Panic!

And Pete’s: “Jack, those are cops, they’re cops!”

He hears the voices and yet they are meaningless, they do not penetrate the thick haze of desperation which seems to have gained control of him. The Ford spins wildly forward under his guiding hands, rocking, pitching, engine whining, plunging through darkness into darkness, gear down, gear up, skid right, fishtail left, shortcut across that flat grassy stretch, and now he can see the road, the Western Avenue Extension. He looks into the rear-view mirror—and suddenly there are no stabbing white cones seeking out the Ford, no crimson wash to the landscape. He’s lost them, he’s beaten them, he’s won!

Exhilaration sweeps through him. He down-shifts into second as he reaches the Extension, slowing, but instead of turning right, toward town, he turns left and drives two thousand yards and swings down a rutted tractor lane; the lane borders a grassy-banked stream in which he had once picked watercress when he was younger, and there is a small grove of willows there. He takes the Ford in amongst the low-hanging branches, cuts the engine, and the black of the night enfolds them.

He turns to look at the others then, grinning, and their faces seem to shine whitely through the ebon interior of the car. The smile fades. He is looking not at admiration, not at gratitude—he is looking at trembling anger.

“You crazy bastard!” Hal says thickly.

“What the hell?” he says. “I saved you guys, didn’t I? Those cops were too far back to get a clear look at the car or the license. They don’t know who it was. If I’d stopped we’d be busted now, on our way to jail.”

“You could have killed us, you could have rolled this car right off the road,” Pete says.

“And suppose they’d caught us?” Gene snaps. “It would have gone twice as bad for trying to run away.”

He stares at them. “Listen,” he says, “we did get away. We had to get away and we got away. That’s all that matters. Don’t you see that, you guys? That’s all that matters, getting away.”

But they do not answer, and they do not speak again even after he leaves the willows a half-hour later and drives them slowly back to town.

Lennox pushes away from the granite profusion, again into the blinding glare of the sun. The few moments in the shade have helped his vision, and he can see again in a wavering focus. His eyes sweep the terrain: strange outcroppings of rock, tall cacti, mesquite and creosote bush and cat-claw, thick clumps of cholla climbing halfway along a volcanic cone—

What’s that?

There, there, off to the right?

Something ... bright yellow, fiendishly reflecting the rays of the sun. Something made of metal—a car? the hood of a car? Is there a road over there? Are there people? A car means both, a car means help, a car means escape—is that a car?