“Hell,” John said firmly.
“We saw Los Angeles, gentlemen,” April said out of the gloom.
“I didn’t recognize anything,” John said. “Not even like Livermore, or the farm fields. I mean—”
“There wasn’t anything real there,” Jerry finished for him. “Just all… spinning.”
April advanced and pulled her gown away from her legs to sit on a log. “I think we should tell each other what we saw, as close as we can describe it. I’ll begin, if you wish.”
Jerry shrugged. John continued to stare into the fire.
“I think I recognized the outlines of the San Fernando valley. It’s been ten years since I last visited Los Angeles, but I remember coming over the hills, and there’s Burbank, and Glendale… I just don’t remember what they looked like, back then. Hazy air. It was hot, not like now.”
“The haze is still there,” Jerry said. “But it doesn’t look the same.”
“Purple haze,” John said, shaking his head and chuckling.
“Now if you agree that we saw the valley—”
“Yeah,” Jerry said. “Maybe that.”
“Then there was something in the valley, all spread out.”
“But not solid. Not made of solid stuff,” John said slowly.
“Agreed,” April said. “Energy, then?”
“Looked like a Jackson Pollack painting all spun around,” Jerry said.
“Or a Picasso,” John said.
“Gentlemen, I’d agree, and amend a little—it looked a great deal like a Max Ernst to me.”
“Don’t know about him,” Jerry said.
“Something spinning in the middle. A tornado.”
April nodded. “Yes. But what kind of tornado?”
John squinted and rubbed his eyes. “Spread out at the bottom, all kinds of spikes going out—like lightning, but not glowing. Like shadows of lightning.”
“Touching,” John said. “Then disappearing.”
“A tornado dancing, perhaps,” April suggested.
“Yeah,” the twins said.
“I saw trains of disks weaving in and out, under the tornado,” she continued. “Did you?”
They shook their heads in unison.
“And on the hills, lights moving, as if fireflies were crawling up to the skies.” She had her exalted look again, staring dreamily over the fire. John wrapped his hands around his head and continued shaking it.
“Not real,” he said.
“No, indeed. Not real at all. But it must have some connection with what my son did.”
“Shit,” John said.
“No,” Jerry said. “I believe you.”
“If it started in La Jolla, and spread all over the country, then where is it oldest and most established?”
“La Jolla,” Jerry said, looking at her expectantly. “Maybe it got started at UCSD!”
April shook her head. “No, in La Jolla, where Vergil worked and lived. But all up and down the coast, it spread fast. So maybe all the way down to San Diego, it has united, come together, and made this place its center.”
“Fuck it,” John said.
April said, “We can’t get to La Jolla, not with this in the way. And I’ve come here to be with my son.”
“You’re crazier than shit,” John said.
“I don’t know why you gentlemen were spared,” April said, “but it’s obvious why I’ve been.”
“Because you’re his mother,” Jerry said, laughing and nodding as if at a great deduction.
“Exactly,” April said. “So gentlemen, tomorrow we will drive back up and over the hill, and if you wish, you can join me, but I will go by myself if need be, and join my son.”
Jerry sobered. “April, that is crazy. What if that’s just something really dangerous, like a big electrical storm or a nuclear power plant gone haywire?”
“There ain’t any big nuclear power plants in LA,” John said. “But Jerry’s right. It’s just fucking crazy to talk about walking into that hell.”
“If my son is there, it will not hurt me,” April said.
Jerry poked the fire vigorously. “I’ll take you there,” he said. “But I won’t go in with you.”
John looked hard and seriously at his brother. “You’re both bugfuck.”
“Or I can walk,” April said, determined.
Jerry stood with his hands on his hips, staring resentfully at his brother and April Ulam as they walked toward the truck. Sweet purple-pink fog spilled out of the LA basin and drifted at tree-top level over Fort Tejon, filtering the morning light and leaving everything without shadow, ghostly.
“Hey!” John said. “Goddammit, hey! Don’t just leave me here!” He ran after them.
The truck crested the hills on the deserted highway and they looked down into the maelstrom. It looked very little different in daylight.
“It’s like everything you’ve always dreamed, all rolled up at once,” Jerry said, driving intently.
“Not a bad description,” April said. “A tornado of dreams. Perhaps the dreams of everyone who’s been taken by the change.”
John clutched the dash with both hands and stared wide-eyed down the highway. “There’s about a mile of road left,” he said. “Then we got to stop.”
Jerry agreed with a curt nod. The truck slowed.
At less than ten miles an hour, they approached a curtain of dancing vertical streamers of fog. The curtain stretched for several dozen feet above the road and to each side, rippling around vague orange shapes that might have once been buildings.
“Jesus, Jesus,” John said.
“Stop,” April said. Jerry brought the truck to a halt. April looked at John sternly until he opened the cab door and stepped out to let her exit. Jerry put the shift lever into neutral and set the brake, then got out on the other side.
“You gentlemen are missing loved ones, aren’t you?” April asked, smoothing her tattered gown. The maelstrom roared like a distant hurricane—roared, and hissed, and bellowed down a rain gutter.
John and Jerry nodded.
“If my Vergil’s in there, and I know that he is, then they must be, too. Or we can get to them from here.”
“That’s crazier than shit,” John said. “My wife and my boy can’t be in there.”
“Why not? Are they dead?”
John stared at her.
“You know they aren’t. I know my son is not dead.”
“You’re a witch,” Jerry said, less accusing than admiring.
“Some have said so. Vergil’s father said so before he left me. But you know, don’t you?”
John trembled. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Jerry stared at the curtain with a vague grin.
“Are they in there, John?” he asked his brother.
“I don’t know,” John said, sniffing and wiping his face with one arm.
April walked toward the curtain. “Thank you for your help, gentlemen,” she said. As she entered, she became scrambled like a bad television picture, and then vanished.
“Look at that!” John said, trembling.
“She’s right,” Jerry said. “Don’t you feel it?”
“I don’t know!” John wailed. “Christ, brother, I don’t know.”
“Let’s go find them,” Jerry said, taking his brother’s hand. He pulled gently. John resisted.
Jerry pulled again.
“All right,” John said quietly. “Together.”
Side by side, they walked down the few yards of highway and into the curtain.
36
Her leg cramped on the eighty-second level. With a twist and a cry, she fell on the stairs and knocked her head against the railing. One knee caught a stair edge just below the patella. The flashlight and radio flew from her hands onto the concrete landing. The bottle of water wedged between two stairs and burst open, soaking her and dribbling away as she watched, paralyzed with pain. It seemed hours—but was probably only minutes—before she could even pull herself up to the landing. She lay on her back, eyes sandy from needing to weep and having no tears.