Phantom Drone II

“It’s not paranoia if they really are after you,” goes the old saw. And “they” were most definitely after me. Why?

I, Dante Johnson, possessed the Phantom Drone.

This wonderous gadget was a one-person flying machine that allowed both pilot and vehicle complete invisibility for as long as the battery lasted; one hour when operating within normal parameters, 30 minutes when burdened with my larger than average size plus ample camping supplies.

The doughnut-shaped drone, which fit about the waist of the pilot, was my project; indeed, I was the Project Manager. Yet I had good reason to believe my boss wanted to hog all the credit for himself. So, I resolved to deliver the world-changing miracle to our company’s founder and owner at our international headquarters in Seattle on my own, hopefully earning a much-needed promotion in the process.

It was only three and a half hours after I acquired the drone. Having recharged the device from an unoccupied house in a newly constructed subdivision, I determined to shoot for the upper atmosphere. There, I would be well out of sight of anyone on the ground, plus even higher than planes fly so that no airline passenger would see me, nor would I be fatally struck by a huge jetliner midflight.

Knowing from brutal experience how deathly cold it would be up there, I shook up five chemical hand warmers, then placed one in each glove and boot, plus one more taped to my abdomen. Combined with my artic parka, snow pants, and snow boots, at least I wouldn’t freeze to death.

And so, latest road atlas in hand, I set out for Seattle. Soaring ever higher into the pale blue sky, I found it increasingly difficult to draw breath. The cold air stung the back of my throat, and I tasted blood. I suddenly found myself running along a suburban street on a fine, green summer day, vainly trying to catch my wife.

Matilda wore a skimpy workout outfit that exposed her muscular midriff but otherwise clung lustily to every voluptuous curve of her nubile body. I had asked that she wear long basketball shorts and a baggy T-shirt instead, but apparently, that was a bridge too far. I hated that I couldn’t catch her. The fact that she was a dozen years younger and worked out every day but Sunday, while I was far out of shape from my college football glory days didn’t matter – I was being beaten, and worse, beaten by a girl. When she slowed and turned to call, “Come on Dante, you can do it!”, I’m sure she meant to inspire her husband, but it only made me feel that much worse.

I remember complaining about how hot it was, and asking her why we couldn’t run in the cooler hours of the early morning or late afternoon like people with some damn sense. So, I was happy when it got considerably cooler, but now it was way too cold.

“Why is it so cold out here?” I shouted, for the sun, grass, and trees all advertised a fine summer day.

“What?” Matilda called.

“It’s freezing! Why is it freezing in the middle of summer?”

“Sweetie, I'm practially walking. Quit being such a big, fat lazy baby and catch up!”

“Sure babe, just as soon as I take off this motorcycle helmet.”

“Why are you wearing a motorcycle helmet for a run, silly?”

“I… I don’t know, I…”

Feathery, snow-white, icy fractals bloomed on the visor of my full-face motorcycle helmet, then spread across the whole thing like a frost fire till I could see nothing but a wall of white. Instinctively, I clawed at my face, desperate to clear my view, the frost reappearing almost as fast as I could scrape it away. My heart pounded in my ears, ugly red flowers blossomed at the corners of my vision, and I was panting, gasping loudly, I… I couldn’t breathe… Everything was growing dark…

Suddenly, I was drawing in a huge gasp just as a black, yellow-striped wall rushed at me…

“Ah!” I yowled, and wrestled back control of the drone, decelerating to a stop about an inch or so above surface, facedown. I righted myself and, adjusting the drone, alighted the soles of my snow boots onto solid ground. That’s when I realized I was standing in a mostly abandoned church parking lot, with an utterly astonished, bespectacled woman in a business suit with skirt standing open-mouthed not one meter in front of me.

I glanced around the parking lot to note that no one else was around. That made sense, as I was in a church parking lot on a Saturday. A thought occurred to me to murder the witness, but I immediately dismissed that thought as being entirely too evil for my taste. Instead, I looked that woman directly in the eye and, pumping my right fist in air, proclaimed…

“Up, up, and away!” …

…before launching myself back into the sky.

Well, it was obvious what had happened. I recalled from my high school Science classes that because gravity, most of the atmosphere is at ground level, but the further from the ground, the less atmosphere, till you get to space where there is essentially no atmosphere at all. I had flown to where the air was too thin for me to breathe, hallucinated, passed out from lack of oxygen, and then fallen back down to where the rush of air and the increased atmosphere had roused me before I’d made a crimson splat in front of a very unfortunate church lady.

The trick, I decided, was to fly high enough that I would not be noticed from the ground, but not so high that I passed out from lack of oxygen. I determined that to be 18,000 feet; high enough to avoid virtually all birds and insects, but so far below where commercial airliners fly that I need not fear being seen or flown into.

*

Without the Cloak engaged, the drone flew 60 miles per her hour for roughly 4 hours; sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. Then I had to charge it for three hours. I’m no one’s math wizard, but that’s around 240 miles every 7 hours, or a practical speed of 34 miles per hour. You’re probably thinking I could keep that cycle going 24 hours a day by sleeping the three hours the drone was charging. Well… not so much.

Flying at night was a nonstarter. For one thing, I flew high to avoid being seen, and if you think its cold up there during the day, you try that mess after sundown. But worse, for fear of becoming lost, I wimped out and abandoned my plan to shoot a straight magnetic azimuth to my destination, binding my travel to the physical road atlas instead. Without GPS, (Global Positioning System), my only way to navigate was to keep track of roads, intersections, major terrain features, and easily identifiable buildings like malls, stadiums, and in one case a waterpark… you get the idea. It goes without saying – oh heck, I'll just say it -- that these landmarks were usually invisible at night.

Each time I had to stop to recharge my drone, I turned on the Cloak over some suburban neighborhood, went low, and looked for houses for sale. Inevitably, I’d find one before running out of power. Then it was a small matter of landing invisibly in the backyard, turning off the Cloak, then plugging into an external outlet at the back of the house. Each house I used for this purpose had a conveniently fenced off back yard where I could avoid being seen.

But with night travel off the table, I needed places to stay. The first night I slept in my new sleeping bag in a public park with a public restroom. It was summer, so cold was not a problem. I hadn’t slept on the ground since Ukraine. I also wrapped up my drone and mountaineering pack in the tarp, and then tied the tarp to my leg with paracord. Good thing too, because I was awoken twice by homeless people trying to rob me; pulling on my leg as they grabbed my bundle of stuff. In either incident, they would have been more successful if they had first bashed me in the head or slit my throat in my sleep before trying to rob me, so I resolved not to sleep in public parks anymore. I also woke up studded with insect bites so… yeah.

The next night I found a cheap motel. I knew better than to book a room in the front office. Instead, I waited till some dude in a suit showed up with a woman young enough to be his daughter, if his daughter was into too much makeup and not enough clothes.

Just after the suit opened the door, I walked up and offered the guy a hundred dollars cash if he would let me use his room and take his -- date -- somewhere else. (Before I began this journey, I had withdrawn as much cash from an ATM as I could.) He agreed. I would rate the room half a star, but it was several orders of magnitude better than sleeping on the ground with a bunch of thieving drug addicts and biting insects. Plus, I got a nice, hot shower out of the deal.

I flew another 480 miles the next day and stayed at another cheap motel with the previously described method. Having become quite used to the good life via Matilda, I found crashing in a cheap motel most unappealing. But eh, I’ve had worse. Much worse. Ask the Iraqis.

*

On the third day, I dared try the magnetic azimuth thing, so I wouldn’t be bound by the roads and thus save precious travel time. It had only been two days, yet I was already sick of hanging out in back yards till my drone recharged. As luck would have it, I'd found a book on the nightstand of the motel room where I spent the second night – “Pride and Prejudice”, by Jane Austen. I’d much rather play video games or even do some ridiculous thing with Matilda and her stupid, cackling, slutty friends than read a book. But video games were not available, so it was read some dead English lady’s novel or perish of boredom.

So there I was, flying while seeking out landmarks on the ground. See, to navigate by compass, you shoot at a stationary object in the distance – like a hill, radio tower, or building -- and then once you reach that object you shoot at another object ad infinitum till you reach your goal. Eventually, I found myself over rolling, forested hills with few roads and scattered buildings. When the low battery alarm started screaming, I looked down to see nothing but forest – no buildings at all! Not good.

Fortunately, I soon spied a narrow, winding road. The road ran perpendicular to my path, which meant I had to stray from my compass heading to follow it, but that couldn’t be helped. Roads lead to civilization, and I needed a refill.

The road led to a lone convenience store surrounded by pines. As I landed on its flat, whitewashed roof, I noticed the displayed gas prices – outrageous. Apparently, this guy had so little competition he could charge whatever he bloody well pleased for his fuel. I also noticed there was only one vehicle in the parking lot – a jacked-up pickup truck with huge, aftermarket custom offroad wheels plus a giant lightbar across the cab.

The air was cool, but far too warm for an artic parka and matching snow pants – I had to shed them. I found an electrical outlet post sticking up from the roof, no kidding. Obviously, I plugged in the cord for the drone. I’m no architect, but there can’t be too many buildings with electric outlets on the roof, so I congratulated myself for my luck.

Leaving the drone on the roof along with my winter clothes and backpack full of camping gear, I climbed down a handy white metal access ladder and entered the store ringing the hanging jingle bells as I opened the door. The place was typical of its kind; aisles stocked with merchandise in bright packaging; glassed-faced refrigerators on the wall filled mostly with drinks, but also some ice cream and frozen meals. There was a commercial coffee machine and I helped myself to a taste – turns out even gas station coffee was better than the freeze-dried crap I’d bought at the camping supply store.

I noticed some distinctive things about this convenience store. For one, there were heads mounted on the wall; all broadly antlered deer save for one bison and one bighorn sheep with magnificent curly horns. The place also stocked hunting and fishing supplies, including live bait. There were tables and chairs in a separate addition, with a kitchen behind them.

I’d been eating expensive, reconstituted dehydrated camp food for only two days, but aside from the “breakfast scramble” – which is excellent, by the way – I was already sick of the stuff. So, I loaded up on snacks, bottled water, coffee in the biggest cup size they had, and brought them all to the cashier. Said cashier was a muscular bear of man, bigger even than me, with shoulder-length gray hair, a soiled white t-shirt and a long, shaggy beard à la Grizzly Adams.

“Good morning!” I sang. “I’ll take these.”

“Duh,” Grizzly grunted, and rang up my order without comment. Instead of telling me the price total, he just looked up and stared at me when he was done. I had to look at the digital display on the register to see how much I owed.

I paid cash, of course. But when I reached for the change, instead of putting it in my hand, he dramtically dumped the bills and coins on the counter in front of me.

“Get on now, boy!” he growled.

“Look here…!” I began, anger rising, when I noticed the black, double lightning ‘SS’ Schutzstaffel tattoo on his left forearm. Then I noticed his right hand was hidden under the counter. This guy was looking, no begging, for trouble!

Clearly, it was time for me to swallow my pride and walk away. But not without my snacks; I’d paid for those, and I made sure to demand a receipt so he couldn’t accuse me of stealing. His Nazi-loving ass could keep the change, however.

I could see the cashier’s murderous glare as I collected my bags and feel that same icy stare on the back of my head as I turned to exit the store. But when I stepped outside, I noticed it. Right there mounted on the exterior wall. A genuine old school payphone. The kind smartphones made virtually extinct. How had I missed it on the way in?

I set my bags of newly bought stuff down, plucked the handset off the phone and listened. Dial tone. This thing was legit!

Now that I had the means (I didn’t dare have my own phone on me), I felt an overpowering compulsion to call someone. It was worth the risk of being tracked and caught because I couldn’t bear not knowing. And so, I boldly strode back into the store and up to the counter.

“Hey!” I barked, “I need my change. I’ve got the receipt in the bag if you want to know how much you owe me.”

“You want to make a phone call?” the cashier asked.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah. I want my change, Grizzly.”

“Don’t bother with the change, son,” he told me, in a voice surprisingly calm and friendly. Further, the murder had faded from his eyes. Instead, he reached under the counter and extended an old school flip phone to me. “Vintage” the kids call them these days.

“Take this,” Grizzly explained. “Just give it back when you’re done, homeboy. Hell, take it outside if you want to talk private. I understand.”

What I didn’t understand was the sudden helpfulness from the “SS” tattooed man, but I was too desperate to look a gift horse in the mouth. I snatched the phone from him and rushed back out to the parking lot. Then I opened the flip phone and made that call.

The phone rang on the other end, and it kept ringing as my anxiety mounted. But just when I was about to despair, someone answered.

“Hot Boss?” came a familiar voice. “Is this you?”

“Molly!” I yelled, relaxing as joy pushed worry from my heart. “Thank God it’s you!”

I was elated. I figured that if Molly Maguire had access to her phone, that meant she wasn’t in prison, because prisoners don’t get to use their own phones. As Molly was as bad with money as she was with personal hygiene, I knew she didn’t have the means to make bail, so I concluded that Mr. Forbes – that would be my boss – must have followed my suggestion and bailed our Chief Engineer out from Police custody with company funds.

“Busted!”, the mousey doctoral candidate crowed. “Oh, Dante baby, I can’t wait to have you in my arms again! Once I’m back in your bed, we’re gonna do it like rabbits all night long, just like old times!”

“Molly what…?”

I caught myself. Molly was claiming to have had gone to bed with me, when nothing could be further from the truth. Despite her constant advances, I had not as much as kissed the genius engineer, much less been intimate with her. Sure, her breasts were oversized, but so was the rest of her. Plus, I wasn’t kidding about the hygiene; most of the time, the girl smelled. Besides, I’d won the lottery when I married Matilda, and I wasn’t about to trash all my carefully laid plans for anyone, much less Molly Maguire.

“Dante?” Molly continued. “You still there, boss?”

“Molly what… do you want me to do to you when we meet again?”

Molly began to describe some of the nastiest, freakiest porn I’d ever heard, and some I hadn’t. I played along, adding details and creating more fake intimate encounters. Eventually, she got to the point… where was I? I answered as well I could – with communications tracking technology these days, there was no point in lying about my location.

“But I’ve changed my mind,” I continued, making stuff up on the fly. “The Big Guy (that was the name for our company’s founder and owner) probably won’t even see a scrub like me. Plus, let’s be honest – the cops are already waiting there to arrest me before I even get a chance to give him the Phantom Drone. So instead, I’m going to take this baby on over to Ms. Sandford at the Chicago headquarters.”

Of course, the company we worked for had a subsidiary in Chicago. Already, I was planning to buy the old flip phone from Grizzly with cash and then fly three hours towards Chicago before destroying said phone. Then I would of course turn on the Cloaking Device for a bit before heading back toward Seattle.

“I’ve got to go now, Molly. See you later, kid.”

Molly broke, her tough, nasty girl façade gone in an instant.

“I love you Dante!” the engineer mewled, choking back a sob. “I love you so much. Please be careful!”

“It’s okay Molly,” I said, soothingly. “You’re gonna be okay, kid. Everything will be okay. I’ll take care of it. Goodbye for now.”

And I hung up the phone. But when I started back toward the store, a sudden realization froze me in my tracks.

I had to call someone else. I didn’t want to. But it had to be done.

I dialed a certain number on the famously indestructible antique flip phone. But surprisingly, a familiar male voice answered, “Dante, is this you?”

“Noah?” I replied. “Noah Wáng?”

Noah was my favorite neighbor in the exclusive gated community where we both lived. Two days ago, he and an FBI agent were the first people to witness me disappear via the Cloaking Device on the Phantom Drone.

Confused and annoyed, I asked “Dude, how the hell do you have my wife’s phone?”

“Dante, you must answer the next call you receive on the phone you are currently using,” Noah commanded, his voice taking on a strict, no nonsense tone. “And don’t bother calling this number anymore, because that child bride of yours paid me a mint to wreck this phone.”

“Come on Noah, you know Matilda’s not a child. Don’t go there!”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, man. As a former friend once told me, ‘Peace out, homes!’”

And the line went dead.

I took the old phone off my ear and just… stared at it. While I was trying to figure out what just happened, someone called me on the device I held. I pressed the call button and brought the thing back to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Dante!” Matilda exclaimed, with a bust of loud, harsh static. “Oh, thank God sweetie, you’re safe!”

Each word she spoke was so garbled, it was a chore to listen.

“I’m okay baby,” I sighed. “Everythings’ going to be okay.”

“Is it?” my wife snapped with sudden bitterness. “Is everything okay when you’re screwing that disgusting, bloated pig of an engineer at your job? That fat, stinking whale?”

“Matilda…”

“Here I am working out every day to keep this body a perfect 10 for the love of my life, and meanwhile my husband is off plowing my 600-pound life!”

“Matilda!” I roared, wandering around the lot with the phone next to my ear, “Dammit girl, I am not cheating on you. Despite what you’ve heard, Ms. Maguire and I are not having and have never had an affair!”

There was a pause. I was grateful for that, because the pronounced static on each syllable was really starting to get on my nerves.

“Dante, listen!” crackled Matilda.

“Let me guess,” I groaned, closing my eyes, and pinching the bridge of my nose. “You want me to come home?”

“Oh, good Lord no. Totally don’t come home baby; it’s a trap! Now this dedicated VPN is being bounced all over the world, which is why the sound quality is such crap. And don’t bother calling my number, because I had Noah take a hammer to my old phone. Sucks. Loved that phone. Anyway, do you have a pen and paper? Because I need you to follow Mommy’s instructions, and I know how you like to forget things.”

“Don’t!” I barked, feeling a familiar, exasperated rage welling within me.

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t… speak to me like I’m a child.”

“Then don’t act like one,” she sneered in response. “Look at you, yeeting away from home like some pathetic teenage runaway. Spoiled, ungrateful little brat! What, Mommy didn’t buy that new gaming console you like?”

I paused to take some deep breaths. Twelve years younger...

“Babe?” Matilda asked. “You still there?”

“I assume you didn’t call just to put me in my place,” I snarled. “What do you want, Matilda?”

“Okay listen to Mommy Dante, cause this is hella important. Like, this is it chief, no cap. You know the place where we first… well, you know… did it? I gave you my V-Card there, remember?”

“Yes Matilda, I remember.”

Specifically, I remembered it being not much fun. The girl was way too… uptight. She bled like a stuck pig and would not quit crying afterwards.

“Well, one of Isabella’s sons will be living at that place like, twenty-four seven. Get there as soon as you can, babe. Please, before they throw you in jail. The password is ‘Kandahar’. When you arrive, the contact will take you across the border to live with Isabella’s family until your lawyer and I can get all this straightened out. Do you… copy Dante? That’s it right, ‘Copy’?”

“Copy that, Mrs. Johnson. Go to designated rally point Victor Charlie, password Kandahar. I read you Lima Charlie.”

“Yesss!” Matilda crowed, “Live your best life, King!”

A horrid feeling threatened to overwhelm me. I asked my wife a question, and despite my best efforts, I could not keep the tremble out of my voice.

“Matilda… d-do you… love me?”

“Of course!” she brayed, “You’re my life, and I deadass don’t care what my parents or friends or anyone else has to say about it. I love you, Dante Johnson. You’re mine forever!”

“You’re an idiot.”

Well, “you’re an idiot” is what I tried to say, but between the unbidden sob and the overpowering static, the message was apparently lost.

“Dante, Dante!” Matilda shouted, “What was that? I couldn’t hear um… I could not read last transmission. Please repeat… I mean, say again, over.”

Blinding tears filled my eyes as I hung up. They were not tears of sadness, but rather immense frustration and deep guilt. I’d always assumed Matilda was just using me for virtue signaling amongst her peers, and to poke her controlling, racist father in the eye. But this…

How despicably have I acted! I, who have prided myself on my discernment. I could not think of Matilda without feeling that I had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.

Utterly beaten, I reentered the store and slunk to the waiting cashier.

“Here’s your phone back,” I told him, “Thanks, man.”

Grizzly flashed a wicked grin, and then he dumped the offered phone to clatter before him. Afterwards, he brought forth a hammer from beneath the counter and bashed the phone to pieces.

Composed, I calmly noted, “Um, I was going to pay you for that?”

“Burner phone. I got a dozen of ‘em. You think I’d give a monkey anything I actually cared about?”

“Dude, you take that back, or this ‘monkey’ is gonna beat you’re a…”

He interrupted by bringing a 12-gauge pump shotgun out from under the counter and pointing it at me. At the time, it looked like a 155 howitzer. Once again I was a kid, and I’d plunged through the pond ice into the freezing waters below.

“You gonna shoot me?” I asked.

“Not if you’re smart,” the bearded man replied. “See, my buddies are coming, and we’re all gonna have fun with you in my basement all day long. Then again, you look like one of them big, tough gorillas. Hell, you might last two or three days. I sure hope so.”

“In that case, it sounds like the smart thing to do is to make you shoot me.”

“How about you tell me where you stashed that Phantom Drone you stole?” Grizzly stated, cocking his long-haired head. “You know, the one I heard about on the news. Give me the drone, and maybe I let you walk right on out of here.”

I suppose I had heard them before, but now there could be no mistaking the large motors entering the parking lot behind me, outside the store. One of them came to a screeching halt.

“Looks like the boys is here. I’m way nicer than they are, believe you me. So how ‘bout you play ball there, homeboy?”

A realization hit me.

“You didn’t pump that shotgun,” I noted aloud, “Do you really keep it stored down there with a shell in the chamber? That’s not very safe, is it?”

Grizzly glared at me. I could not suppress a smile. He pumped the shotgun – clickchat! – but the instant he twitched; it was too late. I was already diving for cover behind a pyramid display of stacked cans filled with Texas chili.

The pyramid of chili collapsed with a thunderclap, but the water, bean, and beef filled metal cans were sufficient to stop the buckshot – I assume it was buckshot. Now I leapt into cover behind more shelves. I continued to run with the fully stocked metal shelves between me and my attacker…

An explosion. Another. The sound of punctured metal shelving pinged the air as food burst from torn, colorful packages to flutter through the air like confetti or spray across the floor. I kept running, but something was wrong. Despite sprinting with all my might, I was only going about half as fast as I could run trying to catch Matilda, until I dove to the floor and rolled to a stop behind a circular tank filled with beer.

“What the hell’s going on in here, Fred!” roared someone who had just entered the store. The newcomer was not alone; he was accompanied by the sound of many other feet.

“The nigger’s still here!” Fred howled. “He ran over there but aim low. I want him alive!”

World War III erupted in that store, for at least one person was firing an illegal fully automatic weapon. Near me, a display case disintegrated in a cascade of splintering glass as fountains of liquid burst from ruptured cans and cartons. But to their credit, all the holes in the wall behind the destroyed case were no more than a meter off the floor; the Nazis were all aiming low, per Fred’s “Grizzly’s” instructions.

I obviously wanted to get back to the drone, but reaching the roof access ladder would require running back through that firestorm; screw that!

Keeping in a low crouch, I ran through the stockroom and banged my right shoulder through a marked Exit. I rushed through a bit of forest and out into the road beyond as a pickup truck approached. It was a risk; that truck could easily be carrying more Nazis who had yet to arrive to Fred’s summons.

“Help!” I howled, frantically waving my hands over my head, trying to get the oncoming truck to stop. But when I quit running, white-hot pain flared in my lower right leg as if it had burst into flames. I tried to take another step, only for my leg to turn into a wet noodle and collapse me onto the asphalt in a heap.