"Goddammit, Cindy, no it ain't like that." Pussycat growled.
There was a pause as he listened to his girlfriend on the other end of the phone.
"I know, I'm sorry it's last minute, but it's family stuff, y'know."
Another pause.
"It's complicated."
Pause.
Pussycat sighed. "Thanks, love you."
Just then, Dreamer sidled up to Pussycat's side. "O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love; and I'll no longer be a Capulet."
"For fuck's sake!" Pussycat hissed.
He listened to his girlfriend's hysterical laughter on the other end of the phone.
"That only encourages her."
Dreamer pretended to faint, causing Pussycat to catch her in his arms. "O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable."
Pussycat hung up the phone. "Pitbull! Dreamer's reciting Shakespeare again!"
"Thank you, Dreamer, that'll be all." Pitbull called back from somewhere in the living room.
Dreamer walked briskly to the back door. "I am going to go write. Gentlemen, I bid you adieu."
She swept herself out the door, leaving Pussycat standing in the kitchen, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Dreamer climbed inside Thunder's cab and drove out to the pasture. It had been months since the whole episode with Roy Smokey. She parked Thunder in a high spot, overlooking the small ranch owned by Pitbull's boss, but inhabited by Dreamer, Pitbull, and Pussycat.
Dreamer climbed out of the cab and into the bed. She set up her lawn chair, sitting down with her typewriter like she often did. She always did this in Thunder's bed. It was her little safe-place, and she'd always felt special about that truck. She'd had that same feeling with Stonewall, it was just something unique about her.
Thunder rolled heavily across the sky, and Dreamer looked up from her writing to see that the lights inside Thunder were on, beckoning her to come inside. A few raindrops fell from the sky, and she quickly took her piece of paper out of the typewriter to preserve the ink. At that moment, a flash of white cracked across the sky, coming down, down, down. A bright bolt of lightning zigzagged down from the heavens, thin and white. With the pass of a single heartbeat, the single blink of an eye, all was quiet. A small stream of smoke rose slowly from Thunder's bed.
The valiant truck twitched and moaned, small arcs of electricity passing through his undercarriage to his roof. His headlights flashed on and off by themselves, over and over, until they stayed on. Thunder's engine sputtered to a steady hum. His headlights flickered, the small lights above his windshield visor illuminating themselves as well.
The whisper of a word on the howling wind could be heard, repeating over and over: Thunder, Thunder, Thunder…