I was halfway to Boston when I got carjacked. I had just crossed into Virginia from North Carolina. It was four in the morning. The last Starbucks mocha grande had worn off and was only keeping me awake by pressing on my bladder. Even that wasn't working so well. There wouldn't be more Starbucks until Richmond in an hour, two before they opened.
That damned extra hour. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have been in this mess. Ok, that and if I hadn't been driving my wife's car. Which I wouldn't have if it weren't for Homeland Security. Who says irony is dead? I think that lot has made it into an art form.
It started at the airport the day before as we were checking in. My wife had decided she wanted to surprise her parents for the holidays this year. A white Christmas in New England? That's what the Weather Channel was promising. As I was finding out hour by hour, nothing about this trip was working out as planned. My idea of the spirit of the season was me, my recliner, my X-Box controller, and a freshly minted Fallout 3 apocalypse to explore in 7.1 Dolby surround and 46 inch high-def plasma with only a bottle of 40 year-old Napoleon brandy as a companion. Needless to say that wasn't going to happen, so we compromised. I would fly into Boston instead of Hartford, rent a car and drive to meet her at her parents' after spending a day or two exploring Quincy Market with my aunt. My wife had it all arranged, at least in her mind. The details she left up to me.
The best we had been able to book with our frequent flier miles were flights that left just far enough apart to make it impractical for me to drop her off and return home until my departure. Instead, I would have several hours to kill in the airport, perhaps bouncing back and forth between the espresso bar and brew house until my blood chemistry had achieved the optimal balance necessary for holiday flying, somewhere between three and four shots of each.
We were running late that morning at the airport, so we rushed her through check-in and sprinted toward security with barely a spare moment for a "love you" and peck goodbye. When she boarded the tram to take her to her gate, she was beaming, almost radiant at the prospect of going home and spending the holidays with her family. I suspected it was the overactive airport AC that had brought the color to her cheeks, but that image of her happiness stuck in my mind. How could I ever have thought of denying her? That sentiment soon became my undoing.
I decided to check-in before beginning the ritual of hopping from line to line until the alcohol and caffeine had come into a perfect state of equilibrium most conducive for take-off. While I had been blinded by twinkle in my wife's blue eyes at the checkpoint, she had dumped all the presents we were carrying north on me without my noticing. As I turned to go after watching her angelic smile fade in the distance as the tram pulled away, there it was at my feet, the huge bag brimming with gifts, my new, and quite sobering, responsibility. That was only the first of a series of unplanned events.
Next, the automated kiosk wouldn't check me in. A cute ticket agent dressed like one of Santa's elves, complete with green tights, miniskirt and a pointed red cap, came by, referenced her own terminal, frowned and asked for my ID. Then next thing I know, I'm being bum's rushed by four of the burliest Santas I've ever seen.
Their idea of getting into the Christmas spirit. Imagine the cast from "Conan the Barbarian" decked out in red felt, faux fur trimmed Santa suits, their badges and Glocks strapped to the extra-wide black vinyl belts, acting as if I'd just broken into their tower, stolen their gems and killed their pets. For several minutes, all I saw was Coca-Cola red. By the time I was done coughing up white synthetic fur from breathing through the sleeve of the whichever jolly fellow had me in the chokehold, I was handcuffed to a chair in a steel-line broom closet somewhere off the main terminal, thinking I was about to cash in my round-trip voucher for a one-way ticket to a sunny resort in southeast Cuba and an all expenses paid winter vacation courtesy of the U.S. Government while the security Santas tore into the presents like a mob of angry children in a Yuletide version of "Lord of the Flies."
After a brief interrogation complete with a holiday rendition of the classic Good Santa, Bad Santa routine, everything was sorted. No, we didn't make a mistake, sir. There was just a minor clerical error regarding your driver's license number, middle initial, date of birth and country of origin. Yes, we are ninety percent confident now that you are a U. S. citizen just like you said. Sign this classified non-disclosure waiver of liability and you're free to resume your travels. No, it shouldn't happen again on your return flight. But you might want to arrive four hours early, you know, just in case your name doesn't get cleared from the list in five to ten business days. I'd avoid all airports until then. Happy Holidays and have a nice trip.
By the time I had cleaned the fingerprinting ink out of my hair, my flight was in final boarding. Only one problem: I no longer had a ticket. While I was MIA in the bowels of the airport, the airline had given away my seat. We'd be more than happy to rebook you, right after the blackout period for your frequent flier miles. How does January 8th sound? Certainly, I can get you on this flight, as long as TSA unlocks your credit card in the next five minutes. Oops, it looks like your seat has already gone to standby customer. All we have left is first class. You don't have cash, do you? Of course, you can talk to a supervisor. She'll be in first thing in the morning.
The next thing I knew, I was behind the wheel of my wife's SUV in long-term parking, dizzy and slightly disoriented from the lack of much anticipated stimulants and depressants packaged in delicious chocolate and amber beverage form, picturing my next phone call shattering my wife's cherubic happiness. In that post-traumatic adrenal hangover I was struck by a way to salvage this less than perfect holiday.
Back in college, I had once driven straight through to Boston. Ok, it had been middle school, and I had ridden with someone else. But I remembered it had taken just over 24 hours. I used to pull all-nighters during finals. The speed limits were higher now. The weather was supposed to be clear until the day after tomorrow, giving me plenty of time. Gas prices had fallen so it'd be cheaper than flying with same day prices. If I hit the road now, I'd arrive before the next flight arrived, if I could catch one. And I'd still have time to rewrap all the presents before I headed across the Mass Pike. I had procrastinated on talking to my aunt, so she only knew that I'd call sometime tomorrow. Like every convicted felon says at the news conference just before he goes to jail, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I should have written the day off to karma and returned home to the holiday scent of newly unwrapped game disk. But I knew my wife would think I'd somehow arranged my misfortune to duck out on a family gathering. After last year's debacle, I would do anything to maintain our current marital détente.
So here I was twelve hours later, just crossing into Virginia. The interstate seemed to stretch out forever, at least that's how long it seemed to take for each mile to pass by. A pair of shadowed sneakers with no feet in them had just run across the road in front of me, jarring me into paranoid alertness long enough to spot the "Virginia Welcomes You" sign advertising an all-night rest area two miles farther on the right. I was ahead of schedule so figured I could afford an hour or so to sleep off the hallucinations before continuing on my way.
I whipped into a spot on the back side of the restrooms. I had barely set the parking brake before I was out the door and scooting for the side marked "men." After the blessed relief of making room more Starbucks, I strolled back toward the car, with a quick detour to peruse the vending machines, confirming that I would be better off waiting until Richmond for breakfast. Nothing in the slots looked comparable to handcrafted hot oatmeal with fruit and nuts and brown sugar that I knew would be waiting in the hands of my incomparable barista.
As I approached my wife's SUV, I noticed the moon was bright and just past full, giving the grass between the spreading oaks the look of freshly fallen snow. My breath steaming in the brisk air only added to the illusion though the sky was clear and full of stars. The place was peaceful and deserted. It was the Friday before Christmas so the holiday travelers wouldn't take to the roads until at least tonight. The only activity was in the truck parking area a hundred yards away where two USPS semis and a FedEx long-hauler were catching what rest they could before their frantic delivery schedule resumed.
I had just crawled back into the car and reclined the seat when something startled me back awake. I'm not sure whether it was a dream or a noise but in my sleep deprived haze I was convinced it was the sound of ice ricocheting off my windshield. I snapped forward, nearly slamming my forehead into the steering wheel. I shook my head to try to focus. It was still dark, so I hadn't been out very long. As my vision cleared, I saw a stocky boy in front of my car, just standing there, staring at me.
I rolled down the window and called to him, "Are you ok, son?"
Nothing, he just kept staring, kind of like that kid in "The Shining." No, I was just paranoid and exhausted. I unlocked the door and swung my feet out. "Are you lost? Where are your mom and dad?"
Just as my feet hit the pavement, a gang of children swarmed around the car from the front and behind. Before I could scramble back to the safety of the front seat and the cell phone charging in the lighter, I felt a gun press against my left kidney. "Don't move, stretch, unless you want to pee through a machine for the rest of your life."
I had no idea what that meant, but with my bladder still trying to relax after four hours of coffee torture, he had my full attention.
"Now, unlock all the doors and get behind the wheel, slowly." His voice was deep and gravelly, kind of like Pigpen from "A Charlie Brown Christmas," not at all what you might associate with a kid. "Keep your eyes front and your hands in plain sight, beanstalk, or they won't find your body until the tundra melts."
I flicked open the master lock switch and eased into the driver's seat, placing my hands at ten and two on the wheel, just like in driver's ed, hoping this was just some childish prank. "I don't have much money, but there are some Christmas gifts in the back. Take them and I'll forget this ever happened."
By then I heard the other three doors open and kids were piling into the SUV, thumping and bumping like a herd of cattle making its way through the slots of stockyard. "You think we came for your merchandise there, Sasquatch?"
"Well, there are some pretty cool toys. And chocolate. Good stuff. Ghirardelli."
"You got it all wrong, Abominable. We don't want your stuff. Everybody in?" Grunts of assent resounded all around me like a troop of baboons at Busch Gardens. "Gun, secure that cell phone."
"You got it, Sig," another strange voice beside me replied, like Froggy from the Little Rascals. What kind of kids were these? I heard rattling noises of the charger being unclamped and the cord wrapped up.
"What do you think, Hagan," the one I thought was Sig asked another companion. "Will it all fit?"
A new baritone voice from the back seat responded, "Just barely. We have to ditch some of the junk back here."
"Ok, Yeti," Sig said from between the seats. "You can relax. We don't want your money or your stuff. All we need is a ride and a few hours of your time. Hell, it might even be on your way."
"You want the car, take it," I said. "It's my wife's, anyway. Just drop me where I can call my insurance company in an hour or two."
"Take a look around you, troll. Does it look like any of us is going to drive this monstrosity?" I slowly turned my head. What I had mistaken for children all had thick, bushy beards, except the one who had been standing in front of the car initially. None of their heads came more than halfway up the seats.
"You guys are all little people," I said in astonishment.
"Are you some kind of moron?" Sig asked, waving his pistol in front of my face. "We're dwarves, not 'Little People.'"
"But I thought that was the what you liked to be called," I protested.
"You're not the fastest car on the track, are you?" said the one sitting in the passenger seat, Gun, I think. "We're Dverger. Dwarves, not dwarfs."
"Why do we always get the ones with IQ's short of the highway numbers?" grumbled a new voice behind me, a dwarf with a sharp nose.
"At least, we're on the East Coast." Hagan added.
"Dwarves? You mean like Tolkien?" I started putting it together.
"Tolkien was a hack," Sig snapped back. "The only thing he got right was that we don't like elves. Think older and more epic."
"Wagner?" I asked. I knew all those classic graphic novels I read would come in handy some day.
Sig shoved the gun into my eye. "You calling us Nazis, there, Cyclops?" All the other dwarves froze.
"Whoa, whoa, no way man." I protested gripping the wheel as though it were a life ring. "Sorry, I didn't know."
"Leave him alone, Sig," Gun said as he connected the power source of a GPS to the lighter, and another one for a radar detector to the spare 12V socket. "He's just uneducated. His brain is probably steeped in O'Really's propaganda."
We all took a second to calm down. Sig took a deep breath, deeper than I believed possible from such a small man, er, uh, dwarf. "Just start it up and pull around to the picnic area. We need to pick up our stuff."
I started the SUV and eased it back out into the parking lot. Following Sig's gestures with the pistol, I pulled into a secluded spot back by some deeply shadowed picnic tables, where two more of his friends emerged. Neither could have been much above four feet tall. As my eyes adjusted, I spotted a chubby one sitting on the picnic table, the benches of which were stacked with metal crates the size of small footlockers.
"This sled the best you could find," one of the pair who approached the car asked when Sig rolled down a back window. "Are these windows even legal?"
The windows were dark, but that dark? Ok, maybe in hindsight insisting on drug dealer tinting with the after-market guy who'd setup shop in the storage warehouse had been a mistake on my part. I knew I should have taken the Jeep to the airport, but who wants to leave a soft-top with no locks in long-term parking over Christmas.
"Hagan says it'll all fit," Sig replied. "Now, get it loaded before that sheriff figures out Carl's trick. It's almost light."
He was right; the sky was beginning to brighten. Normally, the transition between night and dawn was the worst time to be awake. Oddly, between the cold and the guns and the surreal nature of my captors, I was surprisingly alert.
As I stared out the windshield, uncertain whether I wanted the sheriff to return or not, the other dwarves began loading the SUV while Sig kept an eye on me, having climbed around to the front seat. I figured all their gear would fit with some careful arranging, though I wasn't sure where the other three dwarves would sit. But the SUV kept bouncing on its shocks as they arranged and rearranged things behind me.
Finally, Hagan came around to the passenger side and said, "It's all in, but we had to ditch some stuff."
I looked over toward the picnic table to see all the gifts my wife had entrusted to me scattered across its top and benches, along with most of my luggage. "Hey, those are Christmas presents." I protested.
"We're at war," Sig replied. "Consider them casualties. Schil, put a note on them saying "Donations for the Poor" for when the sheriff gets back so the troll here doesn't pout. Then we're out of here."
The dwarves piled into the SUV. At first I wasn't sure they were all going to fit. They almost didn't. Gun took the front seat. Sig, the beardless one and one other took the rear. Hagan and the last three split to either side of the cargo deck. They had stacked their crates to create facing benches. The four of them had laptops that they kept rumbling over in low voices and adjusting. I didn't know what they were up to, but it looked serious and illegal.
"Where are we headed, boys?" I prompted once they were all settled.
"Just pull back on the highway, northbound," Sig answered with a glare. "Gun will direct you from there. And buckle up. We don't want to give them any reason to pull us over. That would end badly for everyone."
Given his tone, I believed him. He had a lot of attitude packed into that small body.
As soon as we got on the road, Gun flipped the radio over to AM and started scanning through the channels. Normally, I avoided that band. All they ever ran was talk radio, and that by guys whose politics hovered between black-helicopters and vast left wing conspiracies. Even FM was dicey until you got to DC. At least after that you could tune in something other than country. I usually relied on my iPod, but Gun had disconnected that and tossed in the glove box, right after scanning through its contents with a scowl. "Just a bunch of Lilith Fair crap, and some 'This American Life.' What are you, gay?"
"Married," was all I could think to say. Nothing like having your masculinity challenged by someone half your size to get you thinking on your feet. Gun just grunted.
He settled on a station out of Norfolk that was like an American Top 40 for ideologues with alternative band names, with Shawn the Manatee, Plush Limburger and Will O'Really holding steady atop the charts for the eighth consecutive year. "It's time for you to get a real education, ettin-boy, something with some red meat, not that oatmeal they serve on NPR."
The O'Really Report was up, an encore presentation from yesterday afternoon. Will O. was the king of this tribe of cultural cannibals; he had a radio show plus a cable television "news" program called "The O'Really Reckoning" on Coyote News. Personally, I was more of a "Countdown" fan; I liked a side of humor with my news and rants. But I knew who O'Really was. I would pause on Coyote News during commercials on "Countdown" just to annoy my wife, until she threatened to stab out my eyes with her crochet hooks and steal back the remote.
Today, he was ranting about the Governor of Washington State and a War on Christmas that she'd apparently fired the first shot in a few weeks ago by not burning some atheist in effigy in Olympia's public square. A single, secular sign had defiled the nearby nativity just with its proximity.
This got my passengers all fired up. At first I couldn't tell whether they agreed or disagreed with O'Really. They grunted and snorted at whatever he said. They cried out with unintelligible exclamations. Those proceeded to unfathomable response phrases, like a liturgy, whipping up their emotions until they could barely be contained. Pretty soon the inside of the SUV sounded like an old time tent revival, culminating with Sig shouting, "He wants a war, he's getting a war, right boys?" The SUV erupted in agreement, the pandemonium rocking it back and forth on the off-road-rated shocks, nearly causing it to swerve from lane to lane as I struggled to control it.
Fortunately, O'Really's show ended before they could get truly fired up. As a closer, Will O. put out a pitch for his Christmas special live from Rockefeller Center in New York City at nine tonight, where he would have Santa Claus giving away presents to the progeny of his faithful.
"We'll see you there, Will O." Sig shouted at the radio to a backslapping chorus of agreement.
Gun scanned around until he found Pall Hardy somewhere down the dial, "We really love this guy," Gun whispered to me at one point. "An American classic. One of the few you guys ever got right."
As Sig, Gun and their comrades listened in reverent silence, I began wondering just what I was involved in. These guys were nuts. I had no idea whether they were performance artists, a terrorist militia or escapees from a psychiatric hospital. They acted like meth-lab chemists who worked without respirators. Whichever was true, I was screwed. There was no way I would be able to talk my way out of this after the airport incident.
After Pall Hardy informed us that we now knew the rest of the story, the station started playing Christmas carols. Gun swatted the radio in disgust. "Celtic propaganda," he muttered.
I started giggling as sleep deprivation and the ridiculousness of the situation began to sink in. It bubbled up slowly, unwilling to be contained no matter how hard I tried until I was shaking and tears were streaming from my eyes.
"What's so funny?" Gun demanded.
"Just that this day couldn't get any better," I laughed, wiping a hand across my cheek. "In the last twenty-four hours, I've been interrogated by TSA Santas at the airport then carjacked by a bunch deranged dwarves with a Christmas fetish. But that will be nothing compared with what happens the day after tomorrow when I show up at my wife's parents' with no gifts. Then, I'll wish Homeland Security had deported me to Guantanamo."
Sig perked up in the back seat. "You're on the no-fly list?" he asked, looking anxiously at Gun.
I nodded as microburst giggles continued to erupt from my chest like a cross between the hiccups and a grand mal seizure.
"Gun, change course," Sig barked. "Hagan, I need intel, now."
Suddenly, the SUV was a hive of activity. The laptop crew popped open a crate between them sporting what looked like some sort of weird, helical structure similar to an impressionist sculpture of a DNA strand. Gun was scrolling through the GPS street-finder at lightning speed, calling out cities and addresses in a language that only it seemed to understand. The laughter died in my throat like a cancerous cramp.
Gun had me exit the highway within a mile and head toward Norfolk. We started on a Federal Highway but quickly descended through the hierarchy of roads from state to county then municipal and finally to roads without markers or names or sometimes pavement. Gun kept shifting me from one to another, always making sure I obeyed the speed limit. There was nothing out here other than tobacco fields and stands of trees all softened by a hint of fog.
"What is that thing back there," I asked Gun when he paused for breath from his conversation with the GPS.
"Satellite downlink," he replied distractedly. "Turn on the rear defroster. It gets better reception that way."
"What else is in those crates?" I asked, knowing I probably wouldn't like the answer.
"Mostly black market stuff out of Iraq and the Stan." Gun started ticking off stuff from a Tom Clancy wish list, "Night vision equipment, encrypted communication links, Alpine climbing gear, pixelated camo, you know, like the Marines wear."
"You know how hard it is to find that stuff in boy's extra-husky?" the dwarf with the sharp nose interjected rhetorically.
Baby's first battledress. Where would you even look for that, I wondered, The Blackwater Gift Collection? Halliburton R Us?
"Please tell me I'm not hauling weapons," I begged. If I was, chainlink isolation in Guantanamo would look like a beachside paradise in a distant tropical dream.
"Wish I could, there, big boy," Sig replied. "We're a self-contained commando unit with almost everything we need. The rest we pick up on-site."
"Need for what?" I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
"You heard O'Really. For six years he's been railing about there being a War on Christmas. Now, we're going to give him one. This Santa stunt of his is the perfect opportunity to send a message."
My world became a little darker, like I was staring at my future down a long, black tunnel whose sides were closing in. I drove in silence for a while. They were serious.
Hagan's voice broke me out of it. "The NSA database says he's clean. The vehicle is unmarked with no current surveillance. There's a pending instruction to move his name from the active to the inactive watch list, with a possible upgrade to archives in five years unless he screws up again."
The dwarves all exhaled simultaneously, which sounded like the air escaping half a dozen weather balloons.
Sig spoke first. "Gun, get us back on course. Keep to the secondary roads, just to be safe. We'll shoot up the peninsula and pick up the interstate outside of Wilmington to keep a low profile."
"I'm on it," Gun replied. He directed me back to a relatively straight two-lane blacktop that paralleled the Federal Highway we had started on.
For a while, I concentrated on driving, trying to figure out exactly how deep I was into this and whether I could get myself out. Before I had come to any conclusions, we were pulling onto the beltway around Norfolk.
"Pull off at this exit," Sig instructed. "I see a Home Depot."
Once were in the parking lot, he leaned forward to me and said, "Go in there and get us a chainsaw, the smallest one they have."
"Gas or Electric?" I asked.
"Are you being funny, big man?" He showed me his pistol again.
"I take it you'll need a gas can, too."
"And some chainsaw oil. Oh, and get eight pair of linesman's pliers, good insulated ones," he added. "Don't try anything stupid. Hagan has access to your NSA file. One quick update, and you're as much a part of this as we are. All the files they pull off our hard drives will implicate you as a ringleader." The laptop gang all smiled malevolently and nodded in unison.
"Oh, and get us some bratwurst and pretzels from the vendor by the door," the chubby dwarf ordered. "And don't forget the mustard. Spicy, not yellow."
"Carl, go with him to keep him honest," Sig amended. "Pretend to be his son."
The creepy, beardless dwarf got out of the SUV with me and grabbed my hand as we approached the entrance. Great. Now I knew how Oedipus' father must have felt.
We collected everything Sig wanted and returned without incident. The only question came when I ordered eight brats with sour kraut and eight bottles of water from the hotdog vender, along with a large black coffee. "The kid's hungry," I said to his quizzical expression. That and a long, probing look at Carl seemed to satisfy him.
"Beer would have been better than water," the chubby dwarf commented on our return.
"I'll put that in their suggestion box the next time I'm through," I remarked, pretending to write a note. "'Dear Home Depot, please sell more beer in your parking lot.' You want an ammo tent, too? Tools, guns and alcohol, that's probably one-stop Christmas shopping for you guys."
They all glared.
Back on the beltway, we skirted Norfolk and headed across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. They posted Carl in the front seat now, to keep with our cover. Me and "my son" were the only ones the toll attendant would see. Once we were clear of the tollbooths, we stopped for gas and Gun took over at navigation again. Sig seemed confident that a full tank would get us to our destination.
The ride up the Delmarva Peninsula was mostly quiet. Sig ordered Nibel and Schil, the chubby one and the one with the sharp nose, to keep watch with Gun while the rest of them caught a nap. I wished I could. I was entering that zone of exhaustion where you had to actively calm down before you could get to sleep. I needed something to help occupy me, so I tried to engage Gun in conversation.
He seemed sociable enough now that he had some food in him. There wasn't much but rolling hills and farm country between the Bay and the Maryland border. Halfway there, I'd learned all their names. Sig, Gun, Hagan, Nibel, Schil and the twins, Gern and Gisel. They called themselves the Fenris Brothers. He looked at me as though that was supposed to mean something. It didn't. Sig was the oldest, then straight down the line. They had all come over from "the old country" on fake passports and visas saying they had seasonal employment at Disney World. Carl, they'd picked up at "South of the Border." Gun didn't know his last name, or really much else about him. "I think he's a cousin we lost track of somewhere. He might be Swedish. They're all beardless and kind of strange."
"So what's your beef against O'Really?" I asked as we passed the sign for Wallop's Island.
"O'Really is just a pawn. Our beef is with Christmas. Specifically, with the big man."
"Santa Claus?" I asked. These guys were armed AND delusional.
"That's what everyone calls him now," Gun said. "When we knew him, he was just Fat Nicki. We started this Yule thing together as a distraction, a winter feast with ice beer."
"You ever seen Norway in winter?" Schil chimed in. "There ain't much to do other than ski and drink, preferably at the same time."
"It grew into an incentive program," Gun continued, "a kind of an end of year raiding bonus. Then it became a payoff to keep the adolescents in line until we could ship them off in the spring. They kept demanding more and more younger and younger."
"That was before the Christians co-opted the whole enterprise." Sig had woken up and joined the conversation. "The Celts rolled over first, so their holidays got priority, Halloween, Easter, Candlemas, all based on Celtic holidays. But we held out another five hundred years, so they needed something big to reel us in. That's when they took over Yule."
"Oh, really," I said, trying to sound interested.
"You think that's funny?" Sig glared at me. "Decorating Norway spruces, where do you think that started, funny boy? And the traditional Christmas ham? You think a bunch of erstwhile Jews thought that one up? Yule logs, mistletoe, holly, garlands, stockings by the chimney, giving presents near the solstice, even the cookies, all of them came out of Norse traditions. Without us, Fat Nicki wouldn't have a franchise."
"So, what, you guys are culture warriors out to set the record straight?" I figured why not play along with their distorted fantasy. At least it was entertaining and keeping me awake as the miles spooled by.
"It goes deeper than that." Gun took over again. "Before they canonized Fat Nicki to buy him off, we were his associates. We had the gold, so we bankrolled the whole operation. We had some money we needed to clean after the Fafnir raid. In return, we got a cut of the profits. Once it took off, the Christian Mafia muscled in. They were concerned about their image, more worried about the Irish than the Danes, so we got the boot and the elves took over."
"So this is basically a contract dispute?" I knew I shouldn't spin them up more, but I couldn't resist.
"This is about plain old theft," Sig interrupted. "They kidnapped Fat Nicki in the dead of night to brainwash him and stole our reindeer. They even renamed them."
"They don't remember us now." Schil sounded sad.
"For a long time we let it go," Gun explained. "We had a lot of mining interests in Wales at the time, so for a while, we were making out pretty good with the whole coal thing. Only smart things those fairies ever did."
"Actually, I think it was Fat Nicki," Carl spoke for the first time. "A part of his reprogramming that didn't take."
"So, what do you need me for?" I kept digging, hoping they would realize how ridiculous it all sounded. "Why don't just ride in on a sleigh?"
"We use technology, idiot," Sig snapped. "Haven't you been paying attention? Magic is for fairies and elves. We spent the better part of three years upgrading to the latest equipment after the Macy's fiasco."
"How was I supposed to know he'd send a body double that year?" Hagan piped up again from behind his laptop.
"The elves must have smelled something wrong," Gun said. "They've tapped into the National Intelligence database through their NORAD connections. You know government does radar telemetry assistance and threat assessment all Christmas Eve. You can watch Nicki's progress online."
"How are we supposed to fight DoD and Homeland Security?" Schil asked rhetorically. "They frost-boarded our cousins Alber and Andvar last year."
"That's why we've gone low profile," Gern or Gisel took it up now, "and taken up insurgent tactics."
"And how is O'Really involved in this?" I asked. I was getting a headache, but just had to know where he fit in this elaborate theory. Amazingly, they were all singing from the same sheet of music. It was beautifully confusing how they could complete each other's thoughts.
"Limburger, the Manatee, Will O., they're are all just Fat Nicki's mouthpieces," Gun answered. "O'Really is like a one man propaganda arm for the elves, trying to secure the franchise against poachers with this fake War on Christmas. So, we decided to turn that against him. He'll have the eyes and ears of the nation with his Christmas special tonight, broadcast live coast to coast on Coyote News."
"He had the audacity to schedule it on the eve of the winter solstice," the other twin added, Gisel or Gern. I'm still not clear which was which, but they were both awake now. "That's like snowball packed with ice to the back of your head."
"That's like throwing down a gauntlet," Sig finished up. "If he thinks he can Zarathustra us, he's sadly mistaken. This time we aren't laying down. Those bastards stole our holiday. Well, this year, we take it back."
That seemed to end the discussion. All the dwarves were awake and busy again. They seemed to have a list that they were checking and rechecking. Maryland soon fell behind us. Before I knew it, we had bypassed Dover and were coming up on the interstate again near Wilmington. Before we got there, we pulled into an abandoned barn for a final pit stop and equipment check. Nibel and Schil broke into a previously unopened metal crate and drew out a feast of what I could only assume were the dwarven equivalent of MRE's: smoked Atlantic salmon, Jarlsberg cheese, savory bread-like crackers, venison sausages and homemade Norwegian flat beer in Grolsh-style bottles. I was famished, so tried a bit of everything. All the food was delicious, hardy and filling. The beer was potent. I finished one before my world became untethered and I drifted completely out.
When Nibel woke me, it was dark outside. The dwarves had killed off most of their supplies. Empty bottles littered the floor of the barn. How they could drink that much and still be on their feet was beyond me. Everyone except Carl had donned gray and white urban Marine camo. Gern and Gisel were just finishing coiling ropes and reloading them in the crates. Hagan was reviewing something on his laptop with Sig and Gun. Schil and Carl were on watch by either door, cleaning their weapons. They were all smoking pipes stuffed with a sweet yet mild smelling tobacco. All except Carl, who had rolled his own cigarettes. Smoke drifted through the barn like a layer of fog. It was like an ATF trifecta in here. Nibel offered me a thermos filled with strong, black and reasonably hot coffee.
"We need you awake and alert for the next few hours," he explained. He proffered one of Carl's handcrafted cigarettes that I stashed in my shirt pocket for later. "But make sure you pee before we leave. Sig says we'll drive straight through once we hit the interstate."
As I sampled Nibel's gift and attended to his warning, the dwarves stowed everything back into the crates and reloaded the SUV. A few minutes later, we were headed north again.
The remainder of Delaware became a blur. Traffic picked up as more people took to the roads. The interstate was packed. Hagan kept a constant monitor on the weather. It looked like it the worst of it would hold off until at least after midnight. But that meant everyone wanted to get where they were going in a hurry. It required a constant four-dwarf watch to keep us from getting run into the barricades lining the New Jersey Turnpike.
The mayhem continued as we took the Lincoln Tunnel into New York. My memory of the city is a chaotic haze, even with having recouped a few hours sleep. The only thing I can remember are a series of headlights, horns and screaming cabbies before Gun had us safely tucked into some back alley normally used by trucks to pick up trash from behind the businesses two blocks from Rockefeller Center. With Gun's navigation skills and the dwarven watch, we'd made record time.
"Ok, this is where we get out," Sig said as I shut off the engine and killed the headlights. "You've done your part. No matter what happens from here, we'll keep you out of it. I'd get as far away from here as you can and forget you ever met us."
I figured that would be impossible, though I knew they'd lock me in an institution if I ever shared the story. "Your secret is safe with me," I said, knowing it was the truth.
"It had better be, Jolly Green. If I find out you're one of Nicki's stooges, we'll hunt you down next. Even if we fail tonight, remember we have a lot of cousins with long memories. Back home we have a reputations against giants." I nodded somberly, taking him at his word.
But I couldn't let it lie. "One question, Sig." He cocked his head and glared at me, then nodded reluctantly. "Will anybody get hurt in what you're about to do?"
He squinted his eyes at me and smiled an evil smile. "Only someone's ratings."
That was good enough for me.
In the time that Sig and I had spoken, the others had unloaded the SUV. They policed any sign that I'd ever had passengers. Everything was spotless and just as it'd been before the rest stop, with the exception of a pine-scented addition shaped like a fir tree suspended from the rearview mirror. I watched as they faded into the night, crates hoisted onto their shoulders, ropes coiled around their arms, linesman's pliers and a single small chainsaw dangling from their belts. One of them carried a gas can. I still had no idea what they intended to do.
I eased the SUV back out into city traffic. Gun had instructed me on the best way to get back to the tunnel and the interstate. It was a harrowing drive without the dwarven watch, but I made it without any unreasonable detours. In an hour, I was headed north again, my eyes half glued to the rearview mirror waiting for the inevitable red and blue pursuing lights.
I arrived in Boston just after midnight as it started to flurry. I found a hotel on the South Shore, near where my aunt lived. I'd wait to call her until the morning, hoping a decent lie came to me in the night. I collapsed on the bed and turned on the TV, still wired from exhaustion. I scanned through the channels until I came across Coyote News.
They still had the "Breaking News" banner splashed across the bottom of the screen. They were showing replays of the footage captured just hours before of the giant Christmas tree overlooking the ice rink at Rockefeller Center crashing toward the cameras just outside the Coyote News studios. Individual strings of lights had been cut until the words "God Jul" could be clearly read down its side in blazing, six-foot letters. Amazingly, there had been no injuries, though Will O'Really had been rushed to a local hospital for observation after some sort of apoplectic seizure.
NYPD and Homeland Security had cordoned off a ten-block area around the ice rink. Witnesses had reported a small horde of heavily armed children rappelling from the lower limbs of the tree just before it snapped and fleeing the scene on foot. Another suspected member of the group had been sitting on Santa's lap, rumored to be played O'Really, and whispered into his ear "the real War on Christmas is about to begin" just before the lights on the 72-foot Norway spruce flickered and the tree toppled after a resounding crack. Just prior to that, the kid had reportedly asked Santa for a Nintendo Wii with a cross-country ski package for Christmas. I recognized Carl's creepy little smile from the police composite sketch.
Sources close to the investigation said they were also looking into an Al-Qaeda link to a previously unknown group from Norway known as the Dverger Winter Arctic Reindeer Veterans Emancipation Network and Lapland Expatriate, though D.W.A.R.V.E.N.A.L.E had claimed no official responsibility for the act. Linguists at the FBI were still trying to decipher the nuances of the group's message.
NYFD was consulting with local construction crews and structural experts on how re-erect the eight-ton tree with building cranes and brace its trunk with steel bands as soon as authorities reopened the site. Linesmen from Con Edison's Local 1-2 had volunteered to restring the more than five miles of wiring and 30,000 replacement LED lights, saying they would have the tree ready for the re-lighting ceremony tentatively scheduled for Christmas Eve. Habitat For Humanity was still scheduled to come in after the New Year and haul away to tree's remains for salvage lumber to rebuild a house for a refuge from Hurricane Ike.
Homeland Security had elevated the threat level around the White House Christmas tree to Red. The Vice President, who was supposed to play Santa for the Congressional children this year, had reportedly been moved to an undisclosed, secure location.
As the news loop began to repeat, I smiled and flicked off the television with the remote.
After a brief but pleasant visit with my aunt, I arrived at my wife's parents', still trying to figure out how to explain the missing gifts as I trudged through the snow to their door. Instead of having to conjure another unconvincing lie, I found a package addressed to me waiting on the porch, mailed from Bergen, Norway, by international overnight express. That must have cost a pretty krone. Inside were replacements for all the gifts that had been left at the rest stop, with the addition of a present addressed to me from "The Real Santa's Helpers" that I later found contained a sampling of smoked Atlantic salmon, Jarlsberg cheese, savory bread-like crackers, venison sausages and seven Grolsh-style bottles containing homemade Norwegian flat beer and one with a potent but heavenly mead. There was also pipe carved to look like a dragon's foot clutching the bowl and a packet of that same sweet yet mild tobacco. "God Jul" was all the card inside read.
"How was your trip," my wife asked as she opened the door to greet me. Her cheeks were rosy, her hair a gold and copper halo. Her eyes sparkled like the Atlantic on a clear winter's day. Being home made her even more angelic, until she glanced at the driveway and asked, "Is that my car?"
I could only laugh and shake my head, "It's a long short story that I'll tell you while we rewrap these presents inside."
© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III
