Ill Wind (32 page)

The man took a full step backward. “Where are my parents?”

The question threw her. “Who?”

“Jan and Howard Brooks. I’m Connor Brooks, their son. They live here.”

Now Heather began to understand, and her initial anger gave way to a little pity. “Sorry, but they moved. I’ve rented this place for four years now. I used to get junk mail addressed to Brooks, but that was a long time ago.”

Standing on the porch, Connor Brooks shook his head in amazement. “They moved? They didn’t even tell me!”

Heather stayed quiet; it sounded like a bad joke.

Connor thought it over. “I don’t suppose they left a forwarding address?” His eyes were wide and blue and hopeful. Heather sized him up and for some reason liked what she saw.

“Afraid not. The landlord might know, but he lives down in Sedona, and the phones are out. I don’t expect you’ve got a car?”

Connor grasped the porch railing as if to prevent
himself
from falling. “If I had a car that worked it wouldn’t have taken me a week to get here. I can’t believe it! After all I’ve been through—and they moved!” He ran his hands through his hair in apparent anguish, but Heather got the distinct impression it was just an act. He tried to peer inside the house. “Hey, could you spare anything to eat? I’m starved.”

She thought for a moment. Did she really want this guy around? Everything he said sounded reasonable. Still . . .

She said, “Power’s gone out, but there’s some leftovers in the fridge. Wait here.” She bolted the door after she stepped back inside.

She watched him for a minute from the corner window. He stepped off the porch and looked up and down the street. Jamming his hands in his pockets, he rocked back and forth on his heels, waiting for her to return.

Heather grabbed some stale bread and cheese from the refrigerator; before opening the front door, she returned to the kitchen and took out two beers.

Connor turned when she came outside. “Not much of this looks familiar to me. My parents moved here after I left home, and I . . . I haven’t been back to visit too often.”

She raised her eyebrows. “No kidding.” She handed him the food. “Here.”

His eyes widened at the beer. “Thanks!”

As they spoke she could not say why she found him intriguing, but Connor Brooks gave the impression of being a survivor. He had no connection to her old life. She began to calculate whether it might be worthwhile having him around.

He seemed to read her thoughts. “Do you think I could impose a little more? I’d really like a shower. It’s been a rough couple of days, and I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.”

She thought it over; the suggestion sounded so preposterous that it made her pause. Funny what a difference a few hours can make. The old Heather would have been flustered, even terrified—and that was enough to make her change her mind. “You do smell like you could use a bit of freshening up. The water will probably be cold, but I’ve got a hose out back you can use.”

“Out . . . back?”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Heather smiled. “Times are changing. Besides, I’ll bring you a towel.”

Chapter 40

Alex Kramer’s two horses were excited to be taken out. Todd ran his calloused right palm along the hot, soft neck of Ren, the palomino, patting gently; he stepped into the stirrup, hauling his leg over the horse’s back.

He reached back to gather the reins from Stimpy’s bridle, looping them around the saddle horn. The corral gate stood open, and Todd squeezed Ren with his knees, nudging the horse toward the open road. “Let’s head ‘em out!” he said.

Todd reveled in the warm redolence of the horses. The thick scent brought back fond memories of his younger days, as did the hollow clatter of hooves on the hard road surface. It had been in a long time since he’d taken a horse and slept under the Wyoming stars. Of course, it would be different riding through downtown San Francisco, and a heck of a lot more dangerous. He kept Alex’s old Smith & Wesson loaded and at his side.

Whispering to the horses, Todd guided them alongside the paved road. The hills were quiet and still. It was time to move on, to stop waiting for the world to fix itself. Besides, he had to go rescue Iris, whether she wanted it or not. Staying in the city would be plain stupid. If the downtown areas weren’t already burning, the mobs would
ge
out of hand before long.

Todd kept his eyes forward, Alex’s abandoned house at his back. On the winding road, he passed mailboxes, driveways, but the houses sat quiet, deceptively peaceful. Blue-gray wood smoke curled from one chimney. He came across a man walking his German shepherd, as if it were a normal afternoon; Todd and the man nodded to each other, and the dog barked, but the horses continued down the road.

It seemed unreal to him. Elsewhere in the world, planes were crashing, buildings falling apart, communications severed. The last he had heard, the president was stuck out of the country. The C&W radio station had mentioned something about the Vice President being killed in an elevator accident, but they had not been able to confirm the rumors . . . and then the radio station blinked out, replaced by static. Todd couldn’t get any other stations on the radio either. When he pried it open, he discovered the plastic circuit board had melted.

Only a week ago he’d been flying in the Oilstar helicopter, spraying the Prometheus microbe. At the time, Todd had considered the
Zoroaster
spill a terrible disaster. Now his entire definition of disaster had changed.

After an hour he reached U.S. highway 101, which stretched down the Marin peninsula, across the Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco and then the south bay. Todd took the two horses at a rapid trot down the middle lane. The hard road would not be good for the horses’ hooves, and he moved over to the grassy median whenever he had a chance. He wondered if the asphalt itself would turn soft and spongy once the petroplague got hungry. The microbe’s appetite for plastics seemed random and unpredictable.

He felt idiotically out of place on horseback in the middle of a six-lane highway that should have been filled with vehicles zooming by at 70 miles an hour. He felt like a ranger in the wilderness.

Groups of scavengers moved among the dead cars littering the highway, smashing into locked cars or just pushing windshields through the soft insulation holding the glass in place. One tall man without a shirt tucked a set of hubcaps between his elbow and his ribs, leaving a serrated smudge of grease and dirt along his side. A middle-aged woman in a red canvas jacket carried a paper grocery bag stuffed with loose cables and metal housings of car stereo boxes. A blond-haired teenaged boy slashed out seatbelts with a long knife, draping a long tangle of them over one shoulder. Todd couldn’t imagine what the kid would want them for. As Todd approached, the boy jerked his head out of a Volvo and flashed a broad grin.

At a fast trot, the horses made good time on the empty highway. Before long, Todd reached the cavernous tunnel that cut through a ridge. The horses trotted into the tunnel, their hooves booming inside the enclosed space.

Cars had stalled there, smashed into a tangled mass. Both lanes had been cut off, and no traffic had been able to pass this way for days. The ceiling lights had gone out, but enough daylight streamed in from both ends to let him ride close to the cold tile wall. The horses moved nervously from the close shadows. The empty metal hulks made ticking sounds. Ren and Stimpy began to trot, startled by the reverberating explosions of sound made by their own hoofbeats.

Finally bursting out to the sunlight, Todd took a deep breath of the cool ocean-tainted breeze and stared ahead at the Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond that at the San Francisco skyline.

Not long ago, Todd had been below on the heaving deck of the
Zoroaster,
trying to offload as much of the crude as possible before the tanker plunged into the channel. There had been helicopters, news crews, boats, rubberneckers . .
. .

Now, as he guided Ren and Stimpy onto the bridge, he heard only the whistling sounds of the wind. The foghorns no longer sent forlorn tones out to warn ships. The water, far below, made hushing sounds against the support piers. In addition to the sea dampness, the air carried a sulfurous stench. Leaking crude oil from the sunken
Zoroaster
continued oozing to the surface, and Prometheus thrived.

Puffing and red-faced, a sweat-suited jogger ran by, intent on the sidewalk in front of his feet. Todd shook his head—people were crazy! How could anybody go through a daily routine in the middle of a crisis? He seated his cowboy hat more firmly; no matter how much the world changed, he thought, some rituals remained the same.

The bridge cables high overhead thrummed in the breeze. The lowering sun dazzled on the water far out to sea. He saw no Navy ships or freighters or fishing trawlers. A shiver went up his spine as he realized just how deeply the plague had separated the world into thousands of tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Grim-faced backpackers headed along the walkway, moving briskly in a forced march. A gaunt man with red-rimmed eyes, gray stubble on his face, and
a SURF
!
t
-shirt, called to Todd, “Hey, you’re going the wrong way, man!”

“I know,” Todd said.

A young couple with three children—the oldest no more than eight, and crying—carried lumpy packs on their shoulders as they hiked toward the Marin peninsula, in the opposite direction Todd was going. The little four-year-old girl carried a cloth doll with yarn hair; dark indentations marked where plastic button eyes had dissolved.

Within ten minutes the two horses approached the southern end of the bridge. Waves crashed against the rugged shore of Fort Point. The deep-green cypress trees and red-roofed military housing of the Presidio shone with brilliant color, as if someone had twisted up the contrast knob. At the end of the bridge, an unlit sign demanded STOP! PAY TOLL. Todd directed Ren and Stimpy through the empty
toll booths
. He smiled ironically to himself as they passed through the unused “carpool” lane.

On horseback, he entered San Francisco.

#

Todd avoided the densest part of the city, planning to ride full-tilt through Golden Gate Park, keeping his head low and a firm grip on Stimpy’s reins. His horses were among the most valuable possessions in the world right now. He kept the pistol within easy reach and urged Ren and Stimpy to a fast trot.

Reaching the large forested area of the park, the small lakes, and the wide grassy clearings made him forget he was in the middle of a city, for a short while. In the grassy expanse, Ren tried to stop and graze, but Todd wouldn’t let him, jabbing with his boot heels to keep up the pace. He saw no kids tossing baseballs or
frisbees
, no fun and games.

A cluster of men and women worked by the trees with
hand saws
and axes taken from downtown hardware stores. Not one of the people looked accustomed to manual labor, and they took frequent rests. With a scurry, they fled to one side as a eucalyptus came crashing down, then they set to work chopping it into smaller pieces. A mound of firewood sat stacked to one side. Teenagers took turns with
sledge hammer
and wedges to split the chunks. Two older women with new rifles stood guard over their wood.

Todd urged Ren and Stimpy eastward out of the park and into more dangerous crowds, following the Panhandle under large oak trees. Old Victorian houses towered over the boulevards on either side of the narrow strip of park, but Todd kept the horses on the grass as long as he could, until he was finally forced to return to the city streets in Haight-Ashbury. It did not surprise him to see various apocalyptic street preachers hawking recipes for salvation to the wandering crowds. Every time someone looked at Todd too closely, he conspicuously pulled out the pistol.

In front of a row of dark coffee shops, Chinese street vendors had set up food kiosks with sidewalk barbecues, burning sticks of what appeared to be broken crates and pieces of furniture. They cooked on Weber kettle grills and cast-iron woks over open fires. Looking at the exotic food as he rode by, Todd had a sudden craving for a decent steak. He wondered how hard it was going to be to find food from now on.

A lump caught in his throat, claustrophobia from the jammed, breaking-down buildings, the sounds of breaking glass, shouts from the sidewalks, he realized he had lost his way. “Calm down,” he said to himself, “calm down.” Breathing deeply, trying to quell his panic, he reined the horses to a stop and unfastened his
saddle bags
to take out a map. He unfolded it and tried to get his bearings, figuring out the best way to return to Highway 101. He felt absurd sitting on horseback in the middle of a deserted intersection, staring at a street map like some lost tourist.

He had just decided which way to turn when a series of popcorn noises came from a rooftop a block away. It took him a moment to identify them as gunshots. Across the street, Todd saw a flash of stone dust and heard the
spang
as a bullet ricocheted from the wall of a building. “Jeez!” he cried and yanked out the pistol again, waving it in the air. Another gunshot struck nearby. Todd fired off a round in the direction of the sounds, but knew he had no chance of hitting anything.

“Yah!” he shouted at the horses. Both Ren and Stimpy galloped away from the sniper, down Van Ness toward the highway leading out of the city.