“I don’t know where it is. Zelig made sure only a tiny number of the people involved knew the actual location. That way Flagg and his gutter rats wouldn’t be able to get there—not until it was strong enough to hold him off.” A brief lull occurred, as if the man was gathering his thoughts. “Anyway, Flagg’s dead. But his work lives on.” After another, longer pause, he seemed to come to a decision. “You folks best come inside, before you all freeze.”
They trudged around the back, and entered through a reinforced doorway.
Then they were face-to-face with the man possessing the voice. Ted Abbey had a neatly trimmed beard, flecked with white, and wore thick horn rimmed spectacles. His eyes were the palest, milkiest blue that Kyle or Carrie had ever seen.
The moment they were inside the store, he slammed the vanadium-steel security door, locking and bolting it. Immediately he went around to each of the observation slits in the walls to scan the outside once more. “Fine,” he said. “Now we can talk.”
Chapter Twenty
It was the first day of December.
The armed convoy that was the McGill family had finally rolled and fought its way through to California and was now only a few miles away from the ancient mining ghost town of Calico.
There were three vehicles, all showing signs of wear and tear. Two had bullet holes in their flanks, and the third was badly scorched where an attempt had been made to firebomb it an hour east of Fort Scott, Kansas.
Paul drove an ex-Army jeep towing a fuel tank. It had held twelve hundred gallons when they left New England and was now down to around the four-hundred mark—still more than enough to make them a target for any renegade group they encountered. The cab had been rebuilt using plate steel, and they’d managed to obtain some bulletproof tires from a military dump less than eighty miles from Mystic.
Jeanne and Angel, whose burned hands were almost healed, took turns driving the second vehicle.
It was a black four-by-four that had started life as an underpowered import from Europe and could now manage one-thirty on a flat, open highway. Jocelyn and Sukie generally rode with the two women.
Pamela traveled with Mac, heading up the fast-moving convoy.
They spelled each other at the wheel of the massive Phantasm, keeping the RV moving along the side roads, trying to avoid any sections that were too steep or winding or narrow. Generally they’d been successful in the long and hazardous trip.
The previous evening, as they camped on top of a high ridge with good visibility for thirty miles around, it had occurred to Henderson McGill how bizarre life had become. That he should think their trip had been relatively uneventful.
Several times they’d driven over bloated corpses, not stopping for fear of a trap, hearing the sickening sound of the wet explosions as ripe, putrid bellies burst.
The convoy had been attacked on eight separate occasions, but each time the McGills had come through safely, beating off the raiders with their vastly superior firepower.
Mac had guessed that, on their way west, they’d probably passed a million wrecked cars and trucks and gone within a quarter mile of five million corpses. But he knew in his heart that this was probably a conservative estimate.
Yet they’d been lucky. Nobody had been killed. The only injury had been a sprained wrist for Jeanne while changing a tire.
“Think there’ll be anyone up in this place, Dad?” Pamela leaned on his shoulders, her hair brushing against his cheek.
For the fiftieth time that morning Mac checked his mirror, making sure that Paul and the gas were behind, with the four-by-four riding his fender, and that nobody else was in sight.
“Doubt it. We’re way late on the date we agreed. But if Jim Hilton or anyone else got there, they’ll likely have left us some sort of message. That’s what I’m hoping.”
“Then off along the yellow brick road to this Aurora.”
“Sure. Aurora means dawn, from the Latin, so I guess it fits.”
” ‘Yellow Brick Road’ was Jack’s favorite song from that old vid, you know.”