CHAPTER 74 Stu woke up from a night of broken rest at dawn and lay shivering, even with Kojak curled up

CHAPTER 74

Stu woke up from a night of broken rest at dawn and lay shivering, even with Kojak curled up next to him. The morning sky was coldly blue, but in spite of the shivers he was hot. He was running a fever. "Sick," he muttered, and Kojak looked up at him. He wagged his tail and then trotted into the gully. He brought back a piece of deadwood and laid it at Stu's feet. "I said sick, not stick, but I guess it'll do," Stu told him. He sent Kojak out for a dozen more sticks. Soon he had a fire blazing. Even sitting close would not drive the shivers away, although sweat was rolling down his face. It was the final irony. He had the flu, or something very like it. He had come down with it two days after Glen, Larry, and Ralph left him. For another two days the flu

510 had seemed to consider him-was he worth taking? Apparently he was. Little by little he was getting worse. And this morning he felt very bad indeed. Among the odds and ends in his pockets, Stu found a stub of pencil, his notebook (all the Free Zone organizational stuff that had once seemed the vital stuff of life itself now seemed mildly foolish), and his key ring. He had puzzled over the key ring for a long time, coming back to it over the last few days again and again, constantly surprised by the strong ache of sadness and nostalgia. This one was to his apartment. This one was his locker key. This one was a spare for his car, a 1977 Dodge with a lot of rust—so far as he knew it was still parked behind the apartment building at 31 Thompson Street in Arnette. Also attached to the key ring was a cardboard address card encased in Lucite. STU REDMAN—31 THOMPSON STREET—PH (713) 555–6283, it read. He took the keys off the ring, bounced them thoughtfully on the palm of his hand for a moment, and then threw them away. The last of the man he had been went into the dry-wash and clinked into a dry clump of sage, where it would stay, he supposed, until the end of time. He slipped the cardboard address card out of the Lucite, and then ripped a blank page from his notebook. Dear Frannie, he wrote at the top. He told her all that had happened up until he had broken his leg. He told her that he hoped to see her again, but that he doubted it was in the cards. The best he could hope for was that Kojak would find the Zone again. He wiped tears absently from his face with the heel of his hand and wrote that he loved her. I expect you to mourn me and then get on, he wrote. You and the baby have to get on. That's the most important thing now. He signed, folded it small, and slipped the note into the address slot in the Lucite square. Then he attached the key ring to Kojak's collar. "Good dog," he said when that was done. "You want to go look around? Find a rabbit or something?" Kojak bounded up the slope where Stu had broken his leg and was gone. Stu watched his progress with a mixture of bitterness and amusement, then picked up the 7-Up can Kojak had brought him on one trip yesterday in lieu of a stick. He had filled it with muddy water from the ditch. When the water stood, the mud silted down to the bottom. It made a gritty drink, but as his mother would have said, it was a whole lot grittier when there was none. He drank slowly, slaking his thirst bit by bit. It hurt to swallow. "Life sure is a bitch," he muttered, and then had to laugh at himself. For a moment or two he let his fingers fret at the swellings high on his neck, just under his jaw. Then he lay back, splinted leg in front of him, and dozed.

He woke with a start about an hour later, clutching at the sandy earth in sleepy panic. Had he had a nightmare? If so, it seemed to still be going on. The ground was moving slowly under his hands. Earthquake? We got an earthquake here? For a moment he clung to the idea that it must be delirium, that his fever had come back while he dozed. But looking toward the gully, he saw that dirt was sliding down in small, muddy sheets. Bounding, bouncing pebbles flashed mica and quartz glints at his startled eyes. And then a faint, dull thudding noise cameit seemed to push its way into his ears. A moment later he was heaving for breath, as if most of the air had suddenly been pushed out of the gully the flash flood had cut. There was a whining sound above him. Kojak stood silhouetted against the western edge of the cut, hunkered down with his tail between his legs. He was staring west, toward Nevada. "Kojak!" Stu cried in panic. That thudding noise had terrified him-it was as if God had suddenly stamped his foot down on the desert floor somewhere not too distant. Kojak bounded down the slope and joined him, whining. As Stu passed a hand down the dog's back, he felt Kojak trembling. He had to see, he had to. A sudden feeling of surety came to him: what had been meant to happen was happening: Right now. "I'm going up, boy," Stu muttered. He crawled to the eastern edge of the gully. It was a little steeper, but it offered more handholds. He had thought for the last three days that he might be able to get up there, but he hadn't seen the point. He was sheltered from the worst of the wind at the bottom of the cut, and he had water. But ow he had to get up there. He had to see. He dragged his splinted leg behind him like a club. He got up on his hands and craned his neck to see the top. It looked very high, very far away. "Can't do it, boy," he muttered to Kojak, and started trying anyway. A fresh pile of rubble had piled up at the bottom as a result of the... the earthquake. Or whatever it was. Stu pulled himself over it and then began to inch his way up the slope, using his hands and his left knee. He made twelve yards and then lost six of them before he could grab a quartz outcropping and stop his slide. "Nope, never make it," he panted, and rested.

511 Ten minutes later he started again and made another ten yards. He rested. Went again. Came to a place with no holds and had to inch to the left until he found one. Kojak walked beside him, no doubt wondering what this fool was up to, leaving his water and his nice warm fire. Warm. Too warm. The fever must be coming up again, but at least the shivering had subsided. Fresh sweat was running down his face and arms. His hair, dusty and oily, hung in his eyes. Lord, I'm burning up! Must be a hundred and two, a hundred and three... He happened to glance at Kojak. It took almost a minute for what he was seeing to sink in. Kojak was panting. It wasn't fever, or not just fever, because Kojak was hot, too. Overhead, a squadron of birds suddenly flocked, wheeling aimlessly and squawking. They feel it, too. Whatever it is, the birds feel it, too. He began to crawl again, fear lending him additional strength. An hour passed; two. He fought for every foot, every inch. By one o'clock that afternoon he was only six feet below the edge. He could see jags of paving jutting out above him. Only six feet, but the grade here was very steep and smooth. He tried once to just wriggle up like a garter snake, but loose gravel, the underbedding of the Interstate, had begun to rattle out from beneath him, and now he was afraid that if he tried to move at all he would go all the way to the bottom again, probably breaking his other damn leg in the process. "Stuck," he muttered. "Good fucking show. Now what?" Now what became obvious very quickly. Even without moving around, the earth was beginning to shift downward beneath him. He slipped an inch and clawed for purchase with his hands. His broken leg was thudding heavily, and he had not thought to pocket Glen's pills. He slipped another two inches. Then five. His left foot was now dangling over space. Only his hands were holding him, and as he watched they began to slip, digging ten little furrows in the damp ground. "Kojak!" he cried miserably, expecting nothing. But suddenly Kojak was there. Stu flung his arms around his neck blindly, not expecting to be saved but only grabbing what there was to be grabbed, like a drowning man. Kojak made no effort to throw him off. He dug in. For a moment they were frozen, a living sculpture. Then Kojak began to move, digging for inches, claws clicking against small stones and bits of gravel. Pebbles rattled into Stu's face and he shut his eyes. Kojak dragged him, panting like an air compressor in Stu's right ear. He slitted his eyes open and saw they were nearly at the top. Kojak's head was down. His back legs were working furiously. He gained four more inches and it was enough. With a desperate cry, Stu let go of Kojak's neck and grabbed an outcrop of paving. It snapped off in his hands. He grabbed another one. Two fingernails peeled back like wet decals, and he cried out. The pain was exquisite, galvanizing. He scrambled up, pistoning with his good leg, and at lastsomehow-lay panting on the surface of I-70, his eyes shut. Kojak was beside him then. He whined and licked Stu's face. Slowly then, Stu sat up and looked west. He looked for a long time, oblivious of the heat that was still rushing against his face in warm, bloated waves. "Oh, my God," he said at last in a weak, breaking voice. "Look at that, Kojak. Larry. Glen. They're gone. God, everything's gone. All gone." The mushroom cloud stood out on the horizon like a clenched fist on the end of a long, dusty forearm. It was swirling, fuzzy at the edges, beginning to dissipate. It was backlighted in sullen orange-red, as if the sun had decided to go down in the early afternoon. The firestorm, he thought. They were all dead in Las Vegas. Someone had fiddled when he should have faddled, and a nuclear weapon had gone off... and one hellish big one, from the look and the feel. Maybe a whole stockpile of them had gone. Glen, Larry, Ralph... even if they hadn't reached Vegas yet, even if they were still walking, surely they were close enough to have been baked alive. Close beside him, Kojak whimpered unhappily. Fallout. Which way is the wind going to blow it? Did it matter? He remembered his note to Fran. It was important that he add what had happened. If the wind blew the fallout east, it might cause them problems... but more than that, they had to know that if Las Vegas had been the dark man's staging area, it was gone now. The people had been vaporized along with all the deadly toys that had just been lying around, waiting for someone to pick them up. He ought to add all of that to the note. But not now. He was too tired now. The climb had exhausted him, and the stupendous sight of that dissipating mushroom cloud had exhausted him even more. He felt no jubilation, only dull and grinding weariness. He lay down on the pavement and his last thought before drifting off to sleep was: How many megatons? He didn't think anyone would ever know, or want to know.

512 He awoke after six. The mushroom cloud was gone, but the western sky was an angry pinkish- red, like a bright weal of burnflesh. Stu hauled himself over into the breakdown lane and lay down, exhausted all over again. The shakes were back. And the fever. He touched his forehead with his wrist and tried to gauge the temperature there. He guessed it was well over a hundred degrees. Kojak came out of the early evening with a rabbit in his jaws. He laid it at Stu's feet and wagged his tail, waiting to be complimented. "Good dog," Stu said tiredly. "That's a good dog." Kojak's tail wagged faster. Yes, I'm a pretty good dog, he seemed to agree. But he remained looking at Stu, seeming to wait for something. Part of the ritual was incomplete. Stu tried to think what it was. His brain was moving very slowly; while he was sleeping, someone seemed to have poured molasses all over his interior gears. "Good dog," he repeated, and looked at the dead rabbit. Then he remembered, although he wasn't even sure he had his matches anymore. "Fetch, Kojak," he said, mostly to please the dog. Kojak bounced away and soon returned with a good chunk of dry wood. He had his matches, but a good breeze had sprung up and his hands were shaking badly. It took a long time to get a fire going. He got the kindling he had stripped lighted on the tenth match, and then the breeze gusted roguishly, puffing out the flames. Stu rebuilt it carefully, shielding it with his body and his hands. He had eight remaining matches in a LaSalle Business School folder. He cooked the rabbit, gave Kojak his half, and could eat only a little of his share. He tossed Kojak what was left. Kojak didn't pick it up. He looked at it, then whined uneasily at Stu. "Go on, boy. I can't." Kojak ate up. Stu looked at him and shivered. His two blankets were, of course, below. The sun went down, and the western sky was grotesque with color. It was the most spectacular sunset Stu had ever seen in his life... and it was poison. He could remember the narrator of a MovieTone newsreel saying enthusiastically back in the early sixties that there were beautiful sunsets for weeks after a nuclear test. And, of course, after earthquakes. Kojak came up from the washout with something in his mouth-one of Stu's blankets. He dropped it in Stu's lap. "Hey," Stu said, hugging him unsteadily. "You're some kind of dog, you know it?" Kojak wagged his tail to show that he knew it. Stu wrapped the blanket around him and moved closer to the fire. Kojak lay next to him, and soon they both slept. But Stu's sleep was light and uneasy, skimming in and out of delirium. Sometime after midnight he roused Kojak, yelling in his sleep. "Hap!" Stu cried. "You better turn off y'pumps! He's coming! Black man's coming for you! Better turn off y'pumps! He's in the old car yonder!" Kojak whined uneasily. The Man was sick. He could smell the sickness and mingling with that smell was a new one. A black one. It was the smell the rabbits had on them when he pounced. The smell had been on the wolf he had disemboweled under Mother Abagail's house in Hemingford Home. The smell had been on the towns he had passed through on his way to Boulder and Glen Bateman. It was the smell of death. If he could have attacked it and driven it out of this Man, he would have. But it was inside this Man. The Man drew in good air and sent out that smell of coming death, and there was nothing to do but wait and see it through to the end. Kojak whined again, low, and then slept. Stu woke up the next morning more feverish than ever. The glands under his jaw had swollen to the size of golfballs. His eyes were hot marbles. I'm dying... yes, that's affirmative. He called Kojak over and removed the keychain and his note from the Lucite address-holder. Printing carefully, he added what he had seen and replaced the note. He lay back down and slept. And then, somehow, it was nearly dark again. Another spectacular, horrible sunset burned and jittered in the West. And Kojak had brought a gopher for dinner. "This the best y'could do?" Kojak wagged his tail and grinned shamefacedly. Stu cooked it, divided it, and managed to eat his entire half. It was tough, and it had a horrible wild taste, and when he was done he had a nasty bout of stomach cramps. "When I die, I want you to go back to Boulder," he told the dog. "You go back and find Fran. Find Frannie. Okay, big old dumb dog?" Kojak wagged his tail doubtfully. An hour later, Stu's stomach rumbled once in warning. He had just time enough to roll over on one elbow to avoid fouling himself before his share of the gopher came up in a rush. "Shit," he muttered miserably, and dozed off. He awoke in the small hours and got up on his elbows, his head buzzing with fever. The fire had gone out, he saw. It didn't matter. He was pretty well done up. Some sound in the darkness had awakened him. Pebbles and stones. Kojak coming up the embankment from the cut, that's all it was...

513 Except that Kojak was beside him, sleeping. Even as Stu glanced at him, the dog woke up. His head came off his paws and a moment later he was on his feet, facing the cut, growling deep in his throat. Rattling pebbles and stones. Someone-something-coming up. Stu struggled into a sitting position. It's him, he thought. He was there, but somehow he got away. Now he's here, and he means to do me before the flu can. Kojak's growl became stronger. His hackles stood, his head was down. The rattling sound was closer now. Stu could hear a low panting sound. There was a pause then, long enough for Stu to arty sweat off his forehead. A moment later a dark shape humped against the edge of the cut, head and shoulders blotting out the stars. Kojak advanced, stiff-legged, still growling. "Hey!" a bewildered but familiar voice said. "Hey, is that Kojak? Is it?" The growling stopped immediately. Kojak bounded forward joyfully, tail wagging. "No!" Stu croaked. "It's a trick! Kojak...!" But Kojak was jumping up and down on the figure that had finally gained the pavement. And that shape... something about the shape was also familiar. It advanced toward him with Kojak at his heel. Kojak was volleying joyful barks. Stu licked his lips and got ready to fight if he had to. He thought he could manage one good punch, maybe two. "Who is it?" he called. "Who is that there?" The dark figure paused, then spoke. "Well, it's Tom Cullen, that's who, my laws, yes. M-O-O-N, that spells Tom Cullen. Who's that?" "Stu," he said, and his voice seemed to come from far away. Everything was far away now. "Hello, Tom, it's good to see you." But he didn't see him, not that night. Stu fainted.

He came around at ten in the morning on October 2, although neither he nor Tom knew that was the date. Tom had built a huge bonfire and had wrapped Stu in his sleeping bag and his blankets. Tom himself was sitting by the fire and roasting a rabbit. Kojak lay contentedly on the ground between the two of them. "Tom," Stu managed. Tom came over. He had grown a beard, Stu saw; he hardly looked like the man who had left Boulder for the West five weeks ago. His blue eyes glinted happily. "Stu Redman! You're awake now, my laws, yes! I'm glad. Boy, it's good to see you. What did you do to your leg? Hurt it, I guess. I hurt mine once. Jumped off a haystack and broke it, I guess. Did my daddy whip me? My laws, yes! That was before he run off with DeeDee Packalotte." "Mine's broken, too. And how. Tom, I'm awful thirsty—" "Oh, there's water. All kinds! Here." He handed Stu a plastic bottle that might once have held milk. The water was clear and delicious. No grit at all. Stu drank greedily and then threw it all up. "Slow and easy does it," Tom said. "That's the ticket. Slow and easy. Boy, it's good to see you. Hurt your leg, didn't you?" "Yes, I broke it. Week ago, maybe longer." He drank more water, and this time it stayed down. "But there's more wrong than the leg. I'm bad sick, Tom. Fever. Listen to me." "Right! Tom's listening. Just tell me what to do." Tom leaned forward and Stu thought, Why, he looks brighter. Is that possible? Where had Tom been? Did he know anything about the Judge? About Dayna? So many things to talk about, but there was no time now. He was getting worse. There was a deep rattling sound in his chest, like padded chains. Symptoms so much like the superflu. It was really quite funny. "I've got to knock down the fever," he said to Tom. "That's the first thing. I need aspirin. Do you know aspirin?" "Sure. Aspirin. For fast-fast-fast relief." "That's the ticket, all right. You start walking up the road, Tom. Look in the glove-box of every car you come to. Look for a first-aid kit it'll most likely be a box with a red cross on it. When you find some aspirin in one of those boxes, bring it back here. And if you should find a car with camping gear in it, bring back a tent. Okay?" "Sure." Tom stood up. "Aspirin and a tent, then you'll be all better again, right?" "Well, it'll be a start." "Say," Tom said, "how's Nick? I've been dreaming about him. In the dreams he tells me where to go, because in the dreams he can talk. Dreams are funny, aren't they? But when I try to talk to him, he always goes away. He's okay, isn't he?" Tom looked at Stu anxiously. "Not now," Stu said. "I... I can't talk now. Not about that. Just get the aspirin, okay? Then we'll talk." "Okay..." But fear had settled onto Tom's face like a gray cloud. "Kojak, want to come with Tom?" Kojak did. They walked off together, heading east. Stu lay down and put an arm over his eyes.

514

When Stu slipped back into reality again, it was twilight. Tom was shaking him. "Stu! Wake up! Wake up, Stu!" He was frightened by the way time seemed to be slipping by in sudden lurchesas if the teeth on the cog of his personal reality were wearing down. Tom had to help him sit up, and when he was sitting, he had to lean his head between his legs and cough. He coughed so long and hard that h(r) almost passed out again. Tom watched him with alarm. Little by little, Stu got control of himself. He pulled the blankets closer around him. He was shivering again. "What did you find, Tom?" Tom held out a first-aid kit. Inside were Band-Aids, Mercurochrome, and a big bottle of Anacin. Stu was shocked to find he could not work the childproof cap. He had to give it to Tom, who finally worried it open. Stu washed down three Anacin with water from the plastic bottle. "And I found this," Tom said. "It was in a car full of camping stuff, but there was no tent." It was a huge, puffy double sleeping bag, fluorescent Orange on the outside, the lining done in a gaudy stars-and-bars pattern. "Yeah, that's great. Almost as good as a tent. You did fine, Tom." "And these. They were in the same car." Tom reached into his jacket and produced half a dozen foil packages. Stu could hardly believe his eyes. Freezedried concentrates. Eggs. Peas. Squash. Dried beef. "Food, isn't it, Stu? It's got pictures of food on it, laws, yes." "It's food," Stu agreed gratefully. "Just about the only kind I can eat, I think." His head was buzzing, and far away, at the center of his brain, a sweetly sickening high C hummed on and on. "Can we heat some water? We don't have a pot or a kettle." "I'll find something." "Yeah, fine." "Stu—" Stu looked into that troubled, miserable face, still a boy's face in spite of the beard, and slowly shook his head. "Dead, Tom," he said gently. "Nick's dead. Almost a month ago. It was a... a political thing. Assassination, I s'pose you'd say. I'm sorry." Tom lowered his head, and in the freshly. built-up fire, Stu saw his tears fall into his lap. They fell in a gentle silver rain. But he was silent. At last he looked up, his blue eyes brighter than ever. He wiped at them with the heel of his hand. "I knew he was," he said huskily. "I didn't want to think I knew, but I did. Laws, yes. He kept turning his back and going away. He was my main man, Stu-did you know that?" Stu reached out and took Tom's big hand. "I knew, Tom." "Yes he was, M-O-O-N, that spells my main man. I miss him awful. But I'm going to see him in heaven. Tom Cullen will see him there. And he'll be able to talk and I'll be able to think. Isn't that right?" "It wouldn't surprise me at all, Tom." "It was the bad man killed Nick. Tom knows. But God fixed that bad man. I saw it. The hand of God came down out of the sky." There was a cold wind whistling over the floor of the Utah badlands, and Stu shivered violently in its clasp. "Fixed him for what he did to Nick and to the poor Judge. Laws, yes." "What do you know about the Judge, Tom?" "Dead! Up in Oregon! Shot him!" Stu nodded wearily. "And Dayna? Do you know anything about her?" "Tom saw her, but he doesn't know. They gave me a job cleaning up. And when I came back one day I saw her doing her job. She was up in the air changing a streetlight bulb. She looked at me and..." He fell silent for a moment, and when he spoke again it was more to himself than to Stu. "Did she see Tom? Did she know Tom? Tom doesn't know. Tom... thinks... she did. But Tom never saw her again." Tom left to go foraging shortly after, taking Kojak with him, and Stu dozed. He returned not with a big tin can, which was the best Stu had hoped for, but with a broiling pan big enough to hold a Christmas turkey. There were treasures in the desert, apparently. Stu grinned in spite of the painful fever blisters that had begun to form on his lips. Tom told him he had gotten the pan from an orange truck with a big a on it-someone who had been fleeing the superflu with all their worldly possessions, Stu guessed. Much good it had done them. Half an hour later there was food. Stu ate carefully, sticking to the vegetables, watering the concentrates enough to make a thin gruel. He held everything down and felt a little better, at least for the time being. Not long after supper, he and Tom went to sleep with Kojak between them.

515 Tom hunkered down by Stu's big, fluffy sleeping bag. It was the next morning. Stu had been able to eat only a little breakfast; his throat was sore and badly swollen, all his joints painful. The cough was worse, and the Anacin wasn't doing much of a job of knocking back the fever. "I got to get inside and get some medicine into me or I'm gonna die. And it has to be today. Now, the closest town is Green River, and that's sixty miles east of here. We'll have to drive." "Tom Cullen can't drive a car, Stu. Laws, no!" "Yeah, I know. It's gonna be a chore for me, because as well as being sick as a dog, I broke the wrong friggin leg." "What do you mean?" "Well... never mind right now. It's too hard to explain. We won't even worry about it, because that ain't the first problem. The first problem is getting a car to start. Most of them have been sitting out here three months or more. The batteries will be as flat as pancakes. So we'll need a little luck. We got to find a stalled car with a standard shift at the top of one of these hills. We might do it. It's pretty hilly country." He didn't add that the car would have to have been kept reasonably tuned, would have to have some gas in it... and an ignition key. All those guys on TV might know how to hotwire a car, but Stu didn't have a clue. He looked up at the sky, which was scumming over with clouds. "Most of it's on you, Tom. You got to be my legs." "All right, Stu. When we get the car, are we going back to Boulder? Tom wants to go to Boulder, don't you?" "More than anything, Tom." He looked toward the Rockies, which were a dim shadow on the horizon. Had the snow started falling up in the high passes yet? Almost certainly. And if not yet, then soon. Winter came early in this high and forsaken part of the world. "It may take a while," he said. "How do we start?" "By making a travois." "Trav—?" Stu gave Tom his pocket knife. "You've got to make holes in the bottom of this sleeping bag. One on each side." It took them an hour to make the travois. Tom found a couple of fairly straight sticks to ram down into the sleeping bag and out the holes at the bottom. Tom got some rope from the U-Haul where he had gotten the broiling pan, and Stu used it to secure the sleeping bag to the poles. When it was done, it reminded Stu more of a crazy rickshaw than a travois like the ones the Plains Indians had used. Tom picked up the poles and looked doubtfully over his shoulder. "Are you in, Stu?" "Yeah." He wondered how long the seams would hold before unraveling straight up the sides of the bag. "How heavy am I, Tommy?" "Not bad. I can haul you a long way. Giddup!" They started moving. The gully where Stu had broken his leg-where he had been sure he was going to die-fell slowly behind them. Weak though he was, Stu felt a mad sort of exultation. Not there, anyway. He was going to die somewhere, and probably soon, but it wasn't going to be alone in that muddy ditch. The sleeping bag swayed back and forth, lulling him. He dozed. Tom pulled him along under a thickening scud of clouds. Kojak padded along beside them.

Stu woke up when Tom eased him down. "Sorry," Tom said apologetically. "I had to rest my arms." He first twirled, then flexed them. "You rest all you want," Stu said. "Slow and easy wins the race." His head was thudding. He found the Anacin and dry-swallowed two of them. It felt as if his throat had been lined with sandpaper and some sadistic Soul was striking matches on it. He checked the sleeping bag seams. As he had expected, they were coming unraveled, but it wasn't too bad yet. They were on a long, gradual upslope, exactly the sort of thing he had been looking for. On a slope like this, better than two miles long, a car with the clutch disengaged could get cruising along pretty good. You could try to popstart it in second, maybe even third gear. He looked longingly to the left, where a plum-colored Triumph was parked askew in the breakdown lane. Something skeletal in a bright woolen sweater leaned behind the wheel. The Triumph would have a manual transmission, but there was no way in God's world that he could get his splinted leg into that small cabin. "How far have we come?" he asked Tom, but Tom could only shrug. It had been quite a piece, anyway, Stu thought. Tom had pulled him for at least three hours before stopping to rest. It spoke of phenomenal strength. The old landmarks were gone in the distance. Tom, who was built like a young bull, had dragged him maybe six or eight miles while he dozed. "You rest all you want," he repeated. "Don't knock yourself out." "Tom's okay. O-and-K, that spells okay, laws, yes, everybody knows that."

516 Tom wolfed a huge lunch, and Stu managed to eat a little: Then they went on. The road continued to curve upward, and Stu began to realize it had to be this hill. If they crested it without finding the right car, it would take them another two hours to get to the next one. Then dark. Rain or snow, from the look of the sky. A nice cold night out in the wet. And goodbye, Stu Redman. They came up to a Chevrolet sedan. "Stop," he croaked, and Tom set the travois down. "Go over and look in that car. Count the pedals on the floor. Tell me if there's two or three." Tom trotted over and opened the car door. A mummy in a flowered print dress fell out like someone's bad joke. Her purse fell out beside her, scattering cosmetics, tissues, and money. "Two," Tom called back to Stu. "Okay. We got to go on." Tom came back, took a deep breath, and grabbed the handles of the travois. A quarter of a mile farther along, they came to a VW van. "Want me to count the pedals?" Tom asked. "No, not this time." The van was standing on three flats. He began to think they were not going to find it; their luck was simply not in. They came to a station wagon that had only one flat shoe, it could be changed, but like the Chevy sedan, Tom reported it only had two pedals. That meant it was an automatic, and that meant it was useless to them. They pushed on. The long hill was flattening out now, beginning to crest. Stu could see one more car ahead, one last chance. Stu's heart sank. It was a very old Plymouth, a 1970 at best. For a wonder it was standing on four inflated tires, but it was rust-eaten and battered. Nobody had ever bothered with much in the way of maintenance on this heap; Stu knew its sort well enough from Arnette. The battery would be old and probably cracked, the oil would be blacker than midnight in a mineshaft, but there would be a pink fuzz runner around the steering wheel and maybe a stuffed poodle with rhinestone eyes and a noddy head on the back shelf. "Want me to check?" Tom asked. "Yeah, I guess so. Beggars can't be choosers, can they?" A fine cold mist was starting to drift down from the sky. Tom crossed the road and looked inside the car, which was empty. Stu lay shivering inside the sleeping bag. At last Tom came back. "Three pedals," he said. Stu tried to think it out. That high, sweet-sour buzzing in his head kept trying to get in the way. The old Plymouth was almost surely a loser. They could go on over to the other side of the hill, but then all the cars would be pointing the wrong way, uphill, unless they crossed the median strip... which was a rocky half-mile wide here. Maybe they could manage to find a standard shift car on the other side... but by then it would be dark. "Tom, help me get up." Somehow Tom helped him to his foot without hurting his broken leg too badly. His head thumped and buzzed. Black comets shot across his field of vision and he nearly passed out. Then he had one arm around Tom's neck. "Rest," he muttered. "Rest..." He had no idea how long they stood that way, Tom supporting him patiently as he swam around in the gray halftones of semiconsciousness. When the world finally came back, Tom was still patiently supporting him. The mist had thickened to a slow, cold drizzle. "Tom, help me across to it." Tom put an arm around Stu's waist and the two of them staggered across to where the old Plymouth stood in the breakdown lane. "Hood release," Stu muttered, fumbling in the Plymouth's grille. Sweat rolled down his face. Shudders wracked him. He found the hood release but couldn't pull it up. He guided Tom's hands to it and at last the hood swung up. The engine was about what Stu had expected-a dirty and indifferently maintained V8. But the battery wasn't as bad as he had feared it would be. It was a Sears, not the top of the line, but the guarantee-punch was February of 1991. Struggling against the feverish rush of his thoughts, Stu counted backward and guessed that the battery had been new last May. "Go try the horn," he told Tom, and propped himself against the car while Tom leaned in to do it. He had heard of drowning men grasping at straws, and he guessed that now he understood. His last chance of surviving this was a rattletrap junkyard refugee. The horn gave a loud honk. Okay then. If there was a key, take the shot. Probably he should have had Tom check that first, but on second thought, it didn't much matter. If there was no key, they were most likely all through no matter what. He got the hood down and latched by leaning all off his weight on it. Then he hopped around to the driver's door and stared in, fully expecting to see an empty ignition slot. But the keys were there, dangling from an imitation leather case with the initials A. C. on it. Bending in carefully, he

517 turned the key over to accessory. Slowly, the gas gauge needle swung over to a little more than a quarter of a tank. Here was a mystery. Why had the car's owner, why had A. C. pulled over to walk when he could have driven? In his light-headed state, Stu thought of Charles Campion, almost dead, driving into Hap's pumps. Old A. C. had the superflu, had it bad. Final stages. He pulls over, shuts off his car's engine—not because he's thinking about it, but because it's a long-ingrained habit—and gets out. He's delirious, maybe hallucinating. He stumbles out into the Utah bad lands, laughing and singing and muttering and cackling, and dies there. Four months later Stu Redman and Tom Cullen happen along, and the keys are in the car, and the battery's relatively fresh, and there's gas— The hand of God. Wasn't that what Tom had said about Vegas? The hand of God came down out of the sky. And maybe God had left this battered '70 Plymouth here for them, like manna in the desert. It was a crazy idea, but no more crazy than the idea of a hundred-year-old black woman leading a bunch of refugee into the promised land. "And she still made her own biscuits," he croaked. "Right up until the very end, she still made her own biscuits." "What, Stu?" "Never mind. Move over, Tom." Tom did. "Can we ride?" he asked hopefully. Stu pushed the driver's seat down so Kojak could hop in, which he did after a careful sniff or two. "I don't know. You just better pray this thing starts." "Okay," Tom said agreeably.

It took Stu five minutes just to get behind the wheel. He sat on a slant, almost in the place where a middle front-seat passenger was supposed to sit. Kojak sat attentively in the back seat, panting. The car was littered with McDonald's boxes and Taco Bell wrappers; the interior smelled like an old corn chip. Stu turned the key. The old Plymouth cranked briskly for about twenty seconds, and then the starter began to lag. Stu tapped the horn again, and this time there was only a feeble croak. Tom's face fell. "We're not done with her yet," Stu said. He was encouraged; there was juice lurking inside that Sears battery yet. He pushed in the clutch and shifted up to second. "Open your door and get us rolling Then hop back in." Tom said doubtfully: "Isn't the car pointing the wrong way?" "Right now it is. But if we can get this old shitheap running, we'll fix that in a hurry." Tom got out and started pushing on the doorpost. The Plymouth began to roll. When the speedometer got up to 5 mph, Stu said: "Hop in, Tom." Tom got in and slammed his door. Stu turned the ignition key to the "on" position and waited. The steering was power, no good with the engine off, and it took most of his fading strength just to keep the nose of the Plymouth pointed straight down the road. The speedometer needle crawled up to 10, 15, 20. They were rolling silently down the hill Tom had spent most of the morning dragging them up. Dew collected on the windshield. Too late, Stu realized they had left the travois behind. 25 mph now. "It's not running, Stu," Tom said anxiously. Thirty mph. High enough. "God help us now," Stu said, and popped the clutch. The Plymouth bucked and jerked. The engine coughed into life, spluttered, missed, stalled. Stu groaned, as much with frustration as with the bolt of pain that shot up his shattered leg. "Shit-fire!" he cried, and depressed the clutch again. "Pump that gas pedal, Tom! Use your hand!" "Which one is it?" Tom cried anxiously. "It's the long one!" Tom got down on the floor and pumped the gas pedal twice. The car was picking up speed again, and Stu had to force himself to wait. They were better than halfway down the slope. "Now!" he shouted, and popped the clutch again. The Plymouth roared into life. Kojak barked. Black smoke boiled out of the rusty exhaust pipe and turned blue. Then the car was running, choppily, missing on two cylinders, but really running. Stu snap-shifted to third and popped the clutch again, running all the pedals with his left foot. "We're going, Tom," he bellowed. "We got us some wheels now!" Tom shouted with pleasure. Kojak barked and wagged his tail. In his previous life, the life before Captain Trips when he had been Big Steve, he had ridden often in his master's car. It was nice to be riding again, with his new masters.

They came to a U-turn road between the westbound and eastbound lanes about four miles down the road. OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY, a stern sign warned. Stu managed to manipulate the clutch

518 well enough to get them around and into the eastbound lanes, having only one bad moment when the old car hitched and bucked and threatened to stall. But the engine was warm now, and he eased them through. He got. back up to third gear and then relaxed a little, breathing hard, trying to catch up with his heartbeat, which was fast and thready. The grayness wanted to come back in and swamp him, but he wouldn't let it. A few minutes later, Tom spotted the bright orange sleeping bag that had been Stu's makeshift travois. "Bye-bye!" Tom called in high good humor. "Bye-bye, we're going to Boulder, laws, yes!" I'll be content with Green River tonight, Stu thought. They got there just after dark, Stu moving the Plymouth carefully in low gear through the dark streets, which were dotted with abandoned cars. He parked on the main drag, in front of a building that announced itself as the Utah Hotel. It was a dismal frame building three stories high, and Stu didn't think the Waldorf-Astoria had anything to worry about in the way of competition just yet. His head was jangling again, and he was flickering in and out of reality. The car had seemed stuffed with people at times during the last twenty miles. Fran. Nick Andros. Norm Bruett. He had looked over once and it had seemed that Chris Ortega, the bartender at the Indian Head, was riding shotgun. Tired. Had he ever been so tired? "In there," he muttered. "We gotta stay the night, Nicky. I'm done up." "It's Tom, Stu. Tom Cullen. Laws, yes." "Tom, yeah. We got to stop. Can you help me in?" "Sure. Getting this old car to run, that was great." "I'll have another beer," Stu told him. "And ain't you got a cigarette? I'm dying for a smoke." He fell forward over the wheel. Tom got out and carried him into the hotel. The lobby was damp and dark, but there was a fireplace and a halffilled woodbox beside it. Tom set Stu down on a threadbare sofa below a great stuffed moosehead and then set about building a fire while Kojak padded around, sniffing at things. Stu's breath came slow and raspy. He muttered occasionally, and every now and then he would scream something unintelligible, freezing Tom's blood. He kindled a monster blaze, and then went looking around. He found pillows and blankets for himself and Stu. He pushed the sofa Stu was on a little closer to the fire and then Tom bedded down next to him. Kojak lay on the other side, so that they bracketed the sick man with their heat. Tom lay looking at the ceiling, which was scrolled tin and laced with cobwebs at the comers. Stu was very sick. It was a worrisome thing. If he woke up again, Tom would ask him what to do about the sickness. But suppose... suppose he didn't wake up? Outside the wind had picked up and went howling past the hotel. Rain lashed at the windows. By midnight, after Tom had gone to sleep, the temperature had dropped another four degrees, and the sound turned to the gritty slap of sleet. Far away to the west, the storm's outer edges were urging a vast cloud of radioactive pollution toward California, where more would die. At some time after two in the morning, Kojak raised his head and whined uneasily. Tom Cullen was getting up. His eyes were wide and blank. Kojak whined again, but Tom took no notice of him. He went to the door and let himself out into the screaming night. Kojak went to the hotel lobby window and put his paws up, looking out. He looked for some time, making low and unhappy sounds in his throat. Then he went back and laid down next to Stu again. Outside, the wind howled and screeched.