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He turned to her with a puzzled expression on his face, and she smiled lovingly at him. “Be safe, hon.”
He grinned at her. “Every day, Nana.”
2
IN SOUTHEAST DC NOT long before dawn that same day, flashes of lightning periodically revealed the hulking silhouette of the last remnant of an abandoned highway project.
Blocked off at both ends by concrete barriers, the high, curving ghost ramp—the remaining quarter of a cloverleaf—stood awaiting demolition as it had for ten years, a blight between a lumberyard and a back channel of the Anacostia River.
The lightning flashes also revealed the bleak world beneath the ramp, the tents and impromptu shelters erected by hundreds of unfortunates: the sick, the tragic, the addicted, and the long forgotten, who were living their lives as best they could under the span.
The most coveted camping spots were high up on each of two six-story embankments that supported huge concrete stanchions cradling what remained of the ramp. The fortunate few who had those spots were tucked right up under the abandoned exit and sheltered from all the elements save the cold.
The rest of the dwellings spilled haphazardly toward the bottom of both embankments, increasingly exposed to wind and rain the lower they got. But the tents, tarps, and slapped-together structures on both sides of the camp stopped well short of what remained of an old road grade that ran beneath the ghost ramp toward the river.
In the throes of the latest storm, in the strobe-like lightning flashes, no one appeared to be out or moving on either embankment except for a thirteen-year-old boy named Boog who’d had to pee so badly that he left the plywood hovel where he lived and went out under a tarp slung over a three-legged table and two cracked plastic chairs.
He’d no sooner finished relieving himself than the rainstorm lost some of its power. Before returning to his nest, he peered uphill into the gloom and darkness under the ramp, a learned habit.
Then Boog turned back to the old army blanket that served as the door to his home and looked down the grade in the gathering gray light toward the roadbed, a mud-and-broken-pavement mess. He saw water sluicing around a car that had not been there before.
Not that people didn’t boost cars, strip them, and abandon them beneath the ghost ramp now and then. But this car, a small black SUV, looked intact. And who knew what was inside? Boog had very little time to act.
If the car was unlocked, he wanted to be in before the rest of the vultures were even aware of its existence. Boog dropped fast down the steep slope and wove around the tents and shacks. He could see the vehicle better now.
An Audi! That’s luxury!
If it was locked, he’d break the window, get in, and take whatever was there. Finders keepers, right?
Near the bottom of the embankment, he caught movement to his left, back toward the lumberyard. A shadow, the silhouette of someone, vanished into the brush that choked the ground on both sides of the old roadbed.
Had that person been inside the car already?
Feeling frantic, Boog jumped off the low concrete retaining wall at the bottom of the embankment and landed in the weeds and mud. He hated getting his sneakers dirty, but this was business. He might find something he could sell for enough money to buy food for a week, maybe enough for him to leave this godforsaken place for good.
Who knows what’s inside? Boog excitedly jumped from pavement piece to pavement piece until he was fifteen feet from the Audi, which was almost broadside to him. He smelled gas and stopped.
Was the tank leaking? Had the guy been siphoning gas and spilled some?
Even though it was almost dawn and Boog was just fifteen feet away, he couldn’t see through the Audi’s tinted windows. He took several steps closer, and the gas smell got stronger.
Thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed and flooded the interior with brief, garish light. Boog froze in horror.
There was a person in the front seat!
Boog took a step back as another lightning bolt lit the scene, revealing big smears of what appeared to be blood down the window. He tried to see past the blood smears to get a better look at the figure inside.
He could swear he saw—
In his peripheral vision, back toward the brush where the shadow had vanished, he caught a flash of something intensely blue. He turned to it and saw a low wall of flame ignite.
The flames were a foot high even in the rain and came fast toward Boog and the car in a sinewy, hurrying line.
The boy felt the danger, spun, and ran. He jumped up on the concrete retaining wall just as the flames leaped a narrow channel of water sluicing down the road and continued racing toward the Audi.
The car ignited in a whoosh of flame that billowed up like a yawning mouth and ate the Audi whole. There must have been puddles of fuel mixed in with the rainwater. Boog knew what was going to happen and began scrambling up the embankment, trying to get far away before—
The SUV’s gas tank exploded. The boy threw himself to the ground and covered his head with his arms. A few seconds later he peered back and saw a column of fire soar above the Audi almost high enough to lick the underside of the ramp.
