And we're back to comedy. Thank you 13thReflection for your comment! I'm glad you like it, and it also reminded me to quit dinking around and just post XD
Enjoy!
Caution: Road Hazards
Allen fell asleep around one in the morning. Only to be awoken what seemed like minutes later when an alarm went off.
The adult bolted upright in bed, a warm mass covering his feet, eyes flitting around for the source of the offending noise. According to the clock on the nightstand, it was six in the morning.
"What the hell, Bakanda?" Allen groaned, reaching for the alarm over the pillow clutched between his arms. Tim, lying over his legs, let out a small groan when Allen's feet started jabbing into his ribs.
After the offending shrill had been successfully silenced (because, it was, like, six in the morning and he'd only had five hours of sleep), the white-haired adult noticed through bleary eyes that the bathroom light was on. As if on cue, a freshly-showered Kanda stepped out.
"Let's go, Moyashi."
"Screw you. I'm going back to bed," Allen moaned, burying his head in a pillow.
Kanda, not one to be deterred, corrected, "We need to hit the road."
"We've got two days. We'll be fine."
Allen was just starting to think he'd won the argument with his stellar logic when he heard the door lock click. "Car leaves in half an hour," The Japanese man growled.
It took Allen longer than it should have to process those words and get moving.
The Best Western in Petersburg, Virginia had a breakfast buffet. Thank God. So, when Kanda insisted they hit the road at six-thirty that morning, Allen was fortified with enough food to give him the strength to drive the remaining hours and walk Timcanpy. What the other guests were going to do for food wasn't really his problem, even if he did feel a bit guilty for cleaning the place out of their waffle batter, boiled eggs, breakfast muffins, both hash and cubed potatoes, and any sausage grilled or microwaved.
After three hours of driving, they ended up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where Allen found an open bank to draw enough cash to fund their expenses. Kanda was still required to pay for half the hotel costs and all of his food; since they both used the same bank the trip took maybe a half an hour. From there, it was the Walmart Supercenter in the same city to replace their stolen necessities. A shopping-trip that was made all the more expensive because of Kanda's loyalty to certain products way out of Allen's normal pay-grade.
He was an EMT saving up for Med school. Exactly how rich did Kanda think he was?
Rich enough, apparently, to afford two pairs of Levis, three cotton shirts, a tight-fit tank top, cloth hair ties, fancy hairbrush, and the most expensive brand of shampoo and conditioner carried at Walmart (which, Allen learned, was twenty dollars – 42.34 altogether with tax). And that didn't even include the things Allen needed. Clothing and toiletries he eventually paired down in order to save money for the bare necessities: AKA replacing snacks looted by the nefarious clowns (because, duh, food).
After about twenty minutes utilizing the Walmart bathrooms to change their clothes and brush their teeth, the two adults and dog were back on the I-95 south by eleven. Kanda was so anxious to make time that he broke the Golden Rule of no eating in the car to save half-an-hour. Something he was probably regretting upon seeing just how much of a mess Allen's speed-eating was making in the shotgun seat.
"What the hell, Moyashi?" Kanda growled, sapphire eyes detouring from the road long enough to eye the various burger wrappings discarded on the dashboard.
"wha?" Allen asked through seven fries, not even having the space to form whole words.
"Keep that fucking greasy stuff off of my dash." Kanda punctuated the statement by brushing the discarded papers from the car and back into Allen's lap.
"Whe yowa me ta pu it?"
"Your dog talks better than that," The Japanese man snapped, attention going back to the road, passing a minivan driving half the speed of turtles.
"Where do you want me to put it?" Allen finally said, enunciating each word like he was talking to a five-year-old. "Your car is like the size of a pin. You don't even have grocery sacks for trash. What do you want me to do, litter?"
"If it means keeping that greasy shit off my car," He quipped.
"In case you can't read, Bakanda, there's a 10,000 dollar fine for littering. After buying all your beauty products from Walmart, I don't have the funds to feed myself."
"Be more concerned about the dent in my car you'll be paying for."
Oh, he just had to rub it in, didn't he?
"Maybe if your gear shift wasn't such a – Whoa, watch it!"
It was mid-argument that the black sedan approached a construction zone on the I-95. Unfortunately, because of the hills and plethora of trees, neither adult had noticed traffic was at a dead-stop until they were thirty-feet from the break-lights.
Kanda slammed on the breaks, having noticed the permanent stop a moment before Allen, muttering a curse as he did so. 18-wheelers and hauling trucks that couldn't respond to the sudden dead-stop traffic were forced to drive into the berm to the right and left, veering into the grass and rocks like go-carts on speed.
The dark sedan stopped less than two feet behind the bumper of a Ford pick-up, stopping so suddenly Kanda and Allen jerked against their seatbelts, nearly losing breath as they did. Timcanpy fared no better, smacking into the back of the driver's seat with a yelp as he fell to the floor.
"Jesus, what the hell?" Kanda groused, as if there were actual traffic gods responsible for such a travesty.
Allen turned around in the seat to check on the dog. Timcanpy had all for paws braced against the floor, smashed between the back seating and Kanda's chair. "You Ok, bud?" After a head-pat from his owner, the dog was indeed Ok, hopping back onto the chair to view the action from the padded comfort.
"Forget the damned dog, Moyashi," Kanda growled. "Figure out how far this back-up is."
Allen, distracted by another semi speeding past them at fifty-miles-an-hour, couldn't even form a snappy response. If those trucks hadn't seen the back-up… and had kept going on the interstate…
God, and he thought fixing the bumper was going to be expensive.
After a few minutes of scrolling on his phone, Allen finally found an online report of the back-up. "Looks like they're doing construction further up… I guess there was some kind of accident. There aren't any lanes open yet, so traffic's being rerouted off of the nearest exit. The only thing there is a Flying J, so I'm guessing they don't have the road space for all these people."
Kanda started messing around with the built-in GPS system mounted onto the car dash, locating the exit from where they were parked. "That's… a few miles from here," he grit out, apparently imagining the bumper-to-bumper cars between them and the exit.
"Good thing we already stopped for lunch," Allen muttered, internally sighing at the idea of sitting in traffic for however long it was going to take to get off the interstate.
Still, he felt for the people who'd been caught in the accident. The report hadn't said if there were any fatalities, only that a few people had been carried off in an ambulance. Still, at least the emergency-responders had arrived – hopefully everyone got the help they needed.
"Fuck that," Kanda replied, dark eyes scanning the landscape, raven pony-tail caught in the AC vent draft.
Allen, figuring Kanda was just a little restless, put his attention to reading the bumper-stickers on the car in front of them. Sure, it would get old in a few minutes, but it wasn't like they-
"What are you doing?" Allen asked, half-concerned and half-terrified as Kanda started turning the car into the left lane of traffic.
"Getting out of here."
"How exactly do you- Kanda, watch it!"
"I can see, Beansprout," he muttered, focused on maneuvering the car's nose between another sedan and a minivan bumper.
Fortunately, no one started honking horns or shouting expletives (at least, that Allen could hear) as the Japanese man switched lanes in dead-stop traffic, not hesitating to muscle cars twice their size to make room in the adjacent lane.
By that point, Allen had figured out what Kanda was trying to do. And he did not like it.
"What the fuck, Kanda? Are you trying to get us killed?"
"Shut up, Moyashi."
"I will not shut up! There are semis passing us at over fifty in the median. Do you understand what's going to happen if we get hit by one? They're five times our size!"
Kanda, however, was in no mood to listen. His mind had already determined there was a way to keep them from sitting for hours in traffic. After the time they'd wasted shopping, he gave no quarter to Allen's protests or any potentially life-threatening situations.
All it saw was freedom.
And, Allen thought, at seventy-miles-an-hour, 'freedom' looked a lot like 'sudden-pain-followed-by-instant-death'.
Allen clutched the Oh Shit handle for dear life as Kanda pulled a U-turn in the posted no-U-turn median, sights set on the north-bound traffic. Timcanpy, who'd finally calmed down, went slamming into the door of the car with another yelp as Kanda put metal-to-metal, taking the car from zero to seventy in the space of twenty feet.
"Jesus, Bakanda!" Allen shouted as the car revved up in the north-bound lane. "What the hell was that? Tim and I could have died."
"The dog's fine," Kanda snapped, sapphire eyes not even bothering to glance at the dog who'd been body-slammed into the nearest hard surface. Twice.
"Ugh, just – a little-heads-up next time, alright?" Allen groused, checking on the dog once again. Who was trying to situate himself back on the chair, giving the car door a wary glance.
Ah, Tim. Ever the trooper.
Kanda just tsked. "Find us the right exit."
"Fine," Allen agreed, pulling up his phone's Maps App to look for a road that would take them off of the north-bound road and go south past the I-95 back-up. "As long as you split the gas money with me."
The Japanese man, more interested in getting back on the road, agreed with a grunt.
The duo, after the daring U-turn on the interstate, took the exit for a Love's travel stop. At the exit, the stopped at the gas station for bathroom breaks and disposing of trash, Kanda walking Tim (at the younger adult's insistence) while Allen continued searching his Maps App for a proper road around the mess.
Finally finding a single-lane road than ran practically all the way to the Great Pee Dee River (No he hadn't read that wrong) to merge with the I-95 just inside South Carolina, well beyond the back-up, Kanda retook the wheel.
As the large southern trees enveloped the one-lane road, cracked pavement bumping beneath them, the Japanese driver continued to break speed limits and pass tractors, quickly eating up empty stretches of pavement.
They continued on the single-lane frontage road for what was about thirty minutes without coming across the road that was supposed to take them back to the I-95.
"I'm telling you, it's supposed to be here," Allen said, scanning the roadside with his grey eyes.
"You must be reading it wrong."
Glaring, the white-haired adult stuck his phone under Kanda's nose. "See? That blue dot is us. That white line is the road. It's not here."
Kanda grunted, but otherwise quit arguing. "How do we get back, then?"
It was a valid question. All they'd seen for the past half hour were thick trees engulfed in ivy, blue sky, and chipped asphalt. No road signs, no people, no cars, and definitely no turn-offs back to the I-95. Not even a dirt-road to some farm house or cabin.
"According to this," Allen muttered, looking back at his phone, "We should come across another road soon. Wait, why are we slowing down? Did you find it?"
"No. There's something in the road," Kanda answered pensively, the car slowing from sixty-miles-an-hour (posted limit being forty) to thirty-five.
"Is that a tree?" Allen question aloud, looking at the shaded stretch of asphalt before them.
There was some kind of dark, mottled log resting in the middle of the road. It was an odd place for a tree, since there wasn't a stump near-by. And didn't trees normally fall on the side of the road, close to their stumps?
…did it look like it was breathing?
As if Kanda had the same thought, he slammed on the brakes. Thankfully, for Tim's sake, they slowed in a much gentler manner than Kanda's previous attempts, the sedan stopping fifteen feet from the road obstruction. Close enough to see the object but left with enough room to maneuver around if they had to.
Not that there was any maneuvering space. The shrubbery on both sides of the road ran practically up to the asphalt, some mud visible between the green and black. There was only about four feet on either side of the object and the pavement borders, the thing practically the width of Kanda's sedan and then some.
As they adults watched, they noticed the obstruction – which was definitely breathing – had a sharp point on the right side that looked like… a tail. The other end looked like a snout twice that size. Just visible in the shade looked like a grin to rival the Cheshire cat, carving out a jaw that when open could probably swallow Allen whole and still have room for Timcanpy.
"It's an alligator," Allen blurted, half awed and half terrified.
The Brit's dove eyes could pick out the small slits for the reptile's own eyes. Could see the rough shades created by the hills and valleys of its scales running down its back. Two stumpy legs sat underneath its broad belly, looking hardly adequate to lift an Alligator that was easily twelve feet in length.
Sure, Allen had seen them before, but never in the middle of the road. Usually it was from behind the safety of a fence looking down into a lake, and even then, the dark reptiles were maybe thirty feet away. Not right outside his car and within chomping distance should anyone need to get out for a potty-break.
"Damn," Kanda scowled like there was a cow shit on his shoes. Which, Allen thought, hardly qualified to express his sudden fear.
"Maybe we should turn back," The Brit suggested.
"I'm not turning around again because of some stupid reptile."
"Kanda, that's not just any reptile. That's an alligator. The same ones that drag their victims to the bottom of a lake and roll around with them until they drown. We're getting out of here."
"Fuck that," The Japanese man swore, gripping the steering-wheel hard enough to bend it.
"What are you going to do? Threaten it with Mugen until it leaves? That guy's too fat and happy to move for anything less than dinner. Time to move on."
Kanda blinked at Allen, eyes widening as if struck with a sudden idea. Allen, now feeling apprehensive, watched the adult pull out the Loves gas station sacks from the back of the car.
"What are you doing?" the Brit asked in vain, watching Kanda root through the sacks. The Japanese adult having decided talking was no longer necessary.
A few seconds passed, where only the rustling of plastic could be heard. Then, as if striking gold, Kanda smirked. Apparently having found what he was looking for.
Kanda's slender hand pulled out a fist-load of beef sticks.
The same ones Allen had purchased in case Timcanpy wanted a snack on the road.
The gleam in Kanda's sapphire eyes suggested he wouldn't be using them to feed the dog.
"Wait a second, you know people aren't supposed to… why the hell do I even bother," Allen groaned, scrubbing at his face.
"No idea," Kanda agreed, sadistic smirk a little too evident as he rolled the window down with child-like glee.
Kanda, sticking his fingers between his lips let out a sharp whistle so loud a few birds took flight. What followed was the sound of crinkling as Kanda unwrapped all five beef sticks, a surprisingly strong scent of meat and spices filling the air.
Allen watched as the alligator popped a single eye open. Or he thought it was an eye – could have been the shade.
Apparently satisfied to have its attention, Kanda chucked all five beef sticks out the window.
They sailed through the forest like stick-figure acrobats somersaulting through the air. Allen watched, dumbfounded, as the once-sedate reptile hefted its body onto all fours. The alligator moved faster than he thought possible as it gave a python-like waddle chase to the beef sticks.
"Holy shit," Allen breathed, surprised. That had actually worked. Of course, he and Kanda would be sent to jail for feeding gators, but… it had actually worked.
Kanda, pleased with his solution, started flooring it down the now-empty highway.
Maybe five minutes later, they finally came across the road that connected with the I-95. They'd also crossed the Great Pee Dee River in their haste; so close to the Atlantic, the river was more like the Mini Pee Dee River, making Allen think its names was given further upstream.
"Remind me never to get you a gecko."
Kanda, having successfully merged with south-bound traffic on the I-95, didn't bother taking his eyes off the road. "They eat crickets, Moyashi."
"…so are you saying you'd actually throw crickets at it, or…"
Kanda smirked. "Fuck no. I'd just run it over."
Allen, for once, found himself oddly grateful Tim wasn't a mini-poodle.
Key Largo: 11 hours
I'll try to post quick, but getting the right comedy/humor mood to write the chaps can be challenging.
Leave a review if you have time, and thanks for reading!