Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

would encounter police of any kind and be identified as the infamous

traitor of whom the radio reporter had spoken, her hunger and bladder

pressure were both too mild to justify the risk.

On the road between Barstow and Vegas, she would be relatively safe, for

CHiPs were rarely assigned to that long stretch of lonely highway.

In fact, the threat of being stopped for speeding was so small (and so

well and widely understood) that the traffic moved at an average speed

of seventy to eighty miles an hour.

Fridays and Sundays, the traffic was so heavy that it looked startlingly

anachronistic in this wasteland-as if all the commuters from a great

city had been simultaneously transported back in time to a barren era

prior to the Mesozoic epoch. But now, on several occasions, Rachael’s

was the only vehicle in sight on her side of the divided highway.

She drove over a skeletal landscape of scalped hills and bony plains,

where white and gray and umber rock poked up like exposed ribs-like

clavicles and scapulae, radii and ulnae, here an ilium, there a femur,

here two fibulae, and over there a cluster of tarsals and metatarsals-as

if the land were a burial ground for giants of another age, the graves

reopened by centuries of wind. The many-armed Joshua trees-like

monuments to Shiva-and the other cactuses of the higher desert were not

to be found in these lower and hotter regions.

The vegetation was limited to some worthless scrub, here and there a

patch of dry brown bunchgrass. Mostly the Mojave was sand, rock,

alkaline plains, and solidified lava beds. In the distance, to the

north, were the Calico mountains, and still farther north the Granite

Mountains rose purple and majestic at the horizon, and far to the

southeast were the Cady Mountains, all appeared to be stark, hard-edged

monoliths of bare and forbidding stone.

At 4,10, she reached the roadside rest area that she had recalled when

deciding not to stop in Barstow. She slowed, left the highway, and

drove into a large empty parking lot. She stopped in front of a low

concrete-block building that housed men’s and women’s rest rooms. To

the right of the rest rooms, a piece of ground was shaded by sturdy

metal latticework on four eight-foot metal poles, and under that

sun-foiling shelter were three picnic tables.

The scrub and bunchgrass were cleared away from the surrounding area,

leaving clean bare sand, and blue garbage cans with hinged lids bore

polite requests in white block letters-PLEASE DO NOT LITTER.

She got out of the Mercedes, taking only the keys and her purse, leaving

the thirty-two and the boxes of She pushed the Mercedes up to seventy,

and other cars passed her, so she was confident that she would not be

pulled over by a patrol car even in the unlikely event that one

appeared.

She recalled a roadside rest stop with public facilities about thirty

miles ahead. She could wait to use that bathroom. As for food, she was

not going to risk malnutrition merely by postponing dinner until she got

to Vegas.

Since coming through the El Cajon Pass, she had noticed that the number

and size of the clouds were increasing, and the farther she drove into

the Mojave, the more somber the heavens became. Itreviously the clouds

had been all white, then white with pale gray beards, and now they were

primarily gray with slate-dark streaks. The desert enjoyed little

precipitation, but during the summer the skies could sometimes open as

if in reenactment of the biblical story of Noah, sending forth a deluge

that the barren earth was unprepared to absorb. For the majority of its

course, the interstate was built above the runoff line, but here and

there road signs warned FLASH FLOODS. She was not particularly worried

about being caught in a flood. However, she was concerned that a hard

rain would slow her down considerably, and she was eager to make Vegas

by six-fifteen or six-thirty.

She would not feel half safe until she was settled in Benny’s shuttered

motel. And she would not feel entirely safe until he was with her, the

drapes drawn, the world locked out.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *