Nebraska Cruising

The Nebraska sunset threw shadows across the dashboard as the driver took a bite from his ground beef-filled pastry. The grass alongside the I-80 glowed and the median was an river of fire whose obsidian banks he flew over. He drove a nondescript gray Nissan Altima and wore a pair of knock-off Wayfarers on a face sharp with a day and a half's stubble. A navy collared shirt and a pair of dark jeans completed the look of a man of no import, the sort of fellow you'd walk past in any place on Earth without being consciously aware of.

Behind him lumbered a black Ford F-150 with an oversized front bumper and Washington plates, whose unsubtle appearance matched its choice to tailgate its quarry for the past five hours and counting. It'd spent the first three conducting various experiments in Japanese-American automobile breeding before it's occupants had worked out that intimidating his car into an untimely death wasn't going to work. It now loitered sulkily about a second and a half behind, for now content to menace only NHTSA. He had remained calm during the assault, of course, taking the role of an aggrieved tourist trying only to make it back home without being run off the road by a band of rowdy hicks, but the constant vigilance had started to wear on him, especially as the landscape continued to be maddeningly flat and the roads infuriatingly straight.

The reason the truck followed him so closely was due to his status as a courier of a compact but no doubt extremely valuable piece of merchandise, which resided in a small backpack in the passenger footwell. He had conducted similar runs all over North America for years, and had enjoyed many a pursuit such as this, but this evening found himself weary of the business. He swallowed his bite and ran his tongue over his chapped lips as he glanced at the water bottle in his center console, then looked at his mirror. The tinted windscreen of the truck revealed nothing but the slowly-brightening reflection of his taillights and he sighed, then tapped the screen of his GPS to wake it.

One of his usual techniques for escaping such a situation involved taking advantage of the tendency for rural police officers to make a quick buck off out-of-towners. While there wouldn't be another town along for some time, there was always the possibility of a highway patrol officer skulking in the median or on the shoulder of the highway, and it looked like there were a few choice spots for a man of the law to set up a speed trap and kick back for a while to enjoy a coffee and a cigarette. He tapped his GPS again, and the map was overlaid with a handful of blue dots. A cluster of them sat a few minutes out, and he glanced at the mirror again as he contemplated his options, before setting his cruise control to six over, opening his glovebox, and pulling a small box out of it.

Sure enough, his headlight beams bounced off a dark box in the median a little while later, and he made his move, pressing the button atop the box as he cruised past the speed trap. He braced himself for the flash of red-blue lights and wail of sirens, but nothing came. He frowned, then released the button and put the box back in his glovebox.

This was one of the risks with involving the police: sometimes, they just didn't care. Radar jammers such as the one he used were illegal, and immediately noticeable to the officer operating the radar gun, but that didn't mean that the officer would actually act on it. He tapped his chin, then took a drink of water, grabbed a snus pouch from the container in his cupholder, and stuck it under his lip, considering his options as the nicotine began to buzz. The road was straight and flat, and the off ramps and cutouts were few and far between. He leaned forward to tap the GPS screen again before his face slammed into his steering wheel.

The car wrenched left and he swore as he slammed the accelerator pedal down and brought the car back into line. The truck sounded its horn as it let the gap between them grow, before it went to ram the Altima again, supercharger whining. That was a mistake.

He shifted down a gear and the BMW inline-6 roared as the Altima leapt forward. Blood poured from his nose as he climbed through the gears, the truck's headlights beginning to fade. He flipped a switch and the car went dark.

He knew he didn't have long. His pursuers may not have expected his commute-mobile to be B58-swapped, but they'd recover quickly and likely knew the area better than he did. He stuck another snus pouch into his lip, ignoring the metallic tang from the blood on it, and rapidly tapped and scrolled on his GPS' screen, eyes flicking between the screen and the unlit road before him before he found a promising detour. He smirked and wiped the blood from his face as the pinpricks in his mirror began to grow.

The truck caught up just as his turn came, and light flooded the Altima's cabin. He visualized his line, ignoring the encroaching vehicle, and, finally, made his move.

The Altima swerved towards the median and he slammed on the brakes as the truck thundered past, its taillights lighting up as the Altima's tires screeched and it slid down the off-ramp, flicking onto the perpendicular path at the bottom. He floored it once more and flew into the night.

It would be another hour of detours and the odd stop to lower the windows and listen for pursuers before he finally had his lights back on and was headed in the right direction. Fifteen minutes later, though, he pulled into at a mournful Sinclair and parked along the side of the building, scanning the road before walking inside and making a beeline for the restroom, nodding at the twenty-something manning the register. She ignored him in favor of her phone.

He emerged ten minutes later, thoroughly disgusted but clean, with the only remaining evidence of his battle with the Ford a large brownish stain on his shirt, and went methodically through the convenience store's aisles, grabbing a towel, a couple of bags of beef jerky, and, after a moment's consideration in front of the cooler, a NOS and a bottle of water before walking to the register and plunking his haul down.

"This and a can of spearmint Zyns"

The woman looked up from her phone and a smile slid across her lips.

"Absolutely!"

She began scanning his items.

"Where are you headed? We don't get many out-of-towners around here"

"Nashville"

"That's a long drive! You on vacation or something?"

"Business. Company cheaped out on the plane tickets, so here I am"

"That's awful!"

"They gave me plenty of time to get there, so I can't really complain"

They continued to make smalltalk as she slowly scanned his items.

"Anything else I can do for you?" She leaned forward and batted her eyelashes. The man paused and contemplated for a moment, then grabbed a small green plush dinosaur from the rack by the counter and tossed it onto the pile.

"I'll take this as well"

He paid and she sulked as he walked off, bag of miscellanea in hand. As he placed his hand on the door, she called out.

"You got a name?"

He pushed the door open and walked into the night without replying, and a few moments later his Altima growled to life and swung out of the parking lot, heading east. Inside, carbon dioxide hissed as he cracked open his energy drink, and he eyed his GPS screen as he took a sip, settling in for another shift on the road. The dinosaur sat on his dashboard in silence, watching a black sea of grass lit only by the stars.