“You also called me honey. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
He caught her thin smile from the corner of his eye and felt warmth spread through his loins. “It was a figure of speech.”
“Mm-hm,” she said, watching the cityscape passing by. “We’ve got a long way to go. We’ll need to stop for gas again before we get there.”
“We’ll find a place.”
Five miles up the highway they got a flat tire.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, crossing the lanes to the berm. “Can we catch a break?”
“There’s a spare,” she said, watching fearfully out the back window to see if anyone was going to stop and hassle them.
He got out and opened the back hatch, lifting the cover to the spare tire compartment to find a doughnut-sized space saver tire. “Just what I thought.”
“We must have hit something in the road,” she said, joining him at the back of the car, her red hair blowing in the wind.
He looked at her askance, wondering if she’d already forgotten the bodies.
Halfway through changing the right rear tire, a car pulled off the road with two large men inside.
“Oh, crap,” Marty said.
“Need some help?” the passenger asked as he climbed from the car.
“No, we’re fine,” Marty said. “Thanks anyway, man.”
Both men were covered with jailhouse tattoos, and they were watching Susan too closely for comfort.
“Why don’t you let us give you a hand?” the passenger said, coming close. “You gotta make sure you get those lug nuts good and tight.”
“Good and tight,” the driver echoed.
Marty took the pistol from his pocket and pointed at them. “I said no thanks.”
They stopped short but didn’t appear afraid. The passenger looked at his buddy. “I don’t think he’s got the cojones.”
There was a sharp crack and the man grabbed his thigh, stumbling backward. “You motherfucker!” he screamed, his face twisted in anguish, blood quickly gushing through his fingers.
“Chill the fuck out, man!” the driver shouted, pointing at Marty. “All we wanted to do was help, you son of a bitch!”
“Get lost!” Marty shouted, taking a step forward.
“Marty, let them go.”
“Move it!”
The driver helped his bleeding friend back into the car and got behind the wheel, speeding off with the wounded man giving them a bloody finger.
“I don’t think he’ll live long,” Marty said, going quickly back to his work. “Did you see how bad he was bleeding? I must have hit the femoral artery.”
“Do you think they were really…”
“Gonna take you?”
She nodded.
“I’m positive.”
Two hours later, just across the border into Arizona, they began to run low on fuel and started looking for an acceptable gas station. Every station they passed for thirty miles was swarming with motorists, and many of the stations appeared to be more or less under siege. One they passed was fully engulfed in flames.
They finally spotted a Shell station with only a few cars at the pumps. People were running in and out, picking the place clean, but Marty decided to give it a try.
They pulled up to one of the pumps and he got out and swiped his card. To his immense relief, the card was authorized and he grabbed the nozzle from its slot and stuck it into the fuel port.
“Hey, buddy?” a man said, poking his head around the pump. “Do you suppose we could use your card? There’s nobody working in there and all we got is cash.”
Marty glanced into the man’s car to see that he was traveling with a wife and two children.
“I’ll pay you double,” the man said.
“You can owe me,” Marty said, lending him the card. “Pump as much as you need.”
“Thanks a lot.” The man ducked back around.
When Marty was putting the nozzle back into the slot, the man stepped back from around the pump, and even as Marty was reaching for his card, the man jammed a .357 Magnum into his face.
“Sorry, buddy,” the guy said, “but we got a dead battery. Tell your old lady to get out of the car.”
“Hey, whoa!” Marty said, stepping back. “We’re more than willing to give you a jump, man.”
“Get her the fuck outta the car!” the man ordered.
“Bill!” the man’s wife shouted. “Let them give us a jump!”
“We don’t have any fucking cables!”
Marty pointed at the station. “They’ll have some inside!”
The man pointed the weapon at Susan. “If I have to tell you one more time, I’ll shoot her. I swear to Christ!”
Susan got quickly out of the car. “Let them have it, Marty.”
The man trained the gun on Marty as his family loaded into their car. The woman offered to let Susan get their bags of food from the back.
“Don’t let them take a fucking thing!” her husband ordered, never taking his eyes off Marty.
That’s when Marty first noticed the gold star on the man’s belt.
“Protect and serve, huh?”
“Fuck you,” the man said, getting into their car, keeping the gun trained on him. “I got a family to take care of. Get over there where I can see you and keep your hands up. I see the gun in your pocket.”
Marty stepped back and kept his hands up as the man drove away with their car and all of their supplies.
Susan jumped into the cop’s car and turned the key. There was a clicking noise under the hood but that was it. In the backseat there were a few meager rations and two bottles of Gatorade. “At least they left us something,” she said. “Maybe we can get somebody to give us a jump.”
During the confrontation, the looters had cut the pump island a wide berth, not wanting to risk getting shot, but now that the maniac with the gun was gone, a large group of teenage Latino males were taking notice of Susan, loitering about and smoking cigarettes they had stolen, talking furtively among themselves. A few of them were marked with gang tats and had moco rags tied on their heads.
“We’d better just get moving,” he said.
“Okay, yeah,” Susan replied, taking his meaning.
They took the supplies from the back of the car and started off on foot toward the highway. Marty had no idea what they were going to do now, but they needed to get away from the gang because there were more of them than there were bullets in the gun.
“Shit,” he said with a glance over his shoulder. “They’re following us.”
“I’m scared,” she said, grabbing his hand.
Marty could feel her trembling, and his bladder filled with ice.
“Don’t run before they make their move,” he said, spotting half a dozen or so civilized-looking men standing across the street in front of a doughnut shop. “Maybe we can get some help from those guys over there.”
The gang started trotting after them.
“They’re coming!” she said in panic.
“Don’t run!” he hissed, gripping her hand tighter.
The group caught up and encircled them. “Hey, mamasita!” the apparent leader said with a heavy Chilango accent, flicking his cigarette away and grabbing at Susan’s T-shirt. “Let’s see what you got under the hood, esa.”
The others laughed, making exaggerated gestures as they flicked the ashes from their cigarettes or swaggered along combing their hair.
Susan fended off the advance and kept walking, squeezing Marty’s hand.
“What’s the matter, mama, you don’t like young dick or what, eh? We’ll show you a good time.”
They kept walking, but as they drew closer to the doughnut shop, the men on the sidewalk filed inside, and that’s when Marty knew they were in deep shit. The gang knew it too, of course, also watching to see what the doughnut men were going to do. Now confident, one of them grabbed Susan by the hair from behind and another tore at her T-shirt, exposing her bra.