But at least it handled manageably now.
47
Progress was slow but steady. The surroundings became emptier of people, the vehicles fewer, all going the other way. A couple of hours after leaving San Antonio, Mitch voiced the question that perhaps had been forming in many of their minds. He had come back to allow Cavan a spell of riding up front in the cab.
“Look, I know she’s important to you, Lan, and it has to be a big thing in your book, but in a situation like this we have to be realistic. . . . I mean, how likely is it, really, that anyone is still going to be at this place? If this shuttle that we’re betting on is down over the border, wouldn’t we be doing everyone here a favor by being honest and heading straight on there direct? I hate having to say this, but . . .” He gestured at the desolation around the roadway unrolling behind them, and left it at that.
“It isn’t just Vicki and Robin,” Keene replied. “We need a pilot too. I told Halloran to try and find one.”
Mitch looked puzzled. “But I thought you could fly it,” he said.
Keene shook his head. “What gave you that idea?”
“You were on that ship that all the news was about, the one that outflew the spaceplane, right?”
“Sure, as an observer-engineer. I helped design the propulsion unit, that’s all.”
Mitch stared at him for a few moments of revelation while the universe took on a new perspective suddenly. “Well, shit,” he pronounced resignedly. The others exchanged ominous looks but said nothing. Colby took out a handkerchief to wipe his indestructible spectacles. “Isn’t it funny how life always has one more thing in store that you hadn’t thought of,” he remarked to nobody in particular.
Interstate 37 continued all the way into Corpus Christi. The plan, however, was to exit at Highway 281, seventy miles before, which followed a direct route south to San Saucillo, where Keene had told Vicki to wait. Since they were now entering his home territory, he changed places with Cavan to ride up front in the cab.
If anything, the bleakness of the depopulated surroundings was even more unnerving than the scenes they had witnessed from California to San Antonio. The smoke and clouds had mingled into a heaving canopy of orange and brown from which hissing streamers of flame and bursting fireballs continued to lash down over the hapless landscape of deserted townships and abandoned farms. Buff and Luke were silent, staring out in awed, uncomprehending dread. Closer to the coast now, with two circulation systems in collision, the winds alternated between violent spasms and sudden calms. With the windows closed, the cab quickly became unbearable in the heavy, humid heat that had descended. Opening them brought in fumes that produced burning nostrils and smarting eyes. The air had a greasy stickiness that matted the hair, permeated clothing, and lodged in the throat, giving everything an oily taste.
As the miles rolled by from Orange Grove to Alice, recognition of familiar places and old landmarks triggered images of the world that Keene had known. The contrast between his recollections and the things he was seeing at last brought on the dispiritedness that he had been fighting. How far, and for how long, had he been fooling himself? Whatever chance there might once have been of finding anyone had faded long ago. He’d had the chance to escape to the stars. Instead, all he was coming back to was a graveyard. He pushed the thought from his mind, wiped the sticky film from his lips, and waved away the flies.
Things went well until twenty miles or so past Alice, when Buff slowed suddenly, craning forward in his seat to peer through the windshield. “What the hell have we got here?” he growled.
“Damn!” Luke groaned on Keene’s other side.
Outlined ahead was what looked like a shadowy hump extending across the highway. Closer, it proved to be part of a ridge of impact ejecta and boulders thrown from a crater somewhere to the side, with tangled branches of trees protruded in places. Buff brought the truck to a halt, and they climbed out, pulling hoods over their heads and batting away flies. The others from the rear joined them.
Reynolds climbed to the top of the ridge to reconnoiter, reporting when he came back down that the blockage extended as far ahead as he could make out. Surveys to the right and left revealed no ready way around. A number of other vehicles that had tried finding one had been left bogged down in the sandy soil. A brief conference inside the shelter yielded no alternative to turning around and finding a way through to Highway 77, which ran parallel to 281 twenty-five miles farther east, about halfway to the coast. They would follow 77 southward to below Kingsville, and then cut west to get back onto 281.
They retraced their route accordingly, and turned off Highway 281 at the first opportunity. But the patchwork of minor roads and tracks was constantly blocked or obliterated, forcing them ever farther northward until well into the afternoon, when they finally made Highway 77 just short of Robstown—almost back where they would have been had they stayed on the Interstate from San Antonio. But at last, they could resume heading south again.
For the past few miles, Keene had noticed the landscape taking on a peculiarly flattened appearance, the vegetation lying in one direction as if it had been combed, houses leaning and coming apart. And there was wreckage that seemed not to belong—house contents and belongings; parts of structures; all kinds of trash and debris—not scattered in the patterns that had become familiar but lying in endless carpets. Some of the piles included human and animal bodies, grotesquely bleached and bloated. What it meant didn’t hit Keene until he saw the mounds and ribs of sand on the highway, in places holding pools of trapped water, and realized that the dark masses and clumps draped across them were seaweed. “Stop the truck!” he told Buff sharply.
From the map, they were thirty miles inland. Yet already, they had ventured below what was now the level of high tide. From the condition of the sand it appeared to have receded only recently. It would return, Charlie said, in six hours at the most. The roadway they were standing on would then be under the Gulf.
They had two choices: either turn around yet again and go back to Alice, which would mean finding a way to San Saucillo via a long detour inland; or they could make a dash south now, while the highway was above water, and hope for a way inland before it was submerged again. Buff and Luke wanted to turn back. Even Mitch seemed subdued, and for once Alicia couldn’t raise the spirit to dispute him. It was Cavan, amazingly still unflagging and indefatigable, who provided the spur.
“Six hours? We could make the Mexican border in half that time,” he told them. “There have to be a dozen ways back across to 281 in that distance. You’ve seen what kind of a mess it is once you get into those back roads. We’d still be blundering around there when it gets dark, and then lose another night.” Keene watched him, cutting an almost jaunty figure in Army fatigues and a combat smock, for some unknown reason still carrying his submachine gun slung across a shoulder. Cavan waved an arm to indicate the direction ahead. “Did we come this far from California to be stopped now? The people who are depending on us are that way, and so is our only way out. We don’t have time for any more excursions around Texas. In any case, speaking personally, I’ve seen enough of this bloody state. The more we stand here talking, the more time we’re giving the tide to turn. So let’s shut up and get on with it.”
“Leo is right,” Alicia told the others. “I’ve seen enough of Texas too. We have to give it a try, yes?”
Buff and Luke shook their heads at each other but said nothing. Mitch nodded his assent to the troops. Charlie, Colby, and Cynthia turned away without commenting and went back around to the rear of the truck. They all climbed wearily back aboard. Soon, Keene found himself looking out once again at the stretch of road from Corpus Christi to Kingsville that he had driven so many times. But he had never seen it like this. The road was thick with flotsam and trash as well as fallen rubble, making progress slow. There were upturned cars, downed trees—even wrecked boats carried from the coast. Through the outskirts of Kingsville, the remnants of houses demolished by impacts had been
broken up by the water and dispersed. The whole area looked like a shantytown in the wake of a hurricane, extending for miles.
They were ten miles or so past Kingsville, anxiously watching east for the first signs of the wave front, when Keene saw the figures ahead, standing across the roadway. They were holding automatic weapons trained on the cab of the truck. Two standing ahead were waving it down. Farther back in the haze was what looked like a barricade on the road. Keene took the radio from the shelf below the dash panel and buzzed Mitch in the trailer three times. At the same time, he felt for the automatic in the holster at his belt. “Forget all the stuff you’ve seen in movies,” he muttered to Buff. “They could cut this tin box to ribbons in seconds with those things. You’d better pull over.”
48
Keene counted eight of them, muffled in a variety of coats with hoods or hats, a couple wearing poncholike capes. Their faces were all dark, although whether this was their complexion or due to the effects of smoke, dust, and dirt was impossible to tell. They looked exhausted and desperate.
“Okay, stop it right there,” one of the two who had come forward ordered. He had a thick beard and was wearing a torn gray jacket with a hood that revealed tangled hair protruding around the edge. With six rifles trained from fifty feet farther back, there was no question of accelerating through the line. Buff halted the truck and looked down from the window. The leader had a lean, high-cheeked face with narrow, yellow eyes. He motioned with his rifle for them to get out of the cab. “Let’s see what we got here. You’re going the wrong way, doncha know? Now we’ve got us a ride going the right way. Come on, everybody out!”
“Not so fast!” Mitch’s voice barked from the trailer behind. The leader’s head jerked sharply to look back past the cab. Keene moved his head to view the nearside mirror and saw three barrels protruding from gaps in the forward end of the shelter. “This is an Army Special Forces fire team. We are in here, behind cover. You are out there, in our sights. Your call.”
The leader glanced uncertainly at the other, wearing a purple scarf across his face, who was standing just behind. The others farther back shuffled awkwardly or stood in bewilderment. One of them started to back away cautiously. “Hold it right there!” Mitch’s voice ordered. The man froze.
Then the leader waved at them to lower their guns, and his face split into a grin of broken teeth with gaps. “Well, sa-ay. It’s okay, we don’t want no trouble, man. We were, like, just bein’ careful, you know. Doesn’t do to take chances, the way things are. You never know who you might run into. But you’re still goin’ the wrong way, man. We’ve been where you’re headin’, and there ain’t nothin’ to go there for. It’d make more sense to just turn around and get us all out o’ here.”
“That’s fine. So you can lay the guns down,” Mitch answered. The leader hesitated. In the cab, Keene raised his automatic above the window level where it was visible, leaving no doubt who would be the first to go. The leader nodded to his men and put his own gun on the ground. One by one they hesitantly followed suit. He turned back toward the truck and spread his arms wide, again switching on a broad grin to show he was the most reasonable fellow in the world.
Mitch appeared from the back, accompanied by Cavan, cradling his submachine gun in the crook of an arm. Legermount and Birden got out too, but remained in covering positions by the rear corners of the trailer. Keene climbed down to join them, still holding the automatic. Other rifles were still being aimed from inside the shelter. “Okay, now we’ve established a talking relationship, what’s it all about?” Mitch asked. “Did you people just decide to go out for a walk or something? Look around. Don’t you know this is going to be seabed in a matter of hours?”
“Yeah, we know all about that, all right.” The leader looked back along the highway. “But whatever your plans are, you people ain’t gonna get no farther in any case. There’s a bridge down just back there. Nothin’ the other way for us to turn around for—’cept wait for the tide to come in like you said.” He waved toward the side of the highway. “Then we saw that boat there and figured we’d come across to check it out—think maybe it’d see us through till we found somethin’ better, like maybe another truck. Then you showed up.”
Keene looked the way the leader was pointing and noticed for the first time the hulk lying on its side against a gravel bank about a hundred feet off the highway. He turned with Mitch and Cavan to peer past the men still cordoning the road. The wind was gusting, but not to the levels that it had reached earlier. Flies attacked in vicious, swirling flurries. Ahead, he could make out, now, the canted surface and bared pilings of what he had taken to be a barricade across the roadway. More figures were standing on the near side of the break.
“Where are you making for?” Mitch asked.
“Corpus Christi, then thirty-two to San Antonio. What other way is there?” The leader shrugged as if it were a pointless question. “Where the hell did you think you are going?”
“It’s a long story.” Mitch squinted into the distance. “So how bad is this bridge?”
“Not even good for walkin’, man. Washed out. We just about got ourselves over, an’ that’s it. Like I said, you ain’t takin’ that truck nowhere that way.”
“Let’s have a look.” Mitch waved to Buff, who slipped the truck into gear and eased it forward. The leader directed a torrent of Spanish at the others back on the road. They parted sullenly. The leader and his second led Mitch and Cavan through them, the truck following ten yards behind.
There were four more in front of the bridge, three women and a boy, maybe in his mid teens. The leader said something in Spanish as he approached, sounding as if it was meant to be jocular but evoking only a suspicious look from the youth as he saw the strangers carrying guns and his own people without any. Moving to the edge of the break, Keene saw that the bridge spanned a shallow ravine containing a creek. The structure had collapsed on one side, shedding most of the pavement except for the right-hand shoulder, which hung as a succession of tilted slabs and flakes to afford a precarious crossing from the far side. The ravine was littered with trash and debris washed up by the tide and carried down by the creek from farther inland. The wreck of a small coastal freighter lay half buried in mud a short distance below the bridge on the seaward side. Keene guessed that the boat being slammed against the bridge had caused the initial damage, and the flood waters had taken things from there. On the far side of the bridge was an ancient green truck of the kind used for local deliveries, with a miscellany of boxes, bicycles, plastic-wrapped bundles, and suitcases tied to the top. Mitch and Cavan came up to stand alongside him and silently took in the scene. It told its own story.
“You see what happened,” the leader said, waving. “We get that far, and that’s it. We don’t wanna go back anywhere we’ve seen, man, I’m tellin’ you. Then Augusto sees the boat over this side here, and we come over to check it out. Figure maybe we’re gonna need it when the water comes in again, you know? So now, what you say? That big truck can easy take all of us. You ain’t goin’ anywhere this way, in any case. We don’t give you guys no trouble. I mean, what else you gonna do, just leave us here? Come on, man. We all gotta stick together in this, you know?”
Mitch swatted flies away from his face and looked at Cavan for guidance. “Looks like there might not be any other way,” Keene heard him say above the wind.
“What about my guys back there?” the leader asked. “Is it okay for them to come back now? We’re all friends together, right?”
“Over there, where we can see them,” Mitch said, waving at the shoulder on one side of the roadway. “Have one of them pick up the guns and leave them by the truck.” The leader yelled back to relay the directions in Spanish. Buff and Luke had come down from the cab and were staring at the bridge and the strip of highway disappearing into the swirling vapors beyond. Luke turned and said something; Buff shook his head stolidly. The others were appearing from the back and coming around to inspect the situation. “You gu
ys bring some women too,” the leader commented, tugging his beard and grinning approvingly.
“What else are we going to do?” Mitch said. “Shoot them? We don’t have any choice but go back toward Corpus Christi. We can’t just drive away and leave them here to drown?”
“I suppose we have to take them that far,” Cavan agreed. “Then it would depend on what we decided. Are we still talking about finding a long way around, or do we give it up and head back for San Antonio?”
Mitch pulled a face and looked toward the sky. The booms and rolling of distant thunder had intensified in the last few hours. “I don’t like the way this is going. It feels like it’s building up toward the Big One that Charlie talked about. I don’t want to be anywhere near any ocean when it hits.” Cavan looked at Keene to invite comment, but in a way that said Mitch was speaking for both of them.
“What’s happening?” Charlie asked as he joined them.
Cavan gestured. “See for yourself. The only way now is back. What we do when we get to I-37 is the question.”
Alicia was turning her head from side to side, as if searching for a way around. “But . . . San Saucillo?” she said. “What about the shuttle?”
“What do you want us to do, fly the truck over?” Mitch asked her.
“What’s the deal? Are we trying for the long way, then?” Colby asked, moving into the circle.
“That’s what we’re debating,” Cavan told him.
“Athena’s closing in,” Charlie said dubiously. “Every tide is going to be higher than the last.”
Worlds in Chaos Page 41
