Ill Wind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  People moved out of the way. She shoved aside the ones who didn’t.

  She stuffed the backpack with dehydrated food in foil packages. Staring at a tiny gas-burner backpacking stove, she decided that she could cook over a campfire. She opted for a large hunting knife, some fishing equipment, and a mummy sleeping bag rated to 20 below zero.

  Heather glared around the store, rejecting most of the items. A tent would be too bulky to carry all the way home. Some compact pots and pans would be nice, but unnecessary—she could adapt her own utensils. She took matches, a snakebite kit, a solar still for purifying water.

  Heather felt supercharged. On a normal day, she would have been at the office processing forms, answering telephone calls, gritting her teeth against Sysco’s treatment of her. But not today, honey, she told herself. Not anymore.

  Then, realizing that she wouldn’t have a car, or even a bicycle unless she could find one without a plastic-based inner tube, Heather remembered the most important piece of her ensemble—sturdy hiking boots, made of leather with genuine rubber soles. She had to avoid anything with plastic stitching, vinyl sides, synthetic rubber soles. Just in case.

  Guarding her stuffed neon-pink backpack, she searched through the ransacked boxes of hiking boots. Other people had the same idea, but this caused her less concern. Heather had big feet, and shoes her size wouldn’t fit many other women.

  Finally, dangling a pair of black hiking boots with sparkly purple laces, she waited in line. She had little cash in her savings, and she no longer had a job—but the man at the cashier counter was accepting credit cards. Credit cards! As if they were going to be worth anything!

  Heather smiled smugly. Unclear on the concept, she thought. She just hoped she would reach the counter before the plastic cards dissolved in her purse.

  * * *

  The power went out for the second time that day, and Heather had no real expectation it would ever come on again. She sat in her living room with the drapes open and the windows cracked to let in a breeze. While she still had enough light, she wanted to sort her new equipment. From now on, she had to plan with a whole new mindset.

  She lived in the suburbs of Flagstaff in a two-bedroom house with a small backyard and a carport instead of a garage. Aluminum awnings thrust out above every window. The place had been built in the fifties, with the stomach-turning decor of the times: yellow siding, olive-green carpeting, speckled Formica countertops. Heather had rented it for four years now, always intending to move to something better, but never able to. She suspected she would be leaving the city soon, though.

  Heather tied her hair back in a pony tail, then squatted on the floor to organize the dried food and read the instructions on the camping gear. She had gone backpacking in the Grand Canyon with her last boyfriend, Derek, a fellow employee of Surety Insurance. He had eventually dumped her when he took a promotion at a competitor’s company in Tucson. Nothing much about the relationship had been memorable, but she had enjoyed the camping, and she missed the sex. The Grand Canyon was only an hour and a half drive north of Flagstaff, but for some reason Heather had never considered going back there alone.

  Why the hell not? she asked herself. Stop being a puppy-dog trying to please everyone but you!

  The phone rang twice, then fell silent before Heather could reach it. She stared at it. The phone lines had been dead four of the five times she had tried to dial out, and the one time she heard a dial tone she hesitated and then hung up again.

  Her family would be trying to call her from Phoenix, but she had no interest in contacting them. They would want her to come back home so they could weather the tragedy together. And that was definitely not in Heather Dixon’s new agenda.

  Her family lived three hours’ drive away. She had two sisters and three brothers, with Heather right in the middle, the “undistinguished child.” Growing up, she’d had to put up with sisters’ boyfriends, brothers’ softball games, without finding her own niche.

  The University at Flagstaff was far enough away that she could find independence, but her interest faded quickly. She quit school after a year and took a job at Surety Insurance. She never admitted that she had missed her home—but every conversation with her parents made it clear that they knew so. It was time to get away and go someplace safe.

  She thought of Al Sysco weaseling into the promotion that should have been hers; she thought of Derek, using her as a springboard for jumping to another insurance company.

  Well, what goes around comes around. Sysco was probably still waiting for a phone call from the Boston office, telling him the crisis was over. Heather tried to imagine him fighting to survive, hunting his own food; she started to snicker. Then she realized that Sysco probably couldn’t conceive of clunky, unassuming Heather Dixon doing that either. She had not found the nerve to make her escape until the petroplague struck.

  Kneeling on the threadbare olive carpet, Heather unfolded her AAA maps of northern Arizona. There were trails, and she had supplies; she saw no reason why she couldn’t hike from one end of the Grand Canyon to the other. Where else could she find somewhere as safe to go?

  She had just begun taking inventory of her dried food when a knock came at the door, putting her on guard. Once the stores ran out of food, looters would go door to door, breaking in and raiding pantries. But they certainly wouldn’t politely knock, would they?

  Heather debated not answering, but her drapes were open and she sat in plain view. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t home. Taking a deep breath, wishing she had a gun, she strode to the front door. She was tired of turning her back and hiding.

  She twisted the deadbolt locks with a sliding click, then yanked open the door with more force than she intended. “What?”

  The man waiting on her front porch gaped at her in sudden surprise. He looked flustered. He was in his early thirties, with a large and muscular build; his face was sunburned and framed by lanky blond hair. He looked like an out-of-luck surfer. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  Heather started to slam the door in his face; but something new inside her found the man’s blustering question amusing. “Well who the hell are you? I’m Heather Dixon. Pleased to meet you. And why are you standing on my front porch?”

  The man took a full step backward. “Where are my parents?”

  The question threw her. “Who?”

  “Jan and Howard Brooks. I’m Connor Brooks, their son. They live here.”

  Now Heather began to understand, and her initial anger gave way to a little pity. “Sorry, but they moved. I’ve rented this place for four years now. I used to get junk mail addressed to Brooks, but that was a long time ago.”

  Standing on the porch, Connor Brooks shook his head in amazement. “They moved? They didn’t even tell me!”

  Heather stayed quiet; it sounded like a bad joke.

  Connor thought it over. “I don’t suppose they left a forwarding address?” His eyes were wide and blue and hopeful. Heather sized him up and for some reason liked what she saw.

  “Afraid not. The landlord might know, but he lives down in Sedona, and the phones are out. I don’t expect you’ve got a car?”

  Connor grasped the porch railing as if to prevent himself from falling. “If I had a car that worked it wouldn’t have taken me a week to get here. I can’t believe it! After all I’ve been through—and they moved!” He ran his hands through his hair in apparent anguish, but Heather got the distinct impression it was just an act. He tried to peer inside the house. “Hey, could you spare anything to eat? I’m starved.”

  She thought for a moment. Did she really want this guy around? Everything he said sounded reasonable. Still…

  She said, “Power’s gone out, but there’s some leftovers in the fridge. Wait here.” She bolted the door after she stepped back inside.

  She watched him for a minute from the corner window. He stepped off the porch and looked up and down the street. Jamming his hands in his pockets, he rocked back and forth on his
heels, waiting for her to return.

  Heather grabbed some stale bread and cheese from the refrigerator; before opening the front door, she returned to the kitchen and took out two beers.

  Connor turned when she came outside. “Not much of this looks familiar to me. My parents moved here after I left home, and I… I haven’t been back to visit too often.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “No kidding.” She handed him the food. “Here.”

  His eyes widened at the beer. “Thanks!”

  As they spoke she could not say why she found him intriguing, but Connor Brooks gave the impression of being a survivor. He had no connection to her old life. She began to calculate whether it might be worthwhile having him around.

  He seemed to read her thoughts. “Do you think I could impose a little more? I’d really like a shower. It’s been a rough couple of days, and I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.”

  She thought it over; the suggestion sounded so preposterous that it made her pause. Funny what a difference a few hours can make. The old Heather would have been flustered, even terrified—and that was enough to make her change her mind. “You do smell like you could use a bit of freshening up. The water will probably be cold, but I’ve got a hose out back you can use.”

  “Out… back?”

  “Consider yourself lucky,” Heather smiled. “Times are changing. Besides, I’ll bring you a towel.”

  Chapter 40

  Alex Kramer’s two horses were excited to be taken out. Todd ran his calloused right palm along the hot, soft neck of Ren, the palomino, patting gently; he stepped into the stirrup, hauling his leg over the horse’s back.

  He reached back to gather the reins from Stimpy’s bridle, looping them around the saddle horn. The corral gate stood open, and Todd squeezed Ren with his knees, nudging the horse toward the open road. “Let’s head ‘em out!” he said.

  Todd reveled in the warm redolence of the horses. The thick scent brought back fond memories of his younger days, as did the hollow clatter of hooves on the hard road surface. It had been in a long time since he’d taken a horse and slept under the Wyoming stars. Of course, it would be different riding through downtown San Francisco, and a heck of a lot more dangerous. He kept Alex’s old Smith & Wesson loaded and at his side.

  Whispering to the horses, Todd guided them alongside the paved road. The hills were quiet and still. It was time to move on, to stop waiting for the world to fix itself. Besides, he had to go rescue Iris, whether she wanted it or not. Staying in the city would be plain stupid. If the downtown areas weren’t already burning, the mobs would ge out of hand before long.

  Todd kept his eyes forward, Alex’s abandoned house at his back. On the winding road, he passed mailboxes, driveways, but the houses sat quiet, deceptively peaceful. Blue-gray wood smoke curled from one chimney. He came across a man walking his German shepherd, as if it were a normal afternoon; Todd and the man nodded to each other, and the dog barked, but the horses continued down the road.

  It seemed unreal to him. Elsewhere in the world, planes were crashing, buildings falling apart, communications severed. The last he had heard, the president was stuck out of the country. The C&W radio station had mentioned something about the Vice President being killed in an elevator accident, but they had not been able to confirm the rumors… and then the radio station blinked out, replaced by static. Todd couldn’t get any other stations on the radio either. When he pried it open, he discovered the plastic circuit board had melted.

  Only a week ago he’d been flying in the Oilstar helicopter, spraying the Prometheus microbe. At the time, Todd had considered the Zoroaster spill a terrible disaster. Now his entire definition of disaster had changed.

  After an hour he reached U.S. highway 101, which stretched down the Marin peninsula, across the Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco and then the south bay. Todd took the two horses at a rapid trot down the middle lane. The hard road would not be good for the horses’ hooves, and he moved over to the grassy median whenever he had a chance. He wondered if the asphalt itself would turn soft and spongy once the petroplague got hungry. The microbe’s appetite for plastics seemed random and unpredictable.

  He felt idiotically out of place on horseback in the middle of a six-lane highway that should have been filled with vehicles zooming by at 70 miles an hour. He felt like a ranger in the wilderness.

  Groups of scavengers moved among the dead cars littering the highway, smashing into locked cars or just pushing windshields through the soft insulation holding the glass in place. One tall man without a shirt tucked a set of hubcaps between his elbow and his ribs, leaving a serrated smudge of grease and dirt along his side. A middle-aged woman in a red canvas jacket carried a paper grocery bag stuffed with loose cables and metal housings of car stereo boxes. A blond-haired teenaged boy slashed out seatbelts with a long knife, draping a long tangle of them over one shoulder. Todd couldn’t imagine what the kid would want them for. As Todd approached, the boy jerked his head out of a Volvo and flashed a broad grin.

  At a fast trot, the horses made good time on the empty highway. Before long, Todd reached the cavernous tunnel that cut through a ridge. The horses trotted into the tunnel, their hooves booming inside the enclosed space.

  Cars had stalled there, smashed into a tangled mass. Both lanes had been cut off, and no traffic had been able to pass this way for days. The ceiling lights had gone out, but enough daylight streamed in from both ends to let him ride close to the cold tile wall. The horses moved nervously from the close shadows. The empty metal hulks made ticking sounds. Ren and Stimpy began to trot, startled by the reverberating explosions of sound made by their own hoofbeats.

  Finally bursting out to the sunlight, Todd took a deep breath of the cool ocean-tainted breeze and stared ahead at the Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond that at the San Francisco skyline.

  Not long ago, Todd had been below on the heaving deck of the Zoroaster, trying to offload as much of the crude as possible before the tanker plunged into the channel. There had been helicopters, news crews, boats, rubberneckers….

  Now, as he guided Ren and Stimpy onto the bridge, he heard only the whistling sounds of the wind. The foghorns no longer sent forlorn tones out to warn ships. The water, far below, made hushing sounds against the support piers. In addition to the sea dampness, the air carried a sulfurous stench. Leaking crude oil from the sunken Zoroaster continued oozing to the surface, and Prometheus thrived.

  Puffing and red-faced, a sweat-suited jogger ran by, intent on the sidewalk in front of his feet. Todd shook his head—people were crazy! How could anybody go through a daily routine in the middle of a crisis? He seated his cowboy hat more firmly; no matter how much the world changed, he thought, some rituals remained the same.

  The bridge cables high overhead thrummed in the breeze. The lowering sun dazzled on the water far out to sea. He saw no Navy ships or freighters or fishing trawlers. A shiver went up his spine as he realized just how deeply the plague had separated the world into thousands of tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  Grim-faced backpackers headed along the walkway, moving briskly in a forced march. A gaunt man with red-rimmed eyes, gray stubble on his face, and a SURF! t-shirt, called to Todd, “Hey, you’re going the wrong way, man!”

  “I know,” Todd said.

  A young couple with three children—the oldest no more than eight, and crying—carried lumpy packs on their shoulders as they hiked toward the Marin peninsula, in the opposite direction Todd was going. The little four-year-old girl carried a cloth doll with yarn hair; dark indentations marked where plastic button eyes had dissolved.

  Within ten minutes the two horses approached the southern end of the bridge. Waves crashed against the rugged shore of Fort Point. The deep-green cypress trees and red-roofed military housing of the Presidio shone with brilliant color, as if someone had twisted up the contrast knob. At the end of the bridge, an unlit sign demanded STOP! PAY TOLL. Todd directed Ren and Stimpy through the empty toll
booths. He smiled ironically to himself as they passed through the unused “carpool” lane.

  On horseback, he entered San Francisco.

  * * *

  Todd avoided the densest part of the city, planning to ride full-tilt through Golden Gate Park, keeping his head low and a firm grip on Stimpy’s reins. His horses were among the most valuable possessions in the world right now. He kept the pistol within easy reach and urged Ren and Stimpy to a fast trot.

  Reaching the large forested area of the park, the small lakes, and the wide grassy clearings made him forget he was in the middle of a city, for a short while. In the grassy expanse, Ren tried to stop and graze, but Todd wouldn’t let him, jabbing with his boot heels to keep up the pace. He saw no kids tossing baseballs or frisbees, no fun and games.

  A cluster of men and women worked by the trees with hand saws and axes taken from downtown hardware stores. Not one of the people looked accustomed to manual labor, and they took frequent rests. With a scurry, they fled to one side as a eucalyptus came crashing down, then they set to work chopping it into smaller pieces. A mound of firewood sat stacked to one side. Teenagers took turns with sledge hammer and wedges to split the chunks. Two older women with new rifles stood guard over their wood.

  Todd urged Ren and Stimpy eastward out of the park and into more dangerous crowds, following the Panhandle under large oak trees. Old Victorian houses towered over the boulevards on either side of the narrow strip of park, but Todd kept the horses on the grass as long as he could, until he was finally forced to return to the city streets in Haight-Ashbury. It did not surprise him to see various apocalyptic street preachers hawking recipes for salvation to the wandering crowds. Every time someone looked at Todd too closely, he conspicuously pulled out the pistol.