"Never mind, honey," Sally said. Her voice seemed to come to her from down a very long canyon.
Charlie swallowed. Something clicked in his throat. "Everything's supposed to mag-lock if the clock goes red. They got a Chubb computer that runs the whole place and it's supposed to be fail-safe. I saw what was on the monitor, and I jumped out the door. I thought the goddam thing would cut me in half. It should have shut the second the clock went red, and I don't know how long it was red before I looked up and noticed it. But I was almost to the parking lot before I heard it thump shut behind me. Still, if I'd looked up even thirty seconds later, I'd be shut up in that tower control room right now, like a bug in a bottle."
"What is it? What - "
"I dunno. I don't want to know. All I know is that it ki - that it K-I-L-L-E-D them quick. If they want me, they'll have to catch me. I was gettin hazard pay, but they ain't payin me enough to hang around here. Wind's blowing west. We're driving east. Come on, now."
Still feeling half-asleep, caught in some awful grinding dream, she followed him out to the driveway where their fifteen-year-old Chevy stood, quietly rusting in the fragrant desert darkness of the California night.
Charlie dumped the suitcases in the trunk and the tote-bag in the back seat. Sally stood for a moment by the passenger door with the baby in her arms, looking at the bungalow where they had spent the last four years. When they had moved in, she reflected, Baby LaVon was still growing inside her body, all her horsey-rides ahead of her.
"Come on!" he said. "Get in, woman!"
She did. He backed out, the Chevy's headlights momentarily splashing across the house. Their reflection in the windows looked like the eyes of some hunted beast.
He was hunched tensely over the steering wheel, his face drawn in the dim glow of the dashboard instruments. "If the base gates are closed, I'm gonna try to crash through." And he meant it. She could tell. Suddenly her knees felt watery.
But there was no need for such desperate measures. The base gates were standing open. One guard was nodding over a magazine. She couldn't see the other; perhaps he was in the head. This was the outer part of the base, a conventional army vehicle depot. What went on at the hub of the base was of no concern to these fellows.
I looked up and saw the clock had gone red.
She shivered and put her hand on his leg. Baby LaVon was sleeping again. Charlie patted her hand briefly and said: "It's going to be all right, hon."
By dawn they were running east across Nevada and Charlie was coughing steadily.
BOOK I CAPTAIN TRIPS Chapter 1
JUNE 16 - JULY 4, 1990
I called the doctor on the telephone
Said doctor, doctor, please ,
I got this feeling, rocking and reeling ,
Tell me, what can it be?
Is it some new disease?
The Sylvers
Baby, can you dig your man?
He's a righteous man ,
Baby, can you dig your man?
Larry Underwood
Chapter 1
Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston. Tonight the regulars were there, sitting by the cash register, drinking beer, talking idly, watching the bugs fly into the big lighted sign.
It was Bill Hapscomb's station, so the others deferred to him even though he was a pure fool. They would have expected the same deferral if they had been gathered together in one of their business establishments. Except they had none. In Arnette, it was hard times. In 1980 the town had had two industries, a factory that made paper products (for picnics and barbecues, mostly) and a plant that made electronic calculators. Now the paper factory was shut down and the calculator plant was ailing - they could make them a lot cheaper in Taiwan, it turned out, just like those portable TVs and transistor radios.
Norman Bruett and Tommy Wannamaker, who had both worked in the paper factory, were on relief, having run out of unemployment some time ago. Henry Carmichael and Stu Redman both worked at the calculator plant but rarely got more than thirty hours a week. Victor Palfrey was retired and smoked stinking home-rolled cigarettes, which were all he could afford.
"Now what I say is this," Hap told them, putting his hands on his knees and leaning forward. "They just gotta say screw this inflation shit. Screw this national debt shit. We got the presses and we got the paper. We're gonna run off fifty million thousand-dollar bills and hump them right the Christ into circulation."