The Last Hitch-Hiker[Chap 2;The Rapture]

              The parabolic evolutionary forces of the 60's produced catastrophic genetic divergences,those unviable mutations too far distanced from the norm found themselves unable to maintain a stationary equillibrium,and were cast off into the fringes of the vast,unchartered counterculture. To gain firm purchase in the sedimentery turbulance of crumbling social and moral institutions proved an unsurmountable obstacle for the Pariahs of the time,outcasts who roamed the tortured landscape between self-awareness and there own private demons.  As the decades advanced,their numbers decreased significantly,along with the open habitat in which they flourished.They fell victim to the serial predators of the highways,the cravings of their own inner demons,or succumbed to the lack of will to continue the struggle against abuse,neglect.and scorn.Their Shrines were buried under concrete and asphalt,there Totems giving way to the new Dietys of the time,fast food restaraunts,strip malls,and used car lots.Their extinction went barely noticed,a mere footnote in the long,arduous ascendency of man,a broken and splintered branch from the Tree of Life.  Virgil knew he had almost pieced together the map that would eventually lead him to the Cave of Living Dreams.He had left nothing to chance,and knowing the frailty of pen and paper,had personally carved the Discovery Runes into the living flesh of his apprentice.Together,they had roamed aimlessly through the unchartered Labyrinth of Seduction for three and a half years,gaining sustenance through scavenging and foraging,pilgrims confined to an intricate maze with no hope for absolution.They were driven as much by the Elements as any solitary convictions,a migratory species with no inherant direction,Americas first disposable generation,Ephemeralis Sapienses.  Interstate Highway 40 bisects the parched and broken landscape of the Mojave Desert on it's pre-ordained path towards oblivion.Searing heat radiates off of the desert floor in incandescent waves,mercifully shrouding the shattered terrain in illusions of shimmering luminescence.Only the hardiest of predators can survive here,highly evolved and specialized life-forms uniquely adapted to the unforgiving and hostile enviroment.Barstow,California lies like a malignant tumor on the desolate shores of this fossilized sea-bed,drawing it's sustenance from the long-haul truckers and Las Vegas tourists whom gas up here before the final push onto less forboding domains.In the collective mythology of numerous religions,Hell is defined as an underground inferno outside the the jurisdiction of a benevolent God,but Barstow locals know differently.To them,Hell is not a vague concept used to strike a chord of fear in curious adolescents,but a tangable and venemous cauldron of barbs,fangs,claws,stingers and scales.