"Mr.Snuggles says this is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen," Smokie reported from his position behind an overturned cruiser, his voice filled with religious awe.
"Beautiful?Beautiful?"Grizz's voice reached volumes that probably violated noise ordinances in three counties."They just turned my roadblock into a goddamn scrap metal festival and made my entire department look like the Keystone fucking Cops."
But even as he said it, watching the convoy disappear down the highway in a cloud of diesel smoke, burning rubber, and what might have been patchouli incense, Grizz had to admit there was something almost impressive about the coordination.Eighty-five vehicles had just blown through his roadblock without a single truck touching another truck, without killing any of his deputies, without so much as denting that hippie microbus.
The deputies who weren't hiding in ditches were climbing out of bushes and from behind trees, staring down the highway at the disappearing convoy with expressions that suggested they were questioning not just their career choices but possibly their entire understanding of physics.One officer was standing next to his upside-down patrol car, which was now decorated with tire tracks and what appeared to be dragon exhaust burns.Another was picking gravel out of his knees and muttering what sounded like prayers in Spanish.And yet another cop was holding his ruined hat and staring at the highway like he'd just witnessed the Second Coming delivered by eighteen-wheelers.
"Daddy," Smokie said, adjusting Mr.Snuggles' tiny sheriff's hat with hands that weren't quite steady, "Mr.Snuggles thinks maybe we should follow them and see where they're really going."
"Follow them?Boy, they just turned half my motor pool into abstract fucking art and made my entire department a laughingstock."Grizz gestured at the wreckage—overturned cruisers, scattered debris, skid marks that would probably be visible from space."What the hell am I supposed to tell the insurance company?All units," he barked into his radio, his voice carrying the kind of fury that made grown men check their life insurance policies, "any car that can still move and isn't currently upside down in a goddamn ditch, form up for pursuit.We're gonna chase these criminal bastards to hell and back if we have to."
As they climbed into the one patrol car that hadn't been converted into modern sculpture by the convoy's passage, Smokie held Mr.Snuggles up to his ear one more time.
"What's that cotton-stuffed pain in the ass saying now?"Grizz growled.
"Mr.Snuggles says maybe Sheriff Cottonmouth didn't tell us the whole truth about what kind of criminals we're chasing, Daddy."
Grizz gunned the engine and squealed out onto the highway, leaving behind a roadblock that looked like it had been hit by a very organized tornado.In his rearview mirror, he could see deputies standing around the wreckage, probably wondering how they were going to explain this clusterfuck to their bosses.
"Well, Mr.Snuggles can kiss my hairy ass," Grizz snarled, flooring the accelerator."Because Sheriff Grizzley T.Lawman don't quit, and he sure as hell don't let some convoy of degenerates and hippies make him look like a fool."
But as the speedometer climbed and the convoy's dust cloud grew larger in the distance, a tiny voice in the back of his head that sounded suspiciously like his son's teddy bear was asking uncomfortable questions about federal intelligence sources and medical supply smuggling operations that required eighty-five trucks and a psychedelic microbus full of Friends of Zeus.
Chapter 8
Ali
Ali's phone had been ringing nonstop for three hours, and each call made the knot between her shoulders tighten a little more.
"Anderson Cooper's people want an exclusive," her editor Scott was saying, his voice crackling with excitement over the truck's CB radio."60 Minutes is interested in a segment about supernatural medical discrimination.And Ali, I just got off the phone with a publisher who wants to offer you a book deal.Seven figures."
Seven figures.Ali stared out the windshield at the convoy stretched ahead of them, at the civilian vehicles that had joined their cause, at the werewolf community they were racing to save.A week ago, she'd been worried about making rent.Now publishers wanted to throw money at her for documenting what was becoming the biggest civil rights story of the decade.
"That's great, Scott," she said, though her voice lacked conviction.
"Great?Ali, this is career-making.You're not just documenting a story anymore—you ARE the story.The photographer who exposed systematic medical discrimination against supernatural communities."
