post 61. the adventure of the blue-pawed mountain tomcats, part XXV.

driving over the barricades with a crash i heard annis let fly a few more rounds into the night behind us. there was no return fire, there was no sound of heavily-armed helicopters and their barrages anymore, there was no more whine of machine gun-toting motorbikes; just the wind whipping through all the new holes and broken windows of the caravan we "acquired" from general taupe. i pictured him in his home, still sleeping, unaware that his minivan had been stolen, his pool had been evaporated, and i was wearing one of his pastel-slathered bathing suits while annis wore one of his wife's ill-fitting and entirely 1967 bikinis. * "are we good?" annis asked. i glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw her still hanging over the half-destroyed back seat. * "you're the one still shooting," i replied, "you tell me. how are the guests?" * i turned on the overheard light and heard her move the tomcats' cage around. "they...ah shit," she replied. "looks like...looks like we lost one." * there was nothing but the sound of the wind rushing through the perforated minivan for a while. i turned the light off and shifted gazes out the window to the left to look at the mountains and the windshield to see the moon slowly rising in front of us. annis' outline was in the rearview mirror and she sat dejectedly, her hair flying around in the wind. we drove for fifteen minutes and she came up front, slapped her pistol on the dashboard and opened the glovebox. "let's see if mrs. general taupe has a hair tie," she said, and began rooting through it. "hellooo," she said, and pulled out a small black box. "what's this?" she opened it and it was a card holder, keeping about ten cards vertically in a piece of black foam. "these are all...these are all security cards..." * "anything we need?" i asked. * "lemme...see...holy shit," she said, and turned on the reading light. "this is a black dennis card." * "what's that do?" i asked. * there was a moment before she answered. "we have to turn around," she said. "we need to go back to the base. to general taupe's house."