“I’m no expert on that,” the man said, “but I suppose it would depend on how good the drivers were. I’ll tell you this, though, there’s no turnarounds once you start up that way. You’ve got to go all the way to the end before you can come back.”
“Fuckin’ D!” Azimuth snarled as he lowered his weapon. Part of his responsibility as carny scout was to make sure the roads were passable for the convoy. The standard operating procedure in a detour situation like this, given the opportunity for ambush and robbery, was for him to leave a marker at the turn-off, which would indicate to those who followed that he had tested the alternate route, returned and marked it safe. Unknown to head roustabout Furlong and carny master Crecca, to increase his enjoyment of the many perks at the other end of the journey, what Azimuth actually did most of the time was to mark the route as safe, and if it wasn’t, he would turn back and retrieve the sign.
When he leaned into the back seat of the Bug, Azimuth wasn’t thinking about the potential risks to himself and his caravan: He had never heard of a problem along this stretch of road. The lack of water, the crushing heat, and the sheer distance kept organized chillers and robbers from setting up shop. And it would take a highly organized and large crew to threaten the carny. As he leaned into the back of the Bug, he was thinking about the various attractions of the Blue Moon gaudy in Paradise, and specifically a set of quadruplet sisters, aged nineteen, who worked in tag-team fashion, around the clock, until the customer cried for his or her uncle. On the Bug’s floorboards was a collection of smooth, white quartzite rocks. He selected one of about three pounds and placed it at the foot of the barricade, next to the detour sign.
“What’s that for?” the man in sunglasses asked him as he straightened.
“To let me people know I’ve gone ahead.”
“How many folks are in the carny?”
“More dan sixty,” Azimuth boasted. “And dat’s widout countin’ all de sideshow muties. It be de biggest damn carny in all de hellscape.”
“Maybe I’ll get a chance to see the show,” the man said.
“You woan be disappointed, dats for sure,” Azimuth said as he climbed back in the Bug’s driver’s seat.
Azimuth climbed back in the Bug and rescabbarded the KG-99. He cranked over the engine, then backed up to give himself room to make the right turn.
“Mebbe I’ll see you den in Paradise,” he shouted gleefully to the bearded man as he slowly drove past him. “Look me up at de Blue Moon gaudy. I be under a pile of blondes. Ha!”
The man just tipped the frayed brim of his cowboy hat in salute.
Azimuth pulled up his goggles and pulled on his headset as he rolled off the roadway and onto the track. He got the Bug into second gear, and had to keep it there as the trail wound back and forth through a series of tight switchbacks that climbed up and away from the predark interstate.
The bearded man hadn’t been shitting him about there being no place to turn around.
Although the one-wag road was wide enough for even the biggest carny vehicle to pass, no way could even Azimuth back the Bug down it by himself. The turns were too tight and road’s downward angle was too steep. Getting back down in reverse could be done, but it would take a very long time, at virtual crawl speed while men walking behind shouted directions for brakes and steering.
And if one of the wags in the line broke down, it would bottleneck the whole caravan.
Azimuth drove on doggedly, and didn’t start to get an antsy feeling until he was about half an hour from the highway, and he saw the lower fringe of the forest ahead. He stopped the Bug in the sunlight, set the parking brake, ripped off his headset and got out.
Above him were towering, densely packed coniferous trees. The two-rut track made a turn just inside the edge of the forest and vanished in among the shadows and the dark, massively thick trunks.