and bumping into things, not sure where it was or where it was going or
even if it would survive. But it isn’t so sick any more. It’s casting
off the parasites that made it ill. Soon there won’t be any parasites
at all.”
“I get you,” Alex said, shaking uncontrollably with both fear and rage.
“It will up and kill all the germs and be as healthy as it once was,”
Ackridge said, grinning broadly, hands still clasped behind his back,
rocking on his heels.
“I understand you perfectly,” Alex said. “May I leave?”
Ackridge laughed in short, sharp barks. “Leave? Gee, I really would
appreciate it if you did.”
Colin climbed out of the car and let Alex slide inside, then followed
him and pulled the door shut, locked it. “Well?”
Alex gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could and stared at his
whitened knuckles. “Captain Ackridge thinks I might have been taking
drugs and imagined the whole thing. ”
“Oh, great.”
“Or that maybe some local boys were harassing us in a pickup. He sure
doesn’t want to favor us over some good old boys having their fun.”
Colin buckled his seatbelt. “Was it really that bad?”
“I think he’d have jailed me if you hadn’t been along,” Doyle said. “He
didn’t know what to do with an eleven-year-old boy.”
“What now?” He pulled at his Phantom of the Opera T-shirt.
“We’ll fill the gas tank,” Alex said. “Buy some take-out food and drive
straight through to Reno.”
“What about Salt Lake City?”
“We’ll skip it,” Doyle said. “I want to get into San Francisco as soon
as I can-and get as far off our schedule as possible, in case that
bastard does know our route.”
“Reno isn’t just around the corner,” the boy said, remembering how far
it had seemed on the map. “How long will it take us to get there? ”
Doyle surveyed the dusty street, the yellow-brown buildings, and the
alkaliskinned automobiles. These were all inanimate objects without
intentions of their own, malevolent or otherwise. Yet he feared and
hated them. “I could get us into Reno a little after dawn tomorrow.”
“Without sleeping?”
“I won’t sleep tonight anyway.”
“Driving will wear you out, though. No matter how you feel now, you’ll
fall asleep at the wheel.”
“No,” Alex said. “If I feel myself nodding off, I’ll pull over to the
side of the road and take a fifteen- or twenty-minute nap.”
“What about the maniac?” the boy asked, jerking a thumb toward the road
behind them.
“That flat tire will slow him up some. It won’t be easy handling the
van by himself, jacking it up . . . And once he’s on the road again,
he won’t drive all night. He’ll figure that we stopped at a motel
somewhere. If he knows we planned to be in Salt Lake City tonight-and I
still don’t see how he could know-then he’ll be up there looking for us.
We can get away from him for good, this time.” He started the car. “If
the T-Bird holds together, that is.”
“Want me to plan a route?” Colin asked.
Alex nodded. “Back roads. But roads we can make decent time on.”
“This might even be fun,” Colin said, opening the map once more.
“A real adventure. ” Doyle looked at him, incredulous. Then he saw, in
the boy’s eyes, a haunted look that must have matched his own, and he
realized that the statement had been sheer bravado. Colin was trying as
best he could to stand up under the incredible stress-and he was doing
remarkably well for an eleven-year-old.
“You’re really something else,” Doyle said.
Colin blushed. “You too.”
“We make quite a pair.”
“Don’t we?”
“Zooming off into the unknown,” Alex said, “without even blinking an
eye. Wilbur and Orville.”
“Lewis and Clark,” the boy said, grinning.
“Columbus and-Hudson.”
“Abbott and Costello,” Colin said.
it might have been just the circumstances, but Doyle thought that was
the funniest line he had heard in years. It brought tears to his eyes.
“Laurel and Hardy,” he said when he was finished laughing. He put the
car in gear and drove away from the police station.