It is, indeed, his father’s Oldsmobile. Ding would recognize that fishing-joke front license plate anywhere, even now, obscured as it is with dirt and oil.

The car’s gone feral in the long years since his disappearance, though, and it seems to have been a rough transition. Its wood-laminate panels are scarred and dented; he can see it’s starving. It growls at him, six cylinders throbbing with desperate hunger.

Ding steps slowly away from the wild Buick he’s skinning, careful not to look the Olds in the headlights. “Easy, boy,” he says softly. “Easy there. Just let me get to my Truckbuster…”