He threw the Rebel Yell bottle and it flew end over end, spraying amber droplets. It crashed into a hundred pieces against the side of an old Porsche. The Kid stood silent, panting and reeling a little on his feet.
The problem was nothing so simple as a four-car pileup this time. This time the problem was nothing but traffic. The eastbound lanes were here divided from those westbound by a grassy median strip about ten yards across, and the deuce coupe probably could have made it from one side of the highway to the other, but the condition of both arteries was the same: the four lanes were crowded with six lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper and side to side. The breakdown lanes were as full as the travel lanes. Some drivers had even attempted to use the median itself, although it was rough and upgraded and full of rocks which punched out of the thin gray soil like dragon's teeth. Perhaps there had been high-hung four-wheel-drive vehicles which had had some success there, but what Trashcan saw on the median strip was an automobile graveyard of crashed, bashed, and mashed Detroit rolling iron. It was as if a mass madness had infected all the drivers and they had decided to hold an apocalyptic demolition derby or lunatic gymkhana here high up on I-70. Colorado Rocky Mountain high, Trashcan Man thought, I've seen it raining Chevies in the sky. He almost giggled and hurriedly covered his mouth. If The Kid heard him giggling now, he would most likely never giggle again.
The Kid came striding back in his high-heeled boots, his carefully coiffed hair gleaming. His face was that of a dwarf basilisk. His eyes were bulging with fury. "I'm not leavin my f**kin car," he said. "You hear me? No way. I'm not leavin it. You get walkin, Trashy. You walk up there and see how far this motherfuckin traffic jam goes. Maybe it's a truck in the road, I don't know. I know we can't f**kin backtrack. We lost the shoulder. We'd go all the way down. But if it's just a stalled truck or somethin, I don't give a rat's ass. I'll jump these sonsofwhores one at a time and run em right the f**k over the edge. I can do it, and you better believe that happy crappy. Get movie, son."
Trash didn't argue. He began to walk carefully up the road, weaving in and out between the packed cars. He was ready to duck and run if The Kid started shooting. But The Kid didn't. When Trashcan had walked what he judged to be a safe distance (i.e., out of pistol range), he climbed atop a tanker truck and looked back. The Kid, miniature streetpunk from hell, truly doll-sized at this half-a-mile distance, was leaning against the side of his deucey, having a drink. Trashcan Man thought of waving and then decided it might be a bad idea.
The Trashcan Man started his walk that day at about ten-thirty in the morning, MDT. Walking was slow - he often had to scramble over the hoods and roofs of cars and trucks, they were so tightly packed together - and by the time he got to the first TUNNEL CLOSED sign, it was already quarter past three in the afternoon. He had made about twelve miles. Twelve miles wasn't so much - not to someone who'd crossed twenty percent of the country on a bicycle - but considering the obstacles, he thought twelve miles was pretty awesome. He could have gone back long-ago to tell The Kid it was impossible... if, that was, he'd ever had any intentions of going back. He didn't, of course. Trashcan Man had never read much history (after the electroshock therapy, reading had gotten sort of tough for him), but he didn't need to know that, in times of old, kings and emperors had often killed the bearers of bad news out of simple pique. What he did know was enough: he had seen enough of The Kid to know he didn't ever want to see any more.
He stood pondering the sign, black letters on an orange diamond-shaped field. It had been knocked over and was lying beneath one wheel of what looked like the world's oldest Yugo. TUNNEL CLOSED. What tunnel? He peered ahead, shading his eyes, and thought he could see something. He walked on another three hundred yards, scrambling over cars when he had to, and came to an alarming confusion of crashed vehicles and dead bodies. Some of the cars and trucks had been burned to the axles. Many were army vehicles. Many of the bodies were dressed in khaki. Beyond the scene of this battle - Trash was pretty sure that's what it had been - the traffic jam began again. And beyond it, east and west, the traffic disappeared into the twin bores of what a huge sign bolted to the living rock proclaimed to be THE EISENHOWER TUNNEL.