Like many bad ideas do, this one started out going well. The bounty hunter found a winding street through a neighborhood of modest houses. He paused at nearly every intersection, checked street names, and compared them to the map on his phone. We missed turns, retraced our path, and seemed to be moving south. Tall trees on both sides of the road blocked my view of the sky so I couldn’t see the smoke from the riots. We might have been getting closer or farther away.
I asked, “How long have you been doing this?”
“Not that long.”
“What did you do before?”
“Other stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” I asked.
“Why do you need to know?”
“I’m curious.”
“Do you think if you befriend me I’ll let you go?”
“No,” I answered. “But I can hope.”
“Put your hopes on something else. This is how I make my living.”
“Where did you work?” I asked.
“My job went away.”
“Why?”
“I owned a waffle shop.” He seemed sad when he said it. “Nobody goes to waffle shops anymore. Nobody wants to worry about whether a degenerate waiter is spewing snot-virus into their runny eggs. The restaurant industry is dead. People are scared.”
“Do you get paid a lot to pick up people like me?”
“With the ration card and what I get paid, I keep my kids fed.”
“How many kids do you have?”
“We’re not talking about me anymore.” He slowed the car to a lazy roll and examined the map on his phone. “You’re a kid. I’m an adult. I’m not falling into your trap. Save that shit for your seventh-grade friends.”
“I’m too old for seventh grade.”
He ignored me and made a turn, nodded emphatically as part of a conversation in his head, and gunned the engine. Smiling and glancing back at me, he said, “We can get through up here.”
He was happier about it than I was.
A few moments later he rounded the corner onto a major thoroughfare running north and south. Welding shops, roofers, sign companies, and oilfield support outfits had signs posted on aging metal buildings down both sides of the road. Many were protected by fences topped with barbed wire that had been there since long before the virus came to American shores.
Now most of the fences were thick with weeds growing through them. The cars and trucks parked in front wore layers of dirt that told a prescient truth about the economy. The cars hadn’t moved in two years. The economy was shuddering to a dead stall.
The sky was starting to darken with the setting sun.
The bounty hunter wagged a finger down the road in front of us. “See, clear all the way down to Loop 610.”
For about three more seconds, he was right.
A sound like nothing I’d ever heard raised the hair on the back of my neck.
The bounty hunter heard it, too. He took his foot off the accelerator as he looked around.
A flood of shouting people poured out of a boulevard just ahead, running and shoving. Some carried pieces of wood and metal, swinging them like clubs. Others wielded stones and bricks. Many had nothing but their fists. The mob poured over abandoned cars, beating them with their weapons. They flowed into the parking lot of a ceramic supply company, shattering the windows, and knocking down the door.
They were bent on destruction.
“Christ!” The bounty hunter hit the brakes, and the car skidded to a stop.
He jammed the car into reverse and squealed the tires as he looked out through the rear window.
I looked over my shoulder, saw no dangers, and then looked back toward the windshield. Hundreds—no—thousands of rioting degenerates were coming up the street toward us.
“Shit!” The bounty hunter hit the brakes again.
I looked out the rear window and saw a relative trickle of crazed people coming out of a street behind us.
The bounty hunter stopped the car, put it back in drive, and raced toward a side street up ahead on the left.
The rioters in front, seeing us coming toward them, turned frantic in their efforts to reach us.
The car’s tiny Asian engine whined as the bounty hunter pulled out of it all the acceleration it could muster. He swung the car into a sideways skid as we approached our turn.
We hit a rioter broadside with the passenger side door, and he went down. Another attacked the back door window and broke it with her face as she collided with the car.
The wheels were spinning again, and the car was gaining traction to get up the side street.
Degenerates were scattered in the road ahead. Most weren’t doing anything but looking in the direction of the coming mob. Some were caught up in the excitement of the howls billowing between the houses. They were frantic with excitement, running and searching for a way to vent. More were coming into the street. The bounty hunter weaved between them as he tried to hold his speed.
We blasted past a stop sign without slowing down and dodged degenerates through another few blocks as they swarmed thicker.
We slowed.
Some kicked at the car as we passed. Others punched at the windows. They threw things.
The sound of the mob several blocks back kept us pushing forward.
We slowed to power our way through several dozen degenerates clumped in the road, unwilling to move.
Flashes of yellow burst from a house on the left side of the street. The sound of gunfire cut through the riot rumble.
Debilitated people in front of and around us fell.
The bounty hunter shouted something I didn’t understand. The car’s little engine whined as he depressed the clutch and shoved the car into reverse without coming to a stop.
The car lurched. It shuddered as the wheels chirped and bounced. The engine banged loudly enough to ring my ears. White smoke spewed from under the hood. We jerked to a stop.
The bounty hunter’s curses filled the air. He pounded the steering wheel with his palms as he looked frantically around.
I fought to get my wrists free of the plastic cuffs. Things were going to shit.
The bounty hunter stopped beating the steering wheel and dug in his jacket for a moment before twisting in his seat to look at me. He tossed a folding knife into the backseat beside me and he pulled out the big pistol he’d threatened me with earlier.
The unbroken back door window beside me inexplicably fractured.
The bounty hunter glanced at the glass for the briefest of moments as he pointed at the knife on the seat and said, “Cut your—” One side of his head erupted in a gush of blood as the window beside him shattered.
Gunfire echoed between the houses again.
I sank low in the seat, though I didn’t think the car door’s thin sheet metal would protect me from the bullets in the air.