“There are ways out,” said Etta.
Susan looked at the old lady doubtfully. She couldn’t imagine Etta hoofing her way anywhere. She couldn’t even climb onto a bar stool by herself. “Which way are you talking about?”
“The Ridge Route.”
“What’s the Ridge Route?”
“There wasn’t always an interstate system, you know. The Ridge Route is the old road over the Grapevine, the way people used to drive to Bakersfield.”
The Grapevine! Susan stared at her. Surely Etta wasn’t suggesting they drive over the Grapevine. The stretch of Interstate 5 between the Los Angeles Basin and the San Joaquin Valley was more than fifty miles long. It crossed some of the steepest, driest, most unforgiving terrain in Southern California.
“The interstate is blocked,” Susan said.
“I know that, but I doubt the Ridge Route is blocked. If you can get us there, I can direct us over. We’ll figure it out from there.”
Susan tried to think. Etta’s route would be long and perilous, but to escape Los Angeles any other way meant crossing through miles of sprawling city, through Orange County to the south, through Glendale and the San Fernando Valley to the west. City meant danger from snarled traffic and thieves, and Susan knew that she and an eighty-something-year-old woman would be no match for any of those. “We could take the 210 to get to I-5,” she said slowly. The Foothill Freeway was the least crowded interstate, running north of Pasadena through relatively unpopulated hills and sparser developments until it connected with the I-5 in Sylmar.
Etta looked satisfied. “Good.”
Susan shot her an annoyed look. “And what are we going to do for food and water on this Ridge Route?” It was dry, mountainous country. If the car broke down, they’d be in big trouble.
“Bring your juice box,” said Etta, unperturbed. She shuffled back to the bathroom.
They didn’t bring the juice box. Susan drank it.
One nice thing about hanging out with someone with heart failure, thought Susan. Etta had too much water in her ankles and lungs and needed to restrict her fluid intake—an ideal circumstance for the current clean water shortage.
Susan looked at the thermos in the Oldsmobile’s backseat. She had no idea how they would get over the Grapevine without more water. The Tehachapi Mountains were just dry terrain and chaparral.
“You did a good job,” Etta said, approaching with a shopping bag in her hand. “I saw the flowers.”
Susan looked away. She had buried Tom in a shallow trench next to Sarah’s grave and had sprinkled the freshly turned soil with bougainvillea petals. She had thought these moments had been private, unwatched by anyone, but apparently, the old woman had witnessed Susan’s very personal good-bye.
Etta peered at her. “We should go,” she said, not ungently. “I brought some things.” She held out a box of crackers and the roasted bell peppers. “It’s all that’s left in the house. We’ll have to look for more food on the road.”
“I’m more concerned about water.”
“I know. We’ll have to find that, too.”
Crackers and bell peppers. A thermos full of water. And an old lady teetering on the edge of heart failure.
Susan looked at the ancient car that stood between them and shook her head.
Harr was feeding the horses when he heard the whine of a distant car.
More like a growing shriek. Harr looked up at the faint speck on the long gravel road and felt a moment’s alarm. Whoever they were, they sure were in a hurry. The car left a trail of dust like a comet’s tail behind it.
He pushed his hat back and wiped his shirt sleeve across his forehead. It was hot as hell, the afternoon sun beating down. He thought briefly about running for his shotgun but decided one car didn’t equal an army. If they wanted to rob him, then let them. Aside from the Cessna, he didn’t have anything worth stealing, anyway.
He walked into the yard and waited in the shade of a poplar tree. The car was closer now, not a quarter-mile away. He could just make out a white hood emerging from the trailing dust cloud. Recognition dawned on him.
Lola.
He wondered why she was driving so fast when the car was swerving dangerously. She’d spin out at any second.
He expected her to slow down as she approached, but she barreled into the yard and slammed on the brakes at the last possible second. The old Pontiac slid to a halt.
“Jesus, Lola!” Harr snapped, whipping his hat off his head to swat away the dust.
He couldn’t see her face through the window. The car was caked in dirt, no longer white, just the light gray-brown color of Harney County soil.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Harr said as he pulled the door open.
The horn went off abruptly. Lola slumped against the steering wheel, her face turned sideways, her cheek bunched up against her nose.
“He left me, John,” she said, wet tears tracking down her dusty face. She didn’t seem to have the strength to move. She just sat there with her cheek resting against the horn.
He reached to switch off the ignition and gently pushed her back against the driver’s seat.
“Ammon’s a bastard,” Harr said. He put his hand to her face to peer at it, his fingers cradling her chin. She was breathing rapidly, her tear-filled eyes red from crying.
“He saw I was getting sick and said he couldn’t take me. I was better off in town.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t want to die in town,” she cried. “I didn’t want to die alone!”
Harr squatted beside the car, his face near hers. “You’re not going to die, Lola,” he said, but he didn’t know if it was true. She looked so weak, as though something as light as a feather could knock her over. He reached his arms under her legs and armpits and lifted her from the car. “C’mon. Let’s get you inside.”
But once he got her in the house, he realized he couldn’t keep her there. She could barely breathe.
He wondered how she had gotten so sick so fast. She hadn’t seemed sick when he had seen her the day before, but now, she shifted as if every breath was a struggle. He walked to the kitchen, poured some of his precious drinking water on a washcloth, and walked back to wipe her face, but the cleaning did little to improve her appearance. A bluish tinge had settled over her lips.
He reached a hand to her forehead and was appalled by the heat. “I’m going to take you to the hospital,” he said abruptly.
She opened her eyes to look at him, and it hurt him to see the fear there. “Don’t you dare leave me, John.”
“I won’t.” He grunted softly as he carried her across the kitchen and back out the door. He put her on the front seat of his pickup, trying to prop her up so that she wouldn’t collapse, but no matter how he positioned her, she slumped awkwardly. In the end, he shut the passenger door against her, wincing when she moaned.
He only half-heard the spray of gravel as he took off down the road. She groaned once when he hit a rut, but otherwise, she only coughed. He wondered if she was even conscious, and then she opened her eyes to look at him, weariness and acceptance and something else that he couldn’t bear filling their hazel depths.
“I knew I could count on you,” she whispered.
Harr stepped on it.
Forty-Nine
Alan Wheeler ran his fingers gingerly over the side of his shirt where it covered the gauze bandage. It was a makeshift dressing, the best he could come up with in a household that held little more than a rudimentary first aid kit, but it was at least a sterile barrier against the bacteria that he was certain would infect his wound.
The phone chirped, the odd ring-tone of his satellite phone. He leaned forward uncomfortably in the padded patio chair.
It was Grif Richardson. “We can get you a helicopter out if you can get to Castaic Dam.”
Alan searched his memory. He had vague recollections of a town and reservoir with that name, somewhere off I-5, on the outskirts of the LA Basin near the Sierra Pelona Mountains. He figured the dam was at least twen
ty-five miles from Beverly Hills.
He kept his voice neutral. “That’s across the city, Grif. Can you get anything closer?”
“No. I’ve gone over it several times with the security guys. The airspace is closed from Santa Barbara all the way south to San Clemente. There’s a private heliport by Castaic Dam that we can access. From what I understand, it’s just an open space with a windsock, but that’s best for what we’re doing.”
“Breaking the quarantine, you mean?”
“Technically the dam is out of the quarantined area.”
“But I’m coming from inside the quarantine.”
“No one will know that. All they’ll know is that a helicopter is transferring a person to the Wheeler Energy corporate jet in Bakersfield. We fly out of Bakersfield all the time.”
Alan made a noncommittal grunt. What Richardson had said was true. Wheeler Energy had its petroleum roots in the oil fields outside Bakersfield, and though the waning oil fields only made up a small percentage of the company’s business, there was still a strong Wheeler Energy presence in the San Joaquin Valley town. Alan doubted that anyone would impede the corporate jet’s departure to Houston.
He just wasn’t sure he could make it to Castaic. There were the small details of the dizziness that still overwhelmed him and the fact that he had no transportation.
“You can’t get anything closer?” Alan asked.
He could feel, rather than hear, the other man’s discomfort in the silence that followed. “Alan,” Richardson said at last. “We’ve tried everything. Flying is under severe restrictions throughout the US. We can justify the flight out of Bakersfield on priority business because the oil fields are there, but there’s nothing, I repeat, nothing flying out of the LA Basin right now.”
“How much time have I got?”
“We can get a helicopter out there in three hours.”
Alan looked at his wristwatch. He was still wearing the Cartier that Brooke had given him all those years ago. Its worn elegance looked jarringly out of place, a habit of dress that he had put on unthinkingly after his short bath in the pool. It was fifteen minutes after noon.
“Give me five hours.” He looked up at Jason’s corner window. “I have some matters to sort out.”
“No more. The helicopter won’t wait on the ground, Alan. It’s an in-and-out operation, for obvious reasons.”
Alan understood. The company was likely spending a fortune to hire the rogue aircraft, because even though Richardson said otherwise, Alan was certain the flight was illegal.
But he didn’t say this. “I’ll be there at five o’clock sharp.” He listened while Richardson gave him directions.
Mack emerged from the porta-potty that stood in the parking lot between the Department of Public Health and the county’s Emergency Management Center and finally let out his breath. The sheer volume of effluent inside had overwhelmed the portable toilet’s internal chemicals, and Mack, along with every other emergency worker, had taken to holding his breath whenever he used the john.
He wanted to throw up, except there was nothing inside him to throw up. He hadn’t had anything to eat in the last few days except a couple of MREs. Combined with a steady stream of instant coffee, the diet was enough to compromise even the stoutest GI system, and Mack was not immune. He’d let loose with a dizzying bout of watery stools.
Now, he felt woozy as he stood in the bright, hazy light. He yanked at his waistband, trying to pull his pants up, because although he had cinched his belt tighter, his waistline seemed to be shrinking beyond the limits of the belt’s holes.
It’s a helluva diet, he thought. Weight loss by plague pandemic.
Maybe he should go home, get a change of clothes, try to wipe some of the sweat and body odor off his body. Not that it would change anything in the War Room. The place reeked worse than a locker room, the windows inadequate to ventilate the ripe funk of unwashed bodies inside.
“George!”
Mack started. He had been so focused on escaping the porta-potty that he had failed to hear the county’s emergency management coordinator approach. The man crossed the pavement between the two buildings to join Mack.
“God, that stinks. I can smell it through the goddamn respirator,” he said, waving his arm through the air. He gestured impatiently for Mack to move away. “Come over here. I need to talk with you.”
They moved several paces away, but it wasn’t much better.
“The mayor wants a meeting in thirty minutes,” the coordinator said tensely. “There are big developments. The governor is dead.”
Mack was disappointed, but with the disease ripping through the population, he wasn’t particularly surprised. He started back toward public health building. The emergency management coordinator followed. “Who’s going to lead the state?” Mack asked.
“The real question is: who’s going to lead the country?”
Mack halted. “What are you talking about?”
“Rumor has it that Washington’s moved to Mount Weather.”
Mack thought quickly. The federal government housed a massive emergency operations center in western Virginia at Mount Weather. “That makes sense. Congress can’t exactly keep meeting publicly with plague ripping through the population. It’s too dangerous.”
“Yeah, but they say they’re enacting the Continuity of Operations plan.”
Mack stared at him. The Continuity of Operations plan was the federal government’s survival plan in the event of national catastrophe. If the government was implementing it, it meant things were so bad, the administration was already thinking in terms of a post-pandemic world.
Mack felt an odd tightening in his chest. “Is it a rumor?”
“There’s nothing but rumors these days.”
Mack had to agree. The CDC had long stopped publicly announcing case numbers. If DRYP were spreading across the East Coast like it was spreading across the West Coast, then isolating the people who would lead in a post-pandemic world for long enough for Kincade’s vaccine to take effect was a matter of survival.
“What’s the mayor want?” Mack started walking again.
“A new plan. One that doesn’t rely on federal support.”
“The federal government hasn’t done anything for us for days,” Mack said.
“But there’s always been the idea that the feds would help us once the worst was over. I’m telling you we can’t count on that. They’re scrambling to save their own asses. We’re on our own now, for real.”
Mack looked around the parking lot at the smoggy midday air. He could make out the ghost-like outlines of the empty casinos in the distance. The Sierras were nowhere to be seen.
Less than twenty-four hours of diesel, he thought, with no help from the feds. How many people could he keep alive if the central coordinating center for emergency management failed? Reno and its people would be on their own. He tried to imagine a world without power, without petrochemicals, but he couldn’t. He realized now they would have to.
Because that world was coming. It was less than twenty-four hours away.
Somewhere in the thirty minute drive from Harr’s ranch to the hospital in Burns, Lola had ceased responding to his questions. She merely slumped, eyes closed, against the passenger-side door, her face a frightening bluish hue.
He shook her shoulder. “C’mon, Lola, wake up. We’re here.”
She didn’t even moan. Harr cut the engine, jumped out of the truck, and crossed quickly to the passenger side. He pulled open the door and caught her as she collapsed, her arms flinging out like a rag doll.
He carried her across the parking lot to the hospital’s emergency entrance, where a small group of patients lay on the pavement. The sprinkling of spots on Lola’s arms had merged into dark purple patches. Harr asked himself if the discoloration had been there an hour ago, when she’d first appeared at his house, but he couldn’t remember. His mind didn’t seem to be working right.
“What the hell are you doing?”<
br />
It took a moment for Harr to recognize Dr. Fisk. The medical director was dressed in a white hazmat suit, his face obscured by a full respirator helmet, from which a hose extended to some sort of blower on his belt. He blocked Harr from the cordoned-off patients. “Get the hell out of here.”
“But she’s sick!”
“I know that,” the doctor said impatiently, moving toward Harr as though he could corral him away from the emergency department. “This is plague, you fool! If you catch it, you’ll die.”
Realization flooded Harr. He could suddenly see himself through the doctor’s eyes: a healthy man carrying a dying woman, walking through a group of people who were also dying, with no mask on!
Well, he’d take his chances. “You’ve got to take her,” he said. “She needs help.”
He could see anger flare in the doctor’s plastic-shielded eyes. “I told you to go to your ranch.”
“I did!” Harr exclaimed.
The doctor shook his head. Of course. Fisk thought Harr was susceptible to the disease. With the catastrophe rolling through Fisk’s hospital right now, he would never be convinced otherwise.
“Take her, goddamn it!”
Fisk pointed at the pavement. “Then put her there. I can’t let you come near the hospital.”
“Jesus Christ!”
But arguing with the doctor wouldn’t get Lola seen faster. Harr glared at Fisk as he set Lola’s limp body on the pavement.
“Stand back,” said Fisk.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. If I was going to catch the damn disease, don’t you think I would have caught it by now?”
“Stand back.”
Harr resentfully stood back while Fisk moved to examine Lola. The doctor turned her face to his, her eyes now closed, the bluish lips parted to reveal dry-looking teeth. He reached a hand to her wrist, held it for a moment, and then stood and turned to Harr.
“She’s dead. We’ll have someone bring her around back. You can go back to your ranch.”
Harr stared in shock.
DRYP Trilogy | Book 1 | DRYP [The Final Pandemic] Page 35