Chapter Twenty Three
Johnny and Veronica drove out of Los Angeles International Airport in a metallic green Pontiac and followed the signs for Interstate 10. The freeway they were on was a river of flowing metal in both directions under a broiling sun. They picked up the ‘ten’ and headed east past the shimmering glass and metal towers of downtown Los Angeles.
“This is something else; I can’t believe I’m really here!” said Johnny, who was driving.
“Just keep on this freeway; we’re heading for Phoenix.”
The flatness of suburban Los Angeles gave way to a hilly area where big houses gazed down at the busy road. After the huge Kellogg Intersection the landscape flattened out again, but was fringed with peaked mountains on the eastern side.
“How about some grub Veronica?” Johnny asked as Lynyrd Skynyrd asked for their bullets back on the radio.
“Yeah, pull-in wherever you want.”
Life size replicas of dinosaurs stood at the roadside in Cabazon, the town where Johnny had chosen to eat. “Jeez, its roasting,” he said as he opened the driver’s side door, “the car's air-conditioning gives you a false impression of the outside temperature.”
After some pancakes and coffee in a diner called Bedrocks, they were back on the road again in a flat, desert landscape dominated by a huge tower of a casino which looked out of place.
The land became craggy as the road climbed out of the green oasis that was Palm Springs and, after the summit of the mountain, it flattened out again before beginning a gentle descent.
“Is this still the Mojave then?” Johnny asked looking at a large saguaro cactus.
“No, I think we’ve passed into the Sonoran Desert,” said Veronica, looking between the GPS on her phone and the roadmap she had found in the glove department. “I think we should stop at a town called Blythe up ahead and find a motel. We need to leave the interstate just after, but we should rest and refuel.
As they drove into Blythe, the sun had began to set turning the desert landscape a pinkish-red.
“Wow! What a great colour.” Johnny remarked.
“Yeah, it’s something special isn’t it?”
They checked in to a Travelodge and spent a comfortable air-conditioned night.
“What are we going to do when we get there Veronica?” Johnny asked as they sat in the forecourt of a gas station with coffees and muffins the next morning.
“Try to get in and get them to stop the tests. We did all right under the mountain in Bavaria.”
“Yeah, but we had Mathias and Günter there. This place will be a populated government site I assume.”
“Well, let’s see,” she said, nodding for him to start the engine.
They crossed the Colorado River, which was on its way to the Gulf of California with parts of the Grand Canyon, and entered Arizona. Then, at the town of Quartzite they left the interstate and headed north along a two-lane that stretched into the scrubland, straight, like a ruled black pencil line on vellum.
They came to a crossroads, and Veronica said: “Turn right here John.”
She looked at him as they drove and then said: “No wait John, turn back!”
“What, back to the I 10?”
Veronica rubbed the sides of the bridge of her nose with the index finger and thumb of her right hand. “No, head north.”
“What’s wrong, are we lost?”
“What? No! I mean yeah. I just got mixed up that’s all!”
She stuffed her cell phone in a pocket and studied the map. “We must turn left ahead and cross the Colorado and then look for the 95.”
They drove through the dusty desert and after a while stopped at a town called Parker where they had coffee and pancakes in an old diner on the main street.
The bridge over the Colorado River reminded Johnny of something he once constructed out of Meccano. And the water reminded him of milky coffee: light brown and frothy at the edges.
Back in California, they left the Colorado Valley and drove through the arid, featureless landscape until they came to a crossroads where Johnny filled the tank at a gas station. There was a red digital read–out above the door which told him the temperature was 92 degrees Fahrenheit.
The 95 took them through a flat land, with dried up river beds, to Needles, a town which lay in the Mojave Valley. They took Pew Road out of town, which skirted agricultural land before climbing to the Needles Highway.
“We need to take the next left John,” said Veronica.
They turned onto a narrow road, which climbed up the rocky hillside.
“Look out for a dirt track on the right.”
A few hundred metres further on there was a dusty track on the right. The only problem was that a large mesh metal gate with a huge padlocked chain spanned it. A sign on the centre read: KEEP OUT. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.