they approached the Nevada border on Highway 178 and stopped five miles from the crossing. Seth remained quiet about the altar episode. He said he was still trying to figure it out but refused to explain what it was.
But she knew. The future had changed; the fact that they were making a run for the state line was evidence enough. He had tossed a prayer into the sky and the future had changed, and Seth was not at all at ease with the fact.
Slowly Seth came to himself. He stared at the blacktop ahead, hands on the wheel. A mischievous grin grew on his face.
“Okay, the way I see it, we have three ways to do this.” He looked at her. “One way would be violent and bloody, one would be crafty and brilliant, and one would be bold and silly. Which is your pleasure?”
She thought through the choices. Violence was unacceptable to both of them. What could he mean by silly? Either way they would succeed, wouldn’t they? Although he had made some errors lately.
“Bold and silly,” she said.
“You sure?”
“Maybe not.”
“No, I think it’s a daring choice,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
“Okay.”
Seth slapped the steering wheel. “Excellent!”
He climbed out, ran to the front of the car, yanked off the Cadillac hood ornament, and hurled it into the desert. Miriam got out, amused.
“What is this?”
“This is our disguise, princess.” He ran to the trunk, popped it up, and returned with a large knife. Without warning he bent and slashed the right front tire. With a terrible hiss, the air bled out. The sound struck her as maniacal.
“I cannot imagine this is a clever idea,” she said.
He ran to the rear wheel and slashed it as well. “You chose bold and silly, remember?”
“Yes, but I didn’t choose stupid.”
Seth laughed and jumped around to the other side, where he repeated the slashing. All four tires were as flat as millet cakes.
“Let’s roll,” he said.
“You can drive on these tires?”
“For a few miles. That’s the point.”
They started down the road, and within a hundred meters the thumping began. Within another hundred the racket was so loud that Miriam was sure the wheels would fall off.
“This is ridiculous!”
“Ha! You think this is ridiculous?”
Now she began to worry in earnest. He had never failed them, but this madness was a new thing. Perhaps he had actually lost his gift as the result of the prayer.
A loud bang sounded from the engine and Miriam flinched. Steam began to seep from the hood. Now what? The engine was going to blow up!
“Seth! Shouldn’t you stop?”
“No!” He was delighted. “This is it!”
“What on earth are we doing?”
“Mess up your hair and put some of that white sunblock on your face. Could you do that for me?”
“Not until you tell me what we are doing!”
“We’re putting on a disguise. Just enough so that he won’t recognize you for a few seconds. That’s all we need. I thought white sun-block would be better than grease.”
“Who is he?”
The smile left his face. “I’m sorry, but we’re starting to run out of time. We’re committed, and honestly, if I tell you too much, this won’t work. I swear I’ll make anything you find less than hilarious up to you later, but now you have to make yourself look nonArabic.”
Smoke was streaming out of the hood. A tremendous thump sounded under them.
“We lost a tire,” he said, grinning again.
She stared at him for one last moment, and then scrambled for the back where a small bag held their toiletries. “I don’t like this,” she said, pulling out the tube of white cream. She smeared the paste over her face. “I don’t like this at all.”
“You look like a ghost.”
She grabbed the visor and looked at her image in the mirror. A streaked white face stared back. The car stopped in a cloud of smoke.
“Perfect,” Seth said. “The crossing is just around that corner. Just drive nice and easy and stop before you get to the police cruiser.”
She spun to him. “Drive? I can’t drive!”
“I told you it would come in handy, didn’t I?”
Captain John Rogers had just put out his last Lucky Strike and was thinking he’d much rather be back in Shoshone, having a cold brew at Bill’s Bar, when he saw the cloud of smoke rolling his way from around the bend.
His first thought was that someone had ignited a smoke bomb, but he discarded the thought when he saw the grille. It was an overheated car, limping as if running on the last cylinder. Banana peckers, that thing was barely crawling. Didn’t the fool driver realize he was frying the engine?
He couldn’t make out the car because it was crawling under a mask of steam, but by the square grille he pegged it as an old sedan. These here were tourists from New York or Vermont, come to take a picnic in Death Valley without knowing the first thing about the harsh realities of the place. John had seen it a hundred times.
He grunted and leaned back on his hood. “Banana peckers,” he said. He didn’t know how the fool could see past the windshield. It was wobbling too. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken . . .
Good night, the thing had burned its wheels off! Was that even possible? The situation had just gone from New Yorker stupid to hardly imaginable imbecile. In his eleven years patrolling these parts, he couldn’t remember seeing anything quite like this.
He stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Double banana peckers,” he said. “Wait’ll the boys get a load of this.”
The car sounded like a limo pulling strings of empty cans after a wedding. It clanked to a steaming halt ten yards off.
John rested his right hand on his gun. Never could be too careful. A man stupid enough to drive this deathtrap was stupid enough to do anything.
The engine died. Hissing smoke boiled skyward. All four tires were gone. Now how in the world was that possible?
The door flew open and someone stumbled out, coughing and gagging on the smoke.
“Hold it there!” John yelled. “Just hold it right there!”
The person straightened, frantic. It was a woman and her face was white. Either sunblock or makeup. Her hair flew every which way, and she reminded him of Gene Simmons wearing that Kiss makeup.
She gripped her hair and turned in a slow circle, moaning.
A faint breeze cleared the smoke for a moment. The car was empty.
He edged forward and peered through the haze.
“You must help me,” the woman moaned.
“You alone, miss?”
She began to jump up and down, screaming at the top of her lungs. “The arks are after me! The arks are after me! Help me, the arks are after me!”
Startled, he followed her terrified look back down the road. “Okay, just go easy, miss. I don’t know what you’re on, but everything is fine now. There are no arks after you.”
“The arks! You don’t understand, I have the ring and the arks are after me!”
He eased toward her. The woman was either high and hallucinating, or a plain lunatic. Not terrible actually; she would be his ticket off this post. He held out a reassuring hand.
“Please, miss. I’ve been here all day and I can assure you, there are no arks in these parts. Now if you’ll just calm down.”
It dawned on him what she was trying to say. He stopped four feet from her and waved a hand through the smoke. “Do you mean the Orcs are after you? Like the Orcs from The Lord of the Rings?”
She stopped jumping, surprised but no longer frantic, as if a light had just gone on in her head.
A door slammed behind him and he spun back. The cruiser!
“Hey!”
A hand slapped at his waist, and he twisted back to see the woman hurl his revolver over the guardrail. He grabbed at her, but she was past him, running for the cruiser. He took a step in the direction she’d thrown the gun and immediately realized he would never retrieve it before they took off. He chased her.
“Stop!” He knew then that these were the two they had been looking for. “Stop!”
The engine fired and the woman piled in. With a squeal of tires his cruiser shot backward, peeled through a U-turn, and then roared off, leaving him straddling the yellow lines on the road.
He glanced down at his waist. No radio. He could get the gun, of course, but . . . John turned around and looked at the steaming car they’d abandoned. The tireless wheels were mangled. It was going nowhere. The trunk was open. The man had come from the trunk and snuck around, using the smoke for cover while the lady went on about the arks. Orcs.
Banana peckers! This was not good. Not good at all.