The next day, with the Rocky Mountains at our back, and the Sierra Nevada range stretched out in front of us, we started making plans. Everything was going smoothly. I was in communication with the Cupertino cell of The Flume. We were girding our loins for the upcoming battle.
We were rolling through a hallucinatory sunset, which cast rays of reddish light on the distant mountains and the scatterings of sage on the vast Nevada plain. Patsy Cline was singing Crazy on a golden oldies station, when I saw piercing headlights approaching. The blacktop curved slightly, so I could see the vehicle from an angle, revealing three joined trailers towed by a driverless Peterbilt tractor, moving fast. I thought nothing of it - these sausage trucks traversed the country, delivering Chinese ephemera to the big box stores.
I know now that DigiRam had made progress in tracking us down. The calls I made to Cupertino were on stolen cell phones, but if DigiRam were monitoring The Flume’s communications and still had access to Google real-time geostationary satellites, it could well have made the link to our convertible. In any case, the semi truck braked hard, and twitched to the left, knocking our car off the road and into a culvert.
From the first trailer, a side door opened, and an Iraq-era, military issue Willie Pete phosphorus incendiary device flew out in a blaze of fire, and slammed into our Pontiac.
The fireball could be seen from Reno. The metal frame of the Pontiac melted. The truck streamed the video back to DigiRam for a few moments, and then left the scene.
The scuff on the truck’s left fender was gone.