When they emerged from the cutting, the sky to the west had dulled to a red maelstrom boiling along the horizon, shimmering with lightning that was all but continuous. With the wind, they would not be able to maintain the rate they had managed from San Saucillo to the border. It was ninety to a hundred miles to Montemorelos, the last stretch being uphill into the highland beyond Cruillas. They had something like eight hours in which to get away, racing against not only the water on one side now, but a wall of fire advancing from the other.
* * *
They did well for the next sixty miles. While the din of bolides passing through the atmosphere, and of airborne and impact detonations, grew to terrifying dimensions, the rising tidal incursions had emptied the coastal region of population, and the road remained free of traffic. And grotesque though the images were that they fashioned from the landscape, the fire to the west and the incendiary skies illuminated the way ahead and gave early warning of obstructions.
But past the San Fernando River, things changed. Emergency evacuation plans had evidently been less advanced south of the border, or less vigorously implemented, and the truck began running into the stragglers still heading for the high ground. Although relatively few in number, they were the slowest and most heavily laden, creating agonizing moving bottlenecks, seemingly at every narrowing of the road or uphill stretch. And crossing over the road to try and pass was invariably frustrated by another driver swinging out ahead and moving only slightly faster than the obstruction, and who once in possession of the passing space, stayed there.
“This isn’t looking good,” Keene announced over the noise as he checked his watch. “We made pretty good time for a while. Now we’re losing it all again.”
“What do you want us to do, shoot ’em?” Mitch yelled back.
Stalled vehicles were also an impediment. At one point, a car right in front of the truck lurched to a halt suddenly, hit by a falling rock, and Legermount was only just able to avoid hitting it as figures tumbled from the doors. A mile farther on, a group of people by a stranded van were waving frantically, several of them running out into the traffic lane and trying to grab the doors of anything that slowed close to walking speed.
“How is it back there?” Keene shouted back over his shoulder through the hole Mitch had cut in the cab wall.
“Bumpy, but we’re surviving,” Cavan’s voice answered. “We’ve felt a couple of hits on the roof. Let’s just hope we don’t collect a big one. What’s it looking like outside?”
“Grim.”
A big explosion occurred a mile or more to the left. The shock came, followed by a volley of debris. There was sharp crack from somewhere near Legermount’s head, and the side window shattered. A truck a hundred yards or so ahead slewed off into the ditch. Legermount gripped the wheel tighter and kept going.
The new site at Montemorelos was up on the plateau away from any major route, and Keene had hoped that they would lose the other traffic when they left the highway. But it didn’t work out that way. Word of the likely size of the impending tide must have gotten around, for everyone was turning off to follow any road leading in an upland direction. Congestion built up, and it seemed that everything would come to a standstill. But though it brought greater immediate hazard, the increasing intensity of the bombardment proved to be the saving factor. Few of the other vehicles had protected roofs, and as the hail of stones from above grew heavier, more of them pulled off the road for the occupants to scramble out and seek shelter underneath, enabling the truck to pass through.
The makeshift windshield exploded inward, covering Keene and the others with rivers of shards; Mitch knocked out what was left with the butt of his rifle and yelled at Legermount to keep going. A tracer of flaming naphtha hissed down and draped across the road ahead of them, but they carried on over it, bucking and bouncing to the smell of burning rubber from the scorched tires. To the right a hillside was on fire, showing the forms of trees as blazing silhouettes.