Martin and Tyler stood at the top of the steps watching Jesus scuttle across to the parking area, where he had left his yellow Mustang.
Tyler handed Martin the automatic. ‘Something to add to your armory, Dad.’
Martin turned the automatic this way and that. It was a battered old Browning, with duct tape wound around the butt because it had lost its wooden grips. ‘Thanks. And thanks for saving my life.’
‘You saved my life, Dad. You saved all of our lives.’
Martin said, ‘I’ll tell you something, Tyler, I’m so tired of all this. Sometimes I think, this is the twenty-first century. Why the hell do we have to keep fighting each other, just to stay alive?’
‘I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know the answer to that one. I don’t think anybody does. Maybe God, but He’s not telling.’
EPILOGUE
No bodies were ever found at Lost Girl Lake.
Park rangers came across three burned-out tents outside the entrance to the cavern, and over the following weeks and months they found items of clothing and personal possessions including wallets and keys, all of which were scattered over a very wide area.
They also found respirators, belts and Kevlar body armor, all of which were identified as belonging to Empire Security Services in San Bernardino, although ESS representatives insisted that they were unable to explain how they had got there.
Inside the cavern they discovered several boxes of canned and dried food. Most incongruous of all were the twisted remains of an M2A1-7 military flame-thrower, which was illegal for civilian use in California.
The evening before Thanksgiving, three young Chemehuevi Indians from the Twentynine Palms Mission reservation were flagged down by highway patrol officers on the Utah Trail because they were driving a Cadillac Eldorado convertible with a broken headlight. They were unable to produce driving licenses or any documents relating to the vehicle, but they protested that they hadn’t stolen it.
They had found it abandoned in the Joshua Tree National Park and considered that it was ‘a gift from Mother Earth’.
Drought Page 34