Route 917: The Hunting Of Sam Vaults Part five (Finale)

By Jack Amos

When a grief stricken Sam Vaults came roaring out of the night and ploughed into the collective

of aliens along with a poorly assembled Thaumetric Splicing Machine, two things happened.

The first being that he obliterated, murdered in the third degree, all sentient otherworldly

presences that were on the highway that evening. 857 exploded on impact, 328 was sent flying,

airborne into the night sky only to be shattered on impact when he arrived back on earth, and

Julius Maneater, the monster of the ages, flew backwards and was smacked hard straight into the

unforgiving pavement. The terror of Siberia, the devourer of men, the one and only serial killer in the United States, was no more.

The second event that occurred on impact, was that the TSM went off in an expulsion of neon

green light and, because it was assembled so poorly, linked Mr. America’s conscience not with the

murderer Julius Maneater, but with the Professor of Russian Literature, Sam Vaults.

As the car spun pinwheel’s away from the site of impact, Sam shuddered, convulsed, shone an

unholy blaze of luminescence, and collapsed. After a moment of steamy wonder and cross eyed

confusion, Sam realized just what exactly had happened, and was over come by fear. He jumped

out of his vehicle and rushed over to the mess of exploded mechanical parts and foreign, inhuman

bodies.

He saw there, in the middle of it all, the corpse of Julius Maneater, flashing through forms, tigers

and monsters, humans so vile they don't deserve names. Flickering, wavering, changing. Over

come by terror, Sam turned and ran, escaping off to Boston, fleeing the scene of his accidental

crime.

It was odd though, because as he drove hurriedly back home, twitching and sweating with guilt,

he was overcome with a new found sense of patriotism, and an odd desire to get naked.

*

Out in the desert night, slumbering next to a lone cactus, Mr.America’s eyes shot open, and he

began to cry. He weeped until the dawn announced It's arrival, and continued through until the

midday. He was full of grief, all for a woman who he had never met, but still loved. It hurt him, how much he loved her.

*

When Sam Vaults rolled back into Boston he tried his very best, really he did, to go back about

his life normally. Apart from organizing his wife’s funeral, he attempted to finish Russian

Existentialism And The Human Sex Drive and to teach his lectures in a competent and educational

manner.

It was just all rather hard to do, when he was filled with an overwhelming urge to undress and

save the nation from numerous enemies that posed as threats to liberation.

Sometimes Sam would wake up, frothing at the mouth, clutching an axe or crowbar in his sweaty

hands, and his entire house would be trashed, absolutely vandalized. Lamps tipped over and

broken, furniture dismembered and slammed open, paintings and decorations ripped apart or

shattered.

Slightly disturbed by these lapses of awareness and violence, Sam would leave his home and head

to lecture halls, worried and concerned for his sanity.

Meanwhile, in his quest for the eradication of oppression, Mr.America would spontaneously

combust into long winded explanations on the true meaning behind part two in Fyodor

Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, in the middle of intense battles against alien soviet foe.

That, along with the intense episodes of grief, greatly confounded him. He missed Miss Sally

Vaults, though he did not know who she was or how he knew her. He only knew that she was gone, and he would never ever, be able to hold her again.

*

All of this was bound to birth a catastrophic consequence eventually, and that’s exactly what

happened on a sunny Thursday afternoon, in a Yale conference room. Sam had entered and been

party to a meeting discussing the implementation of socialist works into the Russian Literature

curriculum. He had maintained a healthy composure throughout the gathering, and if not for a

nude schizophrenic confronting a “The Times Colonist” reporter five hundred and six miles away

in the Arizona Desert, Sam might have lived through to see night fall.

Alas, this was not the case and, just as the meeting was coming to a close, Sam Vaults rose from

his chair, withdrew his .21mm colt revolver from a tweed jacket pocket, and emptied the entire

cartridge into the stomach of a certain professor of socialism, Bernard Fuseham.

As Mr.Fuseham bled to death in his swivel chair, Sam shed his clothes and exited the conference

room, ran out into the university square frantically waving his pistol, and climbed to the top of the

statue of Nathan Hale, where he proceeded to shout and preach against the ways of judgement,

oppression, and socialism. His speech was rousing, nationalistic, aggressive, and beautiful. It

warned against judgment and Russians, and told of the glories that lay in free market capitalism,

and the absolute freedom of the individual.

He attracted quite a crowd, including reporters from “The Times Colonist”, along with the

majority of the New Haven Police department.

At the end of his rant however, as he gazed down upon the crowd breathless and smiling, his eyes

shone innocence and he looked at the students, the professors, the law enforcement officers and

the news reporters, and he felt entirely, blissfully, whole. He didn’t know who Sally Vaults was,

and he didn't miss her. He couldn’t feel the pain.

Sam Vaults was at peace, and he felt whole, un encumbered by worries and grief.

He was happy, and he stayed that way, even when a bullet fired from the gun of a 26 year old

Officer O’Malley, went through his forehead and exited out the back of his skull.

He fell, from the bronze shoulders of Nathan Hale, and cracked into the brick paving.

The crowd gasped in horror and shock but, like all crowds do, they eventually dispersed leaving

only the corpse of Sam Vaults, a handful of police men, and a trembling Mr. O’Malley.

Night fell in Boston.

*

Out in the desert, something snapped loose inside of Mr.America. It dangled for a moment, and

then fell down and out of sight. He opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by the defeated

bodies of soviet foe.

He felt free, the incessant pain that had been withering inside of of his head, was gone. He could

hardly even remember what it was about.

He looked around.

His work here was done.

He sighed, and walked off into the big red, stepping over a deceased alien, singing softly to

himself as he did so.

The empty night air on route 917 was quite, save for the gentile disturbance of a man, humming

“Star Spangled Banner.”

THE END.