A rust-bitten Delta 88 rattled its way down SR 160, south of Pahrump in the dim desert darkness just outside Red Rock. The car used to be a dusky green – the Nevada sun had taken its toll and turned the battered hide a funky gray. With the moon obscured by clouds, its sides were a pattern-less blur.

Holes punctured the bottom of the frame, and the body was in bad shape with dings and scratches marring its finned sides. The engine coughed, the tires were balding, and it ran complete with a bevy of creaks and rattles that old cars inevitably develop.

The man driving was a skinny man. Skinny, bespectacled and indescribable, although he was young. His face had that kind of ageless-ness that Asians are often blessed with, although he was Caucasian and a Vegas native. His face was, flat out, creepy, complete with shifting eyes and shoulders that hunched up toward his ears – long, oblong ears that perched on the sides of his skinny head. He kept his long, bony fingers curled tightly around the cracked steering wheel, belying the panic in his creepy skull.

His name was Jeremy Hinds, he was twenty-nine, had never succeeded well in anything in his life, had dropped out of high school in tenth grade, had one no-where job after another until he just plain gave up with jobs, and now he was on his way to kill his father.

*

He had a habit of gritting his teeth. It made the muscles in his cheeks jump and bunch in front of his ears, which, in turn, made the glasses on his face slide down his nose. Each time he gritted, he punched the glasses back up with a sinewy finger.

“Dammit, where is it.” His shoulders bunched, and he gritted, leaning forward, peering through the windshield which had a long, spidery crack running from one corner to the other.

“I know it’s around here…it’s gotta be…shit!” Somewhere in the dim, a white patch of cleared desert flashed by. The moon peeked from behind its cloud cover and shone briefly down on the Delta as he pumped the brakes and pulled to the shoulder.

“Goddammit.” His glasses slipped to the tip of his nose as he turned the steering wheel and swung the boat-like car around. The Delta groaned through the turn, and he listened to the trash under the seats rattling from one side to the other. Something in the truck cluck-clunked and then settled.