The clutch.
Hickok was taken unawares when the truck abruptly jerked forward.
Something thudded against the grill. A bullet obliterated the rearview mirror. The truck lurched ahead like a wobbly drunk, starting forward and abruptly stopping, again and again, tossing him against the steering wheel.
What the dickens was wrong?
A bullet penetrated the windshield and thudded into the seat beside him.
Hickok glanced at the floor and spotted the third pedal. The first was the gas pedal. And the one on the left was the brake. But what was the other one?
A slug creased his right shoulder, breaking the skin.
The police and commandos were deploying in a circle, enclosing the vehicle.
The clutch! That was it! Hickok tramped on the clutch, grinding the gears as he shifted from first to second and the truck roared across the parking lot. He kept his head below the dash as round after round lipped into the vehicle. The clamor was incredible: metal whining and glass breaking and people shouting and the windshield dissolving in a shower of glass.
There was another pronounced thud from the front of the truck.
Hickok sat up to get his bearings. He was going due south, the truck heading toward a row of parked trikes.
Not ten feet ahead was a solitary commando, a woman, down on one knee, shooting at the truck engine in an attempt to disable it.
Hickok floored the accelerator and the truck lumbered forward. He saw the commando’s mouth open and her petrified eyes widen an instant before there was a crushing thump and the truck bounced as if the wheels had encountered a bump.
The passenger-side window blew apart.
Hickok frantically turned the steering wheel, but too late. The vehicle slewed to the right, its rear end smashing into the row of trikes and bowling them over. He spun the wheel again, thundering down an aisle between the trikes.
A jeep containing three Technic police was zooming toward him.
Hickok wasn’t about to stop. To stop was certain death. The Technics would be on him in a second. He intended to get as far as possible from the Central Core as quickly as possible, and no one or nothing was going to stand in his way.
Especially not one measly jeep!
Hickok’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as the truck closed on the jeep. He could see a determined expression on the policeman driving.
Obviously, the Technic wasn’t about to surrender the right of way.
Thirty feet separated them.
Hickok hunched over the steering wheel and braced for the collision.
Twenty feet.
Would the truck survive the crash? It was a big vehicle, the green trailer it was hauling adding to its bulk, but a wreck at high speed would undoubtedly cripple the motor.
Ten feet.
Hickok held his breath as the two vehicles sped at one another. He flinched in expectation of the impact, and that’s when the jeep unexpectedly altered course, swerving to the left and ramming into some trikes.
He’d done it!
Elated, Hickok didn’t perceive the danger he posed to the mass of trikes occupying the avenue beyond the parking lot until the truck had jumped a curb and slammed into their midst. Chaos resulted. Screams and shrieks rent the air; battered bodies were flying everywhere; trikes and travelers alike were squashed beneath the huge truck tires, trikes crunching and their drivers and occupants being mashed to a flattened pulp; and random gunshots from the Technic police and the soldiers punctuated the general din.
Blast!
Hickok slammed on the brakes and the truck ground to a rocky halt, the motor idling. He saw dozens of trikes and four-wheelers crash as they wildly endeavored to avoid the melee.
Cries of torment and anguish were voiced by the injured and dying.
Dear Spirit! What had he done? The gunman vaulted from the cab, landing next to a demolished trike with an elderly man prone over the handlebars. Hickok gaped at the man’s vacant brown eyes, appalled by the needless deaths and misery he’d inadvertently caused. To his left was a young boy, lying in a pool of blood. He was shocked to his soul, and the gunman’s senses swirled.
He’d killed innocent children!
Children!
A blast from a pistol brought Hickok back to reality. He saw one of the Technic police sighting for a second shot, and whipped his right Colt clear and fired.
The policeman pitched to the tarmac.
Hickok turned, seeking a way out. Six feet away was a lone man seated in an idling four-wheeler, apparently stunned by the destruction, gaping at the Warrior.
Just what he needed!
Hickok jogged to the four-wheeler and shoved the Python barrel into the driver’s chest. “Move out!” He climbed into the four-wheeler beside the driver. “Move!”
The driver, a man of 40 with a bald pate and jowly jaws, his green eyes fearfully locked on the Colt, nodded. “Yes, sir!”
“Go!” Hickok goaded him, glancing over his shoulder. The police and soldiers in the parking lot were prevented from reaching him by the gigantic traffic jam blocking the avenue.
The driver of the four-wheeler pulled out, slowly wending his way through the maze of trikes and other vehicles. “Which way?” he asked.
Hickok alertly scanned the avenue for threatening soldiers or Technic police, but the highway ahead was filled with civilians. Very few of them had seen him jump from the truck, but one or two glared at him as he passed.
“Which way?” the driver nervously queried.
“Just keep going,” Hickok told him.
“Yes, sir.”
The four-wheeler reached an impasse, thwarted by a veritable wall of vehicles halted by the wreckage and the truck.
“We can’t go any further,” the driver wailed.
“Yes we can,” Hickok said, wagging the Python to the right. “Use the sidewalk. It’s not as crowded.”
“But that’s illegal!” the driver objected.
Hickok rapped the driver on the temple with the Colt. “Take your pick.
A spell in the calaboose or a bullet in the brain?”
“Calaboose?”
“The hoosegow,” Hickok explained.
“Hoosegow?” the driver repeated, even more confused.
“The jail, dummy!” Hickok snapped.
The driver gingerly wheeled the four-wheeler onto the sidewalk. Shouts and oaths greeted this unprecedented action, but the civilians moved aside at the sight of the blond man in the strange buckskins carrying an arsenal.
Hickok glanced back at the carnage he’d caused. He remembered that little boy, dead, awash in crimson, and he shuddered. He thought of his precious Ringo, and he could vividly imagine the grief the parents of the boy would feel when—
Wait a minute!
That boy didn’t have any parents! Not natural ones anyhow. Would his surrogate parents feel the same way a natural parent would?
“What’s your name?” Hickok demanded of the driver.
Pale as the proverbial ghost, the heavyset man looked at the gunfighter.
“Spencer.”
“Do you love your parents?” Hickok asked.
If complete consternation was comical, then the driver was hilarious.
But Hickok didn’t feel much like laughing.
“My parents?” Spencer said. “You want to know about my parents?”
“Yeah. I know you folks in Technic City ain’t raised by your true mom and dad,” Hickok stated. “But what about the people who do rear you? Do you love them?”
“Of course not,” Spencer responded while circumventing a squat blue box in the middle of the sidewalk marked with the word “MAIL.”
“You must not be from Technic City if you can ask a stupid question like that…” Spencer’s voice trailed off as the enormity of his own idiocy sank home. He’d called this crazy man stupid! What would the lunatic do?