Bullets & Lace

Chapter One

A scorching late afternoon sun had begun its slow descent upon the hills and mountains of a valley within the Mojave Desert. Carving through this landscape was the worn and corroded asphalt of the Route 66 highway. A once busy and mighty highway that served as the life line to the growing and booming western United States was now a husk of its former self. The towns that relied on the highway decayed into ghost towns and shoddy gas stations were speckled along every thirty or so miles of the highway, making it an ideal route for those that wish to traverse hundreds of miles with little to no witnesses. Among those, a solitary drifter speeds down the empty and dilapidated highway in a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.

The engine of the muscle car roars as the man behind the wheel bellows out a cloud of smoke from a cigarette in one hand while his other hand gripped the steering wheel. Just as the man flicks the cigarette out from between his fingers and out the driver window, the indicator of the fuel gauge suddenly illuminates, causing the man to turn his attention to it.

"Dammit..." The man mutters to himself as he eases his foot off the accelerator and brings his right hand to the gear shifter and presses his foot onto the clutch, bringing the car out of fifth gear and into the fourth gear. "I should have found a filling station by now..." He mutters.

As the roaring of the engine had begun to subside, the man leaned forward in his seat and squinted his eyes towards a structure in the distance that was obscured by the haze of heat radiating from off the land.

"About fuckin' time..." The man grumbles with a sigh and reclines back into his seat.

After a while, the vehicle approaches the gas station and makes a turn into the lot. The man steers the vehicle up alongside one of the two fuel pumps before shifting the vehicle into park and shuts off the engine. The man then swings open the driver door and steps out of the car, the sound of graveled asphalt crunching underneath his steel toed work boots as he ran his fingers through his short messy black hair. Adjusting his tattered black hoodie, the man then takes a scan around of the empty lot of the filling station, hearing the faint sound of doo-wop music on the outdoor speakers of the run down station building and noticing the withered and discolored asphalt of the station lot. The man then glances towards the gas pump itself.

"One of those old school pumps, eh?" The man chuckles smugly to himself before turning his body back around and leans back into the vehicle, popping open the gas tank hatch.

"Looks like I'm saving myself twenty bucks..." The man chuckles again before reaching for the nozzle of the pump and unscrews the tank cap. He then stuffs the nozzle into the tank and squeezes the trigger of the nozzle, engaging the lock of the trigger. The man then sighs out through his nostrils before leaning his body up against the side of his car, listening to the soft clicks of the pump ticker as he massages the back of his neck in an attempt to ease the ache of it after spending nearly seven hours of non-stop driving. He didn't know how far it was till the nearest town or even motel, but all he knew was that the money he scored from the gas station back in Santa Fe could save him from sleeping in the backseat of his vehicle for at least a few weeks and give him a few days worth of decent meals.

As the man stood there, lost within his own thoughts, the faint distant sound of an engine from down the road suddenly struck his ears. He then adverts his gaze down the road to the west, seeing a distant all white vehicle through the haze. He watches the car speed closer and closer as the sound of the engine grows louder and louder. After about half a minute, the man watches as an all white Montego GT comes to a slow crawl and turns into the lot of the filling station and rolls into a parking space next to the building. The sound of muffled heavy bass of electronic music could be heard coming from inside the car as it sat idle for a moment in the parking space.