Shattered

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 alkali-skinned 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.
        
        The van was as difficult to handle as a stubborn cow. After half an hour of constant struggle, Leland got the wheels blocked and the jack pumped up enough to remove the punctured tire. The wind coming across the sand flats made the Chevy sway lightly on its metal crutch. And if the furniture in the cargo hold shifted without warning…
        An hour after he had begun, Leland tightened the last nut on the spare and let the van down again. When he heaved the ruined tire into the truck, he realized he should stop at the first service station to get it repaired. But…
        Doyle and the kid had gotten too much of a head start