Gas

Me and the Cowboy realised what was happening at the same time. We even caught each other’s eye. As he tried stepping up into the RV, his hands grabbing at the door frame, I tried reaching Jennifer. Because she’d managed, and I don’t know how, to release the parking brake.

Her legs and the arms of the UFO people moved everywhere, like a cartoon brawl. Without the brake on the motorhome moved backwards, picking up speed. And we must have hit a pothole or something. Whatever it was, the bump threw me and the Cowboy down – only I was inside and he wasn’t.

‘Umph,’ I heard him say as the air was knocked from his chest.

There was loads of shouting and most of it swearing, especially as Jennifer’s legs and knees hit people’s groins. I kept a tight grip on the bag.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Get off my pants!’

‘Are you crazy, girlfriend?’

The RV bunny-hopped into sudden speed, the engine coughing complaint as we picked up momentum.

Did someone have a foot on the pedal? I was struck down again, just as I glimpsed six hands on the steering wheel. I hit my head on the edge of the sofa with a sharp thwack.

The side door flapped as the RV bounced backwards over the bumpy ground, plastic creaking. Before I realised what we were headed towards, I was relieved, at least, that we’d not run over the Cowboy. That would have been properly bad.

‘Oh, mother of mercy, have pity on me,’ said Richard as some dried buffalo meat smacked me in the face.

I grabbed at the edge of the sofa, my underpowered biceps shuddering to pull me up. Through the two square rear windows, a tall white gas container loomed impossibly large and suicidally close. And still the engine whined.

‘Jennifer!’ I shouted, the view filling with appalling white. I’d played enough video games to know that hitting gas tanks was best avoided.

The back of the RV rose as we hit the dirt incline, put there to protect the gas. I fell once again, rolling until I struck the partition between the living space and the cab.

There was a huge smash, and a part ripping, part screaming of bent metal. And we stopped. There was no explosion. There was no fire. There was the Cowboy, though, without his hat, pulling open the door and ordering us out, veins bursting from his forehead. And there was also a raging hissing sound, a fire hose of whispers.

The gas.

I crawled out, still holding on to the bag, and dropped on to the mound of soil. I ate dirt and I rolled. But, made athletic by the possibility of death, I was soon up and sprinting. I joined Jennifer, the three ufologists and the Cowboy, as we flew towards Dave’s store.

Three … two … one …

A monumental boom ripped across Arizona, sounding like every firework I’d ever heard exploding at once. It launched a wall of air rushing past our ears. A tidal wave of heat followed. I felt it first on the tips of my ears, and it took our legs from us and we were airborne. There was a roller-coaster adrenalin rush to the absence of gravity.

Until we landed. With a crunch of twisted ankles and bruised elbows.

And, once again, superpowers would have been handy.

A split second of complete silence extended as the universe held its breath. It broke with a cough. And then a moan. And Jennifer sat up and pointed. I followed the direction of her finger. Like a broken oil well, where there’d been a gas container, flames now blossomed into the cloudless sky around the RV, which was black and red with heat. You could feel it against your skin.

A voice spoke over the crackling fire. ‘Are you from the government?’ asked Mary, before breaking into a coughing fit.

The Cowboy stood. He pulled Jennifer up, then offered me a hand. Orange roared behind him.

‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘Now where’s my hat?’