She reached the fence bordering the road and followed it toward the gates. Ahead, she saw revelers staggering 1 through the entrance and up the drive to the winery, winding their way between the abandoned cars.
Several couples were furiously copulating on the ground to either side of the drive. She knew she could not get through without being seen, but the men and women near the gates were so far gone that they probably wouldn't care.
She reached the edge of the gate, stepped over a couple on the ground, and quietly slid around the side of the fence.
"I gutted the bitch with my fishing knife," one man was saying, his voice too loud. "Slit her from tongue to twat."
"What'd you do with her tits?" a woman asked excitedly.
Penelope hurried onto the road, moving between the parked and idling cars. The odor of wine was strong in her nostrils, and her body responded to it, her mouth drying out, begging for refreshment, but she forced herself to keep moving. She was still visible from the gate, and she figured she'd go down another hundred yards or so, then find a vehicle to escape in.
Escape to where?
She didn't know. She hadn't thought it out yet. The police station first, then ... She'd figure that out when she came to it.
"PENELOPE!"
Dion.
Dionysus.
"PENELOPE!"
It was a cry and a demand. She could hear it from the road, and it scared her but it spoke to her. It made her want to turn around and run into the woods and throw off her clothes and spread herself before Him.
It made her want to get into a car and keep driving until she reached another state.
A bolt of light shot upward from the trees, a pearly, opalescent beam in which glints of rainbow color could be discerned. She stared at it, feeling the strength in her legs give way. She had not realized until now the scope of the situation she was dealing with. Yes, she had seen Dion's metamorphosis. Yes, she knew what her mothers were and what he had become. Yes, she had seen the growing numbers of followers. But the extent of it all had not been brought home to her.
The light, though, the powerful, unwavering beam that extended upward to the heavens and seemed to illuminate the constellations, made her realize on a gut level how powerful Dionysus was. He was not just a monster. She had not witnessed merely a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation.
She had been witness to the rebirth of a god. A real god.
How could she hope to combat or run away from that?
"PENELOPE!"
There were figures now in the opalescent beam, swirling shades that resembled wraiths or Bmpvie ghosts. They flowed upward from the source of the light, coalescing in the sky high above the hills, rearranging positions until they formed a figure.
Her.
She sucked hi her breath. The image was unmistakable. It was white, the same rainbow-flecked white as the rest of the light, but it was clearly visible, a three-dimensional portrait of her that was so perfect in its details that it looked like a photograph.
But it was not a photograph.
It had come from him.
He wanted her.
"PENELOPE!"
She made her way into the center of the road and started to run. Around her, a few stragglers were rooted in place, staring up at her form as it shimmered in the sky.
He wanted them to catch her and bring her back to him.
To her left, on the other side of the road, she heard the loud sound of a mufflerless engine. Blue smoke was billowing from the tailpipe of a riderless Ford pickup.
She dashed across the center stripe to the truck and pulled open the door, hopping in. The vehicle had an automatic transmission, thank God, and she put it into Reverse and backed up. The truck smacked into the bumper of the small car behind it, but she didn't stop to assess the damage. She threw the pickup into Drive and took off, tires squealing as she swerved into the center of the road. She passed the winery gates, but did not look. She kept her eyes straight ahead.
And drove.
There were fires burning throughout Napa. She could see them, both the smoke and the flames, but she heard no sirens, saw no fire trucks. She turned on the radio. On the rock station, a DJ was praying to Dionysus, a drunken ramble that sounded like a plea for forgiveness. On the country station, Garth Brooks"
"The American Honky Tonk Bar Association"
was playing, while a group of people in the studio whooped it up in the background. The all-news station was silent.
She turned off the radio.
The streets of the city seemed curiously abandoned. There were few other cars on the road, and not many people on the sidewalks. She saw what looked like a dead body in front of the gas pumps at a Texaco station, saw a lone looter in the windowless Radio Shack, but that was about it.
Where was everyone? There were a couple of hundred, maybe a thousand people back at the winery and in the woods, but that was a small fraction of the city's population. What had happened to everyone else?
She turned onto Soscol, the street that led to the civic center and the police department.
And slammed on the brakes.
The street was filled with celebrants. Police cars and fire trucks blocked off large segments of several blocks, and between them wall-to-wall people danced and drank as though it was Mardi Gras. Many of them were wearing masks or makeshift togas. Many of them were naked.
She saw sparklers and fireworks fountains, champagne bottles and beer cans. Here and there fights had broken out, and partially uniformed policemen were happily beating people into submission with night sticks.
Broken Daneam bottles littered the roadway, and as Penelope started to back out, off the street, she heard the sound of glass smashing as the pickup rolled over one. Before she had even finished swinging around the corner, the left rear tire of the truck was flat, the vehicle listing badly, the steering wheel suddenly intractable in her hands.
She got out of the pickup and hurried down Third Street, away from Soscol. It was obvious that she wasn't going to get any help from the police. Two of their own were dead in the woods, eviscerated, and they were partying.
Where would she go now?
She didn't know. She had still not had time to figure out an alternate plan, and her mind was a blank. The best thing to do, probably, was to find another car and drive down to San Francisco, tell the police there, let them figure out what had to be done.
But would they be able to handle it?
Would the National Guard even be able to handle it?
She thought of that beam of light shooting upward into the heavens and shivered.
Vella.
Yes, Vella. Why hadn't she thought of that earlier? If she could get to Vella's house, she could use her friend's phone and call for help. Then they could use Vella's car to escape.
But what if Vella's parents had been converted?
What if Vella had been converted?
She'd cross that bridge when she came to it.
Her friend's house*was only a couple of blocks from school, and school was only a mile or so away. If she could She saw him at the far end of the street.
He was in front of the Mobile station, towering above the hordes of drunken revelers accompanying him. He moved strangely. Not jerkily, like a figure in a stop motion animation movie, but unnaturally. More fluidly perhaps than ordinary movement, but oddly, eerily. He glanced first one way, then another, his head swiveling in a way she had never seen before, and she quickly ducked into the doorway of the donut shop next to her. She trie the knob, but the door was locked, and she closed eyes and hoped that he and his followers would not < this way, would not come down the street.
He bellowed what she would have guessed from tone of his voice was an order.
But it was not an order.
It was her name.
He was looking for her.