Flashback

Hobbling as fast as he could, trying not to let the pain and nausea make him puke, he turned left on South University Boulevard at the light since he didn’t want to head west past the Denver Country Club on First Avenue the way he and Leonard had come. Six or eight painful blocks south, he turned right—heading west—on East Exposition Avenue. He could see a park up ahead. Where there was a park, there’d be homeless people—and with the homeless, there’d be what he needed to steal in order to do what he had to do.

1.16 Denver—Saturday, Sept. 25

K.T. has outdone herself.

Nick, with Val riding shotgun beside him and Leonard in the backseat, is barreling due south on Highway 287 - 385 through the empty Comanche Grasslands at 130 miles per hour in the 2015 Chevy Camaro supercharged SS that K. T. Lincoln provided from the impound lot.

Endless grasslands unspool on either side of the white automobile roaring down the empty two-lane highway. They’ve long since outrun the puny Denver PD and Colorado Highway Patrol interceptors, and Nakamura’s hydrogen-powered skateboards never had a chance to catch up once they turned south from I-70. Val has been cheering and pumping his fist for forty miles now.

The almost-twenty-year-old Camaro is pouring out its Vortech-supercharged 603 horsepower and 518 pound-feet of torque. No plug-in electric motors here, just the raging 6.2-liter L99 V-8 engine gulping down gallons of rare high-octane gasoline.

The windshield and windows on the Camaro Vortech SS are just glassed-over gunslits and Val has already had the opportunity to use his as such. The hood of the highway patrol cruiser in pursuit had exploded upward from the shotgun blast and the car had spun into its own dust cloud. That had been the last of the pursuit before they passed through Springfield, Colorado, just north of the grasslands. Leonard is busy in the backseat double-checking unfolded paper maps, even though both Betty and the Camaro’s nav system are providing minute-by-minute information.

“When we get to the town of Campo ten miles ahead,” calls Leonard over the engine howl and roar of the Nitto Extreme Drag NT55R rear tires, “it’ll be about ninety-eight miles to the border station at Texhoma.”

“How many people in Campo?” shouts Nick. He finds it hard to believe that there’s a town out here in the endlessly undulating grasslands.

“A hundred and fifty,” shouts Leonard.

“One hundred thirty-eight,” answers Betty.

“One… hundred… forty… one,” says the Camaro’s mildly retarded nav system.

“Dad!” cries Val. “There’s some sort of helicopter coming in behind us. But I don’t hear it, just see it.”

“That’s a Sasayaki-tonbo,” says Nick, proud to share his knowledge of such things. He has had to concentrate hard on the driving the past hour and more. At more than 130 m.p.h., a chuckhole or jackrabbit could mean disaster. “It means ‘dragonfly’ in Japanese.”

“What do you want me to do?” shouts Val as he opens the sunroof, shucks off his shoulder harness, and stands, holding the RPG that Nick’s brought in his duffel of weapons.

“Just a warning shot across the bow,” shouts Nick over the roar of air that’s joined the engine and tire noise. “Sato might be in it. I don’t want to kill him.”

“Roger that,” shouts Val and takes aim and launches a rocket. The dark back-exhaust of the rocket scorches the white hood of the Camaro.

The rocket misses the nose of the dragonfly ’copter as planned, but it does catch the tip of one of the huge, intricately warped rotors. The big but elegant machine corkscrews to the right, out of sight over a grassy hill.

“Did you see it hit?” calls Nick as Val sets the spent RPG in back, closes the sunroof, and straps himself back in. They’re approaching Campo at 140 miles per hour.

“It’s all right,” says Leonard from the back. “It autorotated down and just landed hard in a big cloud of dust. No one hurt.”

Val high-fives his father, who quickly returns his hand to the steering wheel.

“Turn right onto Main Street and the highway marked four-twelve, two-eighty-seven, sixty-four, three, fifty-six in front of the town hall in Boise City,” says Leonard, leaning forward between the father and son.

“Why does one highway have so many numbers in Oklahoma?” laughs Val.

“What they lack in actual number of roads, they make up for in numbers for them,” says Nick and is surprised when both his son and father-in-law laugh.

Then they are in Texhoma, Oklahoma, population 909 according to Leonard, 896 according to Betty, not-enough-data according to the Camaro’s nav, 364 miles and less than three and a half hours’ Camaro SS driving time from Denver.

And then they are approaching the Republic of Texas border station.

“Jeez,” says Val, “they’re on horses.”