Detour to Rib-Fest

A man's desperate attempt to get to a barbecue lands him between riot police and protestors, mistaken for a revolutionary.

"No, Dave, I'm not 'almost there.' I'm in gridlock. Total standstill. I can see the heat coming off the minivan in front of me. It's shimmering, Dave. The air is shimmering with incompetence."

Gary held the phone to his ear with a shoulder, both hands gripping the wheel of his meticulously maintained sedan. The air conditioning was blasting, but he could still feel the oppressive July sun trying to bake him through the windshield. Up ahead, a river of brake lights flowed for miles.

"What's it for this time?" Dave's voice crackled through the speaker, unhelpfully relaxed.

"Who knows? Something about... I don't know, corporate greed or saving the planet by gluing themselves to the asphalt. All I know is your brisket is getting cold, and my Saturday is being held hostage by a bunch of kids who've never had a real job."

He inched the car forward six inches. A victory.

"The GPS says it's another ninety minutes, man. Ninety. To go five miles."

"Just hang in there," Dave said. "More for us if you're late."

A robotic female voice cut in from the dashboard mount. "In two hundred feet, remain on the highway."

Gary scoffed. "Idiot machine." He looked to his right. The exit ramp was a tempting, empty curve of concrete. It led to the old industrial sector, a part of town he knew from his teenage years. A labyrinth of warehouses and forgotten roads. Perfect.

"Dave, I'm going off-road. I know a way. These morons can sit here and contemplate their navels. I'll be at your place in fifteen minutes."

"Gary, don't. Last time you took a shortcut you ended up in a Target parking lot on Black Friday."

"That was different. This is local knowledge. The machine doesn't know these roads. My roads." He flicked his turn signal on, a declaration of war against the traffic. He swung the wheel, cutting across two lanes of stationary cars, earning a chorus of angry honks that he took as applause. The sedan climbed the ramp, and for a glorious moment, he was free, accelerating past the static misery of the highway.

"Recalculating," the GPS said, its tone sounding vaguely judgmental.

"You do that," Gary muttered, a smirk on his face. He was the captain of his own destiny, a master of forgotten routes. The industrial park was just as he remembered: a ghost town of corrugated steel and broken windows. Weeds grew like triumphant green armies through cracks in the pavement. The silence was a welcome relief from the highway's drone.

He made a confident left onto a road named after a defunct chemical company. Then came the sound. Not a pop, but a violent, wet *thump-wump-wump-wump* that vibrated through the floorboards. The car lurched, pulling hard to the right. He wrestled it to a stop, the smell of burnt rubber filling the pristine interior.

He got out. The front passenger-side tire was a mangled flap of black rubber, hissing its last breath. A jagged piece of rebar, jutting from a pothole he hadn't seen, was the culprit.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said to the empty street. He kicked the good tire out of frustration, which only hurt his foot. He called Dave back. "Slight delay."

Changing the tire was a greasy, infuriating affair. The lug nuts were on too tight. Sweat stung his eyes, plastering his polo shirt to his back. As he was grunting, trying to get the last nut to budge, a figure on a bicycle glided past. The kid wore a bandana over his face and had a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. He moved with a silent, fluid motion that was deeply unsettling.

Gary didn't pay him much mind until he heard a sharp *slap* against the back of his car. He looked up. The cyclist was already fifty feet down the road, not even looking back. On his bumper, a bright blue and red sticker now screamed: DEPORT ICE.

Something inside Gary snapped. It wasn't just the traffic, the flat tire, or the heat. It was the sticker. The casual, self-righteous violation. He finally got the last nut loose, threw the flat in the trunk, and slammed it shut. He didn't even bother to properly stow the jack. He got back in the car, hands trembling with rage.

He floored it. The donut tire whined in protest. He took the first turn he saw, a narrow one-way street, purely on instinct. A bad instinct.

He was immediately facing a wall of people. Hundreds of them. They weren't moving. They were standing, holding signs, chanting, drinking water from bottles. He had driven directly into their staging area. The wrong way.

Panic seized him. The faces turned towards his car, a mixture of confusion and anger. He tried to put the car in reverse, but in his fumbling haste, his foot slipped. The engine revved, then coughed, then died.

Silence. A perfect, horrible silence fell over his immediate vicinity as everyone stared at the idiot in the sensible sedan who had just stalled in the middle of their revolution.

Then, a young woman with a megaphone, standing on a crate not ten feet from his hood, squinted at him. Her eyes drifted down to his bumper, saw the sticker. A slow grin spread across her face. She raised the megaphone to her lips.

"REINFORCEMENTS ARE HERE!" she bellowed, her voice echoing off the brick buildings. The crowd erupted in a confused but enthusiastic cheer.

Gary's blood ran cold. He fumbled with the key, turning it again and again. Nothing. Just a pathetic click. He looked past the crowd, down the street. At the end of the block, a line of blue uniforms and plexiglass shields stood waiting. A black, armored vehicle sat behind them. Suddenly, a light brighter than the sun blasted through his windshield, pinning him in its glare. He threw a hand up to shield his eyes.

A voice, amplified and distorted, boomed from the police line, a voice of pure, unassailable authority. It was a voice that did not brook argument or excuses about brisket.

The police commander, seeing a car with a protest sticker deliberately blocking the road, focused a spotlight on Gary and announced, "Driver of the sedan, you are the leader of an unlawful assembly. Step out with your hands up."