“How long’s that going to take us, Mac?” asked Angel. “Long while?”
“Yeah.”
“We probably got us enough gas, but when you start getting close to cities, the chance of finding any evaporates.” Paul looked at the others. “What do you all think?”
Jeanne sighed. “If we leave tomorrow, Mac, roughly how many days?”
“Too many.”
“We’ll never make it for the fifth. In the old days I guess we’d have done it easily.” Pamela bit her lip. “Come on, Dad. Do we go or stay?”
“We stay here and there’s nothing. We should try and find somewhere we can winter over, preferably away from the worst of the weather.”
“That means desert or coast.” Paul looked again at the map. “Muir Woods isn’t far from the sea.”
Mac rubbed at the graying stubble on his chin. “Right. We go tomorrow, and with luck we can get there close to the fifth. With a good measure of luck.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Jim Hilton tugged the hand brake on and switched off the engine, allowing the black van to fall silent.
“The big trees are alive, Dad! The first things I’ve seen that haven’t been killed by the Earthblood thing.”
Heather’s father wiped condensation off the inside of the driver’s window and peered out through the steady cold drizzle.
“Yeah, you’re right. I suppose that the simple answer is that the redwoods are so damn massive that the virus wasn’t able to survive long enough to wipe them out. Sure is good to see a real green tree. Just like old times.”
The winding road toward Muir Woods had been deserted, free of the dumped and rusting wrecks that were a thousand-times-a-day sight on most of the blue highways of America.
THAT MORNING of December 5 saw Nanci Simms waiting to be taken by truck for a final session of examination. The Hunters of the Sun had failed to penetrate her disguise, though they’d pressed her about the names of Jim Hilton and the rest of the crew of the Aquila.
Several times she’d heard the name of Flagg as her interrogators bemoaned their ex-leader’s death. But oddly she never heard them talk about the person who’d taken over.
There had been a couple of breaks in her questioning when a large camp of squatters and outlanders had been found about forty-eight miles east of the camp. Nanci learned that the security men had terminally wiped the place, hardly bothering to investigate any of the ragged band.
Her own success in concealing who she was, and what she had been, was all relative.
This afternoon, after a final round of desultory talk and some casual, half-hearted violence, she knew precisely what would happen. Because she’d seen it done to others.
A length of thin wire would be looped around her throat, then she would be hoisted onto one of a row of stout iron hooks in the wall of corridor and left to choke and kick out the last hideously agonized moments of her life.
But Nanci Simms didn’t intend to go out like that.
No way.
THEY’D PASSED the entrance gates, through the Pacific mist, pulling into the deserted parking lot. Jim had smiled to himself at the way he’d still, from force of habit, made sure that he’d placed the van carefully between the yellow lines.
Heather pulled on her blue sweater and slipped into the fresh air. “Come on, Dad.”
He joined her in front of a large notice board that showed a plan of Muir Woods and a little of the place’s history.
“How do you say that?” she asked, pointing.
“Sequoia sempervirens. Fancy name for the giant redwoods.” He turned around to orientate himself. “And that must be Mount Tamalpais,” he added, wondering if he’d pronounced it right. “Want to walk a little bit? Stretch our legs.”
“Sure. Dad?”
“What?”
“Looks like nobody else is here yet.”
“Yeah, it does. Still, it’s early in the day yet, isn’t it?”
They picked their way along the quiet, overgrown pathways, with the steady, monotonous dripping of water the only noticeable sound.
Finally they reached Redwood Creek and leaned on the wooden rails of the bridge to stare into the white-flecked water.