End of the Line (Part Three)

End of the Line: Part Three

Act 3

"Times are a changing"

~1~

'Jumpin Jack Flash' came on the radio when the engine caught. Shit. Obviously the station had, as they liked to say, changed its profile. Bought out? Sold down the river? Supposed to be soft jazz, damn it. Still was, just days ago, when he set the buttons. Now this.

Getting to be where you can't rely on anything.

Anj spun the dial through country music, news, talk show about aliens of the extraterrestrial sort, easy listening, country again, hard rock, another talk show about aliens of the earthbound sort, news again.

Concerned citizens of Arizona were up in arms because a humanitarian group had begun installing water stations in the desert that illegal immigrants had to cross to get from Mexico to the U.S. Thousands had perished trying to make the crossing. Concerned citizens of Arizona, Anj noted, came out all in one breath, like weapons of mass destruction or the red threat.

Meanwhile the state legislature was trying to pass statutes barring illegal aliens from free medical care in Arizona's overburdened, uncompensated emergency rooms and hospitals.

Anj pulled onto the interstate.

They'd sent a single dog after him? And a new dog to boot, not even pick of the litter. That was plain stupid, made no sense whatsoever.

Or maybe it did.

Two possibilities.

One: they were trying to set him up. His designated assassin wouldn't talk, of course. But if Anj had killed him -- as whoever sent him had every reason to expect -- police even now would be going door to door and checking apartment-house records. All over California and adjoining states, fax machines would be rousing from slumber to spit out stats of the photo from Anj's old DMV records and whatever other information about him could be unearthed. There wasn't a lot; even then, instinctively, he kept his head down.

The second possibility hardened to reality when a blue mustang came up around the chain of cars behind him outside Sherman Oaks, lodged in his rearview mirror, and wouldn't be shaken.

So not only did they have a tail on him, they wanted him to know they had a tail on him.

Anj cut abruptly off the interstate and into a service area, bypassing the inner loop. Pulled in and sat, engine purring, out by the truckers. Nearby, a family spilled from its van with dogs int tow, parents shouting at kids, kids shouting at dogs and one another.

The mustang materialized behind him, in his mirror.

Okay then, he thought. My game now.

Popping the clutch, he shot along the service road. As he gained speed, his eyes swept constantly from rearview mirror to highway and back again. With a car length to spare, he slid onto the highway between two semis.

But he couldn't lose the son of a bitch whatever he tried.

Periodically he'd go off-road, blend into local traffic to take advantage of it, interpose traffic lights like blockades between himself and his pursuer. Or back on the interstate he'd accelerate with blinkers going as though to take the off ramp, drop in front of a rig, then once out of sight, floor it and surge ahead.

Whatever he did, the mustang hung there behind like a bad memory, history you can't escape.

Desperate times, desperate measures.

Well out of the city, out where the first of a crop of white windmills, lazily turning, wound sky down to desert, Anj sailed without warning onto an exit ramp and into a one-eighty. Sat facing back the way he'd come as the Mustang raced toward him.

Then he hit the gas.

He was out for a minute or two, no more. An old trick he'd picked up along the way: at the last moment, he'd thrown himself into the backseat and braced for the collision.

The cars struck head-on. Neither was going to leave on its own steam, but the Mustang, predictably, got the worst of it. Kicking his doors open, Anj climbed out.

"You okay?" someone shouted from a window of a battered pickup idling at the bottom of the off ramp.

Then the long blare of the horn and a squeal of brakes as a Chevy van skidded to a stop, rocking, behind the pickup.

Anj stepped up to the Mustang. Sirens in the distance.

The man inside's neck was broken. Internal damage too, judging from the blood around his mouth. Probably slammed into the steering wheel.

Anj still had the business card for Cobb's shell corporation.

He tucked it into the shirt pocket of the driver of the mustang.

---

Episode Five

Subject: Angelus

Date recorded: 1/11/13

Location: Phoenix, Arizona

Here we are again my mutual friends. 

It wouldn't be a week in the XWF without Ursula running her damn mouth now would it?

Let's look at the tape, shall we?

"Oh hey Angelus how is it? What you doing? Are you having a good time?"

Yeah, I'm having a blast watching you make a complete idiot of yourself once again. Thanks for that. I had finally grown tired of watching Sebastian Duke compete with you over who had the bigger vacancy sign in their head.

But this is what you do right, Ursula? No one can do it better than you? 

Interesting. I can think of a lot of people who do it better than you. I think the guy parking cars at the arena can do it better than you. Hell, the street walkers downtown here in Phoenix probably can do it better than you. If you catch my drift.

Oh, I'm sorry. *Now* you're focused, got it.

But seriously, can you try reading off some cue cards or something? It seems that you have a lot to say I just don't understand a word of it. 

You are right about one thing though. 

It is a new year and with a new year it's in with the new and out with the old. 

So, see you later Ursula!  

Please don't try and write a postcard as we wouldn't understand any of it anyway.

I hope the unemployment line treats you well. I'm sure your associates degree in liberal arts will get you far.

Moving on...

This last Impact card has apparently been a beacon for all the delusional wack jobs of this roster to come out. 

We got some inbred, good ol' boy running around with pitch forks and putting his eighth grade education to use. 

Hickster, do me a favor. Go fire up your pickup. Hang your confederate flag and put Lynard Skynard on the tape deck and come down to Phoenix so I can kick your ass up one side of the state of Arizona and down the other. 

You want to talk about fixing Impact? I think Impact will be fixed when you've been removed from it. Permanently. 

Now onto another wannabe zealot. Sebastian Duke.

Duke, you talk a big game for a man who has proven time and again to be nothing but a failure. You can talk about how you got a title shot in your first match all you want. When you arrived here you ran your little smoke and mirror routine like you were some big shot and it didn't work. 

That wasn't seizing an opportunity, Duke. 

That was you doing what you do best ... failing when the lights get too bright. 

This is why you might want to step out of the darkness there, buddy.

So go right ahead with the tough guy mantra, use the dramatic pauses, scrunch your face up in that menacing scowl you got, but at the end of the day you're just an old guy who thinks it's fun to play dress up. 

C'mon, man. Am I really supposed to be intimidated by a guy named Sebastian?

I'll leave you with this. It is a dawning of a new era. That much is for sure. 

And it really doesn't matter who I face, how I face them, or what the odds are. 

Everything is about to change.

Now is the time.

And when the smoke clears, there can only be one left standing.

Angelus.

---