Chapter Nineteen

Once past the Badlands, the drive to Yankton, South Dakota is the polar opposite of exciting. It’s flat. It’s straight. There are only farms and barns to look at. As such, Hep and Scroat got a little loopy during the drive.

“So, do you think that everything is in a barn in South Dakota? Like, the Barn is the state building? I bet you have to get a special permit if you want to build something that isn’t a barn,” Scroat said.

“No, but I heard the capital of South Dakota is in a barn. You can tell it’s the capital because it’s got a flag on it.” Hep said.

A few hours, a sign told them they were approaching the Missouri River. The road ahead seemed hazy, but Hep and Scroat didn’t pay it any mind. The roads were so straight and boring, it was hard to even notice the haze, since it didn’t look all that much different from the horizon, it was just a little closer.

“Hey, do you think they keep the Missouri River in a barn at night?” Scroat said.

“Yeah, I bet they... Whoa!” Hep said. He pulled the van over to the right side of the road and slammed on the brakes.

They were about half a mile away from the Missouri River, and could see a thick fog enveloping the bridge ahead. It was like a passing cloud had decided the bridge would be a lovely place to stop and have a nap before continuing its travels.

“Well that’s not right,” Hep said. He started rolling the van forward, until they were only a few hundred feet away from the bridge.

It was obvious now that the fog was, in fact, raging water, swirling around and over the bridge. Hep stopped the van and got out. He could hear the water roaring, and thought it was strange that all that water wasn’t doing any damage to the bridge.

A face appeared in the water. It looked kind of a like a skinny, watery Santa Claus.

“This path is closed to you, assholes,” Poseidon said.

Hep blinked, and thought to himself, of course we’d run into Poseidon in South Dakota. Where else would he be hanging out waiting for us?

“Look, Poseidon, we’re en route to try and help out some friends we didn’t know we had. I’m sorry about what happened to your boat, and I promise we won’t do that again. Now can we get past please?”

“Oh, well, of course you can pass if you have friends that are in trouble,” Poseidon said. The intensity of the raging water increased sevenfold, “go right ahead and cross. Unless you’re chicken, or something.”

Poseidon laughed. Frankly, being laughed at by a watery, skinny Santa Claus was more than Hep could take.

“Chicken, huh? OK,” he said. He climbed back in the van.

“What the fuck is going on, Hep?” Scroat asked.

“Poseidon thinks he’s funny,” Hep said. He put the van in reverse and started backing down the road until they were a solid half mile away again.

“So are we going to go around? Fuck, how many hours is that going to add to the trip? I can’t take much more of this van.”

“We’re not going around,” Hep said. He stopped the van and rolled up his window. “Have you got your seatbelt on?”

“What? Oh, fuck, are you going to try to drive through that?” Scroat said. He started rolling up his window. “You know, this isn’t our van. Aren’t you supposed to be the ethical one?”

“Yep,” Hep said. He stomped on the gas pedal. The van accelerated as quickly as it could, which is to say, not very quickly. A quarter of a mile later, they’d reached ninety miles per hour.

“I think I might be a bad influence on you,” Scroat said. Hep laughed, and the van hurtled forward to the surging waters.

“If this doesn’t work, you realize it’ll probably kill us?”

“It’ll work,” Hep said. The raging torrent where the bridge should have been seemed to turn black, and a bit of spray was hitting the windshield. Hep turned on the windshield wipers. The wall of water rose above them until it seemed it was towering hundreds of feet above the road.

“Oh fuck,” Scroat said, and the van ran full force into the water. Scroat covered his eyes, and kept them covered for several seconds expecting a face full of cold dirty water and a miserable, suffocating death.

Instead, Hep said “It’s OK, you can uncover your eyes,”

They were driving, rather quickly, on a completely dry bridge. Scroat turned to look out the back window, and just saw open road behind them.

“What the fuck, Hep?” Scroat said.

“It seemed a little weird that the water wasn’t doing any damage to the bridge, and he said something about being chicken. So I figured it wasn’t real. Looks like I was right!” Hep said. He shut off the windshield wipers and opened his window again.

“You’re a crazy motherfucker,” Scroat said.



A few miles outside of Yankton, Hep and Scroat were pretty sure they’d found the barn they were looking for. A small sign outside informed anyone passing by that this was the headquarters of the Society of the Seven Seals, who worked for “Charity, Peace and Expediting the Second Coming of God.”

The barn looked as though it had been white a very, very long time ago, but was now grey with spots where the paint had worn away that were an even darker grey. There was an old Ford tractor with a flat tire abandoned in some tall grass to one side of the barn, and four pickup trucks in varying condition parked in front of the big door.

Hep drove the van right up to the barn, next to the pickup trucks, and parked.

“All right, let’s see about rescuing some monks,” Hep said to Scroat.

“Sure thing. So, you really think these guys are just idiots? I mean, you’re sure?” Scroat said.

“Yep. Nothing to worry about,” Hep said. “We’ll be in and out of there in half an hour.”

He got out of the van and waited in front of it for Scroat to get out.

“You know we could have just gone to Vegas and avoided this whole mess,” Scroat said as he climbed out of the van.

“That wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun,” Hep said.

“Fun?! This hasn’t been fun for several weeks now,” Scroat said.

“Well, this should be fun, anyway. Let’s go,” Hep said. He walked to the person-sized door and started pounding on it.

“Hey! Open up in there, scumbags!” Hep shouted, then he stood back and waited to see what would happen.

Hep and Scroat could hear voices behind the door, trying to decide what to do. Should they open the door? Run? Just pretend no one was home? Hep pounded on the door again.

“Come on, I haven’t got all day!”

The voices inside seemed to come to an agreement, and they heard the latch click. Hep and Scroat both got ready to move fast if someone came out shooting. Instead, a kid about nineteen years old poked his head out, and said, “Uh, can I help you?”

Hep grabbed the kid by his hair and dragged him out the door, while Scroat pulled the door open the rest of the way.

Hep lifted the kid up until he was face to face with him, and used his best menacing voice to say “Where are the brothers you kidnapped?”

“They’re inside! I’ll show you! Don’t hurt me!” the kid said. He struggled a bit against Hep’s grip, but was no match for him.

Hep dropped him, and said “All right, show us where they are.”

“OK! This way,” the kid said, and went back in to the barn.

Hep peeked around the corner of the door before he stepped inside. In the barn were a bunch more young men, none of them could have been over twenty five. All of them looked absolutely terrified.

“This way, come on,” the first kid said. He led them to the back of the barn. He opened a door to a small room. Inside sat Robert Wheeler and another man they didn’t recognize.

“Hey, Hep and Scroat! Man am I glad to see you guys!” Robert said.

“What the fuck?” Scroat said. “What the? What the fuck is he doing here? This fucking guy shows up fucking everywhere we fucking go.”

He grabbed Robert by the front of his shirt and dragged him up, “Why the fuck are you following us? What’s in it for you? Because I’m fucking sick of seeing you everywhere you creepy little shit!”
“Calm down, Scroat,” Hep said.

“Calm down? I’ll show you calm. I’ll show you calm when I’m not going out of my mind expecting Robert ‘I am a wiggy little stalker’ Wheeler to pop out from around a corner every time I’ve got my guard down.”

The Society of the Seven Seals were watching all of this with a mixture of fear and confusion.

“Wait, you don’t like this guy, but you came to get him?” one of them said.

Scroat turned on him and got in his face. “Well, I didn’t fucking know it was Robert Mother Fucking Wheeler here, did I? I thought it was just a bunch of monks I’d never seen before. If I’d known it was Robert Wheeler, I probably would have stayed home and knit a god damned sweater instead. But no, you little fucks had to go and kidnap the one asshole I really, really didn’t want to see, and not tell us about it. I’m going back to the fucking van.”

He stormed back out of the barn, and a few seconds later, they heard the door of the van slam shut.

“Uh, so, good to see your OK, Robert,” Hep said. He turned to leave with Robert and the other monk.

The Society of the Seven Seals stood, dumbfounded, as Hep led them towards the door.

“Hey, shouldn’t we try to stop them, or something?” one of the Society members said.

“I don’t know, that one guy seems like he’s ready to go off on anyone that gets in his way,” someone else said. “I think I’ll just maybe crack open a beer.”

Outside, Scroat was sitting in the van, scowling, and looking pointedly away from Robert. Robert and the other monk got in to the back of the van, each taking their own seat.

“Hi, I’m Brother Stuart,” the monk said to Scroat.

“Hi Brother Stuart. I’m fucking pissed off right now and don’t really give a fuck who you are,” Scroat said.

“Say, Scroat, uh, you might want to lighten up a bit,” Hep said as he got in to the van. “I think the whole reason we got out of there without any fight at all is because you traumatized those kids with your rant. They’re probably going to need therapy.”

“Whatever. I’m fucking hungry. Have they got a restaurant in this town? I need some red meat. And some corn. They grow corn here right? In the corn barn?” Scroat said.

“I guess we’ll find out. It’s just a few minutes to town,” Hep said. He started the van, and the drove at a leisurely pace away from the barn headquarters of the fearsome Society of the Seven Seals.

In Yankton, they found the world’s least authentic Mexican restaurant. Scroat asked for some Tabasco, and they heard uproarious laughter from the kitchen when the waitress went back to find out if they even had any.