Luck Be A Lady

by Catherine Linda Michel

 

Part 4

I hollered at Prue to "HIT the GAS!!! only my holler came out as a high pitched scream! DAMN this female voice! Anyway, I guess Prue got the message because she put her foot to the floorboard. Now, her little 6 cylinder Dodge was great on gas mileage but short on power and that big, black, ugly car had no problem keeping up with us! It hammered the rear end of our car again and, just for a couple of seconds, I felt our car try to go sideways! Prue yanked hard on the steering wheel and managed to get the car straightened out again but, only barely. I heard a yell come from the back seat followed by some of the filthiest language I had EVER heard and I turned my head to see Neri trying to get her pants and blouse off! I yelled at her, "What the hell do you think you’re doing? Now is NOT the time to get naked!

She gave me a really nasty look and yelled back at me. "That SOB, whoever he is, made me spill my coffee all over me!!! PRUE!!", she screamed, "Stop this damn car so I can kick his ass, whoever the Blankety-blank he is!!!" I was hoping that Prue knew better than to stop the car and, she did! Her jaw was set and her face was twisted with anger and fear but she kept her foot on the floor and the car kept picking up speed. We careened around a left hand curve at about 75 miles per hour and Prue’s foot never lifted! She just hung on to the steering wheel like grim death and kept on going! The black car gained on us and rammed the rear end of our car AGAIN!! This time, though, Prue wasn’t able to keep the car on the straight and narrow and we went into a skid! I felt the car lift up onto it’s right side wheels and, just for a second or so I thought we were done for! I pictured our car rolling over and over off the road and out into the scrub brush and spindly trees that lined the road! Somehow, Prue managed to get the car back down onto all four wheels and under control again! Just as soon as she had it straightened out, she floored the gas pedal again and we were off once more! I glanced behind us and that black car was also sideways in the road, seemingly half in the ditch!

We went around another curve and for a few seconds the black car was nowhere in sight. Prue kept her foot down and, once again we gained speed until we must have been doing over 90 MPH!! The engine was straining and I knew that it didn’t have much more to give us. I saw a side road about a mile or so ahead and screamed at Prue to slow down and take a hard right! She spiked the brakes and slewed almost sideways onto the side road and then she immediately put her foot down on the floor again. I snuck a look behind us and the black car was momentarily out of sight! I’d had NO idea that I was on the run with Mario Andretti!

We went around another curve and just as we did, I caught a quick glimpse of that black car as it sped right past the turnoff we had taken! I yelled at Prue to slow down a bit but she didn’t let up a bit!! I looked over at her and she was so intent on controlling the car, I doubt if she had even heard me! TERRIFIC!! Now we had another problem! If we kept going at this rate of speed, on this not- so-good road we had taken, we would be off the road in nothing flat! I hated to take the chance but I didn’t see any other way. I punched Prue fairly hard on her right arm and, when she turned her head, slightly towards me I again screamed at her to slow down a bit! We had temporarily lost that black car!!!

It finally dawned on her that I was trying to get her to take it a bit easier and lifted her right foot a bit. The car settled down, some, and I breathed a small sigh of relief! We had a little breathing room and I tried to come up with some kind of plan to take advantage of it! We flashed past a grassy area with trees about 50 yards off the road and I told Prue to stop, back up and head into those trees. I knew that the driver of that black car wouldn’t be too long figuring out that we had taken that turn off and would be right behind us again REAL soon!

I hoped that we had time to get our car into those trees and hidden from the road. Once the black car had gone past us, I reasoned, we would be able to get back to the main road and put some serious distance between us and it! Prue hit the brakes and slid to a halt. Then she slammed the car into reverse and backed it right off the road and into that small stand of trees! In just a few seconds, I figured that we were hidden from the road and I asked her to stop. She did, and we all just sat there for a minute or two, trying to get our heart rates down somewhere near what we laughingly called normal!

Another thought went through my mind and I grabbed the keys from the ignition and jumped out of the car. Prue yelled at me, "What the Hell do you think you’re doing??!!!" but I was already at the rear of the car, trying to get the trunk open. I had remembered those weapon looking things that I had found aboard the crashed UFO and I tore through the stuff in the trunk until I found them. I grabbed them and the small metal squares that I thought might be ammo clips or something and slammed the trunk lid closed. Then I jumped back into the car and handed the keys to Prue. She jammed them into the ignition and refired the engine. While we waited for the black car to go past looking for us, I tried to figure out how these strange looking weapons worked. At least I HOPED they were weapons! We’d look MIGHTY silly if I pointed one of these things at our tormentor(s) only to have it turn out to be some kind of interstellar squirt gun!! Not to mention that we would be well and truly caught if that happened. I managed to get one of the metal squares to fit into the smaller of the two, well, guns, I’ll call them. L looked carefully all over the outside of the gun and I spotted a small button that had two positions. One of the positions showed a small white circle with a line running diagonally through it and the other position showed just the white circle. I said a short prayer that I was right and that the circle with the line through it was the " Safe" position. I noticed that the selector was already set towards that circle with the line through it and I took a huge chance. I pointed the thing out the window of the car and pulled the trigger. NOTHING happened! Ok. So far, so good! I carefully brought my arm and the gun back through the window and took my finger off the trigger. Then I flipped the switch to the other position and again pointed it outside the window. I extended it out as far as I could reach, hoping that it the damned thing blew up, it might only take my right arm and not the whole car! I took a deep breath and pulled the trigger, aiming at a medium sized tree about 30 yards away.

There was a split second when nothing appeared to happen but then, the tree fell over!!! I looked carefully at the base of the tree where it had fallen and it appeared to have been sawed off as cleanly as it I had used a chainsaw on it! Cleaner, even!!! For a second or two I said nothing, too scared to speak, I guess but Prue let out a whoop that I was pretty sure her Grandfather had to have heard it!! Neri just shrieked and dove down behind the seat, seemingly trying to burrow underneath it! I, well, I was shaking just a bit! I was thinking, "ALL RIGHT!!! Now we’ve got a means of defending ourselves against that lunatic in the black car!!" I only thought that for a minute, though. Then, that thought was replaced by another and THAT one was, "OHHH SHHIT!! If I use this thing on that black car and it’s occupants, and hurt them or, worse, KILL them, we’ll NEVER be able to stop running!

I mean, right then, all they wanted to do, I hoped, was to stop us and take us into custody. If we hurt of killed them, they’d never rest until they had gotten us, one way or another! They’d KILL us if they had to!! I looked over at Prue and she looked back at me and I knew that she knew what I was thinking about. She reached over and touched me lightly on the arm and said, softly, "Bill, we HAVE to get away from here! If that means using that thing on them, well, that’s what we’ll have to do! Hopefully you’ll be able to use it so it doesn’t hurt or Kill them but just slows them down for awhile. Just then, I saw that black car, out of the corner of my eye, as it flashed past the place where we had taken refuge. It showed no signs of slowing down and seemed barely under control as it went thundering by! We waited a few minutes and there was no sign of it returning so Prue put our car in gear and we crept slowly back towards the road. When we were almost ready to get back underway, I took a quick glance in the direction that the black car had been going and I didn’t see it anywhere so we moved back onto the road and headed back towards the main road.

An idea struck me just then and I told Prue to stop the car for a minute. I got out and found a large tree close to the road and pointed that gun at it’s base. In just a couple of seconds, the tree fell over and, whether by dumb luck or whatever, it fell so that it completely blocked the road! There was no way for a car or anything short of a Tank to get through or around that tree and I ran back to the car and jumped in, triumphantly! By GOD!! Something had actually worked right for me for a change!! With a bit more luck, we would be out of here and that black car would be blocked from following us for quite awhile! Neri had gotten back up on the back seat and had buckled herself in so tightly I thought she was gonna cut herself off at the waist! She was giving both Prue and me looks that could easily kill if they continued for more than a few seconds!

I smiled at her, nervously and said, "Hey, Kid, it’s ok! I don’t think they can get through there anytime soon and, by the time they do, we’ll be long gone! One hell of a ride, huh? She smiled at me but it was a smile that had absolutely NO humor in it. No, it was one of those smiles that said, "once we get out of this, you’ll wish theat THEY had gotten you instead of ME!!!" It also said, at least to me it said, "I’m scared as hell but I’ll be damned if I let YOU know about it!" A tough kid, this Neri was turning out to be! Maybe she’d be useful to us after all and not just a kid getting a free ride to L.A.!

We made it back to the main road and took off in our original direction of travel. Prue kept it just a mile or two per hour under the speed limit so we wouldn’t have to worry too much about getting pulled over by some cop. We talked, while we drove and we had decided that we had to get rid of this car. It was too well known by those who were after us, well, after me, anyway. We weren’t sure just how we were going to change vehicles but we knew that we HAD to! I didn’t have much money left and all Prue had was a couple of hundred bucks in cash. She had her credit cards but if we used them, it would create a trial by which we could be traced. We knew that Neri was broke so we didn’t even ask her to contribute. Neri didn’t seem to have much to say, at any rate. She just sat back there and glared at me and Prue. I was beginning to worry a bit about her, thinking that she might just be too scared to talk but I was soon to be dissuaded of that notion! Prue and I discussed several different ways to change vehicles but it seemed that our best choice would be to steal one, leaving her car as a kind of exchange/trade in. Now, I had seen literally dozens of movies and TV shows that showed someone hot wiring a car but I had NO real idea of how to actually do it. The only other way that we came up with to acquire a different car was to use the body changing machine and try to find a less than scrupulous dealer who wouldn’t ask too many questions about who he was dealing with or why they wanted to acquire a car with as little fuss as possible.

That didn’t seem to be too likely a way to ger another car but it was the only other way we could come up with.

When Prue and I started talking about changing cars that way, Neri just, well, she...SNORTED! It was as if she was making fun of our plan! I turned to face her and said, with a bit of anger, "Look, kid! If you have any better ideas, you’re more than welcome to trot them out in front of us for consideration!" She sort of sneered at me and replied, "You two are almost funny, you’re so inept! If you want any help from ME, you’re gonna have to let me in on what the heck is going on here and who those guys are that are trying to get you!" I looked at Prue and she looked at me and we both laughed at almost the same time. I turned back to Neri and said, "Okay. Little girl, just what do you think you can do to help us? If you’ve got enough to offer, we just might let you in on our little secrets but what you’ve got, better be GOOD!" Neri just grinned at me and said nothing for a couple of minutes. I could tell that she was weighing her options and trying to decide if we were worth her help and time. I was thinking the very same thoughts about her and the two of us just stared at each other for several minutes while Prue drove. Finally, Neri sighed and began to speak. Okay, I guess you two have me over a barrel, so to speak, at least temporarily. I’ll tell you some of what I can do and then you two gotta tell me what’s going on and why I should help you. The truth is, my Father, threw me out when I was 14. He said I was in his way and he didn’t want me around cramping his STYLE!! My mom died several years before that and I haven’t any other close relatives anywhere closer than New York City! I’m going to L.A. to get away from the life I was forced to lead in order to survive. With a little luck, I’ll be able to find a job there and put down some roots and live a good life. I’m not proud of some of the things I have had to do in order to make my own way in the world for the last 4 years but I did learn a lot of useful things. Things like how to hot wire almost any car and how to pick any lock or pocket. I managed to avoid having to sell my body on the street in order to eat, but only barely, by learning how to steal and be sneaky! I can get us almost any car you want with a minimum of fuss and in a VERY short time! Okay, you two, now it’s YOUR turn! Just what is going on with you? Who are those guys in the black car and WHY are they after you? Well, I was somewhat taken aback at Neri’s confession but I realized that, if she was telling the truth, she could, indeed be very helpful to Prue and me so I began telling her my story, just as I am telling you, the reader, now. I didn’t leave anything out and it took quite awhile before I was finished. When I WAS done, however, Neri just sat there in the back seat, not saying anything. She had a sort of disbelieving look on her face but I reminded her of that gun and what it could do. She didn’t have any answers for that and, slowly, the look of disbelief was replaced by one of wonder.

"You mean that you two are actually running from the Men In Black? That’s who’s chasing you? Holy s-­t, Prue and Billie! That’s AWESOME!!! You’re telling me that you found some alien stuff in a spaceship and took it and they want it back and that you, Billie are actually a GUY???!?!???!!! You GOTTA show me how those machines work! Man, if they can do what you say they can, they’re worth a FORTUNE!!! As far as an alien invasion goes, don’t you two think that if there was really a threat, the government would already know what’s going on? No doubt they just want to get you two out of the way and get hold of those devices so you don’t screw something up that they might have planned! You two are being suckers and I would bet that those guys chasing you are actually just herding you towards some kind of a trap!

I looked at Neri in stunned disbelief for a few seconds. I had never considered what she had postulated and it set me back on my heels to think that this kid might be right! Prue chimed in just about then and added her two cents to what Neri had said. "She could be right you know, Bill..ie! What if she IS right? That would mean that we are just a couple of lab rats being put through our paces and we have no chance at all of getting away. At least we have no chance if we keep on doing what the drive us into!" I just sat there, stunned! I didn’t even notice that Prue had called me Billie even though we had told Neri that I was really a man, disguised by the alien machines!

I sat there and didn’t say anything for a long time. Prue and Neri finally ran down, conversation wise and they, too were silent for a time. Finally I raised my head and said, "Okay! Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you two ARE right! If that’s true, then what the hell CAN we do? We’ve GOT to get to L.A. to get to Prue’s friends so they can help us hide! I don’t see any way around that! Maybe", I mused, half to myself, "we need to get there by a more circuitous route? We’ve been more of less on a straight line to L.A. and they’ve been on our heels all the way. What do you think, Prue? Should we go to L.A. via Omaha?" Prue looked over at me, briefly and seemed to be thinking hard. Finally she said, "Well, Billie, it seems to me that if Neri IS right, it’s the only thing we CAN do! If we can find a phone somewhere safe, I can get hold of my friends in L.A. and they can wire us some money. Then we can just buy a car somewhere, maybe from someone who has one for sale in his front yard. Then we won’t have to steal one and we can we could even use the machines to disguise ourselves so they wouldn’t know who OR where we are! We could put some mud or something on the license plates so they would be hard to read and maybe we would be able to relax a little bit!" Prue seemed to be warming to Neri’s ideas and I had to admit that they definitely had some merit.

We DID need some time to wind down a little bit and not have to worry every minute that one of those black cars would turn up, behind us! We also had Neri to consider now and not just ourselves. I knew that Prue would agree with me that, no matter how competent Neri might be, she WAS just a kid of 17or 18 at the most and we had no right to put her in any more danger. Neri did look a lot younger than 18 but it was hard to say just how old she really was. She was slender but not skinny and had short brunette hair. Her complexion was pale but not sickly looking and she wore almost no makeup so she could be as young as 15 but I just couldn’t tell. She talked older than that but a hard life on the streets of any city can harden someone, especially someone like Neri who won’t sell her body. It’s the easiest way to make money on the street and knowing that Neri hadn’t taken that easy way out, made me respect her and what she had to say.

We finally decided that Neri was, very probably right and we made plans to get another car. We found a rest stop that had a phone and Prue made a couple of phone calls to arrange for her friends to send her some money. She didn’t exactly tell them what the money would be use for but, instead, told them that she was in a bit of trouble and needed a couple of thousand dollars so she could lay low for a few weeks. It surprised me that she was able to get that much money in so short a time but Prue didn’t seem a bit surprised. She made arrangements to pick up the money at the next large town on our new way which took us farther north than west. She and Neri made some plans to get some false I.D. and Prue told her friends that she would be using a different name to pick up the money. We found a small diner/truck stop and got some food and went back to the car and ate while we were driving to save some time. We kept to back roads as much as we could and made it into the town by nightfall. Neri told us that she had to go out and find a place to get fake I.D.s and left without another word, leaving us to get a couple of rooms at another seedy motel. I took care of that part while Prue located the local FastCash place. Neri returned a couple of hours later, telling us that she had been successful and handed us each an I’D card that only required us to get a picture and put it in place and seal the plastic over it. We found one of those photo machines that took color photos and, after using the alien machines to change out appearances, we went there to get some pictures taken. We took some time to show Neri how the alien machines worked and how to use them but she seemed to be a quick study and, in a matter of minutes, she was showing US things that they could do! It turned out that not only could those machines change one’s looks as per the instructions on the discs, but they could also mix and match those discs. In other words, one could take one of the discs and load it into the machine and STORE the information! Then one could take ANOTHER disc and put it in the place of the first one and actually choose different features from each disc and mix and match them to get a totally different look from what was on either disc! I showed both Prue and Neri how to make disc recordings of themselves so that, when this whole thing was over, they could go back to looking like their normal selves and they did that. They also made an additional copy of each of their discs, just as I had done with mine. We labeled them with a magic marker that Prue had in her purse so we wouldn’t get them mixed up and then I left them alone in the bathroom to complete their changes. Even though I was prepared to see different women coming out of that bathroom, I was absolutely FLOORED when they finally did come out!

Prue had turned herself into a cute blonde, about 5’4" tall and about 100 lbs. She changed her face considerably and used a lot more makeup than she usually did to complete the new look. Since I didn’t think I had been seen enough to be recognized yet, by the MIBs I retained the same body and face I had been wearing but I did opt for a lot more makeup via the makeup kit and I dressed a lot more revealingly than I had been. Neri played with the machines for a LONG time, in the bathroom of the motel room! I was getting a bit worried about her and was just about to go and check on her when the bathroom door opened and out walked the most incredible looking woman I had EVER seen! She was about 5’9" and built like the proverbial brick porta potty with LONG auburn hair. I mean, down to below her BUTT, long hair! Her face made almost every woman I had EVER seen, look like badly made up boys and her walk would be a wide open invitation in any city in the world! She looked to be about 25 or so and sexy as all hell! Prue caught me gaping at Neri and cleared her throat to get my attention. "Hey, sweetie!", she called to me. "Remember, that’s just a kid inside that incredible package you are ogling there and, another thing, You are no loser in the looks department yourself, honey! Look at yourself in the mirror! You are a heartbreaker, Billie! You’re gonna be fighting the men off no matter where we go!" She started to giggle at that and I couldn’t help myself, so did I. Pretty soon, all three of us were laughing so hard we could hardly breathe and we darn sure couldn’t talk! It was still very disconcerting to me to hear the sounds that were coming from MY mouth but I was slowly getting used to it. It was a whole different matter, however to look in the mirror and see this sexy young blonde staring back at me! I mean, I was still turning myself on and I knew that it was ME under all that femininity!

Well, anyway, after we wound down from our laughing jag, Neri announced that she also had a line on a couple of cars for us to look at tomorrow! She HAD been one busy girl during the time she had been gone and we told her how much we appreciated how much she had done for us so far. It got....well, kinda weird for a couple of minutes. With the three of us women hugging each other and feeling all that soft, warm, scented flesh pushing at me from two different directions at the same time but, somehow I managed to keep my cool. Don’t ask me how I did it because, to this day, I can’t remember exactly HOW I did it! I only know that I resisted the impulses that were telling me to ravish these two gorgeous specimens of the female persuasion. Maybe it was the lack of the equipment required to DO said ravishing that kept me on a more or less even keel!

At any rate, we managed to get some much needed sleep that night and, the next morning, we set out to finish the I.D.s, pick up Prue’s money, and go look at cars. We grabbed a quick breakfast at a local fast food place and ate while we drove again. We first stopped at the photo machine and got our pictures. Then, while Neri finished the I.D.s in the back seat, Prue drove to the FastCash place. Neri gave her the new I.D. and Prue entered the place. In just a very short time, she returned to the car with a fat envelope in her purse. I took a peek at what was in that envelope and, friends, I was SHOCKED! It looked, to me, that there was at least 3000 dollars in there and I didn’t count it! It coulda been more than that! With that out of the way, we went looking for the cars that Neri had found out about. We pulled up in front of a place that Neri had directed us to and there were several cars parked out front. Some of them looked pretty bad and I was beginning to have some doubts about this information but Neri told me not to worry. She had a letter from someone she had met last night and she had been assured that whoever showed up with that letter would be able to get what they needed with NO questions asked so, in we went. There were three men inside the small office and, when we walked in, they all jumped to their feet like they had been electrocuted! If looks were sex, each one of us women and, yes, I AM including myself in that statement since I damn sure looked like one at the time, would have given birth in the next three minutes! Those guys just about fell all over themselves trying to meet every one of us and impress us! Inside, I was laughing but I didn’t want to show that. I had never experienced the kind of behavior that these guys were exhibiting and, while I didn’t necessarily welcome it, It WAS funny to watch them trying to cut one of us "out of the herd" as it were!

After a few minutes of that, Neri kind of took over and with the body and face she had given herself, she had those men practically eating out of her hand! It didn’t take too much longer for those guys to start offering her anything in the place or on the lot if she would just have dinner with any one of them! A half hour later, we left the place with three phone numbers, and a really nice Van! It had been modified and had a HUGE engine in it! In addition, there was room enough in the back for one or two people to actually lay down and nap! It had a great stereo system as well and was extremely clean, inside and out, and had a really stiff suspension system under it so it handled more like a sports car than a van! There was one other feature on the van that made me really glad we had gotten it. It had heavily tinted windows all around, except for, of course, the windshield! That meant that no one on the outside, could see inside unless they were directly in front of the van. A DEFINITE plus, in my opinion!

We transferred everything out of Prue’s car and even got a set of license plates from the manager of the place. We were also assured that Prue’s car would be hidden as only THEY could hide a car! They were going to keep it for a month, hidden in a warehouse miles away and then, they were going to paint it and change it as much as possible so we were assured that our link to Prue’s old car was broken. On our way out of town, we stopped at a chain food store and stocked up on various snacks and beverages and Prue and I got a couple of cartons of cigarettes each. We also did some clothes shopping since Prue didn’t have any clothes that would fit that incredible new body she had fitted herself out in and I didn’t have many either, just what had been in that duffle bag. Prue and Neri picked out underwear and outer clothes, shoes and hose, and makeup. I asked them about the makeup and they told me that they were going to teach me how to apply it because it would look strange, to anyone who might see us, if I NEVER put any on.

Then, they steered me to the fitting rooms and made me try on a lot of the clothes they had selected. It was strange being in a women’s fitting room and even stranger, to me, being there with two semi naked women with ALL of us trying on clothes! At one point, we were all giggling to beat the band and if you don’t think I felt weird about THAT, then you still don’t know ME! We each ended up with a couple of dresses, several skirts and matching tops, frilly and lacy underwear, (they told me that they weren’t going to let me get away with just plain stuff!), and several pairs of pantyhose and, what they called thigh highs, which were stockings with elastic around the tops so they stayed up on one’s legs without having to use a garter belt. We also visited the ummm, ladies hygiene section! I didn’t even want to go down that aisle but they made me do it, explaining to me, quietly, that if I was going to remain in disguise for very long, there were some things I would HAVE to learn and there was no time like the present!

I learned a lot ore in that aisle than I had in the whole rest of the store and, most of it was stuff I never WANTED to learn! They WERE right though. I had to know about periods and stuff because, as they said, if I remained in this borrowed form for very long, I was going to be experiencing them, like it or not! So, I got a quickie education in the ways of womanhood. We even bought a couple of purses for each of us, along with matching wallets and cigarette cases for both Prue and me! It was obvious to me that Prue and Neri were not going to let me get away with doing this disguise thing halfway!

We even got make overs at the cosmetics counter and, it was VERY weird, I gotta tell you, sitting there in a chair in a big store, having some woman I didn’t know put makeup on me! When we were done there, Prue and Neri headed for the jewelry department and I really had no choice but to go along with them. It seemed that, for this kind of shopping, THEY were in charge and I was just along for the ride. They bought several pieces of jewelry including several pairs of earrings and matching necklaces and bracelets.

When we were finally done with our shopping, we pushed two fully loaded shopping carts up to the registers and paid for everything. I don’t even want to tell you what the bill came to but it was WAY up there! By the time we were done there, we had put a sizable dent in that fat envelope of Prue’s, though! We loaded up the van with all of our stuff and got in. Prue and Neri seemed invigorated by our shopping but I was bushed! We headed out of town and turned the van northward. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

TO BE CONTINUED .

 

 

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