Balustrade Read Free

amazing, doesn't it hon?” And, “It'll be great to just get away and focus on us.”
    Smiling so broadly.
    His perky optimism had waned since then, but as he drove toward the mysterious Balustrade, Jack occasionally whistled, grinned, and even patted Hilary's thigh the way you might a child who just couldn't wait to get to the circus or zoo or wherever.
    If she were being honest, Hilary was curious about the whole thing and more than a little intrigued about what these “roadside vendors” would be hawking that was to be avoided with such diligence.
    What could be so bad? Stolen prosthetics? Imported snuff Blu-rays? White babies procured from crowded county fairs?
    It all seemed sort of formulaic, as though they were driving i nto the plot of a horror movie. If that were the case, at the very least, the car should have been supplied with a fat stack of CDs. Ominous bass tracks. Some nerve-pounding cello music. A choir of children singing in Latin.
    So , it was a little anti-climactic as the first of these “vendors” popped onto the horizon. A metal shack, of the sort that normally contains lawnmowers and other gardening implements, pegged the side of the road, but more than that, the building served as an easel for an array of signage.
    PRAY to GOD ABOVE for STRENGTH!
    Turn back now, SINNERS!
    And Hilary's personal favorite: Sodomites burn in HELI! The final “L” having been blasted into an “I” by what was probably a shotgun.
    “ Ah!” Jack laughed.
    “ Yeah. Ah. But they’re not exactly vendors,” she said, to be contrary.
    “ Oh but they are. They're selling the lord.”
    “ To anal sex enthusiasts? If they were serious about it, they'd at least put a polite spin on it. God forgives even buggerers .”
    “ They do seem pretty angry.”
    Hilary grinned as they came up on the next structure; no bigger than a highway berry stand. Two teenaged girls, in dresses that would have cleared their ankles if it weren't for those reputation-shielding ruffles, axed at the air with picket signs. One read: GOD HATES . The other: HIPPIE WHORES .
    “ Should we stop for the full spiel?” Hilary asked, flippantly. “They seem like nice girls.”
    “ Uh...fuck no.”
    Hilary shrugged. “They might have lemonade. Just saying.”
    Twenty minutes deeper into the nowhere, and not seeing another soul, Hilary began to wonder who had decided those two girls were the last stand against the evil contained in the black sedan. Their “big guns” against the heathens? The effort didn't seem to be the brainchild of a mastermind. In fact, Hilary could have come up with a stronger campaign to keep people away from Balustrade in her sleep. A recent news report on flesh-eating bacteria on a cruise ship had nixed every one of Hilary's future plans of lounging on the lido deck drinking mai tais—well, maybe not that last bit.
    But just as she'd thought it, she saw them.
    A dense thicket of fanatics, dressed in a similar fashion as the lemonade stand girls. Holly Hobby-esque. If Holly weren’t such a slut. Hilary was certain these two zealots would take offense at such a secular reference.
    “ What the?” Jack's words wisped out of him. He stepped on the brake as the gathering came into view, gravel spewing then sputtering as they slowed to a crawl.
    Their arms tightly linked and their practiced scowls perfectly mimicked—one face to the next. They swayed in an unnerving unison. Side to side. In the center of this ménage, a giraffe of a woman dressed all in black with a wide-brimmed sun hat shading her face, held out her palm to their approaching car.
    “ Jesus Christ.” Hilary gripped the dashboard with one hand, the fingers of her other rubbing the ink off the instructions.
    “ Maybe we can just go around them,” Jack suggested.
    “ Well, whatever you do, don't stop.”
    “ I can't just run over them.”
    “ Maybe we can call the fire marshal.”
    Jack glowered.
    The drab protesters’ lips were moving, chanting it