Shadowfires

Kentucky Derby.
    A bullet clipped the rear bumper or maybe a fender, and the high-
pitched skeeeeeeen sounded like the Chevette's startled bleat of pain.
    The car stopped coughing and shuddering, surged forward at last,
spewing a cloud of blue smoke in its wake.
    In the rearview mirror, Anson Sharp dwindled beyond the smoke as
if he were a demon tumbling back into Hades. He might have fired
again, but Ben did not hear the shot over the scream of the Chevette's straining engine.
    The road topped a hill and sloped down, turned to the right,
sloped some more, and Ben slowed a bit. He remembered the sheriff's deputy at the sporting-goods store. The lawman might still be in the area. Ben figured he had used up so much good luck in his escape from Sharp that he would be tempting fate if he exceeded the speed limit in his eagerness to get away from Arrowhead. After all, he was in filthy clothes, driving a stolen car, carrying a shotgun and a Combat Magnum, so if he was stopped for speeding, he could hardly expect to be let off with just a fine.
    He was on the road again. That was the most important thing now-
staying on the road until he had caught up with Rachael either out on
I-15 or in Vegas.
    Rachael was going to be all right.
    He was sure that she would be all right.
    White clouds had moved in low under the blue summer sky. They were
growing thicker. The edges of some of them were gunmetal-gray.
    On both sides of the road, the forest settled deeper into
darkness.

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28 DESERT
HEAT
    Rachael reached Barstow at 3:40 Tuesday
afternoon. She thought about pulling off I-15 to grab a sandwich; she
had eaten only an Egg McMuffin this morning and two small candy bars
purchased at the Arco service station before
she'd gotten on the interstate. Besides, the morning's coffee and the
recent can of Coke were working through her; she began to feel a
vague need to use a rest room, but she decided to keep moving.
Barstow was large enough to have a police department plus a
California Highway Patrol substation. Though there was little chance
that she would encounter police of any kind and be identified as the
infamous traitor of whom the radio reporter had spoken, her hunger
and bladder pressure were both too mild to justify the risk.
    On the road between Barstow and Vegas, she would be relatively
safe, for CHiPs were rarely assigned to that long stretch of lonely
highway. In fact, the threat of being stopped for speeding was so
small (and so well and widely understood) that the traffic moved at
an average speed of seventy to eighty miles an hour. She pushed the
Mercedes up to seventy, and other cars passed her, so she was
confident that she would not be pulled over by a patrol car even in
the unlikely event that one appeared.
    She recalled a roadside rest stop with public facilities about
thirty miles ahead. She could wait to use that bathroom. As for food,
she was not going to risk malnutrition merely by postponing dinner
until she got to Vegas.
    Since coming through the El Cajon Pass, she had noticed that the
number and size of the clouds were increasing, and the farther she
drove into the Mojave, the more somber the heavens became. Previously
the clouds had been all white, then white with pale gray beards, and
now they were primarily gray with slate-dark streaks. The desert
enjoyed little precipitation, but during the summer the skies could
sometimes open as if in reenactment of the biblical story of Noah,
sending forth a deluge that the barren earth was unprepared to
absorb. For the majority of its course, the interstate was built
above the runoff line, but here and there road signs warned flash
floods. She was not particularly worried about being caught in a
flood. However, she was concerned that a hard rain would slow her
down considerably, and she was eager to make Vegas by six-fifteen or
six-thirty.
    She would not feel half safe until she was settled in Benny's shuttered motel. And she would not feel entirely safe until he was with her, the drapes drawn, the world locked out.
    Minutes after leaving Barstow, she passed the exit for Calico.
Once the service stations and motels and restaurants at that turnoff
were behind her, virtually unpeopled emptiness lay ahead for the next
sixty miles, until the tiny town of Baker. The interstate and the
traffic upon it were the only proof that this was an inhabited planet
rather than a sterile, lifeless hunk of rock orbiting silently in a
sea