The Bug was like an extension of his big, hard body. He could make it do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
Clutch in, hard, shifter dropped into third gear, as smooth and silky as a gaudy house sex sandwich, clutch popped out.
Its engine screaming an octave above redline, the Baja Bug’s nose dipped sickeningly from the sudden deceleration, and Azimuth’s stomach likewise lurched forward.
With the blaster’s vented barrel sleeve braced against the rim of the missing windshield, and the Wailers still wailing sweet and mellow in his head,
Azimuth howled at the male figure standing beside the sign, “Doan mess wid me, mon!” He brought the Bug to a sideways skidding stop right in front of the tall, bearded man in wraparound sunglasses and a tattered straw cowboy hat. The skid made the big knobby tires dig in, and sent a wall of dust flying over the lone sentinel, who neither backed away nor jumped aside.
Azimuth jerked down his goggles and ripped off his headset, holding the sights of the KG-99 on the man. He poked the weapon out the passenger door’s windowless frame until the dust cleared. “What you up to, mon?!” he shouted. “What you fuckin’ wid me road for?”
The man in the sunglasses and straw hat raised his empty hands and started to walk slowly toward the passenger door. The sign leaning against the barricade was a delaminating, irregular chunk of plywood, a painted arrow pointing to the right. “There’s a problem up ahead,” he said.
“There be a bigger problem right here, mon, if you doan clear me way, and quick like.”
“Got cave-ins up ahead,” the tall man said. “The old highway has been undermined by the river.”
“Ain’t no river here, mon.”
“You can’t see it anymore, It runs underground now, in some places right below the road. Up ahead, the flowing water has eroded all the earth from under the road metal. Just the thin skin of concrete is left. It won’t take the weight of your wag. The road will fall out from under you, and you’ll either die in the crash or drown as you drop in the river and get swept underground.”
“Fuckin’ C!” Azimuth said, killing his engine and scrambling out the driver’s door. He swung the handblaster up over the little wag’s roof, and its welded-on bar of high-intensity floodlights, to keep the bearded guy covered as he moved for the front bumper. “Stay where you be, goddammit!”
He stormed over to the barricade and stared down the road, keeping the barrel of the KG-99 pointed at the sentinel’s chest.
“I doan see no fuckin’ holes, mon.”
“Around the curve,” the bearded man told him. “By the time you’d have made the turn, it’d would have been too late. You’ll be rolling over rotten ground. We lost an entire caravan this morning. Eighteen people and five wags. Swallowed up and gone in the blink of an eye.”
Azimuth looked at the man carefully for the first time. He noticed how gaunt his face was under the beard, and how even though the sunglasses completely hid his eyes, they couldn’t hide the suffering he radiated. Perhaps from losing family and friends to the sinkholes. Despite this, the scout remained suspicious. It was his job.
“And yon be in charge of warnin’ people?” Azimuth asked dubiously. “You come from another planet, mon? Or mebbe you just lose your fuckin’ mind?” He raised his left hand and pinched his index finger and thumb together. “I come dis close to chillin’ you, mon.”
“Someone had to mark the detour,” the man in sunglasses said.
“Detour?”
He pointed to his left, to a two-rut track that ran perpendicular to the highway, leading off in the direction of the darkly forested, savage-looking mountains to the east.
“Looks like de wrong bloody way to me,” Azimuth said. “And narrow as worm shit.”
“The road loops up through the foothills and comes back to the highway on the other side of the cave-ins,” the man said.
“Shit! I got me a whole damn carny mebbe a day behind on the road. Big wags. Trailers. Heavy loads. How dey gonna make it up dat pissy little track?”