Community

by Graham Masterton

  As he parked in the driveway, Isobel came running out of the house. She had a thick cream sweater wrapped tightly around her and she looked distraught.

  ‘Where have you been, Michael? John came around from next door and said that Mount Shasta was going to erupt, and that we all had to evacuate. I was going to go with him if you didn’t come back.’

  For a split-second, Michael was tempted to tell her that there was no danger of Mount Shasta erupting, and that she should stay here in Trinity, where she would survive. But he looked behind her, and she had left no footprints in the snow, and he asked himself whether it was really survival, to live like that, for who knows how long, as a ghost?

  Apart from that, he wasn’t in a forgiving mood today. Rightly or wrongly, this was the day when he was going to punish this community for taking away the woman that he had loved so much, and wrecked his own life, and the lives of so many others.

  ‘It’s true, Isobel,’ he said. ‘We need to get out of here now.’

  ‘But my house … all of my ornaments … all of my things.’

  ‘You’ll have to leave them. The chances are that the mudslide won’t reach this far, but if it does, then nobody here is going to survive. Even semi-substantials, like you. They’ll be buried.’

  Isobel looked around at her house, and then back at Michael.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, even though he knew that those two words would be her death sentence.

  She went back and closed the front door, and then she climbed up into the passenger seat. Michael backed into the roadway and headed for the community center.

  ‘There’s a fire at the clinic?’ asked Isobel, twisting around in her seat. ‘I saw smoke, and heard sirens.’

  ‘Bad one, by the look of it,’ said Michael. ‘Could have been caused by a stray lump of magma, from the mountain.’

  ‘Oh, my God. I just pray this doesn’t happen. A friend of mine lost her house when Mount St Helens erupted. All her horses, too.’

  Michael negotiated his way slowly past the community center, and the shoal of vehicles parked outside it. He switched on his flashers and blew his horn, and put down his window so that he could wave his arm, indicating that everybody should follow him.

  ‘Where does this go to?’ asked Isobel, as he headed along the same road that he had taken when he had tried to escape with Natasha.

  Michael pointed ahead of them, where the white peaks of Mount Shasta floated serenely above the pine trees. ‘You don’t have to worry. Look. We’re actually going a little nearer to the mountain, but out of the path of any mudslide.’

  He checked his rear-view mirror. All of the vehicles that had assembled outside the community center were following him now, in a line that seemed almost endless.

  ‘How do you know where we’re supposed to be going?’ said Isobel, after they had been driving for more than twenty minutes. ‘Where are all of these people going to spend the night?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Michael. ‘The USGS people told me exactly where we need to head for. The Forestry Service will look after us. You know – feed us, give us someplace to sleep.’

  He checked his mirror again. The long line of vehicles was still behind him, like a freight train wending its way through the woods.

  ‘So when did they tell you this?’ asked Isobel, after a while.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people from USGS. When did they tell you this?’

  ‘At the clinic, when I went to see Catherine Connor.’

  ‘Why didn’t they come around and warn us? I would have thought they would have had megaphones, you know, and toured around the streets. Why did they leave it to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess they thought that the local people might take more notice if I warned them. Same thing happened before Mount St Helens blew. The USGS had a hell of a job persuading the local authorities to keep the area closed off.’

  There was another long silence between them, and then Isobel said, ‘I don’t think I believe you, Michael. You’ve just persuaded almost the entire population of Trinity to follow you God knows where. What are you up to?’

  Michael looked at her and smiled, and then he laid his right hand on top of her left hand. Her fingers were as cold as ever. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m up to, Isobel. I’m saving lives.’

  ‘I still don’t believe you.’

  ‘Would you believe me if I told you that I loved you?’

  Another long silence. Then, ‘No. But you can lie to me, if you like.’

  ‘All right, then. I love you.’

  ‘Say it again.’

  ‘I love you, Isobel Weston. Essayist, poet, literary genius.’ He almost added ‘nymphomaniac’ but bit the tip of his tongue before he could say it.

  They started to climb the gradient that passed by the house that Samuel Horn shared with Nann. As they went by, Michael saw that Samuel’s battered old Dodge Ram was still parked outside, and that the lights were shining in the living room.

  ‘My God, I couldn’t live here,’ said Isobel. ‘Talk about isolated.’

  They continued up the hill. Michael thought that Samuel must be able to hear this long procession of vehicles going past his house, especially since they were going uphill. He wondered if he would guess where they were all going, and why.

  He took a sharp right turn at the fork, and one by one the rest of the cars and crossovers and SUVs followed his example.

  ‘The Pied Piper of Mount Shasta,’ said Isobel, turning around to see them all following.

  They drove down the narrow road with the pine branches brushing and scratching at the sides of their Jeep. A high bank of cumulus cloud had risen into the sky from the south-west, and it was beginning to grow gloomy. By the time they reached the T-junction it was almost dark, and Michael switched on his headlights.

  ‘Are you sure we’re going the right way?’ asked Isobel. ‘I would have thought that Mount Shasta was over there, to the left, and behind us.’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ said Michael. ‘We’re heading left right now.’

  After they had turned the corner, he put his foot down on the gas until they were speeding along at nearly fifty, and the rest of the procession kept up with him. As the clouds thickened, it grew darker and darker, and after about fifteen minutes it started to rain. Michael switched on the windshield wipers and they mournfully squeaked from side to side.

  ‘How much further?’ asked Isobel. ‘I’m sure we’re driving away from Mount Shasta, not toward it.’

  The lights of Lookout appeared up ahead, and on their right Michael could see the traffic on the interstate.

  ‘Not long now,’ he told her.

  They drove for another five minutes, and then Isobel said, ‘Michael, I’m not feeling too good.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Motion sickness? Let me turn the heat down and open a window.’

  ‘No, it’s not that. I feel … please, I think you’ll have to stop.’

  ‘There’s a town up ahead, Isobel. We can stop there.’

  ‘I need to stop now, Michael. Really. I feel like … my God, I feel like I’m …’

  He turned and looked at her. Her face was so transparent that she could have been made out of glass. Just as he had been able to see the twinkling lights from the interstate around Natasha’s hairline, he could see them through Isobel’s forehead, as if she were wearing a living crown of thorns.

  ‘I’m going,’ Isobel whispered. ‘I can feel myself going. So weak, Michael, it’s like I’m just draining away.’

  He could just about make out the dark hollows of her eyes, and the glistening movement of her lips, but that was all.

  ‘You did this on purpose, didn’t you?’ she breathed.

  He checked his rear-view mirror. The Ford Explorer that had been following him closely had slowed down to less than twenty miles an hour, and it was weaving erratically from side to side across the road with its tires howling. All the way back, as far as he could see, vehicles were slowing down
or pulling into the verge. Some of them were driving off the road altogether, and jolting across the rocks, and into the trees.

  He stopped the Jeep, and the Explorer stopped behind him, and the SUV behind that stopped, too. He could hear a succession of knocking noises, as vehicles ran into each other.

  Isobel lifted her arm toward him, as if she wanted to touch his face, but the sleeve of her thick white sweater appeared to be completely empty.

  ‘I love you, you bastard,’ she said, with her very last breath.

  Michael said nothing, but sat there and watched her sweater softly collapse. It dropped on to the seat on top of her sweatshirt, her bra, her thong and her empty jeans. Isobel, or the ghost of Isobel, was gone.

  He sat there for a while. He didn’t know how he felt. He could have cried but he didn’t really want to – not for Isobel, anyhow. Eventually he opened his door and climbed out and started to walk back along the halted procession of vehicles. Several other drivers had got out of their SUVs, too, and were standing in the road, stunned by the disappearance of their passengers. These were the living. The semi-substantials had all vanished, leaving nothing but their clothes and their shoes.

  He was almost halfway down the line when he came across Jack Barr. Jack had messed-up hair and he was wearing a droopy pair of Hawaiian shorts. He blinked at Michael, and then he slurred, ‘Hi, dude! I thought I recognized you.’

  They hugged and clapped each other on the back.

  Jack said, ‘How the hell did this happen? Like, where did they go, all of these people? That was just about everybody who lived in Trinity! Fricking gone, man!’

  ‘Back to where they should have stayed, when they died for the first time,’ said Michael. ‘In their graves, or their urns, or wherever.’ He tapped his forehead with his finger and said. ‘In here, Jack. In memoriam.’

  He turned the Jeep around and drove back the way that they had come. Some of the other vehicles were already doing the same, presumably because they had no place else to go tonight but Trinity.

  Michael knew that he couldn’t go back there, ever, and he couldn’t carry on driving south, not yet. He had no money and his credit card was in the name of Gregory Merrick. Besides that, he couldn’t yet remember where he lived. There was one place where he could go, however, and ask for at least one night’s shelter.

  He parked up behind Samuel’s Dodge Ram, jammed on the parking brake hard so that the Jeep wouldn’t roll back down the slope, and climbed out. As he made his way up to the porch, several vehicles sped along the road behind him, on their way back to Trinity.

  He walked along the boarded porch, and as he did so the front door opened, and there was Samuel.

  ‘Hi, there, Michael,’ he said. ‘You came back a darn sight quicker than we thought you would.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t yet have the money to pay you for the gas.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that, my friend. All in good time.’ He sniffed the air, and looked around. ‘Whole lot of traffic out on the road tonight. What’s that about?’

  ‘Armageddon, I think you could call it.’

  Samuel gave him a complicated, narrow-eyed look, with his head tilted slightly to one side. ‘Maybe you’d better tell me about it. Do you want to come on in?’

  ‘That would be great. I’m bushed.’

  As he entered the living room, where the fire was crackling, Nann came out of the kitchen with a wide smile. ‘Pleased to see you back so soon, Michael! How about a beer, or a hot drink, maybe?’

  ‘A beer, please. My mouth feels like the bottom of a birdcage.’

  Nann said, ‘Sure. But I got a surprise for you first.’

  ‘Really? What kind of surprise?’

  Both Samuel and Nann turned their heads toward the far end of the living-room. Michael hadn’t noticed that the door there had silently opened, and that someone was standing there, waiting for him to see her.

  Michael turned around, too. It was Natasha, smiling at him shyly, wearing a white cotton hat and a long white cotton nightgown.

  ‘Tasha,’ he said. ‘I thought …’

  He was incapable of saying any more. All he could do was walk over to her and hold her. She felt just as thin as she had before, and just as cold, but it was still Tasha, and here she was. She even smelled of that same flowery perfume.

  ‘I thought you were gone,’ he said, at last. ‘God, that was some trick you pulled there.’

  She touched his forehead with her ice-cold fingertips. ‘I came here to Samuel and Nann’s and Samuel helped me. I didn’t want you to think that you had to stay in Trinity because of me.’

  ‘But I might have left Trinity and never come back here. You didn’t even leave a note.’

  Natasha smiled and shook her head. ‘I knew you’d come back. You had to pay Samuel for the gas.’

  She paused, and then she said, ‘You can still go, you know. I’ll be fine here, with Samuel and Nann. They can be my companions.’

  Michael shook his head. ‘No. I love you, Tasha, and I’ll go on loving you until I die.’

  ‘Hooo-ee,’ said Samuel. ‘Then you can both be ghosts. I’ll drink to that.’

  EPILOGUE

  Siskiyou Daily News, Thursday, February 27

  Following last week’s devastating fire at the Trinity-Shasta Clinic in Trinity, medical director Kingsley Vane announced today that the facility would be closed for at least the foreseeable future.

  Mr Vane and several members of his staff were lucky to escape with their lives when fire swept through the building. Seven critically ill patients were rescued by firefighters from Weed Volunteer Fire Department.

  Weed police and fire investigators are working on the theory that the fire was set deliberately by a previous patient who suffered from a severe mental imbalance.

  Mr Vane commented today that the intensive care at TSC had been ‘revolutionary’. He said that ‘regretfully, we have now lost our chance to become immortal’.