“That was then, lover.” Jeanne had tears glistening in her brown eyes.
“Sure. And this is now. I know which I prefer.”
They rested in Muir Woods for two whole days, recharging their batteries physically and mentally.
When they eventually set off toward the north again, they left the four-by-four behind them. Mac drove the Phantasm with Jeanne and the two younger girls. Paul and Pamela shared the responsibility for the jeep and the gas tank between them.
It was a beautiful dawn, with the sun rising away across the land, sending its lances of bright silver far over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
Chapter Thirty
Gas was becoming a serious problem for the Hilton two-vehicle convoy as it picked its slow and careful way along the winding blacktop that had been Highway 1.
Jim’s guesstimate as they left the relative security of Muir Woods had been that they had enough between them to travel about ninety to a hundred miles up the coast.
“Means we need to find some to syphon,” said Carrie Princip. “Either go right down to the sea, or up inland. This area was kind of low on population, so there might be some around.”
Kyle Lynch shook his head in disagreement. “Think about the floods of desperate refugees that came pouring out from San Francisco. They’d have drained everything dry. We’d be lucky if we find enough to ignite a mouse fart.”
At first it looked as if the black ex-navigator of the Aquila might have been right.
The road was very congested for the first thirty or forty miles. Dozens of stalled vehicles, many of
them still containing the withered corpses of their drivers, littered the way. It took them until well past noon to reach as far as Marshall, barely thirty miles north. Twice they had to take tortuous detours along dirt roads, even driving through the entrances to small farms and houses, cutting across the chewed-up remains of gardens and allotments.
Kyle was driving the second of the four-by-fours, with Carrie at his side. Sly Romero was sleeping contentedly in the back, snoring gently.
“This is like the moon, Carrie. Or some totally undiscovered planet out back of Alpha Centauri. Virtually no plant life left, except for a few patches of bright fresh moss among the dead crimson shrubs. Wish I had my camera with me. Next time we make a stop anywhere near a town, I might go look for one. Doubt that too many people looted cameras when the crunch came. I miss my photography as much as most things.”
“Don’t know what I miss most. I know that I missed my parents when that jackknifing son-of-a-bitch semi wiped them away up near Yellowstone. On their silver wedding anniversary yet. That was two years ago, but it seems like a whole lifetime away. I guess I miss simple things that are gone forever. Flopping out on a sofa with bare feet in front of a fire on a Sunday evening in winter, with a bag of sour cream-and-onion chips, watching the Saints beating the holy crap out of the Bears.”
“I miss Daddy,” came Sly’s quiet voice from behind them, barely audible above the noise of the engine.
THEY’D JUST PASSED through Bodega Bay, where a skinny child had heaved a stone at Jim’s truck, denting the side panel just below the window.
“Reckons that anyone driving has to be an enemy,” said Heather, showing bland indifference to the brief attack.
“Guess so. Watch out. There’s another one coming up, on your side.”
“It’s an old woman, Dad.”
“So it is,” he said, slowing down to a crawl, waving a hand out of the cab to warn Kyle.
It was bizarre. Here in the devastated wilderness of California was a neatly dressed elderly woman, apparently trying to hitch a ride.
Jim put on the brakes. “Stay here, Heather,” he said. “I’ll take a look.”
The land on both sides of the road was clear of undergrowth and relatively flat. He didn’t see how it could be an ambush. There had been plenty of better places for that within the past four or five miles.
The old lady was wearing a high-collared blouse with lace at the cuffs. A short quilted jacket was her only concession to the damp chill of the afternoon. A long skirt came down to midcalf, meeting the tops of her muddy black-buttoned boots. She had on what Jim could only think of as a bonnet with a cluster of multihued feathers stuck into its green ribbon. Her cheeks were a healthy pink, and she had on extremely thick glasses, making her watery blue eyes look gigantic.