Slow Apocalypse (47 page)

Dave got the front wheels of the Escalade onto the ramp and started up. Behind him, the trailer moaned in protest. If the hitch were to come loose, this would probably be the place for it, he knew. And if it did, so be it. They would abandon it, and he wouldn’t spare it a backward glance.

It protested even louder as he got the back wheels on the ramp, then was silent for a moment as the big vehicle climbed, then cried out in pain again as the front wheels went over the top and the hitch was strained to its limit, at a very bad angle to the car. Dave juiced the accelerator and for a moment all four wheels smoked, and then the trailer lurched over the hump and was once more pushing him down the hill. They were gathering speed.

“Dave, should you—”

“Karen, don’t distract me now. The last thing I need is…”
a backseat driver
,
he thought, but bit the words off before he could say them. The last thing
she
probably needed was an angry word from him.

“Sorry,” she said. “My bad.”

He was almost at the T-junction with two burning houses ahead of him. He glanced to his left and saw one of the most terrifying things he had ever seen. It looked like a solid wall of fire rolling down the hillside. No wonder Karen had been nervous; she had probably seen it before he did, with his attention focused forward.

When he quelled his moment of panic he saw that his imagination had contributed a lot to his first impression. The fire was moving, and it was coming down the hill, and it was coming toward them and it would be there very soon, but he had a few minutes. He managed to make himself apply the brakes as he approached the intersection, though his every instinct urged him to take the turn at the highest speed he could manage, even if it meant going up on the two left wheels.

The tires squealed as he made the turn, and he felt terrific heat on the left side of his face. He let the Escalade find its own line through the curve, a line that took it perilously close to the curb on his left but with what looked like enough room to get by.

One wheel of the trailer hit the curb and it bounced high and came down hard. Dave winced, then saw the trunk of a palm tree almost dead ahead. The Escalade missed the tree by inches.

None of the women said a word. Probably too terrified.

“Is everybody all right back there?”

“I got bumped around a little, but we’re okay. Right, Addison?”

“I’m okay, Mom.”

“Jenna?”

“No problems, boss. That was some great driving.”

He realized, incredulously, that she was serious. Well, maybe it was great driving, and maybe he’d just been taking the curve too damn fast.

He calmed himself down with a deep breath, straightened the car out, and steered down the middle of the road. He hardly needed his headlights, the bright light of the following blaze cast a long, black shadow ahead of him but illuminated the sides of the road with a hellish light. He only had to stay in the middle.

At the intersection with the street just below his, only a short distance on a map but a long way down the hill, the guardrail on his right had been smashed.
A twisted piece of metal poked into the night sky. Twin streaks of burned rubber led directly into the hole. How could an idiot manage to go off the road there, Dave wondered, when the street went perfectly straight for another hundred yards? Dave was sure this was the launching pad for the yellow Ferrari that had passed them seconds ago. Maybe something had broken in the steering when he jolted up over the curb.

He had to slow to a crawl as he reached the 180-degree turn on Heartbreak Hill—there was simply no way to take it at any speed. Behind him the trailer weaved back and forth as he braked. He was alert for any wreckage below, but he didn’t see anything at first. Now he was a good ways below the fire, and the darkness enfolded them again. He moved as quickly as he dared, going due north now, toward the second 180-degree switchback. He looked up the terraced slope above him, but all he could see were the flames that were cresting on the drive above.

Suddenly, Ranger appeared in front of him, standing sideways on the road, breathing heavily.

“Daddy, let me get out and get him!”

“No, Addie, I can’t do that.”

It was academic, anyway, as the horse neighed loudly and bolted again, downhill. Dave heard a frustrated cry from the back. Now that the horse had moved he could see what had stopped it. The yellow car must have flown for a while, but it wasn’t an airplane, no matter how streamlined the designers had made it. He could see the groove it had plowed in the terraces above them.

Flames were growing higher up there. Now the remains of a six-hundred-thousand-dollar car lay half on the street and half-off, upside down, its shattered nose on the asphalt, its rear end on the dirt, its back broken.

“Nobody could have survived that,” Karen said.

“I don’t think so, either, but we have to look.”

“I guess you’re right. Yes, you’re right.” He felt something tapping on his shoulder, and realized she was handing him one of their Maglites. He took it, stepped out of the car, and hurried over to the wreck. As he approached it, he thought about the gun in his waistband, and had the awful realization that if anyone was alive in there, the only help he might be able to offer would be a bullet to escape death by fire.

He crouched and shined the flashlight into the small gap left between the crushed roof and the edge of the sprung door, which hung open a few feet. If someone was alive, he realized, he just
might
be able to pull him out.

He needn’t have worried. There was only one man inside, and his skull was clearly crushed. He took in the ruined side of the man’s face, saw the way his jaw had been almost ripped off, and looked quickly away. He stood up, and smelled gas. He hurried back to the car.

“Dead,” he snapped, and put the Escalade in gear again.

He eased around the Ferrari and continued down the hill. Soon they were passing Kingfisher Drive, then Meadowlark Terrace, both streets that angled off to the right. He could see that Addison had moved across the back to stare hopelessly up each street.

“Daddy, he could have gone up any of those streets. They’re all dead ends.”

“I know, honey, but that will leave him no place to go, right? He’d turn around.”

“Maybe not until the fire blocked off this end. Can’t we—”

“Hush, Addison,” her mother said. “Your father has to concentrate. And he’s right. Ranger knows the way down, he wouldn’t go up any of those streets.”

There were taillights ahead of him. More of them appeared as he continued down the hill. As he approached Oriole two cars came speeding onto Doheny, forcing him to put on the brakes again.

“You had the right of way!” Jenna shouted, indignantly.

“I don’t think that counts for a lot tonight.”

On down the hill more cars were appearing. Three people on bicycles zipped past him as he once more slowed to a crawl behind a Mercedes SUV. It was developing into a traffic jam. He had had no idea there were still so many people living on these streets.

“The fire’s gaining on us,” Karen said.

Dave could see it in his rearview mirror. He was down to ten miles per hour, and he knew the fire could travel a lot faster than that. Sparks had begun to rain down all around them. He could see fires starting in the brush beside the road.

“Karen, keep an eye on it. If we get totally jammed up here, we might have to get out and run for it.”

“I’ll dig out some blankets,” Addison said. “We could put them over us, maybe it would keep the sparks off.”

“Good idea,” Dave said. He didn’t know if it would help much, but it would give her something to do.

“We could pour some water on the blankets,” Jenna suggested.

“I like it,” Karen said. “We have a lot of bottles back here.”

Dave heard Karen and Addison scrambling around, but concentrated on the cars ahead of him. One car had just stopped, right in the middle of the road, three cars ahead of the Escalade. The driver of the car behind the blocking car stepped out, one foot still in the car, and started yelling. Dave rolled his window down and he could hear them.

“Get that piece of shit out of the way!”

“I’m out of gas! We need a ride!”

“If you don’t move it, I’m going to push you out of the way! Move it, damn it, we don’t have much time!”

The driver of the stalled car got out, waving a pistol around. The second driver hastily got back into his car.

“Everybody get down,” Dave said. He slid down as far as he could, still looking out the windshield. He heard one of the doors opening and saw Jenna step out on her side, crouching behind her door like the cops did on the television, her shotgun resting on the edge of her open window.

Ahead, the stalled driver had gone back to the second car and was pointing his gun at the man who had yelled at him. Two women got out of the stalled car, looking terrified, going to each side of the second car.

“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” one of the women was saying, over and over, sobbing as she got into the backseat of the car. The other woman couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sight of the fire bearing down on all of them.

“Get in the fucking car!” the driver yelled at her. Then he turned his attention to the man with the gun. “Push that piece of shit out of my way, or I’ll do it for you.”

The man with the gun got into his car and released the foot brake and it began to roll down the hill, the man’s left leg still outside the open door. As soon as the right front tire hit the curb the second driver gunned his engine. His front tires smoked as he screeched around the first car, catching the rear bumper and tearing it off, then smashing into the open door. If the man with the gun hadn’t quickly rolled to his right and gotten his leg inside, it would have been crushed. As it was, the door was severed and tossed twenty feet into the shrubs on the right side of the road.

“Hey, stop, damn it!” the man with the gun yelled, tumbling out of his car and falling into the street. The next car in line almost ran over him, but managed to brake in time. He stood up and aimed at the first car, and then a remnant of sanity seemed to return. He must have realized he had a better chance of hitting the women in the backseat—one about his own age and an elderly
one, possibly his wife and mother?—than the angry man who had hit his car. He began to run down the hill after them, still holding the pistol in his hand.

The man in the next car didn’t take the time to get out and move the bumper out of his way but simply rolled over it. Dave knew he would do the same when it came his turn. But the car in front of him rolled over the piece of metal and it snagged on the undercarriage. The car’s driver ignored it, speeding up with the bumper leaving a bright trail of sparks as it dragged along the pavement.

Off to his left Dave could see something happening that was what he had most feared. He could only get glimpses of it between houses and the thick plantings, the tall trees, the privacy walls, but when he could see the eastern slope of the canyon it was clear that the fire was leaping from treetop to treetop. It was windy enough down on the street, and he knew it would be blowing even harder up there. And for the first time he felt a backdraft, air being sucked in from the west as the fire consumed the oxygen and shot a great plume of heat and flame and sparks and whole burning branches high into the air. The fire was speeding along up there like a runaway train from hell, consuming the streets up the hill, Oriole Way, Skylark Lane, Thrasher Avenue, Tanager Way, Blue Jay Way, and on across the ridge to the streets over there, the ones that led down to Rising Glen Road. His whole neighborhood, and the one to the east, was going to burn.

The firebrands were falling thick and fast now, and something crashed down on the roof of the Escalade. It was burning, that was clear.

“Honey, we need to get that off the roof,” Karen shouted at him.

“I don’t think we have time, Karen.”

“The bicycles are up there, Daddy.”

“Maybe the tires will burn off them,” he said. “We have a few spares in the trailer, don’t we?”

“Yes, I put them there,” Jenna said.

“Then I won’t stop until we cross Sunset. I don’t want to lose my place in line here, we might never get back in.”

The backdraft was blowing harder now, fanning everything, including the burning branch on the roof. He could see sparks flying off to his left, and a few of them swirled in through his open window. It was bringing searing heat with it. He saw Jenna reach up carefully to touch the roof, and quickly draw her hand back.

“That ceiling liner might catch fire,” she said.

“Throw some water on it.”

Somebody in the back started to do that, but it was hard to throw water upwards from a bottle. A lot of it splashed on Dave and Jenna.

“That’s enough of this shit,” Jenna said. Dave heard her unbuckle her seat belt. She grabbed a bottle of water from Karen. “I don’t like having a fire over my head.” And with that she hoisted her small body up onto the windowsill, hanging on to her seat with one hand while with the other she reached over the roof and poured water onto the burning object up there.

“It’s a branch,” she shouted. “Not as big as it sounded, but it’s a hell of a thing to be blown into the air by the wind.”

“Get back in!” Dave told her.

“Just a minute. Anybody got a cloth they can hand me?”

Addison quickly pushed the edge of a blanket into Jenna’s free hand. A moment later Jenna had pulled the burning branch off to one side and tossed it into the road. When she slithered back inside she was slapping at her hair.

“Ouch! An ember fell on me.”

“Put it out with the blanket,” Karen told her. Jenna did that.

“Are you hurt?”

“No. Just a little singe.”

“Thanks, Jenna, but please don’t do that again.”

No one said anything as Dave continued down the hill at about fifteen miles per hour. He was nearing Sunset now, and wondering what he would find when he got there.

When they reached the choke point between the flatlands and the hills where the car barricade had been, where Dave had spent nights and days sitting in a lawn chair with his shotgun across his lap, he saw that some of the cars had been shoved aside.