windowed pocket on the breast of her leathers, tugged her papers from the pouch on her tank with a clumsy gloved hand, and unfolded them inside their transparent carrier. “You’re supposed to gas me up for the run to Tonopah.”
“You have an independent filter or just the one in your helmet?” All efficiency as he perused her papers.
“Independent.”
“Visor up, please—” He wouldn’t ask her to take the helmet off. There was too much dust. She complied, and he checked her eyes and nose against the photo ID.
“Angharad Crowther. This looks in order. You’re with UPS?”
“Independent contractor,” Harrie said. “It’s a medical run.”
He turned away, gesturing her to follow, and led her to the pumps. They were shrouded in plastic, one diesel and one unleaded. “Is that a Connie?”
“A little modified so she doesn’t buzz so much.” Harrie petted the gas tank with a gloved hand. “Anything I should know about between here and Tonopah?”
He shrugged. “You know the rules, I hope.”
“Stay on the road,” she said, as he slipped the nozzle into the fill. “Don’t go inside any buildings. Don’t go near any vehicles. Don’t stop, don’t look back, and especially don’t turn around; it’s not wise to drive through your own dust. If it glows, don’t pick it up, and nothing from the black zone leaves.”
“I’ll telegraph ahead and let Tonopah know you’re coming,” he said, as the gas pump clicked. “You ever crash that thing?”
“Not in going on ten years,” she said, and didn’t bother to cross her fingers. He handed her a receipt; she fumbled her lacquered stainless Cross pen out of her zippered pocket and signed her name like she meant it. The gloves made her signature into an incomprehensible scrawl, but the guard made a show of comparing it to her ID card and slapped her on the shoulder. “Be careful. If you crash out there, you’re probably on your own. Godspeed.”
“Thanks for the reassurance,” she said, and grinned at him before she closed her visor and split.
Digitized music rang over her helmet headset as Harrie ducked her head behind the fairing, the hot wind tugging her sleeves, trickling between her gloves and her cuffs. The Kawasaki stretched out under her, ready for a good hard run, and Harrie itched to give it one. One thing you could say about the Vegas black zone. There wasn’t much traffic. Houses—identical in red tile roofs and cream stucco walls—blurred past on either side, flanked by trees that the desert had killed once people weren’t there to pump the water up to them. She cracked a hundred-and-sixty kph in the wind shadow of the sound barriers, the tach winding up like a watch, just gliding along in sixth as the Kawasaki hit its stride. The big bike handled like a pig in the parking lot, but out on the highway she ran smooth as glass.
She had almost a hundred miles of range more than she’d need to get to Tonopah, God willing and the creek didn’t rise, but she wasn’t about to test that with any side trips through what was left of Las Vegas. Her dosimeters clicked with erratic cheer, nothing to worry about yet, and Harrie claimed the center lane and edged down to one-forty as she hit the winding patch of highway near the old downtown. Abandoned casinos on the left-hand side and Godforsaken wasteland and ghetto on the right gave her back the Kawasaki’s well-tuned shriek; she couldn’t wind it any faster with the roads so choppy and the K-rail canyons so tight.
The sky overhead was flat blue like cheap turquoise. A pall of dust showed burnt-sienna, the inversion layer trapped inside the ring of mountains that made her horizon in four directions.
The freeway opened out once she cleared downtown, the flyover Patch had warned her about arching up and over, a tangle of long banked curves, the crossroads at the heart of the silent city. She bid the ghosts of hotels good day as the sun hit zenith, heralding peak heat for another four hours or so. Harrie resisted the urge to reach back and pat her saddlebag to make sure the precious cargo was safe; she’d never know if the climate control failed on the trip, and moreover she couldn’t risk the distraction as she wound the Kawasaki up to one hundred seventy and ducked her helmet into the slipstream off the fairing.
Straight shot to the dead town called Beatty from here, if you minded the cattle guards along the roads by