Altered States by Paul J. Newell

having a harassed policeman in the back seat meant he should rigidly adhere to the road laws or actively flout them. He judged correctly that now was not the time to ask the question, so decided to just take the middle road, as it were. He drove a couple of blocks – half-jumping one light and not-quite coming to a complete stop at a give-way – then took a right onto Fifth, where there would be cabs-a-plenty.
    Taxis in New Meadows are rather like the hotels – flamboyant and largely impractical. Most of them are themed; a lot of them are stretched; far too many of them are pink with bunny-girls in the back; and one of them is a Lamborghini.
    Conner managed to flag down a regular one: yellow in colour with an ethnically-minor driver boasting language skills just sufficient to completely misunderstand where you want to go. This would not be a problem for Conner. After he’d bundled his passenger from one car to the other – making a mental note to give up doughnuts the next day – he resorted to the modern day Lingua Franca, the emergent international language of capitalism.
    ‘McDonald’s,’ he barked. The cabbie looked confused momentarily until Conner affirmed with a sharp, ‘Drive!’; and the cab pulled confidently into the flow of traffic almost embedding itself into a gem-studded stretched Hummer full of GI Jane bachelorettes.
    They had to drive almost two whole blocks to reach the nearest big yellow M. At the drive-thru Conner picked up a sweet black coffee and then issued his next globalised instruction to the driver:
    ‘Holiday Inn.’
    All the Holiday Inns were on the outskirts of town, so it didn’t really matter which one. He just needed to be someplace else.
    The coffee wasn’t for him, it was for Mila. He assumed she had just been sedated. If so she should slowly start to lift out of her lethargy, and coffee would speed the process. It was a shame he didn’t have any more uppers on him. Conner began to pop the lid of the coffee, which was a task impossible to achieve on firm standing without spilling half the cup’s contents. In the back of a cab, crotch-scalding was a mandatory outcome. Fortunately, McDonald’s heat their drive-thru coffee to the tepid heights of four-and-a-half degrees above body temperature for just this reason. After confirming this via a few splashes to his pants he put the lid back on and started feeding it to Mila through the lid-spout, whilst cradling the back of her lolling head with his other hand.
    ‘Drink,’ he said encouragingly. She made some kind of moaning-cum-gurgling sound in response which he took as a positive development from straight moaning.
    After the coffee was drained he scoped their location and determined they were only about three miles from the nearest Holiday Inn – so it would take another mere twenty-five minutes to get there at their break-neck speed of stationary. He decided to phone ahead and make a reservation to minimize any lobby-based commotion on his arrival with old Ragdolly Anna beside him. Then, finally, he sat back and took a moment to contemplate his predicament.
    He opened the car window a crack to get some air, but the air outside was warm and humid. He watched the people on the busy sidewalk pass by the window, and kind of wished it wasn’t because they were travelling faster than he was.
    Any one of them could be the enemy now. Someone was messing with him, but he didn’t know who. It seemed unlikely in the extreme that it was some fun-loving Feds warning him to stay away from Bigby. Surely they would use official channels if they knew he was still digging around. It could be the bail-bondsman reaping some revenge for his clerk-beating fun being interrupted. But he’d have to be truly crazy to start kidnapping cops if he wanted to stay in business. Scariest of all, it could be one of the rug trading gangs. Maybe his cover had been blown by one of his informants. But they would have simply dispatched him by now. Subtle games