A sideswipe straight out of the Fast & the Furious 17 and we have careened across those who dare stand between us and tender delivery. Was this what the Pony Express was like? I wonder. We flicker back beneath the motorway, nearly meeting a truck head-on. My life flashes before my eyes: it leaves me underwhelmed. Other things also flash by as the boss picks up the pace: speed limit signs, schoolchildren, little old ladies, tourists on bikes, a litany of the helpless and hopeless, as the road necks into single-and-a-half lane in width. At the far end of a tiny hamlet, we reach a T-junction. For the first time since we left the motorway, he releases the accelerator from under his foot, like someone’s windpipe he’s wheedling for information, and turns to me next.
“Now what?”
“Left,” I say, one forefinger gesturing for clarity as the other traces our route through time and space on the map.
As the rain pelts down and the visibility reduces to nothing, he leans forward and a manic smile creeps onto his face.
“Easier in this weather,” he explains. “This’ll keep the fecking eejits off the road.”
We zip through small villages that are slashes of colour at our velocity, aggregations of existence rather than individual houses with individual lives within. Cars inching forward from narrow lanes nearly lose their noses, remonstrative horns dopplerizing in the distance behind us. We continue to streak through a blurry green alley, and despite my initial misgivings, I begin to consider the possibility that we might actually reach the tender drop, and perhaps even with time to spare.
“We’re making good time,” I say.
Silly mistake. A widening flash of grey-white on my side and the boss yanks the wheel hard to the left, headed straight for a solid concrete wall.