Deep Trek

This time it was a coyote, grizzled, its fur sparkling with streaks of silver gray, its questing muzzle turned toward the approaching car. Jeff was about to tap the horn when a sense of caution overcame him. Instead, he gunned the motor, aiming directly at the animal.

At the last moment it scurried away onto the sandy shoulder of the highway, jaws open, almost as though it was laughing at him.

Jeff swore and swung the wheel farther, hoping to be able to clip the coyote with the front fender, but it was too quick.

The blacktop was covered in a film of blown dirt, and the back end of the sports car started to slide as he sawed angrily at the wheel.

The rear wheels came off the pavement, kicking up a plume of orange dust. The nose dipped, making the whole car jolt and shudder. Jeff didn’t have time to worry about what was happening. Split seconds later and he was snaking back down the road, coughing as he recovered control.

A mile or so down the line and he was sailing again, singing one of his favorite songs from before the Aquila’s flight.

The cruise control was on, the afternoon was closing in toward evening, and everything was right with Jeff’s world.

NANCI WASN’T SO WELL.

She’d crawled slowly, crabwise, trying to stop her lifeblood from leaking into the dirt, and retrieved the canteen she’d spotted earlier. It was three-parts empty.

The effort of making it to the partial shelter of the pile of rocks nearly made her pass out. “No,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “I will not yield.”

The wave of dark nausea slithered reluctantly away from the sixty-year-old woman.

If she fainted, then she would let go of the artery. And goodbye would be all she wrote.

” WHAT THE HELL— ”

The cruise control had suddenly kicked itself out, dropping the engine revs and allowing the digital speedometer display to begin steadily falling down the scale.

Jeff pressed his boot onto the gas pedal, feeling the surge of raw power pushing him back into the leather bucket seat.

“Better,” he said, and smirked. For the first time in over an hour he thought about Nanci Simms.

By now she was probably dead. The witch-queen’s, bitch-queen’s heart would finally have stopped beating, and Jeff could stop feeling scared of her.

That was good… mostly good.

The cruise control clicked out again, and the car began to slow. Jeff’s mind was filled with dark memories and he hardly noticed, automatically stomping down again to send the Mercedes roaring up the long incline ahead of him.

The air conditioning didn’t seem so wonderfully chilled. He put his hand out, over the narrow black grille, feeling the cool air on his palm. But it wasn’t cold the way it had been. It was almost warm.

Now the speedometer was dropping again, down to fifty miles per hour, though he was pushing the pedal right to the metal.

“Come on,” he breathed, feeling the first pricklings of panic touching the long hair at the nape of his neck.

The speedometer showed forty, and now the air was hot, hot as the blistering desert around him.

Jeff stamped down, allowing the pedal to come up, then pushing it to the floor, aware that it felt soggy, like treading hard into a thick layer of spongy, wet moss.

Then the speed dropped down to twenty-five.

Jeff’s technical knowledge could have been written large on the head of an average-sized pin. If your car broke down, you called the garage, where some spic mechanic with a name like Vinny would make it work again. Out with the laser cred-card, and you were back on the highway once more.

Ten miles per hour, the engine barely whispering.

He relaxed, whistling softly between his teeth. One of the things that Jefferson Lee Thomas had learned in the past few months was that there wasn’t much point getting ant-shit angry when things had slipped out of his control.

The sleek car rolled finally to a halt, the noise of the motor dying away.

Jeff applied the handbrake, feeling it lock tight. He reached and turned the key again in the ignition, knowing in his heart that it was a hopeless gesture. There was a harsh rattling sound, metal clattering on metal, showing not the least sign of starting up the engine again. Jeff leaned back in the seat.

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