Paul Jones - Towards Yesterday

The sun had finally dipped below the horizon. A pair of sundogs stretched skywards on either side of it like lopsided rainbow guardians of that diming orb. Jim watched as it sank without a trace, replaced now by the crescent of a skull-white new moon, the setting sun’s distant orange glow replaced by the cadmium lambency of the freeway gantry lights.

Ahead of him still lay a freeway littered with vehicles of every size and description, scattered haphazardly across the lanes at every conceivable angle. Sedans, tankers, coupes, pickups, vans, SUV’s, car carriers, motor homes; packed so tightly together in places it was impossible to tell what the original vehicles had been.

It was impossible to pedal in a straight line because of the sheer number of vehicles blanketing the road. The machines had spilled over into the central median, crashing through the separating barriers. They had overturned in the breakdown lanes that skirted both edges of the freeway, many even lurching over onto the grass verges and through the fences designed to block the daily noise of traffic from the businesses that lined the freeway’s shoulders.

Jim found himself zigzagging through the maze of metal as though it were an obstacle course. The road was scattered with small pieces of detritus, sharp pieces of metal that ranged in size from tiny slivers to parts of engines and other things he tried to avoid looking to closely at. In the past few hours, since leaving the house in the valley, he had dismounted several times and been forced to carry the bike rather than risk a puncture.

All it’s going to take is one of those metal splinters in a tire, and I’m walking the rest of the way , he thought, as he applied his brakes, slowing the bike to a crawl to negotiate a particularly hazardous stretch of road. Once clear, Jim remounted and began pedaling.

The road ahead became suddenly and completely blocked by a burned-out jackknifed big-rig, its trailer lay on its back, wheels pointing into the air. Littering the road around the truck was a wall of decimated cars concertinaed into so much scrap metal. The hill of vehicles blocked all of the lanes ahead. Other drivers, not caught in the initial carnage of the crash had swerved left and right in an effort to avoid the barrier. Their vehicles blocked both the breakdown lane and grass verge as well as the median, so he couldn’t simply maneuver around it.

It was no problem. He’d already encountered similar accident induced barriers, all he had to do was dismount, shoulder the bike, and climb over the mountain of metal as carefully as he could. In the twilight darkness cast by the freeway lighting, he was going to have to be extra careful. He didn’t want to fall and break anything out here. Help would never arrive.

Jim glanced at his wristwatch as he jumped off the bike and prepared to climb. The display glowed 20:35. He had made good time, considering the circumstances; helped by a strangely deserted stretch of road along the Agoura Hills section of the freeway.

The last sign he had passed had indicated he was only a mile or so from the Greenwich Village turnoff, which put him close to three miles away from his destination, and Simone’s parents. They lived a few blocks down on El Dorado Drive. If he took the East Janss Road exit, he would be there in an hour or so.

A man waited in the road ahead of Jim.

He looked to be in his twenties, dressed in a business suit that fit his linebacker-sized frame just a little too tightly. The suit was expensive looking but torn in several places along one arm and covered in spots of dirt and oil and blood. The man had fashioned a tourniquet out of his equally expensive looking silk tie and fastened it around his left calf just above a large black stain of dried blood.

The man held a baseball bat.

Jim lowered the bike cautiously from his shoulder as they stared at each other across the ten-feet of asphalt separating them.

Jim broke the silence. “Are you okay, buddy?” he asked with as much concern to his voice as he could muster.

The suit looked hard at Jim, summing him up. Gauging my threat level , Jim thought.

When the man spoke it was in a voice thick with southern syllables. “Give me the bike,” he drawled making the word bike sound more like bark .

Jim shook his head. “Can’t do that. I have to get to my wife. I have some water, I can—” Jim barely had time to duck as the stranger covered the distance between them with lightning speed, savagely swinging the baseball bat through the air where his head had just been.

Christ! This guy is going to kill me over my bike , Jim thought as he ducked the blow. Is this what it’s come down to?

The momentum of the missed strike propelled the stranger forward, past Jim. The guy had put all his energy into a one-shot deal to get hold of some transportation, he guessed. That wound on his leg must have sucked a lot of the energy from him. The assailant now stood panting and gasping from the exertion of the attack, his bloodshot eyes lupine in their wariness of him.

Jim had dropped the bike instinctively when he leaped away from the incoming bat, and now the attacker had managed to maneuver himself between Jim and it.

He could just leave the bike, give it over to this stranger and avoid anybody getting hurt, but who knew where he would be able to lay his hands on another? Bikes would be like gold dust for as long as the freeways and roads were blocked.

“I don’t want to have to hurt you,” Jim said, and then added “but I will if I have too.”

The suit must have thought this was funny because he grinned insanely, raised the bat to his shoulder, and stepped up to the bike. He spread his feet wide and waited in a stance that clearly said, try it .

The guy easily had fifty pounds on Jim, plus he had a weapon. Of course, it looked like his attacker was injured but he couldn’t be sure how debilitating that might be.

Jim scanned the ground around him searching for anything he might be able to use to defend himself.

The remains of a VW Beetle rested beneath the overturned body of an SUV, its domed roof crushed almost beyond recognition, its neo-hippy owner now surely nothing more than pulp behind the compacted steering wheel. The Beetle had collided with the upturned truck that blocked most of the lanes but it had been in a skid when it hit because the car had come to rest sideways against the truck. The chrome front-bumper had been torn from one of its mountings by the impact, and now lay glinting in the gloom, beckoning to Jim.

Jim took a step sideways. The thug in the suit matched him but didn’t move away from the bike.

Certain he wasn’t going to be suddenly battered Jim backed the few remaining feet to the VW. The suit didn’t move, guarding his prize like a lion who had just stolen a kill from a hyena.

Casting a nervous glance over his shoulder, Jim turned his attention to the bumper. The impact of the crash had torn one of the metal L-brackets holding the bumper to the car’s chassis free, that side now rested loosely against the ground, but the second bracket was still fixed firmly by its welded joint. It was going to take the application of some brute force to separate it.

With a final look over his shoulder to make sure his attacker wasn’t going to jump on the bike and attempt to ride off into the darkness, Jim braced his foot against the hood of the Beetle, grabbed the bumper, and pulled. The already stressed and twisted metal of the mounting squealed and screeched its resistance, but Jim felt the ancient rusted metal give somewhat. He was going to have to twist the joint to get more torque and that meant pushing the bumper upwards and leaving no question in his assailant’s mind he was trying to obtain a weapon.