Denver Omelets Are Made from People!

(I-25 to I-76)

After my worthy adversary gave me the slip, dissipating into the dryer plains air on the left side of the Rockies, I emerged from the treacherous mountain roads not far from Colorado’s capital city and famed Mile High city. The area around Denver is mostly suburban—of relatively low visual stimulus unless you’re an ardent admirer of strip malls and/or clonedominiums. Of course, suburban life means business, and by business, I mean traffic. The quaint four-lane I-25 of the desert straights and two-lane I-25 of the mountains spreads out like a snake devouring a rabbit near the city. But to be completely honest, after a night spent in desolate expanses and winding mountain roads, a few signs of civilization weren’t entirely unwelcome. It was nice to shake off the tunnel-vision of twilight as well.

All things considered, my spirits were running pretty high at this point, somewhere in the upper troposphere near the remnants of the storm. Bonded mentally on our original journey to the southwest, my land cruiser and I had now merged together physically. Through the sticky night, we’d somehow become an automotive anthropomorph—some variety of nomadic cyborg road zombie. And, while I wasn’t looking forward to stopping for gas, fearing we’d lose our freeway synergy, my ass was starting to replicate the lined patterns of the seat cushions at this point. Baby blue pinstripes on black jeans might’ve worked in the seventies, but not the late 90’s.

I’d managed at this point to stave off the initial encroach of the Sandman’s forces. I hadn’t even dipped into my Mountain Dew reserve (break 6-pack ring for emergency purposes only). By 5 am, the day was struggling to dislodge itself from the night’s grasp as I crested Denver’s outlying hills. When it finally burst through, dawn painted a stunning, cloud-spattered canvas: vibrant reds swirled around, bordered by muted pinks, which in turn clashed and slid beneath rusty oranges. The sunrise was one helluva wake up call, especially with the sky pinioned between the mountains and the outline of the city skyline in the distance.

The city still slumbered, despite the fact it was a business day, a Tuesday, the most humdrum of weekdays, as I recall. The freeways felt almost as desolate as they did back in northern New Mexico as the city lights disappeared beneath the creeping daylight. As hauntingly beautiful as the vacant landscape was as it converged with the sunrise, it also held the ominous overtones of a small scale nuclear disaster. Perhaps, as I drove through rural New Mexico in blissful ignorance, someone (possibly even friendlies or ourselves, by accident) had spanked Denver with a neutron bomb. Admittedly several cars still roamed the freeways. But I’ve seen Omega Man. Mutants can drive.

Delirious and curiosity-riddled, I was tempted to pause and explore Denver. But I knew it was only the siren song of distraction. Stopping simply wasn’t viable at this point due to my very fixed budget. Searching for survivors and vampiric mutants would take too much time and money since my journey began with roughly two hundred dollars’ worth of savings and a pay advance from my final TCBY paycheck (brightly-colored mohawks and yogurt? Why not.). Every ounce of cash had to be funneled into gas, food, and lodging rather than paranormal investigation and elimination. Rationalizing didn’t help in my exhausted state, though. Somewhere in my veins, the curiosity of Viking explorers was at war with the sensible wanderlust of nomadic Asiatic tribes. Good common sense, at long last, as well as my homing urge, pushed me onwards.

Plus, with all that night driving, I was making badass time.

As my eyes adjusted to the post-apocalyptic aurora, Denver apparently had its own ideas about my hasty exit from its metropolitan area. Humming along, minding my own business, I kept my hands at ten and two, enjoying the relatively empty freeway and its illusion of safety—one which was soon shattered.

Nearing the far edge of the downtown area, a car screamed up the on-ramp. Rather than dropping in behind me or zooming ahead to merge triumphantly, it decided to play a game of sideways chicken. The zombified driver careened towards me, appearing no more aware of the impending collision than he was the dangers of driving a car. For several tense seconds, it looked like my journey would end in a screeching heap of twisted metal some thousand miles from home. 

At the last second, I slammed on my breaks in a last ditch attempt to avoid a visitation from the jaws-of-life, simultaneously laying on the horn. After several more venomous horn blasts and a sustained middle-finger response, the driving dead still remained completely oblivious to the nightmare he’d made of my early morning dreamscape. He merely sped off on his merry way, hopefully not into a bus full of school kids.

Apparently, the mutants of Denver are not friendly.