Right, I thought, as we took off in a kind of low-speed desperate crawl through the mud and the noise and the gunfire, terrified neighbors screaming frantically to each other in the darkness. The red convertible was parked in the shadows, near the front of the trailer right next to the State Police car, with its chase lights blinking crazily and voices burping out of its radio.
The Pigs were nowhere to be seen. They had apparently rushed the place, with guns blazing—hoping to kill Leach before he got away. I jumped into the car and started the engine. The Judge came through the passenger door and reached for the loaded .454 Magnum ... I watched in horror as he jerked it out of its holster and ran around to the front of the cop car and fired two shots into the grille.
“Fuck you!” he screamed. “Take this, you Scum! Eat shit and die!” He jumped back as the radiator exploded in a blast of steam and scalding water. Then he fired three more times through the windshield and into the squawking radio, which also exploded.
“Hot damn!” he said as he slid back into the front seat. “Now we have them trapped!” I jammed the car into reverse and lost control in the mud, hitting a structure of some kind and careening sideways at top speed until I got a grip on the thing and aimed it up the ramp to the highway ... The Judge was trying desperately to reload the .454, yelling at me to slow down so he could finish the bastards off! His eyes were wild and his voice was unnaturally savage.
I swerved hard left to Elko and hurled him sideways, but he quickly recovered his balance and somehow got off five more thundering shots in the general direction of the burning trailer behind us.
“Good work, Judge,” I said. “They’ll never catch us now.” He smiled and drank deeply from our Whiskey Jug, which he had somehow picked up as we fled ... Then he passed it over to me, and I too drank deeply as I whipped the big V-8 into passing gear and we went from forty-five to ninety in four seconds and left the ugliness far behind us in the rain.
I glanced over at the Judge as he loaded five huge bullets into the Magnum. He was very calm and focused, showing no signs of the drug coma that had crippled him just moments before ... I was impressed. The man was clearly a Warrior. I slapped him on the back and grinned. “Calm down, Judge,” I said. “We’re almost home.”
I knew better, of course. I was one thousand miles from home, and we were almost certainly doomed. There was no hope of escaping the dragnet that would be out for us, once those poor fools discovered Leach in a puddle of burning blood with the top of his head blown off. The squad car was destroyed—thanks to the shrewd instincts of the Judge—but I knew it would not take them long to send out an all-points alarm. Soon there would be angry police roadblocks at every exit between Reno and Salt Lake City . . .
So what? I thought. There were many side roads, and we had a very fast car. All I had to do was get the Judge out of his killing frenzy and find a truck stop where we could buy a few cans of Flat Black spray paint. Then we could slither out of the state before dawn and find a place to hide.
But it would not be an easy run. In the quick space of four hours we had destroyed two automobiles and somehow participated in at least one killing—in addition to all the other random, standard-brand crimes like speeding and arson and fraud and attempted murder of State Police officers while fleeing the scene of a homicide . . .
No. We had a Serious problem on our hands. We were trapped in the middle of Nevada like crazy rats, and the cops would shoot to Kill when they saw us. No doubt about that. We were Criminally Insane ... I laughed and shifted up into Drive. The car stabilized at 115 or so . . .
The Judge was eager to get back to his women. He was still fiddling with the Magnum, spinning the cylinder nervously and looking at his watch. “Can’t you go any faster?” he muttered. “How far is Elko?”
Too far, I thought, which was true. Elko was fifty miles away and there would be roadblocks. Impossible. They would trap us and probably butcher us.
Elko was out, but I was loath to break this news to the Judge. He had no stomach for bad news. He had a tendency to flip out and flog anything in sight when things weren’t going his way.
It was wiser, I thought, to humor him. Soon he would go to sleep.
I slowed down and considered. Our options were limited. There would be roadblocks on every paved road out of Wells. It was a main crossroads, a gigantic full-on truck stop where you could get anything you wanted twenty-four hours a day, within reason, of course. And what we needed was not in that category. We needed to disappear. That was one option.
We could go south on 93 to Ely, but that was about it. That would be like driving into a steel net. A flock of pigs would be waiting for us, and after that it would be Nevada State Prison. To the north on 93 was Jackpot, but we would never make that either. Running east into Utah was hopeless. We were trapped. They would run us down like dogs. There were other options, but not all of them were mutual. The Judge had his priorities, but they were not mine. I understood that me and the Judge were coming up on a parting of the ways. This made me nervous. There were other options, of course, but they were all High Risk. I pulled over and studied the map again. The Judge appeared to be sleeping, but I couldn’t be sure. He still had the Magnum in his lap.