Blacktop Wasteland(37)

Glass rained down on Quan. One of the shots from the woman behind the counter had whizzed by his head and punched a hole in the picture window in the front of the store. Ronnie saw the brother on the floor pop up and run toward the door. Quan’s hand raised reflexively.

The young brother’s head snapped back like it was tied to an invisible rope that had been pulled taut. A red mist filled the space between him and Quan. The brother dropped like a wet sheet falling off a clothesline. Quan was blinking frantically. There was something in his eyes.

Ronnie stepped over the brother with half his head missing and grabbed Quan by the arm. He shoved him toward the door. He could hear Jenny screaming. Her sugar mama was howling like a banshee. The old woman on the floor was crying. Ronnie pushed Quan through the door. They hit the sidewalk in a dead sprint. The picture window in the front of the shop exploded. Ronnie didn’t look back but he knew the dyke was still shooting at them. He ran toward the Buick with Quan in tow. It wasn’t until he got to the car that he realized he was screaming too.



* * *



Beauregard opened the passenger door when he saw them run out of the jewelry store. Quan climbed into the back seat and Ronnie jumped into the front. Ronnie had barely closed the door all the way when Beauregard took off, tires squealing and leaving a cloud of gray smoke in his wake. The Buick sailed out of the parking lot doing 40. Beauregard slammed on the brakes and the gas as he twisted the steering wheel to the right. There were only a few cars on the street this time of morning. Beauregard careened around them going up on the sidewalk then back to the street. He ran a red light and Ronnie screamed as he threaded the needle between a jacked-up good ol’ boy truck and a short-body delivery van.

Beauregard gripped the steering wheel like it was a life preserver. He could feel the vibrations of the engine radiating through the wheel and up his arms. His heart wasn’t pounding. He guessed it wasn’t doing more than 70 beats per minute. This was where he belonged. Where he excelled. Some people were meant to pound the keys on a piano or strum the strings of a guitar. A car was his instrument and he was performing a symphony. A coldness filled him. It started in his stomach and spread to his extremities. He knew no matter what happened he would never feel more alive, more present than he felt at this moment. There was truth in that idea and sadness too.

Quan pulled his mask off and tossed it to the floor of the car. He wiped at his eyes while simultaneously spitting repeatedly. There was a hot coppery taste in his mouth. Sirens erupted behind them. He turned and looked out the back window. Two blue and white police cruisers had materialized out of nowhere. The lights were nearly lost in the glare from the sun. Quan wiped his eyes with his sleeve again. He looked at it and noticed the grease paint had a pinkish hue. Blood. It was blood. The guy’s blood. He had killed the guy. He had killed someone. Quan dropped his gun to the floor like it was on fire. The vomit was coming out of his mouth before he even realized he was nauseous.

Beauregard cut his eyes to the left and appraised the cruisers rapidly approaching in his side mirror. During his second recon trip he had driven by the police station once again. It had been near dark and he had counted four cruisers sitting in the parking lot next to the station. Counting the one he had seen parked near the exit made five. A place the size of Cutter County didn’t need more than five police cruisers. The two that were chasing them and the one that was likely on patrol were Dodge Charger Pursuit Special Editions. A 340 hp Hemi engine under the hood meant the car could accelerate from 0 to 60 in six seconds. They came equipped with advanced steering and suspension options. A powerful rear suspension camber linkage and wider-than-normal disk brakes gave the car near supernatural handling capabilities.

As his Daddy would have said, them dogs could hunt.

Beauregard had calculated they would have at least two minutes before the cops even knew the store had been robbed once they had left if everything went smooth. Conversely, he had figured they would only have thirty seconds if shit went south. He had heard gunshots as he sat in the Buick. That was a good indicator things had gone pretty far south. The cops showing up in his rearview mirror was not a shock.

A sign near the on-ramp indicated sensible drivers should slow down to 35 mph to access the ramp and merge into traffic.

Beauregard took it doing 60. He held the gas down with his right foot and the brakes with his left. The car drifted in a semicircle before emerging onto the interstate.

“Shit shit shit!” Ronnie howled.

Beauregard let up off the brake and held the gas pedal down to the floor. The Buick leaped forward as the five-speed transmission he had installed engaged. Beauregard merged and cut off a tractor trailer as he slid into the second of the interstate’s three lanes. The trucker laid on his horn, but Beauregard only heard it as a faint trumpeting in the distance. The sirens soon overwhelmed the horn. Beauregard glanced in the rearview mirror without moving his head. Drivers were pulling over for the cruisers as they closed in on him. They would be close enough to ram him with their bullbars before he knew it. Beauregard cranked up the radio. “WHAM!” by Stevie Ray Vaughan was on the radio. He must have hit the PBS station. Regular radio didn’t play instrumental tunes anymore.

A blue toggle switch was just below the radio. Beauregard pushed it and the engine roared like a cave bear. Nitrous oxide. N2O. He had installed a plate delivery system on the engine. He’d also adjusted the piston rings so that when the engine heated up from the introduction of the nitro the rings wouldn’t fuse shut and crack the pistons.