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Authors: Pierre Ouellette
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moves on.
He pulls his face back from the windshield to check the speedometer once again. Hell. The damned dash lights are out. He fiddles with the rheostat that controls them. They flicker on, then off again. Goddamn. Thought it was fixed. He’ll have to take the old rig back up to his son-in-law tomorrow and see what they can do.
Far ahead, Arjun spots twin pinpoints of red light on the black horizon. They quickly disappear. He doesn’t bother asking Zed if he saw them. The old man’s night vision is largely a thing of the past. Maybe, if they’re lucky, it’s Anslow and the van.
Prince Vegas. It’s the only logical destination given Anslow’s direction of travel. If he can make it, he’ll seek asylum and probably get it. Because the Principality of Las Vegas is no longer officially part of the United States. It operates as a U.S. protectorate administered by an international entertainment cartel, which shares the profits with a cash-starved U.S. government. A place of princes and their princesses, but not from the lumpen backwaters of the United States. The Vegas customer base is worldwide now, with Americans in the minority. As they roll along, Arjun visualizes the enormous complexes, the exotic architecture, the maze of brilliant distractions, each more astounding than the last.
The two red taillights suddenly appear up ahead again.
Arjun presses the mic button and speaks to a second vehicle that’s following them. “We’ve got a vehicle about a hundred yards in front of us. Stand by.” By the time he finishes, the red lights disappear.
“Damn!” Frank mutters. This time, he’s lost the headlights as well as the dash lights. He reaches down to jiggle the exposed wiring. The headlights come back on.
Just in time to expose the deer. A big buck, fifty feet dead ahead.
No time to brake. He yanks the wheel to the right. His left fender collides with the deer’s left haunch. A sickening thud sends his old truck onto the shoulder and off into the desert beyond.
It happens so fast, Arjun has to wonder if it’s real. Up ahead, the vehicle’s lights come back on just as it collides with what looks like a deer. It sails off the road and down a short embankment, which launches it into a violent series of rolls. Its headlight beams rotate rapidly across the grass, sky, dirt, and sagebrush. It finally comes to a stop in a great cloud of dust.
Frank Turner hangs upside down in his seat belt. Hot oil, gasoline, and coolant mix together like smelling salts and yank him back to his senses. In a terrible moment of fright, he tries to remember what got him here, the world inverted and lit only by the beams cast at crazy angles onto the dry grass and dirt. His head is mashed up against the ceiling of the truck, and he feels the warm, wet flow from a huge laceration on his scalp. His left arm is numb and his broken right clavicle shoots out a gusher of pain. He tries to move his right hand to unbuckle the seat belt, but it’s wedged in between pieces of wreckage. When he attempts to move his legs, he finds his knees jammed into the collapsed dashboard. All the while, the electronic warning beep for an open door pulses through the darkness. In the engine compartment, something rips loose and bangs down onto the hood.
The last thing he remembers is dozing off at his daughter’s, sitting in the big old recliner with his shoes off.
The warning beeper stops and the only sound is the bubbling of the various fluids as they follow whatever path the twisted debris allows. The truck is upside down, with the hood tilted down into the dirt and undercarriage raised toward the sky. The repeated rolling has severed the fuel line, and gasoline now begins to bleed out into the cab.
Then Frank hears the rush of rubber on pavement. As it grows closer, his fear turns to humiliation. Whoever it is will stop and find him in this awful predicament, hanging helpless in his overturned vehicle, and will ask him what happened, and he
He pulls his face back from the windshield to check the speedometer once again. Hell. The damned dash lights are out. He fiddles with the rheostat that controls them. They flicker on, then off again. Goddamn. Thought it was fixed. He’ll have to take the old rig back up to his son-in-law tomorrow and see what they can do.
Far ahead, Arjun spots twin pinpoints of red light on the black horizon. They quickly disappear. He doesn’t bother asking Zed if he saw them. The old man’s night vision is largely a thing of the past. Maybe, if they’re lucky, it’s Anslow and the van.
Prince Vegas. It’s the only logical destination given Anslow’s direction of travel. If he can make it, he’ll seek asylum and probably get it. Because the Principality of Las Vegas is no longer officially part of the United States. It operates as a U.S. protectorate administered by an international entertainment cartel, which shares the profits with a cash-starved U.S. government. A place of princes and their princesses, but not from the lumpen backwaters of the United States. The Vegas customer base is worldwide now, with Americans in the minority. As they roll along, Arjun visualizes the enormous complexes, the exotic architecture, the maze of brilliant distractions, each more astounding than the last.
The two red taillights suddenly appear up ahead again.
Arjun presses the mic button and speaks to a second vehicle that’s following them. “We’ve got a vehicle about a hundred yards in front of us. Stand by.” By the time he finishes, the red lights disappear.
“Damn!” Frank mutters. This time, he’s lost the headlights as well as the dash lights. He reaches down to jiggle the exposed wiring. The headlights come back on.
Just in time to expose the deer. A big buck, fifty feet dead ahead.
No time to brake. He yanks the wheel to the right. His left fender collides with the deer’s left haunch. A sickening thud sends his old truck onto the shoulder and off into the desert beyond.
It happens so fast, Arjun has to wonder if it’s real. Up ahead, the vehicle’s lights come back on just as it collides with what looks like a deer. It sails off the road and down a short embankment, which launches it into a violent series of rolls. Its headlight beams rotate rapidly across the grass, sky, dirt, and sagebrush. It finally comes to a stop in a great cloud of dust.
Frank Turner hangs upside down in his seat belt. Hot oil, gasoline, and coolant mix together like smelling salts and yank him back to his senses. In a terrible moment of fright, he tries to remember what got him here, the world inverted and lit only by the beams cast at crazy angles onto the dry grass and dirt. His head is mashed up against the ceiling of the truck, and he feels the warm, wet flow from a huge laceration on his scalp. His left arm is numb and his broken right clavicle shoots out a gusher of pain. He tries to move his right hand to unbuckle the seat belt, but it’s wedged in between pieces of wreckage. When he attempts to move his legs, he finds his knees jammed into the collapsed dashboard. All the while, the electronic warning beep for an open door pulses through the darkness. In the engine compartment, something rips loose and bangs down onto the hood.
The last thing he remembers is dozing off at his daughter’s, sitting in the big old recliner with his shoes off.
The warning beeper stops and the only sound is the bubbling of the various fluids as they follow whatever path the twisted debris allows. The truck is upside down, with the hood tilted down into the dirt and undercarriage raised toward the sky. The repeated rolling has severed the fuel line, and gasoline now begins to bleed out into the cab.
Then Frank hears the rush of rubber on pavement. As it grows closer, his fear turns to humiliation. Whoever it is will stop and find him in this awful predicament, hanging helpless in his overturned vehicle, and will ask him what happened, and he
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