Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants by Goldberg, Lee (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

Sharona sighed and looked at me. “Maybe I can take those drugs instead.”

“We’ll drive,” I said.

“Does anyone have a wipe?” Monk said.

“What do you need a wipe for?”

“My brain,” Monk said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mr. Monk and the Long Drive

Interstate 5 is a straight shot down the San Joaquin Valley in central California. It is so straight, you could almost take your hands off the wheel and drive with your feet.

The scenery, like the drive itself, is monotonous and unchanging, nothing but flat stretches of baked farmland as far as you can see. There aren’t even any interesting towns or tourist attractions to visit. The only signs of civilization are the gas stations and fast-food outlets that are spaced about every thirty or forty miles.

I’ve always wondered where the people come from who work in those desolate, out-of-the-way rest stops. When I was a kid, my dad told me they weren’t people at all, but zombies, living dead who chose to serve hamburgers for eternity rather than go to hell.

I believed him. It’s not that I was a gullible kid. If you’ve seen the glassy look in the eyes of those cashiers, you’d be convinced, too. To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure he was joking.

If you obey the speed limit and only stop for gas, it’s about a six-hour drive down to Los Angeles from San Francisco. But it’s easy to shave an hour off that by speeding. The good thing about a straight drive across a 250-mile valley is that there aren’t a lot of places for the California Highway Patrol to hide, and if the drive hasn’t lulled you into a zombielike stupor yourself, you can usually see the CHP plane circling the highway long before you get into the range of their radar.

But speeding was out of the question with Monk in the car. Thank God for cruise control. I could keep the speedometer set at exactly sixty-four miles per hour. Yes, I know the speed limit is sixty-five, but it’s an uneven number and sixty-six would have made me a felon in Monk’s eyes.

Sharona and I were in the front seat of my Jeep Cherokee. Monk sat in the back, directly in the middle. That may seem like a small detail to you, but it was a big thing for Monk. Before we left San Francisco, he’d insisted that we bring a fourth person along just to make the seating even and balanced.

I refused.

“Okay,” Monk said. “We’ll just have to pick up a hitch-hiker on the way.”

“I’m not going to pick up a complete stranger just so you can have an even number of people in the car,” I said. “He could be an ax murderer.”

“Hitchhikers provide a valuable service to society.”

“You really think they’re riding along with you just so you have an even number of passengers?” Sharona asked.

“Of course not,” Monk said. “They’re doing it to get from one place to another.”

“It’s nice to know you aren’t completely disconnected from reality,” Sharona said.

“And in return for the ride, they balance your car,” Monk said. “That’s the social contract. It really took off in the sixties. All the peaceniks were doing it.”

“The peaceniks,” I said.

“You know, give peace a chance. Make love not war. Gather in even numbers,” Monk said. “Those were some wild times.”

“If you can get Trevor out of jail, then we’ll have four people in the car on the way back,” Sharona said. “Think of it as an incentive.”

Monk insisted on bringing along enough food and water for a two-week stay, along with all the clothes, bedding, dishes and silverware he’d need.

It was a good thing I had a big car.

Sharona and I each brought one overnight bag, a couple bottles of water, and a big bag of Cheese Doodles for us to share. I’m a firm believer that no road trip is complete without Cheese Doodles.

The drive was going pretty well, everything considered, until we were within a few miles of Harris Ranch, seven hundred acres of feedlots teeming with a hundred thousand cows, all of them eating and crapping and waiting to die right alongside the northbound lanes of the interstate.

You can smell the cows long before you see them. Monk began to squirm and gag the instant he caught his first whiff of those mountains of manure. It was as if all the oxygen had suddenly been sucked out of the car and he was suffocating.

“What is that?” he croaked.

“It’s a cattle ranch,” I said. “We’ll be past it in five or ten minutes.”

“I’ll be dead by then,” Monk said. “We all will.”

“Breathe through your mouth,” Sharona said.

“What difference is that going to make?” Monk said with as much exasperation as he could manage while trying to speak without inhaling.

“You won’t smell it,” Sharona said.

“Get real, woman. You can’t smell radiation and it will fry you anyway,” Monk said. “Even if we survive today, our hair will start falling off in clumps tomorrow. Pull over. I have to get my gas mask out of my suitcase.”

“Forget it,” I said. “In the time it would take us to pull over, rummage through your suitcase and get your gas mask, we could be ten miles away from here.”

Monk took a handful of antiseptic wipes from Sharona and covered his nose and mouth with them. He closed his eyes, too, to protect himself from the sight of all those cows and all that manure. I wasn’t wild about the sight either, but as straight as the road was, I still couldn’t drive with my eyes closed.

Once we were past the ranch and the smell, Monk drank about six bottles of Sierra Springs water to cleanse himself of the toxins, which soon created a new problem for him.

“We