The portable crane/lift was a specialty equipment item used for those big signs along the highway.  We didn't know this at first.  What we knew was what we saw.  Beautiful women in what looked like cages hanging in the air.  Neked.  A very married man said.  His ability to blush had been lost somewhere in thirty-plus years of fighting evil.  Damn, a younger guy's eyes followed the beaner'd rope and his eyes lifted from digipad device, up and up, to the bathing beauties!  A middle aged bachelor whistled quietly.  "Looks like we've got our work cut out for us!" 

     "Where'd they get the cages?" The non-blusher stood at least two foot taller than the woman who'd come out of the restaurant.  She was still fumbling with possible put them somewheres pockets looking for a smoke.  "I heard an onusual noise so I came out here."  An older model but in pristine restored condition pick up truck pulled up and two women jumped out leaving the doors wide open.  "WHADDAYA NEED??????"  

     The man looked over his shoulder at the mounding smoke piling around the equipment truck of some Volunteer Fire Department.  "Find out what's on fire!" He whistled by sticking fingers in his mouth and shrilling a shofar blast.  People attached to a rope with carribiners made way over.  "They're just these old underground showers." The woman had been handed a lit cigarette.  "Prolly put down there in an old semi-truck." One woman grabbed a reporter's notebook and jotted down squiggly marks.  Then shoved it back at the young person.  "What's that say?" 

     "It's SHORTHAND.  DON'T THEY TEACH YOU PEOPLE ANYTHING AT YOUR FANCY SCHOOLS?" 

     "LYDIA!" The man pushed into her and drove her backwards.  Stared directly into her eyes.  "KEEP LOOKING at me." 

     The motorbike had rolled up behind us.  Without the motor running the man rolled it forth into the back of my legs.  Knees buckled, a turn around, "WHAT THE FUCK????" The Lonely Bear held up one hand in a wave.  The notebook was plucked from my hands.  "WHAT THE FUCK????"  It was Lydia.  "I'll take notes! You go get you know who!"  She turned to the Lonely Bear.  "How'd y'all get here so fast in this fog?" 

     The Lonely Bear took a síp of what a camp mom called Mountain Piss Water.  "Is there an all to me?" She rolled her eyes.  A line of seriously in need of some repair cars was rolling into the parking lot.  "There's no fog on the highway," Lonely Bear revealed.  "There isn't?"  

     "No ma'more than usual in the very lowest spots."  Men's voices not knowing where the girls were and cussing cellphones were getting out of the cars.  "GO!!!!" 

     On the way to my car a hideous voice, steady-frantic-sounding over some kind of speaker laughed and howled halloweeny and said, "YOU BETTAH FIX US UP GOOD OR YOU CAN KISS THE GIRLS GOOD-BYE." The crane/lift made a creaking, groaning noise and swung.  Like it was lowering, but then jerked up.  Some of the girls fell to knees.  A black plastic garbage bag was pitched out of an unseen area on the now-platform.  A gun was seen pointing at it.  The creepy voice hollered in the speaker, "Shoes.  Now put them on and dance."  The laughing and howling turned to music.

     In second gear up the nearly dark mountain-side highway.  Up and around, gravity at night must be the same in the dark as in daylight, I thought of seeing the road in the happy sunshine daytime, like a matterhorn rollercoaster track hugging tiny people to the neck and shoulders of a giant yeti.  I knew who she wanted me to inform.  And I went directly there but there was no vehicle in the carport.  And most of the stuff usually on board shelves resting on cinderblocks was gone.  A wad of straps was messily out of a bucket laying on its side.  I knew I needed to get to someone I knew in Tennessee.  Fuck the fighting between sports fans.

     Past what seemed like a mile of steaming mulch and hulking logging equipment.  Through backcountry--part Forest, part crags with housing.  Cut-through after cut-through: north and south to go east and west.  The stars above more than all the creeps in the world.  Finally fish-tailed onto the boundary's gravel.  And steamed towards my Ranger's last known campfire site.

     Red plastic cups were all over the ground.  Slick spots of puke.  A duffel bag slow-burning in the firepit.  A small and weak voice called out, "I'm over here.  I am.  I'm here."  Wimpering.  "Oh! Oh my God." I knelt into the man duct-taped and roped to a metal folding chair.  "Ooooww.  Good to see you too.  Well, sort of see you.  They just left.  These'll be swollen shut real soon.  Got yer knife?" 

     "Oh, shit, did I hurt you?" 

     "Where's your knife.  I need you to get it and cut me free." 

     The serated blade frayed the ropes into a jagged release.  He ripped the duct-tape from his skin.  "Go get in the car." 

     A woman in dark clothing stepped in front of me as I turned toward the car.  "Did you do this???" Her low smoky voice desperate to accuse.  The Ranger found his pile of clothing.  "They stole my fucking watch!" He said as he held his pants and shirt in front of his underwear only junk.  "She's not the perpetrator," he told the woman as he pushed my shoulder to keep going to the car.  "Can I ride with you?" Neither of us answered.  My friend leaned on my shoulder to get a booted foot back into his pants.  She reached for my keys.  "Don't fucking touch me," I swerved away and the Ranger's foot stuck in a pantleg tripped him into me and I fell too.  He put a rest hand on my arm.  "We don't know who you are," he said matter-of-factly as he got a second leg back in his pants.  Tapped my arm twice, UP.  He was still buttoning his shirt as I held the flashlight so he could check credentials.  Winced as he tucked in the tail of his shirt but said, "LET'S GO!!!!!" Both he and she crashed into each other trying to get into the front seat.  "Ow." He opened the door and she squeezed herself into the back.  He looked around and decided, "The van took them that way." 

     "You don't have your glasses on!"  

     "I know it did.  I heard it."  He asked for water.  And proceeded to scrape his contact lenses out.  "Go!" He barked when the first one was out.  "Okay, okay." Tires spinning briefly in oozy keg's-been-here mud before I edged the fronts onto something dry and rocked it, jolting into grip and go.  He fished eyeglasses out of his lower pant leg's inner pocket.  "All these TV people and Rock Stars around had me," he reached over and pulled the brights into on.  "THERE!"  There was a Hawaiin shirt in the gravel road.  "They'll have left clues." 

     "Clues?!?" 

     I braked hard and put it in PARK.  Took the keys out of the ignition.  "What are you..." I slammed the door behind me getting out. 

    "You freakin'?"  He was beside me in twelve paces.  

     "Kinda.  But not really.  Listen." He cupped an ear then rose his hand into "Moose Ears, your little brother taught me that move." 

     "No, listen," I tried to gulp away dry mouth and cacked a little cough.  "I came to find you beca, cough, because there's a majorly weird situation going on in Carolina." 

    "Right now?" He cocked his head. 

     "Cha." 

     "Let me get you your water." He did and half-joked, "My contact might be in there."