Chase was determined to reach Goose Lake before nightfall. Keeping to the side roads and the backwoods hadn't been such a great idea after all; whatever Reno had to offer couldn't be much worse. He kept his foot pressed down hard on the accelerator, willing the jeep to take off and fly. When daylight came he thought it would somehow diminish the memory of those figures seen by flashlight, bring back a measure of everyday sanity, but the reverse had been true. Seeing for himself the terminal effects of pollution sickness had intensified his feeling of dread and filled him with a desperate panic that Cheryl might be suffering the same fate.
The hard shoulder and inside lane of the highway were strewn with wrecks. People were living in some of them. Small fires burned in front of doors hanging off their hinges, cooking utensils and belongings were scattered around, and ragged sooty-faced children played among the dented metal and rusting engines.
Fleeing from the south they'd got this far and run out of money, gasoline, goods to barter, and luck. Now they were stranded in no-man's-land with nowhere to go. Large recently erected signs every quarter mile warned: absolutely no admission to immigrants within city limits! So here they were and here they stayed.
If conditions were this bad here, what must they be like back east in the densely populated industrial areas of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati? Chase visualized it as a vast stinking Dick-ensian slum where the skies were perpetually black and the rivers choked with putrescent sludge, inhabited by gray ghosts who trudged to work and carried out their tasks like automatons. According to the newscasts goods were still being produced and sold, the service industries still functioned, life went on "normally" . . . but for how much longer?
"What's happening, can you see?" Ruth asked, craning to look over the windshield.
Chase slowed down as the stream of traffic built up into a solid jam. It was a perimeter checkpoint manned by state militia and city police. Each vehicle and its occupants were being closely scrutinized. The guards were wearing respirators, Chase saw, their visored white helmets gleaming like skulls in the murk that had thickened the nearer they got to the city. He recalled with a small prayer of thanks that Drew had packed respirators and goggles, which at the time had struck him as both morbid and unnecessary.
"They'll want to see our IDs," Chase said, fumbling for his own. He noticed that many of the vehicles, the majority in fact, were being directed onto a slip road. These were the rejected, turned back to swell the tide of flotsam along Interstate 80.
The line crept forward with infuriating sluggishness. The vehicle in front was a clapped-out microbus with taped-over cracks in its tinted windows and a bent TV aerial on the roof. It contained a family, with two or three kids and an old woman who stared morosely through the rear window, chin propped in her hand.
A semicircle of militia, weapons drawn, covered all angles. Chase watched a barrel-chested sergeant who topped six feet examining the family's ID cards and papers. His voice sounded hollow and distorted inside the faceplate.
"State your business in Reno."
"Just passing through."
Chase couldn't see the driver's face, but he could imagine it from the tone of voice. Timid, hopeful, anxious, sweating.
"Destination?" demanded the burly sergeant.
There was a fractional pause. "San Francisco." The driver rushed on with a hurried explanation. "We got relatives there, officer, my wife's parents. They wrote and promised us a place--"
"San Francisco is off limits. Has been for six months." The sergeant pointed with a gloved hand. "Pull over to the right. Access denied."
"But we
"In that case you've crapped out twice," the sergeant said indifferently. "Nobody with an illness or disease of any description is allowed inside city limits. Now move this fucking heap of rust before I have it impounded. That's if you don't want to forfeit everything except the clothes you stand up in."
The microbus shuddered off to the right and Chase took its place. He handed the documents over. "We're both doctors. We have a patient who urgently requires--"
"Did I ask you a question?" The sergeant glanced at the ID cards and held them over his shoulder without looking. "Check these on Memorex."
Chase blinked. His eyes were starting to sting. He noticed that Ruth's eyes were red-rimmed too. Photochemical smog activated by the sun's rays. Welcome to California.
"State your business in Reno."
"Passing through."
"Destination?"
