The truck lurches again.
The angle steepens.
I was against taking the casket thing cause it just pressed the truck down in the mud more, made it more likely Budd get stuck, but now it is the only thing holding the truck against the current.
The yellow froths around the bumpers at each end, and were shoutingto surely no effect, of course.
SUSAN
The animal is trying to eat us, it has seen Gene and wants him. I lean over and strike at the yellow animal that is everywhere swirling around us, but it just takes my hand and takes the smack of my palm like it was no matter at all, and I start to cry, I dont know what to do.
JOHNNY
My throat filled up, I was so afraid.
Bud, I can hear him grunting as he twists at the steering wheel.
His jaw is clenched, and the woman Susan calls to us, Catch him! Catch Gene!
I hold on, and the waters suck at me.
TURKEY
I can tell Bud is afraid to gun it and start the wheels to spinning cause hell lose traction and thatll tip us over for sure.
Susan jumps out and stands in the wash downstream and pushes against the truck to keep it from going over. The pressure is shoving it off the ford, and the casket, it slides down a foot or so, the cables have worked loose. Now she pays because the weight is worse, and she jams herself like a stick to wedge between the truck and the mud.
It if goes over, shes finished. It is a fine thing to do, crazy but fine, and I jump down and start wading to reach her.
No time.
There is an eddy. The log turns broadside. It backs off a second and then heads forward again, this time poking up from a surge. I can see Bud duck, he has got the window up and the log hits it, the glass going all to smash and scatteration.
BUD
All over my lap it falls like snow. Twinkling glass.
But the pressure of the log is off, and I gun the sumbitch.
We root out of the hollow we was in, and the truck thunks down solid on somethin.
The log is ramming against me. I slam on the brake.
Take both hands and shove it out. With every particle of force I got.
It backs off and then heads around and slips in front of the hood, bumping the grill just once.
ANGEL
Like it had come to do its job and was finished and now went off to do something else.
SUSAN
Muddy, my arms hurting. I scramble back in the truck with the murmur of the water all around us. Angry with us now. Wanting us.
Bud makes the truck roar, and we lurch into a hole and out of it and up. The water gurgles at us in its fuming, stinking rage.
I check Gene and the power cells, they are dead.
He is heating up.
Not fast, but it will wake him. They say even in the solution hes floating in, they can come out of dreams and start to feel again. To hurt.
I yell at Bud that we got to find power cells.
Thosere not just ordinary batteries, yknow, he says.
Therere some at DataComm, I tell him.
We come wallowing up from the gum-yellow water and onto the highway.
GENE
SleepingslowlyI can still feelonly in sluggishmomentsmomentsnot true sleep but a drifting, aimless dreamingfaint tugs and rippleshollow sounds. I am underwater and drowningbut dont caredont breathe. Spongy stuff fills my lungseasier to rest themfloating in snowflakesa watery winterbut knocking comesgoesjoltsslips away before I can remember what it means. Hardestyeshardest thing is to remember the secretso when I am in touch againDataComm will knowwhat I learnedwhen the C31 crashedwhen I learned. It is hard to clutch onto the slippery, shiny factin a marsh of slick, soft bubblessilvery as airwinking ruby-red behind my eyelids. Must snag the secreta hard fact like shiny steel in the spongy moist warmness. Hold it to me. Something knocks my sidea thumping. I am sick. Hold the steel secretkeep.
MC 355
The megatonnage in the Soviet assault exploded lowground-pounders, in the jargon. This caused huge fires, MC355s simulation showed. A pall of soot rose, blanketing Texas and the South, then diffusing outward on global circulation patterns.
Within a few days, temperatures dropped from balmy summer to near-freezing. In the Gulf region where MC355 lay, the warm ocean continued to feed heat and moisture into the marine boundary layer near the shore. Cold winds rammed into this water-laden air, spawning great roiling storms and deep snows. Thick stratus clouds shrouded the land for at least a hundred kilometers inland.
All this explained why MC355s extended feelers had met chaos and destruction. And why there were no local radio broadcasts. What the ElectroMagnetic Pulse did not destroy, the storms did.
The remaining large questions were whether the war had gone on, and if any humans survived in the area at all.
MR. ACKERMAN
Id had more than enough of this time. The girl Susan had gone mad right in front of us, and wed damn near all drowned getting across.
I think we ought to get back as soons we can, I said to Bud when we stopped to rest on the other side.
We got to deliver the boy.
Its too disrupted down this way. I figured on people here, some civilization.
Somethin got em.
The bomb.
Got to find cells for the man in the box.
Hes near dead.
Too many gone already. Should save one if we can.
We got to look after our own.
Bud shrugged, and I could see I wasnt going to get far with him. So I said to Angel, The boys not worth running such risks. Or this corpse.
ANGEL
I didnt like Ackerman before the war, and even less afterward, so when he started hinting that maybe we should shoot back up north and ditch the boy and Susan and the man in there, I let him have it. From the look on Buds face, I knew he felt the same way. I spat out a real choice set of words Id heard my father use once on a grain buyer whod weaseled out of a deal, stuff Id been saving for years, and I do say it felt good.
TURKEY
So we run down the east side of the bay, feeling released to be quit of the city and the water, and heading down into some of the finest country in all the South. Through Daphne and Montrose and into Fairhope, the moss hanging on the trees and now and then actual sunshine slanting golden through the green of huge old mimosas.
Were jammed into the truck bed, hunkered down because the wind whipping by has some sting to it. The big purple clouds are blowing south now.
Still no people. Not that Bud slows down to search good.
Bones of cattle in the fields, though. I been seeing them so much now I hardly take notice anymore.
Theres a silence here so deep that the wind streaming through the pines seems loud. I dont like it, to come so far and see nobody. I keep my paper bag close.
Fairhopes a pretty town, big oaks leaning out over the streets and a long pier down at the bay with a park where you can go cast fishing. Ive always liked it here, intended to move down until the prices shot up so much.
We went by some stores with windows smashed in, and thats when we saw the man.
ANGEL
He was waiting for us. Standing beside the street, in jeans and a floppy yellow shirt all grimy and not tucked in. I waved at him the instant I saw him, and he waved back. I yelled, excited, but he didnt say anything.
Bud screeched on the brakes. I jumped down and went around the tail of the truck. Johnny followed me.
The man was skinny as a rail and leaning against a telephone pole. A long, scraggly beard hid his face, but the eyes beamed out at us, seeming to pick up the sunlight.
Hello! I said again.
Kiss. That was all.
We came from and my voice trailed off because the man pointed at me.
Kiss.
MR. ACKERMAN
I followed Angel and could tell right away the man was suffering from malnutrition. The clothes hung off him.
Can you give us information? I asked.
No.
Well, why not, friend? Weve come looking for the parents of
Kiss first.
I stepped back. Well, now, you have no right to demand
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bud had gotten out of the cab and stopped and was going back in now, probably for his gun. I decided to save the situation before somebody got hurt.
Angel, go over to him and speak nicely to him. We need
Kiss now.
The man pointed again with a bony finger.
Angel said, Im not going to go and stopped because the mans hand went down to his belt. He pulled up the filthy yellow shirt to reveal a pistol tucked in his belt.
Kiss.
Now friend, we can
The mans hand came up with the pistol and reached level, pointing at us.
Pussy.
Then his head blew into a halo of blood.
BUD
Damn if the one time I needed it, I left it in the cab.
I was still fetching it out when the shot went off.
Then another.
TURKEY
A man shows you his weapon in his hand, hes a fool if he doesnt mean to use it.
I drew out the pistol Id been carrying in my pocket all this time, wrapped in plastic. I got it out of the damned bag pretty quick while the man was looking crazy-eyed at Angel and bringing his piece up.
It was no trouble at all to fix him in the notch. Couldnt have been more than thirty feet.
But going down he gets one off, and I feel like somebody pushed at my left calf. Then Im rolling. Drop my pistol, too. I end up smack facedown on the hardtop, not feeling anything yet.
ANGEL
I like to died when the man flopped down, so sudden I thought hed slipped, until then the bang registered.
I rushed over, but Turkey shouted, Dont touch him.
Mr. Ackerman said, You idiot! That man couldve told us
Told nothing, Turkey said. Hes crazy.
Then I notice Turkeys down, too. Susan is working on him, rolling up his jeans. Its gone clean through his big muscle there.
Bud went to get a stick. Poked the man from a safe distance. Managed to pull his shirt aside. We could see the sores all over his chest. Something terrible it looked.
Mr. Ackerman was swearing and calling us idiots until we saw that. Then he shut up.
TURKEY
Must admit it felt good. First time in years anybody ever admitted I was right.
Paid back for the pain. Dull, heavy ache it was, spreading. Susan gives me a shot and a pill and has me bandaged up tight. Blood stopped easy, she says. I clot good.
We decided to get out of there, not stopping to look for Johnnys parents.
We got three blocks before the way was blocked.
It was a big metal cylinder, fractured on all sides. Glass glittering around it.
Right in the street. You can see where it hit the roof of a clothing store, Bedsoles, caved in the front of it and rolled into the street.
They all get out and have a look, me sitting in the cab. I see the Russian writing again on the end of it.
I dont know much, but I can make out at the top CeKPeT and a lot of words that look like warning, including σOπeH, which is sick, and some more I didnt know, and then II O OΓOH, which is weather.
Whats it say? Mr. Ackerman asks.
That word at the top theres secret, and then something about biology and sickness and rain and weather.
I thought you knew this writing, he says.
I shook my head. I know enough.
Enough to what?
To know this was some kind of targeted capsule. It fell right smack in the middle of Fairhope, biggest town this side of the bay.
Like the other one? Johnny says, which surprised me. The boy is smart.
The one hit the causeway? Right.
One what? Mr. Ackerman asks.
I dont want to say it with the boy there and all, but it has to come out sometime. Some disease. Biological warfare.
They stand there in the middle of Prospect Avenue with open, silent nothingness around us, and nobody says anything for the longest time. There wont be any prospects here for a long time. Johnnys parents we arent going to find, nobody well find, because whatever came spurting out of this capsule when it busted openup high, no doubt, so the wind could take ithad done its work.
Angel sees it right off. Mustve been time for them to get inside, is all she says, but shes thinking the same as me.
It got them into such a state that they went home and holed up to die, like an animal will. Maybe it would be different in the North or the Westpeople are funny out there, they might just as soon sprawl across the sidewalkbut down here peoples first thought is home, the family, the only thing that might pull them through. So they went there and they didnt come out again.
Mr. Ackerman says, But theres no smell, which was stupid because that made it all real to the boy, and he starts to cry. I pick him up.
JOHNNY
Cause that means theyre all gone, what I been fearing ever since we crossed the causeway, and nobodys there, its true, Mom Dad nobody at all anywhere just emptiness all gone.
MC 355
The success of the portable unit makes MC355 bold.
It extrudes more sensors and finds not the racing blizzard winds of months before but rather warming breezes, the soft sigh of pines, a low drone of reawakening insects.
There was no nuclear winter.
Instead, a kind of nuclear autumn.
The swirling jet streams have damped, the stinging ultraviolet gone. The storms retreat, the cold surge has passed. But the electromagnetic spectrum lies bare, a muted hiss. The EMP silenced mans signals, yes.