Her real concern was her shoulder.
She used some gauze from the kit and painfully put it on both wounds. Then, she grabbed a windbreaker from DePresti’s backseat and managed to tie it around her armpit. The blood from the entry wound had seemed to stop somewhat, but the exit wound still bled slightly.
There was a roll of paper towels under the seat, which she grabbed and started to clean up the superficial cuts on her arms and legs.
The pain had started to set in though, a deep ache in her shoulder that she felt every time she moved. Parkowski would have done anything for a painkiller, but DePresti didn’t seem to have any in the first aid kit.
DePresti kept his eyes glued to the road as he took the ramp for I-15N towards Barstow. Parkowski checked the mirrors for a reappearance of the small army of SUVs that had terrorized them since they had left El Segundo. They chillingly had seen no police cars.
He turned the radio on. After a few minutes, he found a local news station. “A brazen mass shooting at the Manhattan Beach pier today left fourteen dead and another twenty wounded,” the male announcer said.
“Holy shit, fourteen people, just to get Dr. Pham?” Parkowski said.
“Shh,” DePresti said.
“Believing it to be a terrorist act, authorities are on a multi-county manhunt for members of an Islamic militant group that they believe to be behind this heinous act,” a female newscaster said. “They are searching Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino counties and we will let you know more when it comes in.”
“None of the shooters at the pier looked the least bit Middle Eastern,” DePresti said quietly as they switched to a weather update. “Not that they couldn’t be Islamic converts, or from the Balkans.”
“I concur,” Parkowski agreed. “There was no mass shooting.”
“No, I agree,” DePresti said. “They were gunning right for us and your poor boss.”
“Oh, Dr. Pham,” Parkowski said, putting her head in her hands. She felt like a horrible person. “Why did I have to push the issue?”
“We didn’t know,” DePresti said. “We had no idea that it was going to trigger that kind of response.”
“I know we didn’t, but should we have?” she asked, not expecting an answer. DePresti didn’t have one.
They drove in silence for a bit. The news station had no more information than it had already offered, so DePresti turned it off.
The freeway passed through the mountains now, the terrain becoming drier and drier as they drove into Southern California’s interior. The dry air whipped in through their shattered windshield, but after a while Parkowski got used to it. Her shoulder throbbed. “How much longer?”
“Just under an hour,” DePresti answered. “Are you going to be ok?”
“I think so.” She checked the exit wound. The bleeding had started to stop, but she had begun to feel a little light-headed.
“Drink some water,” DePresti suggested. “Once we get to Chang’s place, we’ll get you checked out.”
She was exhausted, in pain, and not much seemed to be going right. Parkowski took a sip from a bottle and curled up on the seat.
The sun was starting to sink below the horizon. Parkowski kept an eye out for any more SUVs, but she had a sneaking suspicion that there weren’t going to be any more. Their opponent — whoever they were — made their move, and had failed. They would likely try again soon, but it would take time to gather those resources.
The desert north of San Bernardino was brown, dry, and to an East Coaster like Parkowski, ugly. It all looked the same as it scrolled past the window.
Parkowski wanted to talk through everything with her boyfriend, to try and process together what they had been through, to make sense of it with all of the other pieces of information. But she was too tired, too weak, and just plain exhausted. That discussion could come later.
Eventually, they reached the outskirts of Barstow.
DePresti drove to a well-lit gas station and backed the car into a parking spot.
“Stay here,” he told Parkowski. “I’m going to go get a map and some stuff.”
She nodded.
A few minutes later he returned, holding a large map book under one arm and a paper bag in the other. “We need to keep moving,” DePresti said, “but here’s some medical stuff. I can do it, or you can while I drive.”
Parkowski groaned. “I’ll do it. Let’s get moving.”
“Hold on, not so fast. I want to use this map first,” he said. “I have a general idea of where I’m going, but I want to double check.”
She laughed. “Just imagine, in the age of cell phones, virtual reality, and space travel, someone using a map.”
“I’m glad I learned how to read one at the Academy,” DePresti said as he spread out a local map of the Barstow area. “I thought it was stupid at the time, but it’s coming in handy now.”
DePresti pointed at a road on the north side of the city. “He told me his address a while ago, it’s off Antelope Road here. I remembered the road, but not the house number. But, look how long Antelope is. It starts in Barstow proper, goes all of the way northwest to the town of Randsburg, and his complex could be anywhere off of there.”
“Complex?”
“Trust me, it’s a complex.”
“Sure.”
“Anyways, it looks like a gas station here,” he went on, ignoring her jab. “I’m going to stop here and ask if they know Andrew Chang. He’s a hard guy to miss.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Parkowski said, digging into the other bag. There were painkillers, more gauze, and a wrap that had been missing from the kit, in addition to a pair of sodas and some snacks. “Thanks, Mike.”
“Don’t mention it,” he added as he pulled out of the parking spot, map in hand. “Thank me when we finally get there.”
They slowly drove out of the gas station and back onto the main roads. The autumn sun had completely set and the evening was in full swing. They were far enough from the Los Angeles metro area that light pollution was less of an issue. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen a sky as full of stars as they danced against the pitch-black sky.
Parkowski cursed again at the arrhythmia that had prevented her from ever becoming an astronaut. Maybe, someday, she would get a chance to go up there.
As they left the city of Barstow, the houses became less and less frequent until there were almost none along the road. DePresti continued onto the Barstow-Bakersfield Highway and then made a right onto Antelope Road. The two began their journey through the desert towards what they hoped was Chang’s residence.
Parkowski popped a few of the ibuprofen and tried to wrap her shoulder with the gauze. She thought about taking off her top but decided to bandage over the t-shirt. “Sorry about your windbreaker,” she said to DePresti, who didn’t respond as Parkowski tossed the bloody jacket into the backseat.
After a few failed attempts, she managed to do it. A little blood seeped out, but it’d have to do until they arrived. Then, she used the wrap to hold the gauze in place. It hurt like hell and made her shoulder hard to use, but it worked.
“You didn’t get anything to clean it, did you?” she asked. DePresti shook his head to confirm her suspicion. That’d be something they’d have to do eventually.
The road wasn’t well marked, and the various driveways and unmarked paths were hard to see. They were no longer in a major metropolitan city, or even in a suburb. There were no streetlights to guide them, no road signs. It was truly the middle of nowhere.
Parkowski thought that they had gone too far and was about to tell DePresti to turn around and go back to Barstow. But, she finally saw the neon light of an old Sinclair sign that had to be almost a century old off in the distance.