The last hot time

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"No," Danny said, without thinking about it.

"Well," the man said, "then it ain't too late to go home."

"I s'pose so." Danny didn't want to start a string of lies with the guy, and he supposed that anything he said would have about the same effect.

"If you need directions…" The old man nodded toward a cardboard box, between a rack of oil cans and the end pump. A card said THE ONLY MAP YOU NEED. The box was full of Gideon Bibles, black and green, probably from the motel. Danny'd seen the same box in Iowa, half a dozen different times and places. He paid the attendant and drove on.

The road was empty. Every half hour or so he slowed down for a reflector barricade marking off a patch of crumbled pavement or collapsed embankment or a mass of burnt-out vehicles too big to remove. There was a little fingernail of moon, making foggy gray shadows on the concrete, but mostly the night was black on black, with a few lone stars on the horizon, barns or one-crossroad towns. A couple of the towns had signs, the old white-on-green reflective ones. He didn't turn off. Towns like that had shot at him in the county ambulance with the lights going. The odds wouldn't be any better now.

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