Deep Trek

There was a stillness to the afternoon.

The pewter clouds had drifted away, leaving patches of high cumulus dappling a pale blue sky. The temperature had begun to fall again, and he was worried that more snow might intervene before they covered the last miles to Muir Woods.

There was a hand-painted notice propped at the corner of the roadblock. The kind that had become only too familiar since the Aquila’s return to Earth.

Aquarius Welcomes No One. Turn Back. No Gas No Food No Water No Beds No Room.

“Thanks a lot,” said Mac, walking carefully closer. “Welcome to Aquarius, the xenophobia capital of California.”

There wasn’t anyone guarding the twenty-foot-high mass of jagged, broken wood.

At least, nobody living.

Mac’s guess was that the man, if it had been male, had died at least three weeks ago. The clothes were wind-washed rags, the skin tight and leathery, tanned almost black. As usual, all the soft tissue of the body had long gone. Eyes, lips, face. And some creature had worried at the torso, tearing away the flesh. There was a small-caliber single-shot rifle across what had once been the sentry’s lap.

Paul walked up to join Mac at his signal that there was no danger.

“Where’s this Aquarius place?” he asked, glancing at the high sides of the cliffs looming above them.

Mac bolstered the handgun. “Could be anywhere around. He’s been dead for a while. They never came to move him or sent a replacement. Chances are the settlement’s inhabitants died of illness or… or something.”

“Can’t get around it,” said Paul McGill, running his fingers through his luxuriant beard. “Burn it?”

His father considered that option. “Suppose that’s best. Bring up a couple of gallons of gas. It might draw attention to us, though.”

Paul nodded. “Sure. But I don’t figure that’ll be a problem. Set the fire, then get ready to roll. This stuff should burn easily, Dad.”

“Then we’ll do it.”

The blaze was ferociously fierce, the flames raging nearly a hundred feet high, the radiant heat making Mac shield his face from over by their vehicles. His son had been right. Within less than ten minutes the block had burned down enough for them to take a run at it, but they waited until there were no signs of live embers to continue on.

There had been no shots, and nobody came after them as they drove out and along the winding road toward the west and the cold, dark sea. There were some torn tents and a couple of tumbledown shacks by a stagnant pool, which might have been all that remained of the dead community of Aquarius. They never knew.

IT WAS late afternoon on December 8.

They rolled over the hills, north of Tiburon, past the turnoff towards Corte Madera.

Now they were in a dead land, filled to overflowing with the urban corpses. The citizens of San Francisco, starving and beyond the edge of desperation, risking the barriers and armor of the National Guard and the state troopers, had tried to flee the catacombs of the city.

Time and again Mac had to ease the massive RV off the highways, squeezing past the rusting ruins of dozens of gridlocked cars and trucks.

It crossed his mind more than once that it might be better to abandon the Phantasm and stick to the jeep and the four-by-four. But they still faced an uncertain future, perhaps traveling on northward into the teeth of what might be a bitter winter. The shelter and comfort of the RV could easily mean the difference between surviving and dying.

Paul flashed his lights in the signal to halt, and Mac eased the vehicle over, avoiding a stalled Volvo station wagon with a snarling skeleton behind the wheel. The power brakes hissed on, and he switched off the engine and jumped down, aware of stiffness in his back and shoulders. He stretched to try to ease it a little. Behind the jeep he saw that Jeanne had pulled the four-by-four onto the hard shoulder.

“How much farther, Dad?”

“Only a few miles.”

“Before dark?”

“Don’t see why not.”

Jeanne and Pamela had climbed out and joined them, while the two youngest children peered from the Phantasm, faces white blurs behind the windows, looking like little orphans locked away in an attic by a cruel stepmother.

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