He must have sensed Mortimer’s presence, turned abruptly. “Oh, it’s you. Asshole. You started all this.”

“Not me.”

“I attacked before I was ready. You made me think Armageddon was about to attack too, so I attacked first.”

“I need to borrow your radio,” Mortimer said.

This made Freddy laugh harder. “You want to hear what’s on the radio? Here, have a listen.”

He unplugged the headphones, and the speakers buzzed to life.

– “…and I think they’re dead too. I can’t find any of the security people and-oh, hell, they’re everywhere. They killed Nancy and the whole kitchen staff…” Static.

“Who was that?” Mortimer asked.

Freddy laughed again, eyes afire with madness. “That’s your precious paradise. Joey Armageddon’s is in ruins. Lookout Mountain is a slaughterhouse.”

“You’re a liar.”

The static cleared, the voice coming in strong again.-“…if you can hear this, if anyone’s reading me at all. Repeat, the bicycle slaves are in revolt. They’re apparently organized, maybe been planning this…I don’t…they got weapons…so many dead…” It fuzzed to static again and didn’t come back.

Mortimer felt his stomach twist, his fingers and arms and face going cold and numb.

Freddy slurped vodka, much of it spilling on his chest. He coughed, wiped his mouth. “Nobody wins. Only losers. Only more and more of the world dying faster and faster. I couldn’t bring back civilization my way, and Armageddon couldn’t do it his way.”

Mortimer thought about the village around the incline station, all the bustling shops, the happy people singing along to “Walk Like an Egyptian.” It would have worked, thought Mortimer. We were so close.

“So what’s it going to be, Mortimer Tate?” Freddy belched, drank more vodka. “Are you going to shoot me now? Ha. What’s that going to prove? Go ahead. You’d be doing me a favor.”

Bang.

“Always glad to help.”

Downstairs, Mortimer climbed behind the wheel of the MINI Cooper, started the engine. He felt light and insubstantial, like he might float up out of himself, get lost on the breeze. Or maybe he would faint. He wasn’t sure.

“You find out anything?” Bill asked from the backseat.

Mortimer hesitated, took a deep breath. “No. No, I didn’t find out anything.”

“I’m sure it’s all fine,” Sheila said. “Last we heard General Malcolm had won. The Red Stripes ran out of gas.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Bill said hopefully. “They kicked ass. And we rescued those women. I’d say the good guys won the day.”

“Right,” Sheila said. “Yeah.”

They looked at Mortimer, waited.

“I want to see Florida,” Mortimer said. “You guys ever been to Florida?”

They scrounged a hose to siphon enough gasoline from the battlefield wrecks to get out of the city, kept heading south and finally slowed nearly to a stop when they spotted an unknown edifice in the center of the interstate ahead.

“Looks like a person,” Sheila said.

Mortimer scratched his chin, blew out a sigh. “Just standing in the middle of the highway?”

“It’s too big to be a person,” Bill said.

Mortimer briefly pictured Horace, the shark-toothed giant. “We’ll go slow. I’ll toss it into reverse if something happens.”

“Or run him over,” Sheila suggested.

They edged closer, and the thing took shape. It was made in the form of a human, arms outstretched, legs bent. It stood atop a length of neon orange fiberglass that might have once been a car door or hood.

They parked the MINI, got out. The wooden plaque at the base of the sculpture read:

INTERSTATE SURFER

– ANONYMOUS

Upon closer examination, Mortimer saw the length of fiberglass had indeed been expertly shaped to resemble a surfboard.

“Huh.” Mortimer sat on the front bumper of the MINI Cooper and looked at the metal surfer. The legs were axles banged and bent into submission, the arms strands of metal Mortimer couldn’t identify, but the stubby fingers were spark plugs. The torso looked like a gas tank. The skull was some engine part Mortimer could only guess at, lightbulbs in the eyes, the wide mouth a car stereo. An orange highway cone for a hat.

Something in the body language kept the sculpture from looking completely comical. It must have weighed a ton but seemed perfectly balanced.

Bill sat on the bumper next to Mortimer. “It looks like the least little thing could knock it over, massive and fragile at the same time. I wonder how long it took him to do it.”

“Beats me.” Mortimer noticed a lack of bird droppings on the sculpture. Nothing rusted. This one was relatively new.

Sheila sat on the other side. “I’d have signed my name. Doesn’t he want credit?”

They sat looking at the surfer a long time, nobody saying a word.

They ran out of fuel twenty miles north of Valdosta. They camped near the car that night, built a small fire and slept the sleep of the dead.

The next morning they sat around the campfire’s cold coals, no gasoline, no food, no ideas and no coffee. If Mortimer had been granted only one wish, it would have been for the coffee.

Sheila spotted it first, a black speck in the blue of the sky. They sat and watched the speck grow bigger all morning until it was close enough to recognize as the Blowfish.

They yelled and jumped and waved as it passed overhead. Bill broke one of the mirrors off the MINI Cooper and tilted sun flashes at the blimp. Just when it looked like it would sail right on by, it made a slow, slow, slow, awkward turn and landed about two hundred yards down the highway.

Reverend Jake seemed happy to see them. They were sure as hell happy to see him. Sheila asked if he’d come looking for them. The reverend looked slightly embarrassed, admitted that he hadn’t been searching for them. Instead, he’d been following the interstate south, intent on witnessing to the heathens in tropical Miami or Key West. He had, in fact, picked up intermittent signals on the radio that sounded vaguely like Jimmy Buffett music.

“Can you stomach some hitchhikers?” Mortimer asked.

The reverend cleared his throat. “‘As you do unto the least of my children, so have you done unto Me,’ says the Good Book.”

For three weeks they floated south. At first they used I-75 as a guide, but somewhere between Gainesville and Ocala, unseen snipers popped off a few shots at them. They veered east until they hit the Atlantic and followed the coast, always south.

They scavenged food, and with the onset of warmer weather, they also scavenged shorts and T-shirts and flip-flops. Bill didn’t look right, the Union officer’s cap and the six-shooters and the Bermuda shorts and the pink shirt that said MY HUSBAND WENT TO FLORIDA, AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.

Mortimer wore cutoff jeans and a white tank top that said TECATE, and Sheila switched between a glowing blue one-piece and a wispy-light sundress with spaghetti straps.

They stuck close to the beach so they could catch fish and crabs and oysters. Jimmy Buffett came in much clearer as they went south. Mortimer became obscenely fond of “One Particular Harbour,” although Bill’s favorite was “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”

They got stuck in Boca Raton for a week when the Blowfish’s little engine finally ran out of gasoline. They rigged an exercise bicycle to turn the propeller and took turns pedaling. This reminded Mortimer of the bicycle-slave uprising back on Lookout Mountain, but he quickly put it out of his mind.