‘You’re right,’ said Ed, with exaggerated ferocity. ‘I would kill you. Della – will you go get me a can of that Moms Kitchen Corned Beef?’
Della hesitated, and then walked back to the wagon. She came back a few moments later carrying the red-and-yellow can with the smiling woman’s face on the label.
‘Okay, where are they?’ asked Ed. ‘And you make sure you tell me straight!’
Pearson stared at the corned beef as if it were the Holy Grail. His stomach rumbled in audible peristalsis, and saliva ran from the corners of his mouth.
‘I haven’t eaten nothing since Wednesday,’ he said. ‘Only a pack of taco chips I found in one of the burned-out houses.’
‘Where are they?’ insisted Ed.
‘I’ll tell you where they are. They’re holed up at the Hughes Supermarket on Franklin and Highland. Them and maybe a hundred more from one of those nutty churches. You can’t get in there if you try. They’ve got the whole place barricaded. The rumour is that they’ve got themselves a whole stockroom of food, enough to last them for nearly a year; and that’s why the place is surrounded.’ Ed looked at Pearson acutely.
That’s the God’s-honest truth, mister. I swear it on my liver,’ the old man promised.
‘All right,’ said Ed, and tossed him the can of corned beef. ‘Don’t try eating all that at one sitting. You’ll be sick as a dog.’
Pearson may have been starving for five days, but he caught the can of corned beef as neatly as a professional ballplayer. Then he was off, hopping and skipping over the ashes with his prize held against his chest. Ed called, ‘Pearson!’ but it was too late. The old man was gone.
Ed walked slowly back to the Chevy. Shearson had managed to control his coughing now, but he was breathing in deep, shuddering wheezes which sounded as if every tube in his bronchial system was clogged with mucus.
‘Are you ever going to let us rest, you infernal farmer?’ he wanted to know. ‘Or are you going to trail us around the west for the rest of our days?’
‘The senator’s sick,’ said Peter Kaiser. ‘Unless we get him someplace where he can rest, he’s going to get a whole lot worse.’
Ed said, ‘My wife and child are apparently barricaded in a supermarket on Highland Avenue, along with a whole bunch of other people. From what that old hobo said, they have plenty of supplies, maybe enough for a year. It makes sense to me personally to try to go join them. I mean, my family’s there. But I also think it makes sense for all of us to try to get in there. Even if we don’t stay for more than a day or two, at least it’ll give us a breathing-space to get ourselves orientated, and decided what we’re going to do next.’
Shearson wiped his face with his handkerchief, and coughed. ‘For goodness’ sake, Hardesty, stop giving us lectures in logic and feasibility and take us somewhere where we can get something to eat. And drink, too, if that’s not too much to ask.’
‘Senator?’ said Karen, and passed Shearson a Dixie cup of lukewarm water.
‘I shall have nightmares about tepid, plastic-tasting water for the rest of my life,’ said Shearson, swallowing it noisily. ‘Do you know something? I’m so much thinner than I was last week that if I stood up, my pants would drop to my ankles.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ said Ed, glancing at Shearson’s huge belly.
Della said, ‘I don’t think we have much of a choice. I vote we try to get into the supermarket.’
‘I suppose that means I go too,’ put in Shearson. Della gave him a grin like caustic soda.
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘I’ll go have a word with everybody else in the convoy and tell them what we’ve decided. They’ll all be able to stay with us, or go to their own way, whatever they want.’
‘What about me?’ asked Peter Kaiser.
‘You stay with me,’ Shearson reminded him, hoarsely. ‘I still pay your salary, remember, or at least I will do when I can get my hands on those bank accounts on Grand Cayman.’
‘The world’s collapsed around his ears, and he still thinks about his swindled money,’ marvelled Della.
‘My dear,’ Shearson reminded her, ‘everything that ever happens in this whole world has something to do with money. Even in the middle of a famine, you can’t lose sight of that.’
Two of the convoy decided to drop out and make their way to Mexico straight away – Jim Rutgers and his family, and everybody who was travelling with Sam Gasiewicz. There was a short but emotional goodbye on the Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga Beach, while the shadowy ocean seethed and foamed, and distant fires burned far away to the south. Moira Gasiewicz wept on Ed’s shoulder, and then her husband tugged her gently back to their car, nodded to Ed, and climed into the car himself.
Ed stood watching the red tail-lights curving away towards Santa Monica, and then he said to Della, ‘All right. Let’s go see what’s happening at the supermarket.’
It was the third attack that night. Soon after dark, the first hails of bricks, bottles and chunks of broken curbstones had racketed and splintered against the supermarket doors, and blazing gasoline had been splashed on the sidewalk outside. Then, like demons from purgatory, the crowd had come rushing through the flames with home-made cudgels and axes and fenceposts wrapped in barbed-wire, and they had hammered on the doors, so furiously and so hard that many of them had smashed their fingers and knuckles. Inside, the congregation of the Church of the Practical Miracle had stood silent and frozen, waxworks, unable to do anything but watch.
A second attack had come at nine o’clock, when one of the crowd had climbed on to the supermarket roof and tried to throw a Molotov cocktail in through the skylight. Tony, crouched behind the liquor counter, had shot at the intruder five times with his .22 target pistol as the man tried to light his home-made bomb, and had hit him twice in the arms, flesh wounds. The bomb had flared up, and splashed fiery gasoline all over the intruder’s clothes. Screaming, his hair on fire, his arms flapping in great circles of flame, he had run across the roof and toppled head-first off the edge. His body had blazed on the sidewalk for almost twenty minutes.
Now, they were attacking again, and this time the thunder of rocks and bottles against the doors was relentless and deafening.
Carl was sitting next to Season in her corner by the fruit shelves. They had been sharing the last of their dinner – a can of soya hamburger helper and a can of Green Giant spinach – while Vee had been singing Sally to sleep. Carl looked at Season with wide eyes, and he didn’t have to say anything at all. They both knew that it was only going to be a matter of time before the mob broke in, and when they did, there wouldn’t be any mercy for any of them. It was no good pretending that what had happened to Granger Hughes wouldn’t happen again.
‘Do you think it’s possible to – make things easier?’ asked Season, in a high, dry voice she scarcely recognised as her own.
‘In what way?’ asked Carl.
‘Well, for Sally. To make it painless.’
Carl pulled at the skin of his cheeks as if it were tired pink elastic. ‘I guess Mike Bull has a whole lot of pharmaceuticals we could use. Aspirin, something like that. But that would take time.’
There was a crash of reinforced glass as the mob outside began to hurl themselves at the supermarket doors with hammers and tyre-irons.
‘You don’t want to do it too soon,’ said Carl. ‘And on the other hand, you certainly don’t want to do it too late.’
‘She’s so pretty,’ said Season, looking across at Sally’s fine blonde hair, her eyes filled with tears. ‘I couldn’t bear it if they hurt her.’