Title: The Cherry Tree Motel
Author: Dru
E-mail: Website: http/bloodstains. Rating: PG-13
Archive: Anywhere, just e-mail me first to let me know...
Summary: Following a lead on a story that promises to make them famous, proves to be more than difficult for the Gunmen. For starters, Jimmy can't read maps and then they get sidetracked helping a hitchhiker who claims she was carjacked. Langly/OC

Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists, nor do I own the state of Washington, not that I would really want to. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot.


"Umm," chewing on his lip in deep thought, Jimmy sat in the back of the old and very abused van belonging to the Lone Gunmen. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a large and detailed map fully unfolded sat in his lap. Mouthing words to himself as he allowed his finger to trail slowly over the map, following the contour of the roads.

"Well?" an impatient voice asked from the front of the van. Melvin Frohike turned his head to look back at the blonde seated in the back of the van. "Which way do we turn?" They had given Jimmy the task of reading the map and giving directions, because he was grumbling about how he wanted to help them pack up the van for their trip, in order to keep him from messing everything up they sent him out to get a map and promised him that he could navigate the cross-country trip.

"Hold on I'm thinking," he looked up at Frohike for a brief moment before returning his attention to the map that was taking up half of the free space in the cramped van. "Ah ha!" he exclaimed loudly after another few moments spent with him pouring over the map while the van sat motionless at the fork in the barren road. "Left, we turn left," his voice was full of pride like a child showing off a major accomplishment.

"Right," came the voice of John Fitzgerald Byers from the driver's seat. He pressed down on the gas pedal and turned the steering wheel to go left.

"NO!" Jimmy screamed, leaping to the space right behind the front seat. "Left, go left not right," he shoved the map in front of Byers. "Left, see?" his voice took on an urgent tone as he pointed to the spot on the map.

"JIMMY!" Byers yelled, trying not to swerve off the road while trying at the same time to bat away the oversized map. His voice was laden with panic, fearing that he would crash the van and kill them all.

"Idiot," Frohike immediately came to the aid of Byers, ripping the map from Jimmy's hands and shoving the blonde back into the rear of the van. Meanwhile both Frohike, and Byers were unaware of the danger that was quite literally right in front of them.

"AHH!" Langly screamed, being the only one in the van to see that they were heading straight for an old white Oldsmobile parked immobile by the side of the highway.

Byers's attention was diverted to his screaming friend and thus he did not notice the imminent danger. In a split second, and before anyone other than Langly in the van had any time to react, they had crashed into the car, with the accompanying screech of metal sliding upon metal. The impact sent Jimmy flying towards the front seat and nearly forced him over the seat and sprawling right into Frohike's lap. The airbags, old and suffering from lack of use, only inflated after they had hit the car, which served to increase the confusion and panic. Of course, Langly's persistent screaming wasn't helping much either.

"Umm guys, I think we just hit something," Jimmy commented, earning him glares from all three Gunmen.

"Ya think, moron?" Langly pushed his way around the airbags to get out of the van and survey the damage. "I think we're okay, we beat up that other car pretty bad though."

"You don't know a thing about cars," Frohike managed to push his was out of the car and came up behind Langly. "You can't even manage to siphon gas without nearly killing yourself."

"I have a delicate stomach." he protested, moving out of the way to allow Frohike to see the damage done to the two vehicles.

"We're fine. The Oldsmobile, though, is banged up pretty badly." the shorter man announced, walking back over to the side of the van.

"That's exactly what I said." Langly proclaimed indignantly. Seeing Frohike climb back into the van, he reluctantly followed; coming up to the side door and grumbling the whole way.

"Let's go then," Frohike ordered, sliding into place in the middle of the front seat.

"Yeah, we should get moving before someone comes along and finds us," suggested Langly as he turned back to see Jimmy. "And there's no way we're letting you read the map either,"

"What? Come on guys, please?" he held on possessively to the map, like a child refusing to share.

"No way. You almost got us killed. Give me the map," Langly reached into the rear of the van, grasping a corner of the map with his long fingers. Stubbornly resisting, Jimmy kept a hole of the map. He tried to pull it back and out of Langly's grasp. With a soft ripping noise, the section of the map that Langly was holding tore away and took a sizable amount of the map with it.

After studying the map for a moment, "Jimmy!" he exclaimed, accusingly. "This is a map of Wyoming!"

"Yeah," he said, as if it was obvious and Langly should have known all along. "We're in Wyoming,"

"No, you moron. We're in Washington!" by this point he now was nearly ready to throttle the blonde.

"I thought we lived in Washington," Jimmy was becoming very confused now.

"No, we live in Tacoma Park, which is NEAR Washington D.C., which is not Washington state. It's on the opposite side of the continent from where we are," he ripped the remaining part of the map from Jimmy's hands and threw it out the window. It floated lazily to the ground, coming in contact with it only after it had blown into the surrounding forest and out of sight.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, offended. "What did you do that for?"

"That map was useless! We're not in Wyoming, we're not near Wyoming. A map of Wyoming isn't going to do us any good!" Langly was nearly hysterical now, Jimmy having nearly pushed him to the boiling point.

"So the blockhead over there has been giving us directions from a map of Wyoming?" Frohike asked in an incredulous tone, the question directed at Langly. "That means we're completely lost," he sighed, exasperated. "We'll never make it to Seattle in time to meet our informant,"

"Calm down, Langly, Frohike," the ever level-headed one, Byers, spoke in a calming tone; trying to soothe the two boys. "We'll just drive to the nearest town and ask for directions there," he suggested. "After, of course, we report the crash,"

"Byers, we don't have to do that," Langly complained. "No one will know it was us,"

"Yeah," Frohike spoke up. "Besides, we can't afford the repair costs that we would have to pay,"

"It doesn't matter, it's the right thing to do," Byers replied, his tone showed that there was no way that he would be persuaded on this.

After getting the two other Gunmen to reluctantly agree, they backed up onto the road and drove off to find the nearest town where they could use a phone and get a new map, of Washington this time. Still, they didn't leave before Langly could get the last word in.

"Why'd we ever let him give us directions anyway?"


Tiredly Rebecca Morris forced herself to move forward on the side of the bleak highway. No cars had passed her in the last twenty minutes, and she was pretty sure that it would be a while before any more came. She wanted more than anything to simply sit down and rest for just a moment. She forced herself onward though, she knew that if she stopped to rest a moment would become minutes and hours and would waste too much time. She did not want to be out here after dark, although the setting sun made that possibility more and more likely. Even so, the next town couldn't be that far away, although she had been telling herself that for miles she wouldn't give up. Soon she would come upon some small town where she could rest and get some food.

Food, her stomach grumbled at the very thought. The last thing that she'd had anything to eat had been breakfast, and now the sun was starting to make it's descent behind the tree tops; reminding her just how long it had been since she had eaten. At this point she was even considering hitchhiking. Being a consseiur of psychological horror novels she knew just how dangerous it was to hitchhike, and she had turned down what appeared to be a nice elderly couple who had offered to drive her to the next town a couple of hours ago.

Sometimes she wished that she had just left all those Mary Higgins Clark and Lisa Scottoline books alone and gone to read some nice safe J.R.R. Tolkien, even though she had to admit she found those Lord of the Rings books incredibly boring. Still, how scared could you get of stumbling across some orcs in southern Washington? Now crazy serial murderers, that seemed so much more likely.

Having to walk miles upon miles; she had figured that even if she had a way to keep track of them she would have lost count by now, was making her seriously consider just hitching a ride with the next car that stopped. She doubted that even a hockey mask and chainsaw would keep her from getting into a car, although she may have been exaggerating that just a bit; she still was paranoid, exhausted but still slightly paranoid.

Then her ears picked up the faint sound of a car engine, then a blue van came into view and Rebecca silently prayed that it would stop. Even as she prayed for that, a heated argument was going on inside that very same van.

"We have to pick her up, Frohike," the calm voice of Byers interrupted the protest of his friend.

"We can't pick up a hitchhiker," he continued once Byers had stopped speaking. "Who knows she could be psycho and ready to kill us,"

"Don't you think you're being overly paranoid?" Byers asked, pulling over to the side of the road where she had stopped walking. "She probably owned the Oldsmobile we destroyed, it's the least we could do. Plus we're supposed to help people, remember?"

"If she turns out to be some mass murderer like in that movie Kalifornia, I get to say 'I told you so'," Langly warned, unhappy with the turn of events. Even as he said those words, Byers was ignoring the both of them and had already rolled down the window to talk to the girl.

"Car trouble?" he asked, leaning out the window a bit as he adressed.

"You could say that," she replied with a half laugh, like it was her own private joke that no one else would get.

"Would you like a ride to the next town?" Byers asked calmly, ignoring Langly and Frohike's sulking.

"Sure, thanks," she smiled, relief showing in her voice.

"There's a door on the other side, there's not much room but the next town can't be that far away," Byers smiled back politely, knowing that she would probably be furious once she found out that they had totaled her car.

"Okay," she walked over to the side of the van and quickly, so she didn't have time to change her mind and decide that this was probably near-suicidal, climbed inside and sat down on the floor next to a blonde guy. Almost as soon as she entered the van she began to have regrets. First of all she had just willingly climbed into an old and decrepit van driven by a guy who seemed way too polite, and had three other male passengers one looked like that some guy from Wayne's World, another looked like the poster boy for dirty old men, and the other one looked like a smiling baboon. And if that wasn't enough to make her feel like she was walking into a death trap, the inside of the van was filled with all sorts of things that did who knows what.

"So what's your name?" the one wearing the suit asked her.

"Rebecca Morris," and as soon as those two words left her mouth she wished she had given them a pseudonym. Of course, it probably wouldn't matter if they knew her real name or not they'd probably kill her anyway. She began to feel more comfortable remembering all of her self-defense classes and the fact that none of them seemed particularly strong. A few kicks to the groin would take care of them she figured, that was if they tried anything funny.

"I'm Byers. This is Frohike," he pointed to the one the dirty old man. "that's Langly," and he gestured to the guy with very long hair "and that's Jimmy," he pointed to the blonde sitting right next to her.

"Nice to meet you," Jimmy said, holding out his hand for her to shake and grinning. She couldn't help but wonder if his face was stuck like that or if he was just really polite.

"It's nice to meet you too, Jimmy," she replied, smiling and taking his hand. He struck her as a big dumb oaf, probably strong but harmless.

"So what happened to you, Rebecca?" Byers asked, pulling back into the road and driving once more. "We saw an old white Oldsmobile by the side of the road a while back, is it yours?"

"No, it belongs to the bastard who carjacked me," she replied, angrily. "He was standing by the side of the road with his ugly old car so I decided to stop to help him. Do the whole good Samaritan thing. So, I get out of the car and go over to help the poor guy. When he shoves me to the ground, and jumps into my car and drives it away,"

"That's awful," said Jimmy, looking very sympathetic. Then that smile returned "But hey if it will make you feel better, we crashed into that car,"

"Really?" she asked, incredulous. "Too bad he probably will never come back to it, still it's a good thing," she smirked, putting her hands behind her neck and leaning against the side of the van. "Too bad he took off with all my stuff still in my car,"

"What were you doing out here anyway?" Langly asked, jumping into the conversation, figuring that it would be more fun than just looking out the window.

"I just got fired from my job. And since I've decided to take some time off before I go searching for a new one, I'm doing this thing I saw in a movie once. Take two thousand dollars and my car and see how far I can get before running out of money," she crossed her legs and dropped her hands back into her lap.

"That sounds awesome," Jimmy smiled and got kinda of a daydreamy look. "I'd love to do that, nothing but me my car and the open road,"

"You make it sound like such a romantic idea. Truthfully, that's what I thought at the time too," she gave another kind of half laugh and smiled. "It's been such a weird time, but it has been fun. Just not in the way I'd imagined it. Of course, up until the point that my car got stolen,"

"When we get to the next town we should go to the police station with you. I got the license plate of the car that your carjacker was standing by. Maybe they could use it to track him down, or the person who he stole that car from if it's not his," Byers offered from the front seat.

"That'd be fine," she sighed. "I really hope they find this guy,"

"They, you don't need the police. I can track 'im down quicker than anyone," Langly offered, turning around to face the back. "I am an expert computer hacker after all,"

"So we're boasting now? Well then, I guess it's my turn. I'm a writer for the L.A. Times," she smirked, pulling her unruly black hair into a pony tail.

"Liar," he accused, leaning over the seat a bit.

"Okay, maybe just a bit. I was a writer for the L.A. Times. I just got fired, remember? From my little story," she sighed, weary from walking hours and hours and from the lack of sleep that came from lying awake in uncomfortable hotel beds.

"I don't believe it," he stated, his voice still accusing.

"Oh, really? Which part the getting fired, or the me working for the L.A. Times?" she asked, unbuttoning and taking off what looked very much like a plaid shirt that a lumberjack would wear to reveal a white tank top.

"You never worked for the L.A. Times," his voice was once more in an accusing tone.

"You wanna bet?" she asked, challenging him.

"Bet what? Some carjacker ran off with all your stuff," he earned an eye roll from Rebecca.

"I thought you were going to track him down," she smirked, toying with him was becoming increasingly more fun.

"I am, and then we'll find something to bet," he said, not even noticing that she was messing with him.

"Whatever you decide to bet I'll win. I did work for the L.A. Times," she folded up her shirt and put it in her lap.

"The next town is twenty miles away," Byers announced, looking at a passing green sign that stated that fact.

"At last," Rebecca said, relieved that soon she would be rejoining civilization, or whatever came pretty close to it.

After what, to Rebecca, seemed like an eternity of waiting, the van pulled in to the parking lot of a diner with it's name on the top of the building in neon lights, 'The Cherry Tree Diner'. She almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of the name, and idly wondered if they grew cherries in Washington. That would be rather ironic.

"We probably should get something to eat before we find the police station. Plus someone at the diner will know where exactly it is, so we don't have to waste time looking for it. And I bet you're rather hungry" Byers offered, once again demonstrating his level headedness and common sense.

"Sure, as long as you guys are buying, I don't have any money remember?" she smiled, opening the side door and practically leaping out of the van and onto the cracked asphalt that covered the small parking lot, glad to be out of the confines of the old van.

"Of course we're buying," Jimmy announced, pulling his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. "It would be carol to force you to watch us eat,"

"What? Carol?" she asked, not fully understanding what he said.

"You know carol, like carol and unusual punishment," he said, climbing out of the van after her.

"Do you mean cruel?" she guessed, wondering if she had underestimated his stupidity.

"Yeah that, cruel. I was close," he tried to make up an excuse.

"Close, yeah right. About as close as Wyoming is to Washington," came the amused voice of Langly.


It's amazing how much things can look up after only a meal. Rebecca was feeling much better about her situation now, having a plan on how to deal with her carjacking that didn't consist of walking around until finding a town and somehow calling for help. Her new one, she figured, was much better. At least she had the license plate number of the car he'd been driving. It didn't surprise her that that piece of shit car had broken down, just look at the thing! It was practically falling apart, he had to have been really desperate to steal that, or maybe that was his car and he was just waiting for some kind person to stop so he could attack them.

She sighed, resting her elbow on the table and placing her head in her open hand. At that moment in time it was a struggle to stay awake, she had nearly fallen asleep in the van on the way here several times. Although she was extremely tired, she didn't exactly want to reveal that to anyone, wanting to get to the police as soon as possible and not wanting the unneeded comments on how tired she looked.

"Ready to go?" Byers asked, jerking her out of her reverie and back to reality.

"Of course," she replied, sliding out of the booth and waiting for everyone else to come out as well.

"I'm just going to ask for directions to the police station," he stated, walking over to the counter to speak with a waitress.

"And I'm going into the van to see if I can find that car first, before we even get to the station" Langly said as he walked out the front door and out into the dark parking lot.

"I'm assuming that it's a race," she said to no one in particular, since Jimmy had gone into the van with Langly and Frohike was hitting on the waitress that Byers was asking directions from. Rebecca figured that she might as well go watch Langly hack into-well she didn't know exactly what he would hack into, maybe the DMV database. She was pretty good with computers and other technologies, but she was in no way technosavy.

Stepping out of the diner and into the parking lot, and involuntary shiver went down her spine. The sun had long since gone down and the temperature had dropped significantly. Untying what Langly had dubbed her ugly lumberjack shirt, she pulled it on and methodically buttoned all the buttons, save the top and bottom ones. As she pulled her hair out from under the shirt, she heard someone slam a car door.

Ignoring the sound, she made her way out into the middle of the parking lot and started to head out to the corner where they had parked the van. The parking lot only had one streetlight to provide light giving the parts of the lot that weren't illuminated rather dark. Still, she could see a sliver of light from the crack in the van's side door so she had a target and wasn't just fumbling around in the dark.

Walking towords the van, she saw a very familiar car. It was the same make and model as her own, but hers was a rather common car so she figured it could just be a coincidence. That is until she noticed that it had the same liscence plates as hers, and she realized that this was her car. She gaped at it for a moment and then saw a man standing beside the car, not just any man but the one that had shoved her to the ground and stolen her car.

"You bastard, give me my car back," she came up right beside him, fuming with anger.

"Like hell, bitch. This car is my ticket to Hollywood," he was so calm and collected, confident to the point of being cocky. The fact that he was so sure that she couldn't take her car back from her only served to make her angrier.

"No, it's my car and I will scream and have everyone in that diner come running out here and calling the police. Unless you give me the car back," she figured dealing with the police would cause more trouble than she really wanted and would only delay her even more.

"No way am I letting you keep me from becoming a movie star," he lunged out and grabbed her wrist pulling her towords him and covering her mouth with his hand. "Like ta see ya scream now," he laughed, as if it was somehow hilariously funny. And then he nearly yelled out in pain as she bit down on his hand, hard, with her teeth. Rebecca tried to get out of his grasp, pulling her arm away from him, but was unsucessful.

She stomped on his foot, which got him to release her wrist and she whirled around and began to run away. "You're not getting away that easy," he snarled, leaping forward and tackling her to the ground. "You know you're pretty cute for an old hag," he commented. He was straddling her, using one hand to cover her mouth and the other to pin down her wrists above her head.

In one fluid movement she brought up her knee and slammed it between her attacker's legs. He yelled out in pain and rolled off of her, whimpering and curling up into the fetal position. "Take that bastard, and 28 is not old," she mumbled the last part, almost as if to reassure herself of that.

Hearing the man's scream Jimmy rushed out of the nearby van and into the parking lot. He stopped dead in his tracks, seeing the man curled up into a small ball and whining. "What happened here?" he asked, grimacing as he thought of why the man would be holding his crotch and whimpering in pain.

"That," she pointed at the man lying on the ground, disgust evident in her voice. "Was the man who stole my car. He attacked me,"

"Remind me to never make you angry"


After getting things sorted out with the police, Rebecca figured that she should be dead tired. The truth was that she really wasn't at all. Fighting with the guy that had stolen her beloved car, he had turned out to be some guy from Kansas joyriding across the country, had sent a surge of adrenaline rushing through her system and kept her from getting any sleep. She didn't even feel like lying down at all. It was hard to believe that she had been so tired just a few hours earlier.

Because she really didn't feel like lying in her hotel bed, after the whole police ordeal she and the Gunmen had checked into the Cherry Tree Motel which was conveniently located right next to the Cherry Tree Diner go figure, she had decided to sit outside on the little concrete slab that separated the line of motel rooms from the parking lot. The night was getting even older and cold concrete was seeping in through her jeans making her butt numb, not that she really minded all that much.

This far away from a city you could see many stars, like pinpricks of light adorning the night sky. She was so absorbed in trying to find a familiar constellation that she didn't even notice when someone came out of the adjoining room and sat down next to her.

"What'cha doin?" the familiar voice of Richard Langly brought her mind out of the clouds, well to be correct stars, and back down to planet earth.

"Looking at the stars," she turned to smile at him, her elbows resting on her knees which were drawn up to her chest. "You can see them so clearly all the way out here,"

"Yeah, you can. It's not like back in D.C.," he looked up at the stars, noticing how many there were.

"D.C.?" she asked, mildly surprised. "So that's where you guys are from,"

"Tacoma Park actually, but it's close enough," he continued to gaze at the stars, seeing a few constellations he remembered from his 9th grade science class, like Cassiopia and Ursa Major.

There was a moment of silence, not the uncomfortable kind but the kind that happens when two people are both absorbed in the same thing and neither of them feels like talking. Of course, that usually changes.

"I like your hands," she said, as if it were the most casual thing in the world like commenting on the weather.

"Wha?" Langly wasn't exactly sure that he had heard her right.

"You have long fingers, like a pianist," she commented, holding out her hand. "See my fingers are so short,"

Langly brought his hand up to compare to hers. Sure enough his fingers were about an inch longer than hers. She smiled, knowing all along that she had been right. It really was such a trivial thing, but it still made her smile.

"Ow," Rebecca recoiled when their fingers collided, causing a spark, more out of surprise than actual pain.

"You're electric," he smiled, pulling his own hand back as well.

"Better watch out then," she smirked deviously, standing up and turning back to go into her motel room. "Well, I better get going,"

"'Night,"

"Goodnight,"

The sunlight poured in through the window adjacent to the bed, regardless of the fact that she had drawn the curtains the night before. They were flimsy and didn't block much light at all. Yawning, but feeling refreshed after the short night's sleep that she had managed to get, Rebecca sat up in bed and glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table. The red numbers flashed- 12:45! Nearly one o'clock, she jumped up shocked that she had slept in so late. She must have been more tired than she thought.

Sliding off of the bed, her bare feet hit the soft carpet without a sound and didn't make that much more noise as the walked over to the window. Pushing aside the drapes she noticed, slightly sadly, that the van belonging to Byers, Frohike, Jimmy, and Langly was missing. Of course it would be missing, they had left hours ago. It was nearly one o' clock in the afternoon for heaven's sake. They could have slept in ridiculously late and still be miles away.

Still scolding herself for sleeping in so late, she began to pack up her things to prepare to return to L.A. in the morning. She figured nothing could top this adventure, she still wished she could have said goodbye to the guys though.


The end, but this is just part one in the series, which is unnamed as of yet.

Will write for reviews!