It was pockmarked with pulverized debris, including the steeple of a smashed church, the roadbed and guardrails torn off a bridge; and a chunk of a movie marquee. It carried endless trees. Whole forests had been peeled from their roots and rode partly on the lahar's surface, like a giant run of logs on the Mississippi.
The lahar extended west as far as he could see. It was bigger than the others he'd seen, deeper and wider; 50-feet deep in places and a mile wide, at least. The bulk of it was no longer moving, yet closer to its source he could see blobs of the volcanic toffee slowly flowing and feeding the back end of the lahar, like the viscous final drippings from a paint bucket.
Pops and fiery outbursts marred its surface. Where these occurred, the lahar would stay on fire, like burning ocean oil from a sunken destroyer.
It took a path just south of them, and off to the other side, forming a fork. So where were they going to move to from here, he wondered, including Gladys and her trucks full of plunder?
The idiot with the tattooed head stood off to the side, lightly tapping a sawed-off shotgun on his thigh. "OK get working!" he shouted hoarsely.
One group of men loosened the joints on the pipes; another group, which Cooper was a part of, ripped them out and carried them downstairs to the parking lot.
When Cooper got down there with a load, which they put on wheelbarrows, he saw Beatrice. They'd included her in a kind of assembly line, passing boxes of stuff to be loaded in the back of a truck. He shouted out to her, said he was okay, and to hang in there. As long as he knew her whereabouts, and they didn't scurry her off to an unknown fate, then they could escape together.
One time, they announced a break, and they were all allowed to gather around a barrel of brackish water for a drink. He found her, hugged her, and told her to get ready to move that night.
CHAPTER 20
She crouched in the underbrush, holding Turk down by the scruff near his ears. She told Amy to stay where she was, behind a tree. Luckily, Amy didn't protest, but viewed the proceedings intently. From the woods, Mikaela watched one of the men try but fail to start the car. The first truck drove off with Shane and Beatrice in the back. Then the man got out of the Subaru, kicked the front door closed angrily, got into the second pickup, and they drove away.
Mikaela softly swore to herself. When they saw the trucks disappear over a rise, they came out of hiding and walked back across a field to the car. She was hoping the stupid lug had left the keys in the ignition, but no such luck. But she located most of their provisions in the back. In his rush to leave, the idiot had left a lot of good stuff in the car, including Shane's rucksack. But not his crossbow. She put his rucksack on her own back, grabbed her gym bag, and got prepared to hike to that town they'd seen in the distance.
She felt like crying. She figured Cooper and Beatrice would be killed by the crazies. That might have been the last they'd see of them, but she held out hope that if she got a ride back, maybe in the same direction of the trucks, she could find them.
She didn't want to upset Amy; she'd hold off on crying until she was alone.
She thought it was weird that the trucks drove back in the direction of the giant lahar path. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the two pickups would hit an impasse, and they'd have to turn around and come back in this direction. They'd see Cooper and Beatrice again.
Amy was clamoring around the nooks and crannies of the car interior, gathering her dolls and other things. Turk stood with two front paws planted on the sill of the open car door.
Mikaela never would have thought that Amy could find something Mikaela couldn't herself. But Amy suddenly leapt up with a gleeful look and a set of keys in her hand. She'd found them under the passenger seat. Mikaela hugged her, then seized the keys and tried to start the car. It made the same chugging noise, but wouldn't catch. Close but no cigar.
Mikaela reached under the dashboard and popped the hood latch. Maybe, just maybe, she could find out what was wrong with the engine. She had a boyfriend in high school who was a grease monkey under cars. He showed her a lot of stuff, when she could focus long enough to listen. She walked to the front of the Subaru and propped up the hood. Her first thought was the battery, but it and the car overall was relatively new. It didn't seem rusted or degraded; the engine parts themselves were dusty from the wild ride they'd had down the dirt road. She remembered something else her boyfriend, his name was Davis, told her: start-up problems usually aren't a problem with the distributor cap, but if all else fails, wipe off any excess moisture on the cap.
She was afraid the starter was blown and they would be walking, but lo and behold, removing, wiping down, and reinstalling the distributor cap worked its magic. The car started back up. Along with a tremendous sense of relief, she felt like a real Fix-It Girl.
"Turk!" she cried out. "Come on back here!" Turk had wandered back up the road in the direction the deer and horses had gone. Amy was half-way between the dog and the car, meandering aimlessly toward her loyal friend. Mikaela watched her for a moment, silently. The wind caught her long blond hair, a doll clutched in one hand. She wore the same dress of the last few days, now torn around the edges and soiled by their ordeal. It seemed a lonesome tableau, the country girl, set against the blackened horizon and blasted landscape. What a strange trip it's been for her, she thought. More of a nightmare than a childhood. I'll do anything I can to get her back to safety. But she couldn't stop thinking about Shane, and Beatrice.
She rounded up both dog and girl, they piled into the car, and Mikaela drove back up the road in the direction the trucks had gone.
CHAPTER 21
He couldn't take it anymore. The thug had been egging him on. It had only taken one afternoon. One side of himself said, Take it for the time being–you'll be out of here soon. The other half sought justice for this bullet-headed twit who kept poking him with the butt of his gun and kicking at him. Finally he reached up and grabbed the guy by the throat with his powerful grip, standing there on the rooftop under a weak, filtered sun.
When the guy tried to tuck the barrel of the shotgun into Shane's ribs, he head-butted him on the bridge of his nose. Dark red blood spurted straight out, and as the bellowing man fell backwards, an airborne bloody spray striped across her white sneakers. Gladys, Shane hadn't noticed, was standing at their side with one of her minders. When the blood stained her sneakers, the face of the guy standing next to her went white as a sheet.
"Take this guy here, and string him up," she muttered, her eyes narrowing. Her eyeballs themselves, however, seemed to mist over, as though the bloodied sneakers reminded her of something unbearably sad. She pulled a white handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to her minder, who ran off to wet it. Then he returned, knelt down, and furiously scrubbed the blood stain on Gladys' sneakers.
A gust of cinders blew over the rooftop, warm and unnatural. It was as if the air and the landscape had reverted to a distant geological epoch. The bullethead with a broken nose stood up unsteadily, then he and another thug seized Cooper by each of his upper arms and dragged him roughly across the rooftop toward the stairs.
He felt like he could have broken free and ran, but he was afraid they'd take revenge on Beatrice, or shoot him in the back. Or both.
"Down in the courtyard!" he heard Gladys, her voice pinched and high-pitched.
###
Mikaela drove the car down the dirt road until they reached the rise, then she pulled over to the gravelly side. This was the place where they'd sped in the other direction, behind the stampeding animals. She had to plot a route down, and eventually, out of the valley. Turk followed her outside the car; he stepped gingerly down into a dry thicket to lift his leg on a rock. Then he sniffed the air, still as a statue.
Mikaela gazed over the battered valley; thousands of acres of productive farmland were now plowed-over and buried by the vast mudflow. The region seemed soaked in a toxic molasses.
The uneven wreckage was lit here and there by pillars of sunlight. There wa
s no electricity, except for a few spots winking in the distance. But for their headlights, they'd be enveloped in pitch-black darkness soon.
She could see where the lahar had forked and moved in two directions, sparing structures and one road. The road led away from an island of buildings; she could see two or three trucks, heading west. That's where she needed to go, to the island.
The lahar had dammed the rivers to the east. A lake grew in the valley behind the berm- and concrete-like walls of lahar. She knew, at some point, it would flood; the valley to the west would be inundated.
Mount Rainier took up the eastern horizon, regal and domineering for so long, but now dwarfed by a pluming ash cloud.
The pickups with their captive friends could only have gone in one direction. The Subaru still had enough gas.
Turk crawled back into the car, and curled up beside Amy.
In a moment of reflection, listening to the silence, Mikaela thought of Muhammed. They'd spent a long weekend together, not long ago, in the Idaho countryside. How different the world was then. How dismissive of its flaws she was; its pain. She could lose herself in escapism, relaxing with a lover. She could sit in a jacuzzi under Idaho's starlit evening, thinking of nothing but the cold vapor drifting off of the bubbling waters; Muhammed's warm, giving smile in the steamy air.
Then, like an apple half eaten and left on a fence post in the sun, the world turned, like Rainier's floral river valleys, to rot.
Mikaela got into the idling car. She glanced at the gas gauge; she had half a tank. Possibly 200 miles, she calculated. A voice, one motivated by raw survival, urged her to turn around, head for that town they'd seen. But she pulled the car back onto the road and let it roll downhill toward the open highway.
She drove back into the ruins and the giant, half-baked lahar. Cooper was down there somewhere.
CHAPTER 22
They had him bound by each wrist with rope. Then a couple of guys on the other end of the rope winched him partway up a flagpole. He was hanging by his arms alone. It was in a courtyard, near the entrance to a warehouse. Maybe Walmart had made its employees recite the Pledge of Allegiance there.
Gladys tacitly supervised. With the dark beard and the long hair he'd grown over the last week and change, he felt like a crucified Jesus. As they winched him, to the sound of a creaky weather vane, his feet left the ground and he felt a profound pressure on his arms and shoulders.
One of the men on the other end of the rope chuckled; his partner turned to him and barked "Shut the fuck up!" with a hint of empathy. Gladys walked closer to inspect the work, with an air that she was busy, ready to move on to better things. She stood just beneath his dangling legs.
"What the hell," Cooper grunted, feeling gravity drive the air out of his lungs. "…Happened to you?"
"…To become this?"
She was silent for a moment, weighing the question.
"None of your business."
An hour passed. Cooper's throat was raw, his tongue passed over the cracked lips. His legs felt like lead, tearing down at his shoulder tendons. He'd ceased glancing at the faces of the meek who wandered past on their various laborious missions. The sun went down. It was a red, toxic sunset, lit by sulfurous fumes. He didn't think he'd make it through the night.
"Water!" he croaked. "Water!"
"Just a minute," he heard, the voice incongruously nonchalant.
It was one of the guys who'd strung him up the fucking pole. He hovered in front of Cooper's head, standing on something, and lifted a ladle to his lips. Shane guzzled at the ladle and spilled half of it down his chin. His sweaty body hung limp and shirtless, the muscles glistening, the feet and legs flexing weakly.
The man quietly gave him another ladle full.
"How you holding up?" he whispered.
"Shitty."
"I might be able to take you down, soon."
"When?"
"Let the others fall asleep…"
"Don't take your time at it."
"Wait." It had gotten a lot darker. The man reappeared, this time with a tree stump. They were using it to cut wood on. He propped up Cooper's feet with it. Immense relief flooded over him.
"Thanks," he grunted.
"I don't want to see you die. Don't misunderstand my intentions here. I'm a prisoner, just like you."
"So cut me down and we both go, with my friend Beatrice."
"Who's that?"
"The blind one."
"Oh, shit."
"What?"
"It's not that easy."
"Why?"
"I'd have to get the other chick…what did you say, Beatrice? Out of that building over there. It'd be hard enough for just me and you. And if they caught me, she'd throw me to her dogs."
"You mean she has packs of dogs?" The man handed him another ladle of water.
"No. They're human. Feral. They're actually worse than her few guard dogs."
"What is wrong with her? Was she just born bad?"
"Well the story goes…" He was in a low whisper now.
"Gladys was running a numbers parlor out of her first laundromat. Young. Ambitious. She had twin girls. She used to bring them to work. One day, she left a cigarette butt in an ash tray near some linen, and went down the block to collect a vig from the guys who ran numbers for her. The linen caught fire, and, you know what old laundromats are like, they're almost as bad fire-wise as dry-cleaning joints. The place was ablaze. They couldn't get to the kids. She came back to the burning building holding two brand-new pairs of white sneakers for them. Now she's all about taking in the damaged off the streets. And sneakers. That was about 30 years ago."
The sun went down; the lights around the building clicked off one by one. Cooper's new "friend" was going to be replaced when his shift was over. Unfortunately, by the lug whose nose he'd broken. In the darkness, a distant set of headlights illuminated the gloomy courtyard.
CHAPTER 23
The night settled down around the car, and Mikaela had a good cry. It wasn't that it had all become too much for her; she wouldn't take it that far. She needed a good cry like she needed a good sleep.
Amy and Turk lay in the half darkness on the backseat.
She drove along slowly, toward the valley and the lahar, wet eyes blurring the murky evening. She hit the dust on the windshield with the washer and the wipers. She knew this road would end somewhere, massively blocked by the remains of the lahar. But she'd seen that one working road from above; and the few trucks, heading west toward Tacoma.
She rubbed the tears off her cheeks with the bottom of her hand, the other gripping the steering wheel. A stark, windswept dirt road with rocks and the gleam of a startled deer. Bad things that happen, like when your sister drowns, never really leave you, she thought. They hang around like a mood drug up by the colors of a certain sunset, or the smell of cooking. Then the curtain drops over you for a while.
It's like dealing with the complete destruction of a human settlement, and a sadistic gang. A cry staunches the wound, then it'll be time to find Cooper and Beatrice. If she can.
She stopped the car in the breakdown lane, wiped her wet nose with her shirtsleeve, killed the headlights. She got into the backseat with Amy, who'd fallen asleep. Mikaela hugged her with one arm, and stroked Turk with the other. Amy moved her head and opened her eyes; her face was all sleepy and mopey. "I love you," Mikaela said quietly, sinking her head into Amy's soft mass of unruly hair.
"I know," Amy said, looking askance, still in dreamland. It crossed Mikaela's mind that Amy needed a bath and a shampoo badly; but they all did. She almost got one at Beatrice's house.
She still had the pistol stuffed into the shiny warm-up coat she'd worn the whole time. Two slugs left, she thought; you can hug an innocent girl and think of putting slugs into men at the same time. It was becoming easy. Too so.
She weighed the information she was going to give Amy, then, "I'm going to look for some food, and you and Turk are going to be alone for a few minutes."
>
"When?"
"We're going to drive for a little bit first. Can you keep Millie and Tom company while I'm gone? I don't want to hear them complaining."
Amy mustered a smile. "They don't complain. They're not like real people! They're just dolls!"
"Oh really? Now when did that happen? I always thought Millie and Tom were real. They're well enough real to me."
"They've always been, just dolls…but I still like them." Amy reached over where Millie and Tom lay semi-crushed and wedged into the end of the backseat. "I still like them. They're still my friends! Oh you don't understand."
"Yes I do. Now, can you, Turk, Millie, and Tom be brave for me, when I go look for food? You'll have to stay in the backseat and not let Turk out. I'm afraid he'll run away. I'll only be a few minutes." Then Mikaela thought of other possible scenarios, but didn't think this poor little girl could digest them.
"Do you promise?" Amy said pleadingly.
"Scout's honor."
"Who's honor?"
"Just an expression. I promise. I promise. I promise."
Mikaela got back into the front seat. She'd left the engine idling. The headlights went on, and she rolled back onto the gravel. Within a mile she came to the northern boundary of the lahar.
CHAPTER 24
She drove down out of the foothills, and when she reached the bludgeoned valley, she could no longer see over the lahar to the surviving road. But she knew the lone highway was out there somewhere.
Her headlights illuminated a small mountain of debris that the lahar had carried across the landscape. It blocked the rest of the dirt road. She stopped, got out of the car, folded her hands across her chest. From above, she'd seen the lahar path fork, with one of the tines of the fork shorter than the other. That was west of where she stood, and not far.
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