“Before, did you—”
She held out her hand. “Give me the knife, Pete. Or the gun, or whatever you’ve got.”
He jerked his head to face her. His body shifted away. “No.”
“Please. You can’t do any good with it.”
All at once fury swamped him in a big wave, like the tsunami she had spoken about but evidently didn’t understand. None of them understood anything, the wimpy Survivors! He shouted, “What’s wrong with you, McAllister? What? The Tesslies wrecked my future! Everybody’s future! And you want to just welcome them back because they gave us the Shell and the Grabs and—when the Grab machinery appeared it didn’t even have any learning circle to teach you that adults can’t go through and so we lost Robert and Seth until that day Ravi jumped on it during a game and it happened to brighten and he came back whole! And still you never blame the Tesslies, you never blame anybody for anything, you just talk about the good of the whole but to not blame the Tesslies—Fuck, fuck, fuck! Do you hear me? Fuck! We’re not…not gerbils!”
“No. But you’re not thinking clearly, either. Survival—”
“Blame the fucking Tesslies! Hate them! Kill them if you can!”
“Pete—”
The platform brightened.
Pete pulled his knife, glared at the pregnant woman on the floor, and jumped into the Grab.
JULY 2014
The Yellowstone Caldera lifted upwards.
For several years the surface land had been rising as much as three inches a year, but a few years ago the uplift had slowed and stopped. Now the ground inched upward again. A swarm of minor earthquakes followed, barely detectable at the surface. Tourists went on admiring the geysers and the bubbling, mud-laden hot springs. Rumbling at low sonic frequencies set off alarms at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory and the White Lake GPS station.
Jacob Kahn rushed to his monitor. “Oh my God,” he said. It was not a prayer.
JULY 2014
Two more nights in cheap motels, one without AC in a sweltering July. Two more days on library Internet connections. On her own laptop Julie had run and rerun algorithms as new data became available. Her driving had taken her steadily north, along the coast. Now she was in Massachusetts, north of Salem. She knew where she was going. She had accumulated enough data points to be sure.
The Eve’s Garden break-in in Connecticut.
The baby snatched on the Massachusetts coast while her teenage sister slept in the same room.
The Loving Pets burglary in New Hampshire.
Thefts at REI in southern Maine and Whole Foods in Vermont.
She was running out of money, and not all her news-watching had turned up the slightest hint that anyone was looking for her. On the other hand, neither had she turned up any more information on Dr. Fanshaw or mutated plant-killing bacteria. Both the glory hound and the deadly mutation seemed to have vanished, which was in itself scary. Still, she would have to go home soon. Or go somewhere.
Alicia had a cold, probably from exposure to all the germs in all the libraries. Julie had a massive headache. Was she just being stupid, imagining herself some dramatic fugitive from a third-rate action movie? Maybe she was just as narcissistic as Geoffrey Fanshaw. The sensible thing was to make the observation, alert Gordon, and go home.
At a Kmart she bought a camcorder. Alicia sneezed and fussed. Julie got them both back in the hot car and drove north on Route 1. The algorithm pinpointed a Maine town, Port Allington, for the next incident. Also a time: between 5:30 and 5:45 tomorrow afternoon. Which was odd, since all the other incidents had occurred in the middle of the night or in early morning. Google Earth showed the location to be in a retail area centered on a large Costco.
She spent nearly the last of her money at a Ramada Inn, several steps up from the places she’d been staying. “You’re lucky to get a room at all,” the desk clerk told her. “It’s high season for tourists, you know. But we had a cancellation.”
“Oh,” Julie said. She was tired, headachy, frightened. Alicia fussed in her car seat.
“Tomorrow the Azalea Festival begins over in Cochranton. You here for the festival?”
“No.”
“You should go. My niece Meg is going to be crowned Miss Cochranton Azalea.”
“Congratulations.”
“You should give the festival a look-see.”
It took Julie a long time to get to sleep. Her theory—fanciful, dumb, insane—kept spinning around in her head. When she finally slept, she dreamed that Miss Cochranton Azalea, dressed in a pink prom dress covered with blossoms, said, “That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard. I thought you were supposed to be a scientist!”
The next morning she felt even worse. But today would end it. She fed Alicia, bathed her, had an overcooked breakfast at a Howard Johnson’s. It was after noon when she got on the road. Another sweltering day. During just the short walk from restaurant to car, sweat sprang out on Julie’s forehead and her sundress clung to her skin. Alicia, in just a diaper and thin yellow shirt, cried while Julie strapped her into her car seat. Julie turned on the AC and powered down the windows to flush the hot air from the car.
Only a few hours to drive, and it would be over.
All at once loneliness overtook her. She hadn’t talked to anyone but motel clerks, librarians, and waitresses in days, and you couldn’t call any of those things conversations. She felt near to tears. Ordinarily she despised weakness—she and Gordon had had that in common—but the way she’d been living wasn’t human. And what did it matter if she turned on her cell? In a few hours the camcorder would have her proof, and she doubted that the FBI or CIA or whoever—even if they were looking for her—could locate her that fast if she were on the road. She needed to talk to somebody. Not Linda, who would ask too many questions. She would call her brother. Not to say anything personal—she and Jake seldom did that—but just to hear his voice.
The phone had nine voice mails waiting.
Sitting in the Howard Johnson’s parking lot, the AC finally making the car bearable, Julie stared at the blinking “9.” Very few people had this number; she’d conducted her professional life on the more secure landline. Gordon? Had the investigation reopened?
Her fingers shook as she keyed to voice mail.
“Julie, this is Jake. Listen, are you due for vacation? If so, don’t travel out west. Nowhere near Yellowstone, do you hear me? I’ll call and explain more when I have a minute to think clearly.”
A mechanical voice informed her that the message was dated days ago, the day Julie had left D.C. The next message was also from Jake, a day later: “Sorry to alarm you, Sis, but my warning still holds. Some weird shit is happening here, signs that the Yellowstone Caldera could blow. You remember, don’t you, I told you that for years now it’s been ranked ‘high threat’? Well, I guess it’ll rank that way a while longer since nothing seems to be happening even though there’s enough magma down there to blow up the entire state. Well, several states, actually. But as I said, it seems to have settled down. But don’t come out here until you hear from me.”