“So am I. You’re welcome to take the station wagon and you and your love can make a break for it.”
“I’ll never make it.”
“Well, that’s your choice,” said Muroe.
“Guys,” said Diller.
“You, madam, are a philistine.”
“I’ve been called worse. We’re getting out of here and we’re going people first.”
“Guys,” repeated Diller.
“Ms Muroe,’ said Keith, sounding terrified. “I found this cord. Will it do?”
“It’ll have to.”
“Guys!” hollered Diller, finally getting the trio’s attention.
“What?” said Muroe.
He didn’t say anything, just pointed out of the hangar doors and down the runway. A large cloud of dust was coming towards them – fast.
“Holy crap,” said Muroe. “It looks like the whole of Nowhere is chasing us!”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Smithy had found a manual under the seat and was trying to read it. His task was complicated by the fact at some point the book had got drenched in what he hoped was some kind of fruit juice.
“Suppress the … what does that say?”
There were also pedals, but as far as he could tell they were brakes. He was unlikely to need brakes any time soon.
The entire plane lurched violently to the side. Smithy didn’t look up. “What the hell is going on?”
“You don’t want to know,” came Diller’s reply.
“Yes, I do.”
“Alright. Keith isn’t going to fit inside, so we’re strapping him to the top of the aircraft.”
“I take it back,” said Smithy. “I definitely did not want to know that.”
“How’s it going?” asked Muroe, as the aircraft shook some more.
“It’s getting there.”
“Get there faster.”
“Thanks. Helpful.”
“Don’t mind her,” said Diller. “And whatever you do, don’t look up.”
“Why would I not …” Smithy looked up and saw the line of vehicles hurtling across the desert towards them. “Damn it. I had to look.”
Chaz was standing up in the front seat of the jeep, screaming instructions that nobody else could hear. Reed sat in the back seat watching him. A couple of motorbikes zoomed past. In the distance, through the open doors of the hangar, he could see the plane sitting there, facing them.
“Get them! Get them, get them!”
“Ehm, Chaz – I mean, Emperor?”
“What is it, LouLou?”
Chaz turned to look at his second-in-command and Reed saw that what little remained of the man’s mind had gone. His eyes were wild, and he was all but foaming at the mouth.
“Never mind.”
Now was not the time to tell him that he’d split the seam on his dress.
Muroe and Wilkins were crammed into the back seat of the Cessna – Wilkins held a metal flight case on his lap and Muroe had another one on hers. Neither of them looked happy about it, albeit for different reasons.
Diller sat in the co-pilot’s seat, straining every sinew not to ask Smithy any questions, primarily about why they weren’t moving. He looked around and reached down into the slot in the doorwell beside him.
“Smithy?”
“Not now, Dill.”
“Yeah, but, Smithy.”
“Not. Now!”
SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO HIM.
Smithy looked up. “Sorry. What?”
Diller held up a piece of paper. “There’s something here that says it is a pre-flight checklist.”
Smithy tossed the manual out the window. “Start reading.”
“One – examine the exterior of the—”
“We’ve got a man strapped to the roof. Just go for the stuff about pressing buttons and pulling knobs.”
Meanwhile, dangling over a now-deserted arena, Messrs Rake and Finley sat in their cage, the sun beating down on them. Forgotten men. They looked out numbly at a world that no longer made sense.
Without warning, their view lurched and the cage crashed to the ground. It tipped over and landed on its side, leaving Finley and Rake in a messy heap.
“This is it,” said Finley in a soft voice. He wasn’t expecting “it” to be a good thing – that wasn’t the kind of day he was having.
After a minute, a truck pulled up in front of him. On the side it read “Taco King”. Finley watched a pair of brown-leather cowboy boots as they stepped out of the driver’s side door and walked towards them. He looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun, to see an old Mexican man in a cowboy hat looking down at them.
“Everybody’s gone,” he said.
Finley said nothing.
“You boys rich?”
It took Finley a second to realise that those last words had been a question.
“Yes. Yes, we are. We’ll pay you whatever you want.”
“I don’t want paying.”
“OK.”
“But I got grandkids. My family, we make the best tacos and burritos you ever had.”
Finley struggled to understand what the required response to this statement was.
The old man shifted. “I am looking for investors.”
And he had found them. They could work out the finer points of the deal in the van.
Chapter Fifty
Following one of the most tense readings of a checklist in the history of mankind, the plane was now moving and taxiing out of the hangar. Unfortunately by this time, the bikes – in what was hard not to think of as a hunting party from Nowhere – had already reached the end of the runway. Two quad bikes and a motorbike were tearing towards them.
“Guys,” yelled Keith from the roof, “they’re coming.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” hollered Smithy.
“I’m scared of heights,” responded Keith, who hadn’t mastered the rhetorical question.
Smithy pulled the throttle.
“Don’t pull it too fast,” warned Diller, “or it’ll stall.”
“Too slow and we’ll die,” said Muroe.
“Everybody shut up with the backseat flying.”
“They’re coming right at us,” yelled Diller over the noise of the engine.
“I know.”
Turning. Stopping. Doing anything that wasn’t going full speed ahead meant they were dead. All Smithy could do was wait for the plane to reach the required velocity and take off, assuming it was willing to do that with all the extra weight on board.
He watched as one of the bikers pulled a handgun from the inside of his jacket.
“Get. Down.”
One of the shots entered the windshield where Diller’s head had been moments before, and exited via the roof above Muroe’s head. The other shots went wild.
Smithy tried to ignore everything else. He was concentrating on keeping the plane headed straight down the runway and pulling back on the controls. At some point he’d presumably feel it was ready to take flight – assuming the large man strapped to the roof didn’t mess with the wings somehow. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he wished it hadn’t. Too late now.