The Big Bang (37 page)

He recognized that lying there grinding his teeth with impotent rage would do him no good. He wished he could communicate with Addie, somehow. Call her, send her an email, something. Hell, even the Pony Express would be an improvement right now. What would he say to her, he wondered. He imagined himself writing her a letter, telling her about his fight to get to her. He wouldn't tell her about the two dead riflemen, he decided. Later, when she was older. She didn't need to know that now. He could tell her about Mike and the way he cared for the cattle. About the moccasins for Queenie. About towing the ice chests with the rope harnesses. She'd like those stories.

The corn husk mattress rustled with each breath Alec took. He doubted whether he could sleep. He was still doubting that when he woke up in the dark to find Becka snuggled up against his side and Queenie at her feet. It was almost cold in the basement, so he pulled up one edge of a quilt to cover her and then he slept without dreams.

It took Hanner nine days to fix the truck. Baldwin had never acquired basic automotive repair skills, so the most he could do was lend what Hanner referred to as “Strong back, weak mind” brute force assistance. Alec ended up taking several trips back to the RV to strip parts from it, notably the two twelve-volt batteries, radiator hoses, and belts.

During the periods he wasn't helping Hanner with the truck, Baldwin listened to the increasingly infrequent Emergency Broadcasts from Seattle. On day three they announced the elimination of both Russia and China as active threats to the United States but didn't say how it had happened. Hanner and Baldwin relaxed a bit at that, and allowed Becka to play outside with Queenie.

Mike looked after the little girl as if she were his own. There was a large stash of prepackaged brownie mix in the cupboards, and he did what he could with water and a few eggs he'd rescued from the filthy refrigerator in the kitchen and stashed carefully in the darkest, coolest part of the cellar. Baldwin would sit cross-legged on the wooden floor with Mike and Becka at daily afternoon tea parties, choking down the dry brownies with cups of well water. Becka would always insist on saving a brownie for Queenie and Mr. Hanner.

Alec spent part of his free time practicing with the pistol. Hanner had purchased enough ammunition for them to hold off the Bolivian Army, if necessary. Baldwin's strong feelings about the weapon had calmed. It was a tool, just as Hanner had said. No different from the ice chests or the pickup truck. It was useful and could help get him to Addie, if he used it correctly.

He explored the outskirts of the farm and was not surprised when he found a meth lab in a trailer about a mile from the farm. He backed well away from the trailer. He'd heard the chemicals used to make meth were volatile and explosive. With any luck, they'd be long gone before they had to worry about the danger from the chemistry set in the trailer.

He found that he couldn't get to sleep unless he wrote Addie a letter. After locating a spiral-bound notebook in one of the upstairs bedrooms, he took to sitting beside Becka as she was falling asleep and penning a description of the day. By the time he was done with a page or two, Becka and Queenie would both be asleep. He'd slip off his boots and lie down beside them; otherwise she'd wake in the night and stumble around until she found him. He might as well save her the trip.

Hanner went out to the lab trailer with him one morning. He did a careful inventory of the contents, and put a red X on two of the barrels. “Can you drag those over to the garage?” he asked Alec.

Alec hefted one. “I can manage.”

“Good. Bring them over in three days.”

“For?”

“Fuel. This stuff is volatile as hell. We might need it to give any gas we find some pep.”

Hanner had tasks for Mike, as well. “We need some kind of hand pump and rubber hose,” he told the trucker. “This was a farm. There's probably one somewhere.”

Mike enlisted Becka's help in the search, making it a game. One of the memories that Baldwin would carry to his grave was the image of the slightly chubby man in his glasses walking with the little girl across the dusty yard toward the barn. The man was pretending to be confused about where to look while the little girl chattered excitedly about all the places they could look and what they might find. Hanner had quietly hoped the pair might run across some living livestock on the grounds, but Baldwin had no such hopes after seeing the meth lab. He'd been around addicts before, and he knew how they had the reverse Midas touch of turning everything they touched into shit. If this farm had ever held any chickens or cows or pigs, the poor things had likely died of neglect long before.

However, Mike and Becka did find a hand pump, located behind the walls of the cellar, along with a strange stash of miscellaneous goods still in boxes. The three men agreed the goods were stolen property and most of it was now useless: MP3 players, televisions, computers. But they did find a few boxes of pristine, expensive camping gear, including sleeping bags and down jackets. Still in plastic bags, the fabrics were musty, but two days of hanging from the tire tree baked most of the smell out of them.

They had been at the farm just over a week when Hanner told Baldwin the truck was ready. Alec was so thrilled, he busted out a disco move he hadn't used since his days as a busboy, a tight spin that ended in a near split. Bemused, Hanner told him they'd spend the next day provisioning and loading it, and then they'd leave for Los Angeles.

Using wood stripped from the barn and a falling-down shed, Hanner had built a wooden shell over the back of the truck, a place for them to sleep in bad weather in a pinch. Inside it was a bit like a ship's cabin, with storage bins along the sides and overhead. Two passengers would have to ride in the back, as the cab would not be large enough for all of them and the dog. “We're goin'
Grapes of Wrath
style,” he announced, showing the finished product to Alec. “Can you drive a three-on-the-tree stick?” There was a short lesson after that in using the column-mounted shift lever on the old Chevy, which Baldwin picked up easily. Even easier was mastering the “kill switch” the wily cowboy had wired into the radio. If the radio was set on anything other than the fifth punch button, the truck wouldn't start. “Too easy to hotwire one of these old girls,” he declared.

Alec didn't think that he'd be able to sleep the night before they left, but oddly he felt sleepy as soon as he finished his nightly letter to Addie. He took his accustomed place beside Becka and Queenie, and dropped right off.

It took Baldwin twelve days to get to Los Angeles, or as close as he could. The trip from the farm house could have been done in twenty hours or less, back in the day, but Hanner's caution had them driving only during daylight, and using only the blue highways, so it wasn't until the third day after they'd left the farm house that they arrived in Southern California, moving against the flow of refugees fleeing the disaster.

He didn't know if it would ever be called Los Angeles again. It might be called “The place where Los Angeles once stood.” By the time they'd reached the outskirts of San Bernardino County they'd already seen the dead stacked by the sides of the road, some horribly burned, others covered with strange sores. Mike ended up sitting in the camper shell with Becka as they rolled through scenes that would have driven even Dante mad, the men doing what they could to shield her from the horrific sights around them.

Hanner and Baldwin had a quick conference. “I'm gonna guess we're on the edge of the hot zone here. Lot of those dead people we passed died from radiation.”

Baldwin was quaking with impatience. “Yeah,” he had to admit. “We can't take Becka into that. Can't take any of you into that.”

“But you're goin'.”

“I can walk. You guys take the truck, go somewhere safe.”

“You walk, you die. Driving will be dicey enough…you'll get enough RADs to make sure you die of cancer in twenty years. Walking, you'll be dead in a week.”

Both men were silent. Hanner said, “Two days. You set us down somewhere, give yourself two days to get it done.”

Baldwin thought about it. “Where? Every half-ass town or post office we passed was filled with refugees.”

“Yeah, we don't want to be there. Some of those poor bastards who are still walking will be radioactive themselves. And close like that, no sanitation, you'll get cholera and dysentery going through.” Hanner took a half cigarette from his shirt pocket, lit it up. He'd been rationing himself ever since they started on the trek to L.A. He took a slow, careful puff. “We can camp out for two days. Be good for Becka and Queenie to be out in the fresh air.” That decided, he extinguished the cigarette by pinching the end, and then returned it to his pocket for another day.

They drove up a state fire road in the low hills of the San Bernardino Mountains and found a sheltered, defensible spot under some pines where they could camp. It was within walking distance of the highway.

Baldwin insisted on unloading everything from the truck. Hanner didn't argue, not in front of the little girl. They told Becka they would be staying here for a couple of days while he went to look for his daughter. Becka became distraught. “You won't leave me, will you, Mr. Alec? You said you'd take care of me!”

Baldwin carefully untwined her arms from around his neck. “I'll be back, honey. I have to go make sure my little girl is okay.”

He topped off the tank with a little of the meth mixture and left all the weapons with Hanner. The cowboy shook his head, returned the Glock to him. “You don't go nowhere without this.” Alec set the pistol on the seat beside him. He gave Becka a kiss goodbye and Mike surprised him with a burly hug.

Hanner shook his hand. “See ya in two days.”

It only took eighteen hours. Most of that was driving, weaving around the stalled vehicles. He was still sixty miles outside of Los Angeles proper when the road became impassible, clogged with inert automobiles that had become wheeled tombs. The rears of the cars were scorched from the fireballs.

After parking the truck on a side street and strapping on his pistol, Alec climbed out of the cab. The street was gritty beneath his boots. He guessed there had been a blast near here; paint was blistered off one side of the houses. He was lucky, this time. The blast hadn't been nuclear, but a nearby brewery had been targeted for the crime of creating alcohol. The fireball had been deadly enough, however, knocking birds from the sky, shredding people with flying glass or pulping their internal organs from the concussion. The grit under his feet was composed equally of the remains of buildings and humans.

With the maps in his back pocket, Baldwin walked steadily toward the city. He passed no one living. By this time, it was apparent to the residents this was a land that now breathed death. Those who could had fled, those who could not had died.

He had to walk around the blast-damaged overpasses and soon had tied a bandana around his nose and mouth. The stench of rotting flesh was everywhere. Flies buzzed around the cars, in and out of windows. Once, he heard a loud pop and whirled, the Glock in his hand, only to find that a bloated corpse in a luxury SUV had finally exploded from the heat.

The sun had set when he climbed up a shattered freeway ramp, trying to get his bearings. The unmistakable blush of electric light glowed in the darkness, a mile or so further. He hurried toward them, coming to a National Guard checkpoint. It was composed of an armored troop carrier next to cement barricades that ran across the road, gasoline generator rumbling and powering the lights. At first, he thought the place was deserted. “Hey, anybody home?” he called. After a moment, a thin shadow on the back of the armor carrier stirred to life, and shambled toward him, a lank figure in a uniform.

“Jesus Christ!” Baldwin said in shock. The black kid inside the uniform was thin, with bare patches on his head and weeping sores on his exposed flesh.

“Yeah, man, it's ugly,” the grunt said. “What's your business, mister?” He turned his head politely and coughed. He coughed a long time.

“My daughter…she's in the city. I have to get her.”

The grunt wiped the bloody mucus off his mouth before speaking. “Sir, if she's in there, she's dead.”

“But…”

“They hit us with at least three bombs, sir. One down in Long Beach, one at UCLA, and one right in the middle of downtown. Bam, bam, bam, all at the same time. There was this column of fire that people could see in
Laughlin
. One of the guys from the AEC figured the temperature reached 10,000 degrees at the core, maybe 6,000 out toward the edges. There's nothing left in there but ash.” The ravaged face stared at Alex for a minute. “I'm sorry, sir.”

“What?” He didn't realize he was weeping. Tears were dripping off his jaw.

The kid in uniform sat down on the cement barricade. “Excuse me, mister, I get tired real easy.”

Baldwin blinked his eyes, screwed them shut, willed the tears to stop. Later, he might cry. He swallowed hard, forcing the pain back down into his guts, where it would live and feed until the end of his days. “I have to go look.”

“Why? Sir, it won't do any good. You wanna end up like me? Last time I looked in the mirror, I like to puked. What good is it gonna do anybody if you go there? Hell, lots of the streets were wiped off the earth. There's no landmarks.” He coughed again.

Alec wiped off his face with the back of his arm. “Then why are you still here, kid?”

The grunt smiled, showing bloody gums and loose teeth. “Hell, sir, cause I said I would be. I'm done, man, but I can still keep somebody like you from doing something useless.”

Baldwin looked past him at the ashen darkness. With an almost physical effort, he let it go. He turned Addie over to God, which is all he could ever do as a parent anyway. He prayed it had been quick for her and Kim, and that they'd been together at the last. The idea of his daughter facing her final moment frightened and alone almost broke him. He shoved the idea away from him and stepped closer to the soldier. “Is there anything I can do for you?”