wide before he added, “Then Barbara came over and it turned into a going away—”

“Enough!” Jonah raised his hand, cutting Dale off mid-description. “I don’t need to hear the torrid details of your carousing. It isn’t like I couldn’t hear your antics all night long. The point is, you pulled an all-nighter before a trip, and now I am left to do all the driving. Again.”

“Nope. The point is, I got some pussy and you’re jealous. Again.”

“That has nothing to do with it, and you know it.”

“Make that pussies. And asses. And mouths.”

Jonah cursed under his breath and mumbled, “I swear, it’s like living with Ron Jeremy.” Louder, he said, “I’m talking about responsibility. I’m talking about follow-through.”

“I’m responsible.”

“Dale, at the grand, old age of twenty-five, the only thing you’re responsible for are broken hearts—”

“Guilty,” Dale interjected as he raised his hands in submission.

Jonah finished with, “—and unwanted pregnancies.”

Dale hissed. “Dude, don’t even joke about that. Why are you so wound up, anyway?”

“Because I’m the only one out of the two of us who seems to care about the serious stuff.”

“I can be serious,” Dale whined.

“I mean I’m the only one who cares about booking gigs and paying bills and holding a steady job and stuff.”

“I got us this job, didn’t I?”

That was true. Weird, but true. Dale, while quite enthusiastic about playing his guitar and attracting groupies and then having loads of sex with said groupies, had proven lackadaisical on the business end of things, as was his usual
modus operandi
. Then, out of the blue, he booked the pair a single night performance at a small casino in Reno. Jonah suspected there was an ulterior motive to playing in the distant city, such as the obligatory trip to Vegas when they were done with the job.

“Yeah,” Jonah agreed. “I guess what I mean is that I’m just tired of being the only grownup in this relationship.”

“Relationship? Jonah, seriously, you sound like my mother now. If I wanted to live with my mom, I’d dig her up and move into her coffin. Now shut the fuck up about it already.”

“Yuck,” Jonah said, as he stuck out his tongue in disgust. “What ugly rhetoric.”

“And stop speaking French; you know I hate that.”

Speaking French
was a code phrase, one of many the pair shared in times of distress.
Speaking French
was Dale’s way of saying that he didn’t understand a word, or a set of words, or an entire situation. It wasn’t the language of France that Dale hated. No. What he really hated was being made to feel stupid, which was an easy feeling for the poor man to achieve, because, truth be told, he wasn’t very bright. Where Jonah considered himself a little above average in intelligence, he considered Dale to have all the brainpower of a piece of cheese. (And that depended on the cheese. Some of the moldier ones had enough live cultures to give Dale a run for his intellectual dollar.)

After a few minutes of silence, Jonah nodded at an envelope surreptitiously tucked in the passenger visor, and asked, “Are you gonna open that or not?” He knew that it had been surreptitiously tucked away, because he had done the surreptitious tucking.

Dale raised his gaze to the envelope and snorted. “No, thank you. That’s why I threw it out. I thought I told you to leave it in the garbage.”

“Really? I don’t think you did.”

Which was a lie. Dale had in fact told Jonah that very thing, more than once, and Jonah heard every word. But Jonah couldn’t just leave it in the trash, because his curiosity was piqued by Dale’s refusal to open it. That, and Jonah was a sucker for all things that arrived by mail. He found mail to be a cathartic outlet for his pent-up frustrations and constant self-loathing. Ads for car dealerships, unwanted credit card offers, even chain letters—he didn’t care as long as it was something physical he could open and read and relate to. In the day and age where everyone conversed by text messages or emails, Jonah was in love with the old fashioned notion of a handwritten note. Even something as simple as a thank you card was a small treasure to Jonah, something worth saving, because it took more effort to produce than just pointing and clicking.

Eyeing the envelope again, Jonah said, “I wonder who it’s from.” He had been wondering this very same thing for three full days, because there was no return address.

“I don’t,” Dale said, as he pulled his cell phone free from his trouser pocket. “But that might be because I already know.”

Jonah hung in that empty space of verbal pause, that thin area where one awaits an explanation, hoping to receive it without having to ask for it. The pause stretched into almost a full minute before he realized there was no explanation on its way. Jonah was left to ask, “Who is it from?”

Dale spoke without looking up, concentrating instead on some mindless game on his phone. “Aunt Clare.”

“You sure?”

“I can tell by her handwriting.”

“That so?” Jonah wondered if Dale and Clare were on the outs, and, if so, why Jonah didn’t know about it. “You should see what she has to say.”

BOOK: Badass Zombie Road Trip

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