They were at a shopping mall and had demolished the side entrance of a Montgomery Ward store. Buff was climbing in over the wreckage of the wall and doors, probing into the darkness with a flashlamp beam. “We need everybody out again,” Mitch called inside. “This thing will never take the wind. We’re going to have to turn it into a flatbed ourselves.”
The store had been broken into already from a different entrance and was well ransacked. However, there were still axes, sledges, and other heavy tools in the hardware and garden sections, which was what they needed. For the next two hours they labored to cut and hammer the side and roof panels from the trailer, leaving the supporting ribs. From the pieces and the doors, and with the help of line and wire from the store, they fashioned a crude, ridged shelter, looking like a shallow tent, standing on the trailer’s chassis between what had been left of the sides. For ballast and protection they lashed mattresses from the bedding department over the top, weighed down with bags of fertilizer and lawn food, to be supplemented by sandbags when they came across some.
Finally, Keene stood looking at the result of their handiwork. It looked oddly inappropriate. A moment of doubt assailed him. “I don’t know,” he said to Cavan, shaking his head. “Are we wasting our time? Is there really any point to any of this, do you think, Leo?”
“Who knows?” Cavan replied. “There’s an old Irish saying: `Now is the time for the futile gesture.’ I’ve always thought it had a wonderful ring of magnificence about it. If anything does, it surely characterizes this obdurate species of ours. . . . Without it, I doubt if we’d even be here at all.” Keene was really beginning to believe that Cavan was enjoying it.
The time by now was well into the small hours of the morning. Everyone was exhausted. They rested up until dawn, and then set out for the ring road on the south side of the city. As they negotiated their way around blocked streets and through burning suburbs, sometimes having to bulldoze wrecked or abandoned vehicles aside, a huge fireball came out of the sky and exploded to the north, sending up burning tracers dripping flames. Minutes later, another fell farther away to the west. The frequency increased as the truck made its way onto Interstate 37 South, signposted for Pleasanton.
But at least it handled manageably now.
47
Progress was slow but steady. The surroundings became emptier of people, the vehicles fewer, all going the other way. A couple of hours after leaving San Antonio, Mitch voiced the question that perhaps had been forming in many of their minds. He had come back to allow Cavan a spell of riding up front in the cab.
“Look, I know she’s important to you, Lan, and it has to be a big thing in your book, but in a situation like this we have to be realistic. . . . I mean, how likely is it, really, that anyone is still going to be at this place? If this shuttle that we’re betting on is down over the border, wouldn’t we be doing everyone here a favor by being honest and heading straight on there direct? I hate having to say this, but . . .” He gestured at the desolation around the roadway unrolling behind them, and left it at that.
“It isn’t just Vicki and Robin,” Keene replied. “We need a pilot too. I told Halloran to try and find one.”
Mitch looked puzzled. “But I thought you could fly it,” he said.
Keene shook his head. “What gave you that idea?”
“You were on that ship that all the news was about, the one that outflew the spaceplane, right?”
“Sure, as an observer-engineer. I helped design the propulsion unit, that’s all.”
Mitch stared at him for a few moments of revelation while the universe took on a new perspective suddenly. “Well, shit,” he pronounced resignedly. The others exchanged ominous looks but said nothing. Colby took out a handkerchief to wipe his indestructible spectacles. “Isn’t it funny how life always has one more thing in store that you hadn’t thought of,” he remarked to nobody in particular.