Rodolfo tapped the brakes again and brought the SUV to the softest halt that he could. He was now at the end of a short vehicle line, cars his size and the occasional camper waiting for the parking lot just downhill. He shaded his eyes with his left hand and stared through the windshield at the carved granite hillside, striking even from this distance. He muttered, “The views on the way here were super nice, but this is just surreal.”
A woman woke up, curled slightly against the front passenger door. She dropped sunglasses in her lap and pulled her hood back. “Holy crap, we’re finally here.”
Rodolfo shrugged. “You didn’t want to fly yet.”
“No.”
A second woman, sitting behind Rodolfo, looked up from her phone. “Hey, I like these road trips, you guys! I’m still a hundred percent telecommuting, and it’s finally driving me a little batty lately. I thought this morning’s drive was starting to make up for the last two years of BS.”
Rodolfo put the SUV in park and twisted around in his seat. “Nah, Kris, you’re cool. If we see these old white dudes real quick, we can chill in the cabin, and then spend all day tomorrow in the badlands.” He grinned. ”If we’re not sick of each other, we can stop back at Crazy Horse on the way home Monday, if you like.”
Claire wiped the passenger side window with her sleeve. “When we drove by before lunch, that just looked like a rock to me.” She squinted. “At least one of those guys is staring right at me.”
Kris looked at their fourth passenger, headphones a little off-kilter as his head rolled back, mouth hanging open, breathing softly. “I think Darrin needs a nap. Claire, do you still have my vape?”
Claire patted the pockets of her hoodie. “Oh, yeah.”
They slowly moved forward a few car lengths. Rodolfo took the pen when it was passed to him in turn, and then handed it back to Claire. “Put that away. We have to talk to the humans soon.” He rolled down the windows a tiny fraction and turned the SUV’s dash fans on full blast.
Claire snorted at a white sign on the side of the two-lane highway. “No parking. No shit. We should queue up like sheep and take our light butt humping in turn, all in the name of civic contribution to parking lot maintenance and scratchy toilet paper.”
“Damn, Claire. It’s like ten bucks per car, I think? It’s the crowds that’ll get ya.”
“Man, all I’m saying is I pay taxes, right? If they handed out a survey that all the suits then had to use in D.C., I’d ask for fewer killing machines and more of this nature and educational shit made free for everyone.”
“Okay, that is a fair point.”
Rodolfo eventually interacted with the bored-looking park ranger. Kris looked up from her phone as they turned into the parking lot, already more than three-quarters full. “Do you need anything for parking?”
Rodolfo said, “Nah, that wasn’t so bad. Can you imagine what a fiasco this must have been before, though? I bet this lot would be full by 9 am on a Saturday like this, easily.” He pulled into the first available parking spot, one row from the edge of the parking lot. “I bought one of those annual passes for tomorrow already. I read that they pretty much pay for themselves, if you use them twice.” He grinned and rolled the windows up. “Or, would that be, two civic humps?” He turned off the engine.
Darrin stirred and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He turned to his left and called out, “HEY!” Kris mimed pulling something off her head. He removed his headphones from his ears, a blast of thrash metal crackling out before he tapped his phone. He continued speaking at a lower volume. “Hey. I had this dream that we were kidnapped at dawn from our comfortable home in the hills and trees, and driven to more trees and hills.”
Rodolfo hoisted a finger. “Bite me, Darrin. I did all the driving. And, you texted back a thumbs up yesterday.”
“Hey, at least I remembered the beer this time.”
Claire put her sunglasses back on and removed her seatbelt. “Rod, why are we here, again?”
Rodolfo poked her left shoulder. “There was a pin in my map of places to maybe drive to someday and we all had the long weekend off together. I thought it would be more fun than sitting in our living rooms.”
“Is there a tour? I heard these guys were hollow and you could climb stairs and stuff.”
“That was a movie, dumbass.”
“There’s an exhibit, too. Did any of you read the email I sent?”
“Can you imagine if the other guy had actually been added?”
“Would he go on the left or the right?”
“How close is the cabin, man?”
“Are we going to sit here all day, or what?”
Claire pointed at a sign at the front of their parking space. Rodolfo opened the back gate to the trunk space as they exited the SUV. They piled their bags from the passenger side next to suitcases and a plastic cooler. Rodolfo tried to pull the fabric cover, a clever design signifying that there totally couldn’t be anything underneath worth breaking a window and stealing over, not in the slightest. It was stuck. He tugged again.
Darrin poked at his phone and giggled. “Hey, there’s an Old Baldy Mountain right back there!”
Kris rolled her eyes. “I married a twelve year old.”
A massive earthquake shook the South Dakota hills. Several trees fell over. A few car alarms went off, flashing headlights.
“It’s the fracking!”
The ground shook again and mysteriously kept rumbling. A lamp post snapped in half and fell, smashing the front of their SUV.
“Our rental!”
“Your rental!”
Granite cracked in the hillside above. The heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln each slowly stood up on spindly robot bodies. Flexible arms retracted as the four stepped away from the mountainside in turn and spread out, rocky heads swiveling to expose the backsides of metallic skulls. They quickly surrounded the parking lot.
“I knew it!”
Washington’s mouth creaked open and a deep mechanical voice boomed forth. “Citizens of these United States! We have watched as you continue to fail the Grand Experiment of Democracy! Now, you will vote.” A red light flashed in Washington’s eyes. “Or, die.”
Beams from his eyes overlapped to form a single red spotlight that immediately swooped to illuminate a young couple, cowering in front of the open side door of their minivan. They stared up, motionless. The parking lot crowd looked on silently.
The man said, “What?” Washington’s eyes blinked and the man fell over, lightly smoking. The woman next to him screamed, and quickly joined him crumpled on the asphalt. Washington’s eyes blinked green once and he intoned, “Ineligible!” An infant began wailing, strapped to a carrier in the open minivan.
Washington’s red beam swept out again as he moved on to the next car. The other three giants began repeating this same process in other areas of the parking lot. Bolts of light fired everywhere, crossing in the air. Everyone still able to move realized it was time to go. Many rushed on foot for the parking lot’s only exit in a mad panic. Someone floored a car in reverse and slammed into Roosevelt’s left clawed foot, snapping the car’s rear axle but dealing no damage to the 26th President. A right arm shot out in a telescoping arc. Teddy tossed the car over his shoulder, deep into the forest.
Rodolfo grabbed Claire’s hand and started duck-walking from his crouched position to get between cars. He whispered about trying to find shelter, or at least a place to hide out of sight. The others followed, but Darrin quickly stopped. “Wait, my stuff is in the car.”
“Really?”
“No, like, my sketchbooks.”
A shadow loomed and they collectively looked up. Chunks of carved beard raining down, smashing into a car at the edge of the parking lot directly ahead. His red glare had caught them in place. Claire said, “Vote or die, Mr. President? Okay, then. Uh, I vote to… Hmm.” She blinked. “V-v-vote –”
Lincoln’s eyes flashed green.
Rodolfo peed a little. “Er, I vote to vote, too?”
“MEETOO!”
“Yes, that is also my vote!”
Lincoln flashed green a fourth time. He silently moved on, rejoining his colleagues in their very thorough polling exercise.
The quartet retraced their steps and cowered together for over ten minutes at the back of their mangled SUV. The blasting sounds slowed down, and then stopped altogether. Rodolfo heard whirring and stomping recede into the distance, replaced by a warbling sea of screaming children and chaotically overlapping sirens. The museum had been stepped on. The parking kiosk and the car of the last person who had been trying to pay were both burning. Nearby, two men yelled at each other in French.
Rodolfo looked at his friends. “Well, uh, the cabin I booked us is only, like, four miles away.”
This story is a personal favorite and more for the holiday theme. Why, yes, I do remember Sean P. Diddy Comb’s Vote or Die! campaign from 2008. Why do you ask?