Jack the Trucker finished his flapjacks and drank the rest of his screwdriver while the Waitress was in the kitchen letting the line cook know that she was going to leave with him. The news played on the television on the wall.


    “…mourns the loss of the first president of the United States of Jackland, President Jack One” a Jack on the news said. “The secret service member that allegedly killed him has been detained and is reportedly undergoing questioning by officials. The entire nation wants to know why he did it. Was he a radical member of the Order Party upset over the Reckless Driving Initiative? Or maybe he was a radical of the Chaos Party, thinking it didn’t go far enough. Or he could have just been unhinged. No one knows anything at this point. This is the first major piece of news of this story world, and people are even wondering if that secret service member could be the main character. We’re joined here by Jack the Professor of Violence at Jackmouth College, an expert on violence of all types. Professor, tell us, what do you make of all this?”


    “Well first I’d like to thank you for having me,” the Professor said, being connected by satellite from his college office. “This is an exciting development for the story world. The Kennedy assassination was the last time a president of the United States had been assassinated in the real world, and that was by a lone gunman. This situation, however, is markedly different with a secret service member being the shooter, a member of an organization who, in the real world, is trusted the most with the president’s life. What does it say about the nature of our world that the most—”


    “…he’s killed somebody!” a male voice yelled from the kitchen in the back of the eatery.


    “It was self-defense!” the Waitress yelled back.


    So, the line cook now knows Jack the Trucker killed somebody. This wasn’t good, Jack reflected. Who else would he tell? Would he call the cops? Maybe agreeing to bring the Waitress with him had been a mistake. And he had wanted an adventure. God he was so stupid, he thought. He considered making a run for it right then and there, but the Waitress came through the door as he was getting out a tenner to leave on the counter to pay.


    “You told him?” Jack the Trucker asked.


    “No,” the Waitress said, taking her apron off and throwing it on the counter and grabbing her purse. “He overheard our conversation from the back. He’s a sneaky little jackoff. But he’ll be fine. He’s just mad that he’s going to have to take the orders now. It’s not like we’re slammed anyway. You’re done eating?”


    “Let’s get out of here.”


    Jack the Trucker walked hastily out of the eatery and through the truck stop towards the doors, the Waitress following behind him.


    “Where are you going?” the clerk asked the Waitress.


    “I just quit!” she said gleefully. “I’m going to Jack Sin City!”


    “Whatever,” the clerk said, flipping a page of his Beanstalk magazine.


    “Hold on,” the Waitress told Jack.


    She went up to the clerk. “Give me a pack of Jacky Strikes.”


    “Come on, let’s go!” Jack the Trucker said.


    “Five Jackbucks,” the Clerk said.


    The Waitress paid and got the pack of smokes. Then she and Jack the Trucker made their way out of the truck stop and over to Jack’s truck. Outside it was hotter than before as it approached noon.


    “You drive a pumpkin,” the Waitress said.


    “Jack o’ Lantern Trucking Services, at your service,” Jack said. “Now let’s go.”


    “What’s the rush? Don’t we have to hide the body?”


    “I don’t want your boyfriend back in the eatery calling the cops on us.”


    “I’m a man, dude,” the Waitress said, scowling. “A straight man. Or at least I’m going to be as soon as we find a gender bender machine. Or wizard.”


    “That’s fine. Let’s go!” Jack the Trucker said.


    “You don’t have to worry about Cook, he’s sneaky but he wouldn’t call the cops. You can trust me on that.”


    “You and he were just created earlier today, how can you be sure?”


    “I’m sure,” the Waitress said.


    Jack thought about it for a moment. He sighed. He looked over the flat plain of desert over towards the interstate. He could see that the jackass’s truck was still there, no cops or crashes around it either, just cars flying past it at breakneck speeds. It hadn’t even turned into a bottleneck, the interstate didn’t have enough traffic density for that. “Okay,” he finally said. “Okay.”


    Jack unlocked his truck door and opened it and got in. He looked around inside at all the blood everywhere, along with the legs and boots peeking out from underneath the sleeper berth curtains. “It’s pretty bad,” he said. “I can do this on my own.”


    “Don’t be silly,” the Waitress said. “If it’s that bad then you need the help.”


    The Waitress climbed into the truck behind Jack and looked at the grisly scene. “You weren’t kidding, were you?”


    “I told you,” Jack the Trucker said.


    “So what happened, again?” the Waitress asked, taking a seat on the passenger side.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Jack sighed and took his seat and then went through the story of his morning. He recounted everything, from the jackass not letting him off the exit to slowing down to a stop on the freeway to the fight in between the trucks to the jackass coming into his truck and Jack ultimately killing him.


    “What a jackass,” the Waitress said. “I’m glad he’s dead.”


    “I’m not,” Jack said. “He was only acting as he was created to do.”


    “And so were you,” the Waitress said. “And so am I. So how do you want to do this?”


    “I… I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’ve never done this—er, I mean I don’t know what to do in this situation.”


    “We could chop him up into bits and put him in a trash bag,” Jackie the Waitress said.


    “That’ll take time. I want to get out of here.”


    “I’ve got an idea,” Jackie said.


    “What?”


    “We’re going back to my place so I can pick up some things. We could drop him in my septic tank.  That and I’ve got plenty of cleaning supplies there.”


    Jack thought about that for a few moments. He didn’t know what the right answer was, but he wanted to get back on the road and away from here as soon as possible. “Okay,” he finally said. “Am I going to be able to get to your place in this big truck?”


    “Well…” Jackie the Waitress said. “That might be a little difficult.”


    “I’ll bobtail,” Jack said. He grabbed a large padlock from the compartment above his seat and hopped out of the truck. He was putting down the trailer’s landing gear when the Waitress came down and joined him. He finished cranking the feet and went and unhooked the airlines and released the fifth wheel. Then he moved to the back of the trailer to lock it up.


    “What are you hauling, anyway?” Jackie the Waitress asked, following him..


    “Uh… I don’t know,” Jack the trucker replied.


    “Aren’t you curious?” Jackie asked.


    “It doesn’t really matter to me,” Jack said.


    “Come on, let’s see,” Jackie said.


    There was no seal on the doors, so Jack opened them up. Inside were numerous large crates on pallets. They hopped up into the back and looked inside the first one and found that it was full of blackjacks.


    They were just packaged haphazardly in a pile in the box. Jack and the Waitress each pulled out a blackjack and confirmed that they were real.


    “Blackjacks?” the Waitress asked.


    “Blackjacks.” Jack the Trucker replied.


    They opened another crate and found this one was full of tasers, all loaded into a crate without any real care.


    Curious, they opened the rest of the crates. There were more batons and tasers, bullet proof vests, 2-way radios. Shotguns and pistols and ammunition, too, although they saw the ammo was non-lethal, bean bag rounds and rubber bullets. There was also some full of drones and controllers. There was a crate full of Halloween masks and stage makeup, which didn’t make any sense to Jack.


    “Where are you taking this all anyway? A police station?”


    “If that’s the case then why the masks? The bill of lading is back in the cab.”


    There was a box in the very front of the trailer, too. It was about three and a half feet long. Curious, Jack opened it up. Inside was a gold plated JK-47, along with a box of real ammunition for it. Jack and Jackie both marveled at the gun, but Jack quickly closed the lid and put it back where he found it.


    “That’s nice!” Jackie exclaimed. “I bet that’s worth a lot of money.”


    “It’s not ours.”


    “I didn’t say it was!”


    “Come on, let’s go,” Jack said, making his way to exit the trailer.


    He closed the doors and put on his padlock and then they both got back to the cab and took their seats and Jack the Trucker got out the bill of lading. They were delivering to the Jack Sin City Jacklegiant Stadium. On the GPS it showed that it was in the middle of the city itself. “I hate delivering to cities,” Jack the Trucker said. “It’s always so cramped.”


    “What do you think it’s for?” Jackie the Waitress asked. “It’s got to be a cop convention, or something, masks or not. It is October, after all. Maybe it’s a cop/Halloween convention.”


    “God that’d be just my luck. Kill a man in the morning and go to the cop Mecca in the evening.”


    “We need to hide the body and clean up the truck,” Jackie said.


    Jack the Trucker didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled his tractor away from the trailer and bobtailed out through the parking lot towards the road. On his way out, he saw the line cook outside the truck stop taking a video of them with his smartphone, the clerk was with him having a smoke, staring them down. Jack pointed this out and said, “I don’t like that.”


    “He’s just trying to intimidate us,” the Waitress said. “He won’t call the cops.”


    “Yeah?”


    “I swear. He’s good people.”


    “And the clerk?”


    “Well, I don’t really know him, to be honest. Cook wouldn’t tell him anything. Take a right at the road, in towards town.”


    “Okay.”


    Jack’s Compassion looked even worse up close. The people were living in absolutely impoverished conditions and there were four separate bars for the small town. Jackie the Waitress gave directions, and it wasn’t long before they were at her mobile home. It was on the outskirts of town, with lots of space around it. Jack liked that, hopefully that meant there were fewer prying eyes. Jack pulled into the driveway and set his air brakes.


    “The septic is around the back,” the Waitress said. “I’ve… uh… got a rug? Do you want to use that to cover him?”


    “This isn’t a movie!” Jack the Trucker said, feeling frustrated.


    “I mean, it’s a fictional story,” Jackie the Waitress said. “Nothing wrong with using some tropes, eh?”


    “Maybe we should cut him up, like you said,” Jack said, “but that’d still take too long! Damn it!”


    “We got all the time we need, man,” Jackie said.


    “No,” Jack said, “we need to get back on the road. I’m done with this place. Get the rug.”


    “I’ll be right back,” the Waitress said, leaving the truck and heading toward her trailer.


    Maybe he should leave her here, Jack the Trucker thought. He could deal with the body later. It’d be just his luck, though, that he’d run into a weight station and get stopped for an inspection. No, better to deal with this now.


    The Waitress came back with a large rug in tow. It was a large shaggy purple rug, which Jack thought maybe meant it would be more absorbent. She brought it into the truck awkwardly and maneuvered it so that it was in between their two seats. “This is going to suck,” she said. “It’s too cramped. Let’s just pull him out on my side and roll him up on the ground.”


    “We do it in the truck,” Jack said.


    “There’s no one to see on this side,” the Waitress said. “It’ll be fine!”


    Jack looked out the passenger side window. What the Waitress said was true. There was nothing out there but desert as far as the eye could see. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”


    The Waitress hopped over the body towards the bed in the sleeper and grabbed the corpse at the armpits. Jack the Trucker got his legs, and they heaved. The body was heavy and awkward and the whole ordeal of getting it up and out of the walkway and over the passenger side seat and out the door was a Herculean task. It got blood all over the seat. Jack slipped on the steps down from the passenger side and fell to the ground, and the body fell on top of him, Jackie the Waitress having lost control of it.


    “Sorry!” Jackie said. “Are you okay?”


    Jack shoved the body off him. He was covered in blood again. Great. “Just get the rug,” he said from the ground.


    Jackie threw the rug down on top of the corpse and hopped down from the truck. Rolling the body up in it was positively easy after the hassle of getting the corpse out of the truck.


    “I’ve got a wheelbarrow,” she said.


    “Okay,” Jack said.


    Jackie the Waitress ran off and came back with a large blue wheelbarrow. They picked up the rug covered corpse and threw it in and started rolling it towards the back of the Waitress’s trailer.


    “Hey, hey, hey!” a cheerful voice said from the street.


    Jack the Trucker felt his stomach drop. There was a Jack on the street, staring at them and smiling like a fool.