315

As the sound of the explosion echoes for miles across the suburbs, you run as fast as you can towards the hole in the paint factory fence. You leap through and keep running, your eyes fixed straight ahead at a spot at the end of the street, where an anxious Rickenbacker is standing, waiting for you to show. He can see by the state of your clothing that you’ve had a lucky escape, and he rushes forward to help.

‘What the heck’s happened to you?’ he bellows, shouting in order to make himself heard above the roar of the fires.

‘Later … ’ you reply. ‘I’ll tell you later. First we gotta get away from here!’

Together you make it back to the roadster in time to see Macy and Langdon’s distress flare shoot into the cloudless sky above Interstate 8.

‘It’s worked,’ says Rickenbacker, relieved that your efforts have not been in vain. ‘The convoy’s on its way through.’

‘Yeah,’ you reply, fighting to catch your breath, ‘and that means the Outlaws are on their way here. It’s time we were outta here!’

A huge, billowing pall of dense, black smoke is rising into the sky above Arizona City, casting its shadow over the barren land ahead. Before long you have left behind the town’s suburban sprawl and you find yourself making your escape westwards along an unmarked road that snakes towards the Santa Rosa Wash.

The tiny town of Chuichu flashes past in the blink of an eye, and within a few minutes you arrive at a junction where once there were roads. Now no trace of them remains, save a signpost that indicates south to the town of Jackrabbit and west to the Santa Rosa bridge and a town called Cucklebur.

You continue driving due west, across sun-baked soil littered with sagebrush and tumbleweed, until at last you reach the Santa Rosa bridge. It crosses the Santa Rosa Wash, a river that is now little more than a dried-up trench. The bridge is holed and impassable by vehicle, and although the Wash itself is bone-dry, its banks are too steeply undercut for you to attempt a crossing here.

‘We’ll head north and cross as soon as we can,’ you say, consulting your map. Rickenbacker is about to agree when suddenly he notices a cloud of dust approaching from the east. ‘Bikes,’ he hisses, ‘clan bikes. Must be the first of the Outlaws. Looks like they saw us leave Arizona City.’

You stand up in your seat in order to get a better view of the approaching bikers, and count only two motorcycles. They are moving too fast to outrun them, leaving you with only two options: to hide or to fight.

If you wish to try to hide from these clansmen, turn to 88.

If you wish to stand and fight them, turn to 135.