FOREWARNING
I jerked awake as the car swerved across the empty five-lane carriageway. Sleeping wasn’t an option any more. Sleep meant death and I wasn’t ready for that yet. I had started driving four days before, when there had been others – not many, but others nonetheless - driving towards Central America. Many couldn’t access a place where it would be safe; I was one of the lucky ones. I smiled as that idea crossed my mind. Lucky? No-one was lucky any more, and with every day that passed I felt that perhaps those who had already lost their lives were really the lucky ones. * When the world was let in on what was happening, I had taken my late father’s Series 1700 Chevrolet convertible and set off down the freeway. The car was more than fifty years old, but I felt more secure here than anywhere else in the world. It had been my father’s pride and joy, stationed at the family ranch in Musselshell,Montana – the place that had been my home for my whole life; yet leaving had been easier than expected. I hadn’t had time to realise that I would never return to the place where boy had turned to man. Even so, tears began to roll silently down my cheeks. Nostalgia would be a man’s downfall, my father used to say; memories were for the forgotten man. As I drove I passed a small motel: one of those run-down, middle-of-nowhere places. I didn’t stop. Stopping would be lethal. A young woman, however, hadn’t been able to take the long-distance driving any more. I assumed that the decreasing oxygen had strained her lungs and made her delirious - it seemed most likely to me, so many others having fallen for that same
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