6
Two hours later they make Ukiah, where they load the ash-encrusted Go Dogs Econoline with more Red Cross survival provisions, and find gas.
Mahina squeegees the filthy windshield while Brock tries to post a call for reinforcements on his heavily attended socials. His phone has only two bars out here, but he writes anyway, his orders as separate posts, like bullets:
Come on you lazy people, JOIN the GO DOGS here in Mendocino County where the Feather Fire is 100 % NOT CONTAINED!
Everything is burning! ALL ANIMALS HUMAN AND OTHERWISE MUST HELP! Bring food and water! Bring your motor homes and trailers if you have them.
All you soft-bodied techies, you Bay Area libs, charge up your Teslas and GET HERE NOW!
All you tough outdoorsmen and women, you survivalist and 2A dimbulbs, you mountain people, you survivalists-GET HERE NOW!
He and Mahina watch the ash-caked screen as Brock’s posts are slowly, one-at-a-time delivered.
On their way back up the highway to the evacuation center they stop at a checkpoint, where a hefty, bearded man in a black Right Fight T-shirt, a matching trucker’s hat, and an AR-15 slung over his shoulder comes to Brock’s window.
Brock knows him: Kasper Aamon — former Laguna Beach High School jock, former member in Brock’s grandfather’s Hillview Chapel, founder of Right Fight — a group of violent, anti-immigrant haters masquerading as conservatives. They’ve been having an extended, online, obscenity-ridden “debate” lately, Kasper claiming that Brock’s church was a “godless slum/front for a devil-worshipping surfer and a tax-dodging tech billionaire.”
Brock can’t reconcile Kasper, the skinny, ectomorphic high school football player who always seemed so focused on his game, with this hate-fueled thug he is now. Can’t quite believe that his body size and type have evolved so dramatically. Pastor Mike told Brock years ago that his prodigal black sheep Kasper would return to his fold someday. Because people can change. And they do.
Of course, both Brock’s and Aamon’s followers flooded the message chains, accelerating the heated arguments. There’s so much shit flying Brock can’t even keep up with it. Mahina has taken over most of the postings as well as getting out the weekly Breath of Life videos of Brock’s rambling, sometimes hours-long sermons, which he calls “rants.”
Aamon shines a flashlight into Brock’s weary eyes. Brock rolls down his window to a blast of hot wind. There’s a big white Tahoe with an after-market light bar squatting partially across both lanes of the highway, bringing drivers to a stop.
“I heard you heathens would be up here, agitating,” he says.
“Glad you’re following us, Kasper,” says Brock. “Man, that’s one fucked-up hat you have on.”
With a quick glance, Brock sees Mahina with her phone up, taking pictures of the man.
“Hey, wahine, why don’t you put that camera down?” Kasper Aamon chortles then breaks into a smile. “Yo, fighters! Look what came up in the net. Weird Brock Stonebreaker, our favorite preacher!”
Brock sees other Right Fighters approaching his van in the smoky darkness. There’s one at Mahina’s window now, eyes curiously wide, his light beam refracting through the glass. A woman behind him. Two more men join the first guy, and in the sideview mirror Brock sees another woman stopping to read the Go Dogs emblem and steadying herself against the wind. All variously armed, all wearing black Right Fight T-shirts with blue stars and red stripes, and the trucker hats that make their heads look huge.
Aamon gives Brock a sidelong stare. “The man with the church who doesn’t even believe in God.”
“Not in past gods, Aamon. But they’ve got a new one out now. We call it the Breath of Life. I’ve explained this to you before.”
“We’ve made it simple,” says Mahina. “The Breath of Life is a god.”
“’Zat right? Then what’s this new god stand for?”
“Life,” says Brock.
Aamon looks puzzled and affronted at the same time. “Ain’t that kind of circular? Can’t you be more specific?”
“Look around you.”
Aamon shakes his head. “What horseshit. Out of the vehicle, you little demon,” he says.
“Nope.”
“What’s inside?” Aamon asks, shifting the flashlight from Brock’s face to the back of the van.
“Provisions for the fire victims.”
“They turned us away at the evacuation center because we’re armed. We carry open, which, as you might know, is now legal in most parts of California.”
“We leave our guns in our cars,” says Brock. “So we can get people food and water and shelter. Help them, instead of just strutting around, playing Army man, like you fools. What good are you really doing?”
“I’m going to ask you, again, to step out of the vehicle.”
“Same answer.”
Kasper Aamon’s eyes bug as he shifts his light beam to Mahina, who has set down the phone and hefted her pistol-gripped, combat 12-gauge from the darkness at her feet. She goes nowhere without it. The man at her window springs away and Aamon takes a step back, too, trying to unsling his tightly strapped gun.
Brock swings open the van door, catching Aamon just right and knocking him to the asphalt. Then he stomps the gas and slams the door.
Engine whining under him, Brock doesn’t think these people will actually open fire on him, but his heart is racing and he hunches down behind the wheel in anticipation of small arms fire, his right hand on Mahina’s big shoulder, trying to scrunch her down, too, but she wrenches herself away and points her shotgun out the window.
“No!” yells Brock. “Mahina, no!”
She drops the gun back into the darkness.
There’s a tense few seconds as the Ford’s engine screams and upshifts, and the flats of water and soft drinks behind them topple and crash to the floor. Mahina mutters lowly to herself.
Brock waits for the bullets to slam into them, but by the time he realizes that nobody’s shooting, he’s around a bend and temporarily out of range.
One problem solved, but the next question is — will Right Fight come after them?
They’ve gone less than a mile when Brock sees in the sideview mirror not one, but three sets of headlights aligned behind him, running three abreast and gaining easily on the old van.
Mahina has taken up her phone again, holding it out the window to document their pursuers.
A red, searchlight-festooned Suburban pulls up on Brock’s side, as an old two-tone white-and-aqua Chevy pickup appears just a few feet from Mahina’s open window.
Brock can’t go right or left without hitting one of them, and when he looks up the straight, narrow highway ahead of him he sees distant headlights topping a rise. The pines that line the highway thrash, and a cloud of ash paints his windshield. Brock can hardly see. He hits the wipers, which help little. The trucks on either side of him are honking now, and the red Suburban has its remote rooftop floodlights trained on his face.
Brock squints and glances left a split second, just enough time to see the face of burly Kasper Aamon.
“Brakes, babe! Hold on!”
Mahina tries to work her big body down into the seat.
Brock presses his foot down, hard and steady, but not too hard; the old van’s brakes were never terrific and the antilock system is weak.
The tires bite and the Econoline hunches down. Brock feels the rear end shimmy, meaning crazy swerves if he pushes any harder.
Both vehicles roar past as Mahina shoots them on her phone, the drivers screaming and laughing as they merge into the right lane.