Just rebuilt the transmission, thank Chrysler. Does the road curve now, or in another mile? Just hope they don’t start shooting. The nitrous in the trunk don’t play nice with bullets.
Table-flat, bone-dry landscape whizzing by in a blur, spring bugs banging the windshield, and I remember that old joke. What’s the last thing that goes through a bug’s mind as it hits a windshield? Its ass, abdomen, rear-end, ha ha, you know?
Behind me on the road—slick, one-a.m.-black SUVs are crawling up on my rear-end, growling like abused dogs, revving forward inch by inch to nip at my Goodyear heels. I open it up just a little more, hope the frame holds. Pulling away a little now, but—shit—they’ve been holding back too.
That switch curve comes up like a boy sneaks up on his girlfriend’s window, quick and quiet, and I’m slamming the brakes, hauling on the wheel, praying to the Four Wheeled Gods that I don’t lose it. I come out of the curve and gun it, glance back to see if I’ve lost ’em. One, two, three… lost one. Fucking lot of good that’ll do me; with less of ’em they’ll just take longer to beat me to death when they catch me.
Skill takes a back seat to engine and instinct. Plain old engine power’s all I got left, and it’s not going to be good enough. They aren’t shooting yet—
Damn me to cracked head gasket hell for even thinking that, because now out pops one of those gray-suited gorillas, leaning out the window with a matte-black 9mm in hand. Well, damn the nitrous too while we’re at it—I’d rather go out in a ball of flames than with a bullet in the brain.
Tap the brakes, and the black beasts behind me leap forward, startled, slow to react. My poor ride shudders like it’s gonna fly apart any second. Ha! Dumb bastard hanging out the window falls out, tumbles into a speck behind us in the distance.
Cheer me on, kitty cats. I’ve got to get rid of six more just like him, all knuckles, thick necks, and suits attached to guns.
They don’t try shooting again, only strain to get a lead on me, wanna force me off the road. I’m holding out for now, I know the road better, the bumps and potholes. They’re in my territory, that’s my advantage, plus my baby, a roaring hot, eight cylinder Detroit-made hellbeast, but they’ve got numbers, and by numbers, I mean the steel-jacketed ones too.
I hear mewing behind me, sharp and sweet above the wailing wind and whining engine. I’m doing this for them, like a total fuckin’ sap, but those big blue eyes cut through me like shivs.
Chrysler knows I put up with a lot working for the big man, but kittens is where I draw the fucking line.
I flinch like the devil yanked on my soul as a bullet zips past. Damn those thugs and their guns, and all I can do is keep one eye on the road, the other on my rearview mirror; one hand firmly on the wheel, and the other protecting my testicles. Times like this, even though it’s hard enough to feed one mouth in this dead world, I wish I still had a co-pilot. A partner, a pal, someone to wheel around with a big old 12-gauge and blast those bastards’ tires out. Tires. Why aren’t they shooting my tires? Must be afraid to hurt the kittens? Bullets don’t come too close to the car, I see now; they’re just tryin’ to scare me.
I flip the cover off the switch; time to risk the nitrous. I’ll blow rings and hoses all over the place, and my sweet, sweet ride’ll be scrap after, but hell, what’s the use in driving a suped-up getaway car if it doesn’t get-you-the-fuck-away? Figure I’ll bury her somewhere special, a nice scrap yard up north away from all the scavenger buzzards and gear-grinding Venom-heads. She’s earned her rest after this.
So damn it all and fuck it too for good measure. Flip the switch, fire the trigger, and zoom, man, zoom. Needle pushes around the bend, the car throws me back into my seat, the mewing in the back goes silent, and the black dogs of death fade away behind me like mist when the sun comes up.
Still, there ain’t a lot of cover out here to hide behind, and my silver bullet of a ride ain’t going to blend in with any traffic (not that we see much down here anymore anyways), so all this does is buy me time to think. Time to figure out what I can do to lose them, get the lead I need to get over the horizon. Find a back road to take me so far out of sight they’ll just give up and forget about me. The thought of leaving the kittens on the road, that might work, but hell, I’ve wasted my car already, so why not go all the way?
That gives me an idea. If I’m careful and they’re stupid—and they established that they are with the shooting stunt—so hey. If I’m careful, I’m golden.
I reach back with one arm and tip the kittens out of the cardboard box. They’re balls of fur stretched over firecrackers, only these firecrackers got wet. I mean, they’re dang tired. They blink in the light, and one even takes a swipe and a hiss at my hand as I haul their box up. He doesn’t like me any more than lead man-gorilla Saul does, but at least this little guy isn’t capable of ripping me limb from limb, even if he shares the man’s thirst for my blood.
I scramble for some empty beer cans, rags, anything on the floor that’ll give the box some weight, stuff it in and get the box good and closed with a bit of oil to seal the deal. Window cranks down, out flies the box, weighted good, rolls down the highway, and I watch in the mirror as it comes to a stop just perfect, right side up. Yeah, they’ll have to stop and check that out, and that’ll give me just the edge I need to make it to the canyon, which is opening up ahead.
The road dips down from table-top mesa to twisty, ancient water-cut maze. Smoke’s curling out of my hood, chastising me on the way by; my car’s ghost, escaping its body, fleeing for roadster heaven. She holds out until I make the main canyon chasm, and then sputters, gasps, and rolls to a slow stop.
Sorry baby, I’m no marine. Gonna have to leave you behind. All plans to give her a proper funeral go by the wayside in favor of saving my own hide.
Four little kittens in the backseat of my dead car, and I’ve got twenty miles between me and safety; twenty miles of rocky desert canyon paths and deadly scorpions, snakes, and rabbits. Don’t get me started on those rabbits, some wack-job’s idea of post-Crash hardened wildlife. Remember hearing once that some dumb fools brought all these birds over from England to America because they were mentioned in a book of plays. Now we all gotta deal with starling shit covering our cars if we park under the wrong dead tree. So it was like that with some post-Crash survival who thought they could help wildlife survive the die-offs. Now rabbits just as likely to gore you to death as they are to fill your belly. Damn shame how some people deal with the end of everything.
So what do I do? I’m not ready to call it quits, gonna have to do something I never do, which is hoof it. I’m wishing I still had that box, but I’ve gotta have something in the trunk that will work to carry these little fur babies. I pop the back and rummage around through the tools and parts and scavenged junk I been holding onto just in case it ever proved useful. There we go—tool box. Covered in grease, filled with rusty screwdrivers, hammers, wrenches, but it’ll do.
I dump it out without a thought, just a small whimper, slipping one good wrench into my back pocket, and gently place the kittens inside. I take a bloody nick on the hand from the pissy one. Shut the lid just part way, not latching it. I can’t hardly imagine being the kind of asshole who’d walk into Shantyville with a toolbox full of suffocated kittens.
Got no choice but to walk across the canyon floor, not sure what I’m going to have to cross on foot, having only been through these parts in my ride, but I know I’d better stick to the difficult terrain so they can’t run me down from their still-working rides. After a minute of jogging, I see a path high up on the canyon wall, so I head that way. Clouds of dust approach from behind, the dogs hot on my trail again, but still a ways off. My ruse must have worked. I crack a smile, pat my tool box, and cut my own dust cloud up that trail, hoping to make it out of sight before they pull in, wishing I’d learned something about covering tracks, or desert survival, back before the Crash. Shoulda been a boy scout instead of spending all that time helping my old man change oil and shit. Course, I can’t beat myself up too bad; knowledge of engines had gotten me this far. It was only the past few minutes where that was worth about as much as a handful of rancid beans.