The Dreaming City
We would have been quite the sight had there been anyone left alive to see us, rumbling up N. La Brea Avenue in Gargantua One—we’d disengaged the electric motor and were running the 16.1-liter diesel only, but that’s another story—the expedition vehicle’s stainless steel hull glinting back at us from the shop windows and its parabolic antenna whirling; its great pistons rattling.
“Rollin’ down—the Imperial Highway, with a big, nasty redhead at my side,” Sam sang along with the stereo. “Santa Ana winds blowin’ hot from the north, and we were born to ride ...”
“Jesus, not again,” moaned Lazaro. He reached past her toward the deck but she batted his hand away.
Nigel, meanwhile, had to shout over the music: “You want to follow La Brea all the way to Hollywood Boulevard—th
