“Damnation! Means them ornery scalpin’ Apaches might come a’sneakin’ up on us and we’re fresh out of firepower.”
Jeff Thomas was opening a can of tomatoes and he glanced over his shoulder at his colleague. “How come I got the short straw and you?” he said disgustedly. “All you can think of are those old Western vids. Now, if Carrie had been my traveling partner…” He allowed the sentence to drift away into the late-afternoon quiet.
“Yeah, the feeling’s mutual, buddy.”
It was a week since they’d parted from their friends on the high bluff overlooking the Stevenson Air Force Base, splitting into pairs, heading off in different directions.
Jed Herne had his roots clear across the continent, in South Strafford, Vermont. But he’d left his home state when he went to college ten years earlier and only returned once. Relations had been difficult between himself and his widowed mother, and time and distance hadn’t improved things.
The end had come eight years ago, when he’d struggled through appalling weather to make Thanksgiving with his mother. It had taken him two days in a rented four-by-four when blizzards closed down the airports. He’d also had a virulent attack of tonsillitis and a raging fever.
When he reached the trim white-board house, up a side street from the general store, his mother had reluctantly opened the screen door and peered querulously out at him.
“Least you could’ve got your hair cut,” she’d said.
Jed had spun on his heel and gotten straight back into the rented vehicle and driven away to rejoin his colleagues on the New York Giants.
He’d never spoken to his mother again after that day and hadn’t gone home for the funeral when cancer took her three years later.
Since he didn’t have any real reason to go anyplace, Jed had been more or less happy to keep Jeff Thomas company.
The journalist was eager to get to his apartment in San Francisco, close by Fisherman’s Wharf, and had also talked about going via San Luis Obispo, where he’d left his ailing father.
“Want some of these?” He offered the opened can to Jed, with a green-handled spoon sticking out of the top.
“Yeah, I guess. Anything else left in the cupboards? Looks like they cleared it out when they left.”
“They probably killed their dog before they went. There’s about a dozen cans of Bark ‘n’ Bite.”
Jed munched on the warm tomatoes. “Don’t think I’m ready for dog food yet.”
“There’s some pasta. Could light a fire and heat some water.”
Jed decided that he’d reached about the halfway mark and handed the can back. “Here,” he said. “Boned and deflavored by our chef, for your dining pleasure.”
He went back into the living room, dimly lit behind the drawn drapes. Jed was still limping slightly, favoring his weakened knee, and he sat down on a long sofa upholstered in a maroon Naugahyde.
It had been cold in the past couple of days, and there was a dusting of snow on the high, jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada towering above them to the west.
He heard the empty can clattering in the dusty sink. Then the journalist called from the kitchen, “Going to have a look around before dark.”
“Sure.”
The back door slammed, setting some brightly painted wind chimes tinkling above the television in the corner.
Jed stretched out, resting his muddied boots on a low table, moving a neat pile of Sierra Club magazines. Walking didn’t come too easily after his ligament operations, and the past week had seen them do a daily hike of twenty to thirty miles. Now he felt bone weary, ready to crash out into one of the pair of single beds in the chintzy room just along the corridor.
He let his mind drift back over the past seven days, since the group of eight astronauts had separated and gone in four different directions.
Within the first tiring hour, he and Jeff had realized that Zelig’s message was true. Virtually all the sagebrush and mesquite around the runway was dead, dry and brittle, their stems and leaves carrying the faint hint of the toxic red plant cancer.
As soon as they reached the nearest highway, intending to head north and then cut across the Sierras around Lake Tahoe, they’d encountered the first human signs of the mega disaster.