Footfall

The rest area was empty. Almost empty. Not quite. He heard sounds at the far end, and went to investigate.

What Gynge saw was a tired old man on a picnic table with his pants off and a girdle stretched out beside him. Bikers called it a “kidney belt,” but it did the same thing any girdle did: it held in a sagging gut. The old man’s gut was a good-sized beer belly. He was trying to hug one knee against his chest, but his gut blocked the way.

The man sat up, blowing. His frame was large; Gynge saw that he must have been formidable in his time. He didn’t look formidable now. His red beard had gone mostly gray, and the hair of his head was following. He sat up, consulted the book beside him. Then he stretched his right leg out in front of him, bent forward as far as he could manage, threw a hand towel around the arch of his foot, and pulled on both ends.

If the man had brought friends, they had had plenty of time to appear. Gynge watched a little longer. The red-and-gray-haired man switched legs, groaning.

* * *

One full day on a motorcycle had done him in.

Harry lay on the picnic table and groaned. Two whiplash accidents within two weeks would leave their mark for the rest of his life. His spine felt like a crystal snake dropped on flagstones! He knew well enough that he was overweight. That was what the kidney belt was for, but it hadn’t been enough, and his guts were about to fall out all over the picnic table.

He’d bought a book of stretching exercises. Some of those were supposed to help a bad back. It was worth a try … but it felt like he was breaking his back rather than mending it.

He had switched legs before the stranger stepped into view. A biker, probably. He strolled up to Harry’s bike, in no apparent hurry; ran his eyes over it; then stepped up to Harry. Looming. He was all muscles and hair and dirt, no prettier than Harry felt, though younger and in better condition.

He asked, “Why a towel?”

Harry flopped on his back, panting. He said, “A towel is the most massively useful thing a traveler can have. And that was a stretching exercise, because my back is giving me hell. See—”

“Skip it. Give me the key to the Kawasaki.”

“Help me up.”

The bandit did, by the slack of Harry’s jacket. He looked down at the feel of something hard over his heart. Harry’s jacket trailed from his hand, and the .25 Beretta was in the jacket pocket.

“I hold the key to a door you don’t want to open,” Harry said.

Anyone with a grain of sense would have at least stopped to think it over. The bandit reacted instantly: he batted at the threatening hand and swung a fist at Harry’s jaw.

Harry fired at once. The fist exploded against his jaw and knocked him dizzy. His gun hand was knocked aside too. Harry brought it back and fired twice more, walking the pistol up the man’s torso.

He shook his head and looked around fast. The gun wasn’t very loud. It wasn’t big either, and Harry didn’t entirely trust a .25 bullet. Any sign of a companion? No. The bandit was still on his feet, looking startled. Harry fired twice more, reserving one bullet for mistakes.

Now the bandit toppled.

Harry had spent some time finding the campground, but it wouldn’t be possible to stay. He rolled off the table, pulled his pants on. then his kidney belt. He paused to catch his breath and to listen.

The bandit was still breathing, almost snoring. Harry looked down at him. “I’ll do you the best favor I can,” he said. “I won’t check to make sure you’re dead.”

The wounded man said nothing. Ah, well.

Harry walked his bike to the bandit’s motorcycle. There was nearly a gallon of gasoline in it. Whistling, Harry disconnected the fuel line and drained the gas into a pickle jar he fished out of the trash. When he’d put the last drop into the Kawasaki, he went through the bandit’s possessions. There wasn’t much.

Then he mounted the Kawasaki and rode away, groaning. Harry was a firm believer in natural selection.

Jeri woke at dawn. Melissa was awake, but huddled in her sleeping bag. “I never knew deserts could be cold,” she said.

“I told you,” Jeri said. “Now watch.” The sleeping bags were head to head, with the Sierra stove between. Jeri made two cups of cocoa without poking more than her head and shoulders out of her bag. In the half-hour they spent drinking cocoa and eating oatmeal, the world warmed. Jeri put her hat on and made Melissa don hers. They left their sleeping bags and rolled them with one eye each on the highway below.

They had moved uphill, away from the car, into a clump of bushes at the crest. With heads above the bushes, using binoculars, they could see clearly for miles. The highway ran straight as a bullet’s flight, broken by a dish-shaped crater nine miles to the west. The precision of that crater grew scarier the more Jeri thought about it. It sat precisely on the intersection of two highways.