In the Wheels

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This is my first sale, which appeared in the August 1990 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I wrote the story in the summer of 1988, during the first couple weeks of the Clarion Writer's Workshop. The first draft was a third shorter, and it was Samuel R. Delany, the teacher that week, who pointed out that the story wasn't complete: the narrator had to return home and face the music.

It was just a car.

“No!” said Zeke from underneath it, “it’s more than that, Joey. It’s fucking perfect.”

We were fifteen. Zeke had found a huge underground vault, a crypt of old cars in the City, and he had dragged me out there to hold the lantern while he checked it out. I was supposed to be on the way to my Uncle Peter’s farm to help bring in the hay.

“Zeke, don’t be crazy. Let’s get out of here.” The City was death, everybody knew that. I could feel the germs and the rads crawling across my skin. We were going to be dead in three days with huge welts all over our skin. Superstitious, I know.

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