Tales of the Derry Plague | Book 1 | LAST

by Anselmo, Ray

  She stood there looking at it, not sure even how to react. For a minute or two she just shook her head, half-smiling. “Of all the …” It was like a reminder that God was protecting her and that He had a slapstick sense of humor. Lately, though, her feelings had been yanked in too many directions too many too times in too short a space. She needed to either go numb or go crazy – and right now she just didn’t have the time to go crazy. She had someplace she needed to go, and flipping out wouldn’t get her there.

  She climbed back in the Ram, tossed the door handle in the bag with the ammo and binoculars and her meds, turned the pickup around and proceeded south once more. There were no more road blockages, and in a couple of minutes she was on the San Francisco side, surrounded by the still-green hills and evergreens of the Presidio, the former Spanish, then Mexican, then American military compound.

  Without thinking, she pulled over under a spreading pine and shut down the engine. She got out and took another look around the vehicle. But no, the only real damage was that stupid door handle snapping off. Could she open the door from the outside? Not as far as she could tell. Maybe if she stuck a finger into the hole, she could trigger – “Ow!” She put her finger in her mouth, then looked at it. Oh – no blood, just a poke. Silly her. Well, she’d only need to open it from the outside if she had a passenger.

  And if she had a passenger, that would mean she had far more important things to deal with than a door handle.

  Kelly leaned back against the door and smelled the pine in the air, along with crude oil, engine exhaust, her own sweat and … wood smoke? It wasn’t quite wood smoke, but it was definitely smoke. Was someone cooking nearby? Could her drive to find other people end up being shorter than she planned?

  “Let’s find out!” Newly energized, she jumped into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine over and headed down 101 again, eager to see where the fire was.

  23

  CITY

  Kelly decided later that she shouldn’t have been so eager, but she had an answer to the question soon enough. The fires – plural – were all over the place. San Francisco was burning.

  She pulled over where 101 went over Girard Road near the east end of the Presidio, grabbed the binoculars and climbed into the truck bed for a better look. Plumes of smoke were rising everywhere she could see – from the piers, from the business district, Chinatown, Japantown, Market Street, Mount Sutro. The Ferry Building had collapsed in a heap of ash and rubble. She could see flames sprouting from where once had been windows in the Transamerica building.

  “Gosh, what a mess.” She recalled reading about the big 1906 earthquake, and how the fire from broken gas mains had caused more damage than the quake itself. Something must have happened to do the same recently. There hadn’t been a big quake, or she probably would’ve felt it up in Marin – even after all this morning’s struggle, she was only twenty miles from home at most. But with all the firefighters presumably gone, it could have been anything. Someone might have left the stove on.

  Regardless, she needed to find a way through it. She returned to the Ram and got on her way, deciding to keep following 101 until she couldn’t or she came up with a better idea.

  Pretty quickly, she needed a better idea. The post office on Lombard was one huge bonfire, with burning mail blowing onto the street, so she turned right onto Fillmore. But that only bought her a few blocks before another fire blocked her way, this one an auto accident aided and abetted by a paint store. A left on Filbert, and several blocks later she reconnected with 101 at Van Ness. She kept the windows up, switched the air conditioning to recirculate, and used the windshield wipers to scrape ash out of her view.

  She barely managed to get around the wreckage of the CPMC Van Ness Campus, only to hit another blockage near City Hall. She took a left onto Golden Gate Avenue, feeling more lost by the minute. There was a little insert of San Francisco on the state map, but it wasn’t nearly as detailed as she needed. She needed to get to that 101/280 interchange – she could find her way easily from there. “Provided the highway hasn’t burned to the ground.” She crossed Market Street to 6th Street …

  … and found that she’d spoken too soon. She actually got the binocs back out to confirm what she was seeing. Yes, that should be Interstate 80 up ahead – and it looked like part of it had collapsed. Maybe she had missed an earthquake. Even if she hadn’t, her current trajectory wasn’t taking her where she needed to go. She three-point turned and went back up 6th to Market, turned left and sighed. This was becoming more frustrating than she’d dreamed – and she’d had some lousy dreams.

  Market took her under Van Ness, but three consecutive right turns put her back on it and heading south again. And after less than a mile and a couple of wrong turns, she was on highway again, cruising east and south and swerving around stalled and crashed cars on her way to 280 and hopefully smoother sailing. She kept to her comfy save twenty-five as she passed San Francisco General Hospital, and winced as she spotted a Jack-in-the-Box sign. Boy, she’d love an Ultimate Cheeseburger right about now.

  She had more problems than cheeseburger availability, though, as she approached the interchange. It was an impassable tangle of roasting and roasted vehicles, like someone had put a hedge maze to the torch. Not too far ahead, a gasoline tanker had jackknifed, spilling its load before setting it on fire, leaving a mass of tar and ashes and singed metal across all lanes. Even in her behemoth, there was no getting around or through that.

  She never had learned how to swear properly. Pity, because now would’ve been the perfect time. Instead, she turned around and headed back to the previous onramp, at Cesar Chavez, to think things over. This day had already been gut-wrenching between all the accidents on the bridge and what she’d found in the City. Even with the A/C cranked it was getting hot inside the Ram, and there was so much junk in the air outside that she didn’t want to leave the truck even with a mask over her nose and mouth. She just needed a way through the city and …

  A dark thought occurred to her: what if the South Bay was in just as bad shape? And the South Bay wasn’t a city – it was twenty cities, melting into a megalopolis. San Jose by itself was bigger than San Francisco, and that wasn’t taking into account Santa Clara and Cupertino and Saratoga and Sunnyvale and Campbell and Mountain View and … well, you got the idea. Yet her planned route would lead her inevitably through the middle of that. If S.F. looked like this, what would it be like there?

  Part of Kelly’s mind was telling her “don’t worry about that, just deal with what’s in front of you and handle the rest when you get to it.” But another part was pointing out all the obstacles she’d faced already today and how it was barely past noon, and she should probably think about this and everything else before she charged into something she couldn’t back out of.

  Mercifully, a third part came up with a compromise: relax and have lunch. That sounded best of all, so she parked and did that.

  It proved to be the wisest move. Calming down and not trying to do anything but fortify herself put her in a much better frame of mind, especially when she realized that in her hurry to get going she’d forgotten to eat breakfast. More directly, it gave her a chance to look over the state map and see something she might otherwise have missed. She’d planned her journey as if she had been going down to Santa Cruz before the pandemic, before everything fell to bits, and naturally had followed the smoothest, most trafficked route for normal circumstances.

  But these weren’t normal circumstances. And there was another way, an obvious one she’d looked right past.

  She followed the thought process with amusement. What road did she usually take to get out of Sayler Beach, or to the far ends of it? State Route 1, called the Shoreline Highway in her part of the world. What was the name for Highway 1 in other parts? The Pacific Coast Highway. So where does it run, based on that information? Along the Pacific coast – duh. How far does it run? From somewhere up in Mendocino County, way north of Marin, all the way south to Oran
ge County, past Los Angeles.

  Which means Highway 1 runs right through …? San Francisco. And …? Santa Cruz.

  She’d been so fixated on the bright yellow interstate highway lines going through the eastern half of the City that she’d gazed right past a narrower yellow line that ran through the western half: good old State Route 1, her old buddy. And she recalled that more of the fires were in the older, more built-up, eastern side of town than in the west. There was another, safer way to travel – one that avoided the big, blocked highway interchanges, and one that led even more directly to her destination.

  And really, you only needed to use the big interstates before the apocalypse if you wanted to go faster. She was keeping herself to residential-street speeds for safety’s sake. As long as 1 wasn’t badly obstructed, it was a better way to go! “So how do I get there?” she mused, looking at the insert on the map and giving serious thought to finding a service station that wasn’t on fire and snapping up a map of the City.

  But the insert was enough for now – Cesar Chavez was a major enough street to show up on it. If she followed Cesar Chavez to its end, then kept working west, she’d reach Market Street about where it turned into Portola Drive. Take Portola west, and it would become Sloat Boulevard – at Highway 1, 19th Avenue. Further, Sloat itself turned into State Highway 35, which looped around Merced Lake and rejoined 1 south of Daly City. She could take either 1 or 35 down, and keep right on going.

  And of course, 1 went right down the coast to Santa Cruz and beyond.

  She finished her salami and cheese and got going again. West on Chavez until it dead-ended at a park. Around the park, pick up another street, and soon she was heading southwest on Portola. Soon enough, she was where Sloat met 19th. She decided to stay on Sloat, theorizing that driving closer to the ocean would mean less chance of fires getting in her way. Sloat turned into Skyline Boulevard (she’d never figure out all the road-name changes in San Francisco, but hopefully would never have to).

  Kelly smiled at the green expanses of the golf courses, the windswept trees hugging the cliffs, and the prevailing west wind blowing all the smoke from the fires away from her. She winced at all the parked cars, many with mummy-like objects inside. She rolled her eyes at a billboard advertising houses “in the low $500,000s” – it would be a long time before houses cost more than “you move in and fix it up yourself,” she suspected. Even before, there were more houses than people to put in them. Now … hey, she’d had a hundred or so to herself since August.

  She reached the interchange with Highway 1 and faced another obstacle, but this one was just a PT Cruiser that had stopped across a lane. It was the work of a minute to bull it aside and continue south. Easily solved problems – yeah, she needed more of that kind. She pulled over and flipped open the pocket watch as she got another idea, and reset the clock on the Dodge’s dashboard. 1:40, if the watch was still accurate. Either way, it gave her a better idea of how much daylight she had before she needed to either reach Santa Cruz or stop for the night.

  A little before three, she reached Half Moon Bay and got a pleasant surprise – another COME TO SANTA CRUZ sign, this one two-sided, where 1 met State Highway 92. This one was dated September 12. Half an hour later, she spotted another one at San Gregorio, at the intersection of Highways 1 and 84, with Sept 11 sprayed at the bottom. She was seeing a pattern here – someone from Santa Cruz had been working their way north, probably starting in early September, about a month after the plague swept through.

  Odd that she hadn’t seen any such signs in San Francisco itself. But maybe she’d just missed them, or hadn’t driven down the right streets. Or maybe they’d burnt up. Well, not something she needed to worry about now. Onward.

  The coast south of Half Moon Bay was a lot like the coast north of Sayler Beach – a lot of place names that were only names, or names and two or three buildings. It was warmer, though, fewer trees and more sun. The highway was built right onto the cliffs in many places – nothing but rock going straight up on her left and straight down to rocks and the ocean on her right. She slowed down to twenty, feeling a little vertiginous, and understood why people usually took the inland route via the South Bay to get to Santa Cruz.

  It didn’t help that a few miles south of Año Nuevo State Park, she found the remains of yet another big rig, shoved not only to the side but through the guard rail, halfway off the ocean side of the cliff. It was teetering there, looking very unsafe for anyone going past. Whoever had gone north and put up the signs probably just wanted to get by and didn’t worry about anything else. But just looking at it made her feel queasy. She flashed back to the trailer on the Golden Gate Bridge that almost collapsed on her cab, and shuddered.

  No, she wasn’t going to leave it like this. She slowly pulled the Ram up to the far end of the trailer, the tires about two feet above the road but rocking up and down a few inches. She made contact with the grille guard, stopping the rocking, then slowly pressed on the accelerator. It didn’t give for a few seconds, then all at once broke loose and began sliding away, off the road bed, off the cliff. A few seconds later she heard the crash as it hit the rocks below.

  “Not exactly environmentally friendly,” she commented, “but the road is much safer.” Except for the big hole in the guard rail. She thought about tying her rope across it, but she only had the one rope and thought she might need it. Instead she straightened out and drove on. Maybe when she came back up, she’d bring something to put across it.

  At 5:32 she reached Majors, which wasn’t major at all, just a few country roads leading into the hills and down to the beach. Maybe a couple dozen houses and some small farms. No activity to be seen except for a cow wandering around, looking for its herd or someone. But it seemed like a nice enough place to stop for dinner. She grabbed the day’s food bag, her front-seat bag and the Mizuno, locked up the Ram and strolled down a dry creek bed to a swath of sand with a sign that said Red, White and Blue Beach.

  As she ate, she pondered her next steps. She was only a few miles from Santa Cruz, and she was nervous as a cat in a rocking-chair showroom. What would she find when she got there? Good people trying to make the best of a frightening new world? A hellscape of wasteland warriors seeking fresh slaves or fresh meat? Some tin-pot military dictatorship? Maybe tons of dead bodies due to the plague mutating or coming around for another pass. Or just one lonely person who’d gone around putting up signs to try and find anyone still living.

  She didn’t know. She’d have to go find out. She was terrified of finding out. So much had gone wrong that one more disaster might break her. But … she hadn’t broken yet. It felt like she’d come close a few times, but she hadn’t.

  And look at what hadn’t broken her. Hundreds of corpses in the streets and in their homes. The loss of electricity and running water, without which the old world could barely function. Dog attacks. A cat attack. Finding town after town empty of human life. Not to mention her own neurochemical imbalances, which had given her life a high degree of difficulty from day one. She’d survived them all. She’d even thrived in spots. She was still here, still fighting, still discovering solutions to problems.

  “I guess I’m tougher than I thought,” she mused. Honestly, she was tougher than just about anyone would’ve thought. Certainly Mom. She had no idea if Mom had gotten through this, but she had. Take that.

  Kelly watched the waves splash on the beach, ate and drank and felt her fragile confidence rise. Whatever she found down the road was what she’d find. Whatever she had to deal with, she’d deal with. If she died, well, that meant she was done and God could judge her as He pleased. If she lived, she’d keep on living. Simple as that.

  24

  FEAR

  But as simple as that was, she was tired from the day’s travel and stress, and felt as unready to tackle the mystery of Santa Cruz as she could possibly be. She was positively dragging as she returned to her truck. If there were people down the road, she didn’t get the sense that she was re
ady to deal with them. She wanted to be at her best, or close enough as she could manage.

  A couple of miles down the road, she pulled up by the entrance to a small farm or something. A dairy farm? It kind of smelled like dairy farms she’d gone by in the past, but she didn’t hear any mooing or snorting. Would the cattle survive if no one had let them out? She didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to think about what she would do when she got to Santa Cruz.

  She quickly concluded she had no idea, for the simple but obvious reason that she had no idea what was happening there. She couldn’t be sure there were even people alive there – they could be dead now, or could’ve moved on to another place. She hadn’t seen any as she approached. Plus if there were people there, would they want her there with all her problems? How were they organized? Who was in charge? What would be expected of her? What should she expect of them?

  The only evidence she had were those signs. There had been people there who left in early September and visited at least a few spots around San Francisco Bay. They apparently wanted whoever saw their handiwork to come. That was literally all she knew or could comfortably assume. Anything else was conjecture, if not guesswork or wishful thinking. She didn’t, and couldn’t, know until she arrived, saw them (if there were them to see) and say, “Heigh-ho, greetings from Sayler Beach!”