A couple of the dead elms toppled away, their roots rotted by Earthblood, and began to slide ponderously down the slope after Sly and Heather.
The rumbling was louder, closing in toward the pain threshold, and Jim was finding it tougher to stay upright, fighting for his balance against the liquid earth. The air was filled with dust, and somewhere he was aware that there had been a monstrous cracking sound, as if the edge had sheared off a tectonic plate, shifting a continent. It was virtually impossible to see anything, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Jesus, Jim!” screamed Carrie, stumbling into him, hanging on as they both fell sideways.
Somehow it was worse to be lying down, with the whole length of their bodies in contact with the quaking dirt. But now the movement was so violent that there was no alternative.
There was only the cold awareness of the reality. The reality that all four were going to die on this lonely blacktop, away in the rural wilds of northern California, during what was finally going to be the anticipated “big one,” as the planet shook itself like a hound dog ridding itself of fleas.
A savage spasm tore Jim apart from Carrie, and he found himself lying half in a deep irrigation ditch, his feet in cold, brackish water. He caught a glimpse of the four-by-four, realizing to his horror that it was being moved by the quake toward him. The tires protested as it slithered sideways like some cunning vid special effects.
He wished that he could have been cuddling his beloved daughter as death came snarling in to claim both their lives.
Blind and deafened, barely able even to draw a choking breath, Jim Hilton knew that this was a fruitless wish. Finally he had only that depressing and lonely thought to take with him into the darkness.
Chapter Nine
“That was a serious mother of a shaker.”
“Yeah. I reckon the epicenter was probably a couple of hundred miles north of here.”
“I hate to imagine what kind of damage it must’ve done up there where we’re going.”
Nanci Simms joined Jeff, Mac and Jeanne McGill, standing on the crest of a rise in the highway, staring away toward the dusty haze that obscured the far north from them.
“I never felt anything so strong,” she said. “At least without power running, there shouldn’t be any serious fires. That was always the main threat to life and to property.”
“You think that Jim and the others, whoever that might be, are somewhere up in the middle of that?” Henderson McGill shaded his eyes, aware of the slight tremor of an aftershock rocking him up onto the balls of his feet.
“Sure hope not, Dad,” said Paul, chewing vigorously on a strip of chili beef.
“There’s always a very real danger that shifting of the big faults can also trigger some major domino effects.”
“Like what, Nanci?” asked Pamela McGill.
“Like pressing the start button on one or two of the sleeping volcanoes up that way.”
Mac sniffed and coughed. “Damn dust catches your throat,” he said. “Come on. Won’t learn anything by standing here staring like a bunch of boobies. Better get going and try to make the best time we can.”
“And hope we don’t find the highway’s vanished,” added Jeff Thomas.
The highway was fine for another eleven miles.
Then it vanished.
“FUCKING VANISHED.” Jeff Thomas stood on the brink of the fresh chasm and petulantly kicked a jagged piece of stone over the brink. It clattered down the steep slope, landing with a splash in the narrow stream.
“That’s very positive, Jefferson,” said Nanci at his elbow. “Now, if you were to kick in just another three million of those pebbles, we could probably pick our way across and continue with our odyssey.”
He turned to her, and for a jagged splinter of a second she saw the ruby glow of murderous hatred in his eyes. It disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. But she knew that it always burned there and that one day she would have to do something about it. Ignoring it, she flashed him an ironic smile and joined the others.