"Riots, looting, arson. A lot of people killed. There's a big refugee camp near Cedarville and they send raiding parties in who take whatever they can lay hands on. You want my advice, mister, you'll find someplace to stay overnight. They're a bunch of crazies, believe me."
Chase glanced over his shoulder at Ruth. "Is there another route into Oregon?" he asked the trooper.
"Not unless you go back to Standish and take one-thirty-nine through Susanville, and even then I couldn't guarantee it."
Standish was a hundred miles back the way they'd come; plainly out of the question. Chase said, "It's my friend I'm concerned about. I was hoping to make Goose Lake tonight to get her some medical attention."
The trooper shrugged. "I can't stop you, mister, but it's at your own risk, you realize that." He looked at the sun dipping behind the trees, casting long spiky shadows across the road and the concrete guardhouse. "I'd say you've got thirty minutes of real daylight left. Alturas is seventeen miles from here. If you move like a bat out of hell and stop for nothing and nobody, you might just make it. Good luck."
They might just have made it, but for the storm.
It was a weird kind of storm such as Chase had never seen before. Years ago it would have been described as freak weather, though today the freakish had become commonplace. Chase saw the alturas 5 miles sign flash by in the dusk, his body bathed in nervous sweat as he tried to solve the equation of distance versus waning light. It reminded him of a problem in physics, plotting a light-distribution curve:
Then, without any warning, the jeep was enveloped in a cloud of yellow rain, the color of piss. It smelled even worse. The headlights sliced feebly through the solid slanting downpour and a sudden wind flung it into Chase's eyes with stinging force.
He managed to slow down without swerving off the road, leaning forward to peer through the jerking wipers. The acrid, smarting smell of rotten eggs filled his nostrils. What the hell had they run into--a cloudburst of industrial waste?
A vivid flash of sheet lightning illuminated everything like a sepia print. Road, bushes, and trees were stained a muddy yellow, the scene fading at the edges where the gusting rain reduced visibility. As the lightning flickered out the air sparked and crackled with ionized particles. A million electrical fireflies danced in front of Chase's dazzled eyes. The smell tasted like old pennies on his tongue and he had to clench his teeth to prevent his stomach spurting up his throat.
Ruth's cry was lost in the boom of a thunderclap that shook the ground and the jeep. Impossible to survive out in the open. The highly charged air made every breath a searing agony, as if windpipe and lungs were on fire. This stuff would eat into their tissues like acid into copper.
Wiping the foul yellow moisture out of his eyes, Chase brought the jeep to a halt. Ruth handed him his goggles and respirator, having already donned hers. As he put them on, another lightning flash transfixed them in its glare: Goggled and masked, they resembled a pair of divers at the bottom of some primordial ocean, caught helplessly in fierce currents that threatened to sweep them away.
Once more, as darkness descended, the air came alive with fireflies, crackling and spitting. Chase helped Ruth into the passenger seat just as the crash of thunder pressed down on them like a giant hand, making the jeep rock on its springs.
"You all right?" Chase shouted.
Ruth nodded. Her dark hair was plastered to her scalp, the bandage a sodden strip stuck to her forehead. Chase cursed, incensed at his own stupidity. Where had he been living these past five years--in some fucking fairy tale? In the womb of the Tomb, that's where, safe and snug and protected from all the nastiness outside. Good God, he should have known that this wasn't going to be a joyride, and yet he'd calmly set out as if on a bloody Sunday picnic!
He slammed the jeep into gear and they moved on through the teeming sulfurous rain.
A mile or so along the road Ruth spotted a building. It was a service station, with no lights showing, and as they drove into the forecourt it became obvious why. The pumps had been vandalized, the cantilevered roof slanted at a dangerous angle, and every single window in the two-story stucco-fronted building had been broken. The concertina doors leading to the repair shop were mangled out of shape, as if rammed by a truckdriver with a score to settle.
