Helicopter

     Have you ever seen a police chase on the news? The car seems like it's going so slow, you think "Why aren't they trying to run?" They are. see, it's just like planes in the sky, the farther away they are, the slower they appear to be moving. Those people are driving a hundred miles an hour, but from the chopper, it looks like their car is powered by flintstone feet. When you're in the car, though, everything speeds by.

     The hardest part of the whole thing is trying to figure out how to lose the chopper. Cars are easy to ditch, since you can usually blend into a large group of cars, and if you drive smart enough, they'll lose sight of you, and then you split in a way they're not expecting. A helicopter, on the other hand, has a crazy field of view, so it's more than a matter of driving in front of a semi-truck. If you're clever, though, and I tend to think that Allen was a pretty clever guy, you find a way to make that height useless.

We Shot up the 405, with the helicopter and several cars tightly in tow, and made our way toward Mulholland Drive. Allen told me to get unbuckled, and to start packing our gear, especially anything identifying, and everything related to the hunt, into as few bags as I could manage. He, meanwhile, was flicking around on my phone, looking at maps. I grabbed everything I could, opening the back seat to get to the trunk, and digging through everything. Living in a car can really take a toll on your tidiness. I had two bags packed when we got off of the freeway, and got onto Mulholland, Which we were only on for a couple of minutes. The cars weren't behind us anymore, but the helicopter had tight eyes on us. Allen warned me that we were about to get into some real dangerous shit, and I laughed, as he pulled us into someplace very residential. He switched on cruise control, and steered as he put on his pack, and shoved any last things he could manage into it. Then, he turned us into some little side street/culdesac/suburban nightmare, and told me to be ready to jump. He swung a hard left through a side yard, and shouted while the car was under some trees, and we both rolled out of the car. One of the smaller bags I had with me snagged in the door, and I almost got pulled along, but I tore it off my arm, luckily. We dashed for cover as the car continued down the path it was on. The chopper followed it, and we scrambled away. The car headed down a dirt road toward the "Upper Stone Canyon Reservoir" which yes, I did look up afterward. The bag that was caught on the door was full of cash, and scattered bills all down the road. We didn't stop to think about it, we still had plenty of cash, and, more importantly, we had to get the hell out of there.

     We headed to opposite direction of the car, hiding in the trees, and making our way toward the 405 again. We spent a long time hiking through the very posh woods out there, just trying to outrun the search crews radiating from the crash of our car. It was another long while before we had any contact with the world. But we spent a lot of time sitting around small, dark fires thinking. I waited four months before I ever found out what happened to Kevin. I've never felt guiltier about anything.