Blindly, four-wheeling through shattered timberland and spinning out over “roads” which Sophie had never seen, the H4 struggled on. It was swallowed by the wasteland.
When Silas once more awoke, dehydrated and terrified and begging for his Jenny, there was panic, even an argument. No, there was no way to reach 119 if 119 refused to be rediscovered. Even such basic concepts as “north” and “mile” began to lose their meanings. Wherever the mud wave-roads carried them, they had to keep moving. To stop for too long would be certain death. And to idle out in the open? Or to kill the engine, to crowbar open the damaged hood and look for leaks? For both of them to sleep? Such things were unthinkable.
God, how are we going to refuel? Sophie drove a little faster, discerning the remnant of the road by assessing the depth of two tiered swathes of ash. How are we going to endure this? Impossible. We’re going to die out here, never knowing how close we were, how far.
Oh, Lacie.
I am so sorry.
But she kept her foot on the pedal, she steered. Machine actions, tap the gas, move the wheel, became instruments of faith. Refusing to see all, she kept her eyes wide open, peering out through the gaps in the lead curtains and gazing out over the murky rind of Hell.
Silas kept two of Tom’s guns at the ready, a .380 Luger Lightweight Compact Pistol and the Galil ARM 7.62mm assault rifle. Sophie did not believe he could really fight if she needed him, but he was there, the grizzled marksman, sometimes even propped up on one elbow despite delirium and pain.
He did not speak for the longest time. The one thing worse than Silas’s hoarse cries, Sophie realized, was this absolute and hopeless silence.
More black rain.
In searching for 119, chasing the ghost-lit echoes of an immeasurable and wavering twilight outside of time, Sophie was forced to drive through old dozer-cleared tracks spidering off the length of something that at least possessed something like a name: National Forest Service Road NFSR-857. She forced the Hummer to climb through piles of acrid and cracking mud, around the tangled burn-knots of uprooted pines. Many of the trees had not been burned, there on that side of the mountain’s hollow. But all had been blasted down and shattered, pointing in the same direction. A compass of deceit. The “roads” she toiled over in those first hours of the outside were little more than trenches in the dirt, runnels formed by the absence of tree-fall, with bulwarks of hardened and dynamited sludge to either side.
She goaded the vehicle, and while he was lucid, Silas tried to improvise a box-brace for his Luger pistol. The rain cleared most of itself away again and congealed into oiled mist. Sometimes, burst carcasses of dead animals were revealed.
Neither of them saw a living thing.
V-2
THE WORLD OF DOLLS AND BLACKENED GLASS
After countless hours, they found themselves driving near to the crater of a vaporized lake, a hollow of once-water surrounded by hills of clay. Under the clay and deep, there were chasms gashed out from the underworld, razor scarps shot through with jet black glass, bearded by stumps of incinerated pines. Pale dead fish were scattered around the crater like silvery confetti.
Silas thought it might have been Dory Lake. Sophie could not say.
If it was, they had somehow driven over newfound hills and gotten slightly east of 119, never realizing they had crossed on over it. How? Had the sets of guardrails been buried in the ash, with new “roads” of baked mud and sludge cross-hatched over the old by wind and rain? Was that possible? If it was, then she would need to find — What was the name of that street, where the Carsons used to live? — she would need to find Dory Lakes Drive, yes, that was it, and get pointed… to where? In what direction?
Downhill. There never would be again a verifiable west, an east. There was up, and there was down. Around the lake, around the gash of the underworld and down from here.
She remembered a line, a fracture, from Tom’s favorite and endless poem, the Paradise of Milton:
Indeed.
Find it, Sophie.
And yes, there were fractured skeletons of houses looming up out of the yellow dark, demolished playthings of the titan, toys in their splintered hollows. By the skew of the molten windows and boiled paint, here and there, some of the imploded mansions seemed almost familiar.
Driving out over concrete circles, over sidewalks which sometimes peeked out from the ash-clay in streaks of meaning, Sophie discovered the great hill where her peers’ and doctors’ mansions had once been. “Carson Country” as Tom had called it, a gated wreath of luxuries once home to dinner parties and fundraisers for the Girl Scouts, had fallen prey to Nihil.
And there is nothing, evermore.
But there was. Where the mansions had once been whole, there were blown-apart giant flowers of pipe and timber. Along the lower scarp of Dory Hill, there at the edge of sight, shone little cascades of pink and parti-colored shapes sticking out of the woodpiles. Rotting bodies, shards of bathtub, shattered armoires and wardrobes which had spilled out their gouts of clothes.
For some reason, down the slope, the bodies had tumbled down the hill, the farthest of anything. Some of the dead were lain in the misted rain like pallid angels. Why had they fallen the farthest? Perhaps some of those lost souls, refusing in the end the ludicrous sanctuary offered up by basements or garages, had even begun to leave, to run away.
There in the down-distance, a hand, a face. Staring up at Sophie, inkblot eyes. Old. It was certainly someone’s grandmother.
You down there. Sophie found herself questioning the silence. Did I barely know you? Did Lacie ever have a sleepover with your grandchild?
And there, a young black man without arms. You, did we ever walk through the casinos, did I ever walk past you?
Sophie stared down the hill to where the mist cut the rest of the pallid shapes’ identities away, her foot poised over the brake as the H4 coasted along over a street, a concrete path of the Once-World which was miraculously almost clear.
Behind her, Silas was groaning. She realized that his teeth were chattering.
Downhill. There was even a bent stop sign still standing. The way through the ash was open enough on that windswept bottom end of Dory Lakes Drive, that she could steer with only one hand.
More torn and desiccated bodies, some of them had first names. After awhile, Sophie gently bit her other hand to keep from screaming.
But the hill-tomb of Dory held wisdom, a key. For beneath the mud-furrowed mouth of Dory Lakes, there was what was left of 119.
Thank you. Oh…
Sophie let out a ragged breath. She felt a compulsion as she drove past the last of the mansions’ pavement circles, to change Silas’ bandages, his diaper, to clean him before they would go on. Once she was on the relatively smooth undulating stretch of 119, she did not want to stop unless absolutely necessary. She put the H4 in park, crawled into the back seat. She explained what she was doing to him and when he began to disagree, she said very clearly that he had no choice.
“You can shoot me if you must, Silas. But I am going to clean you. You are not going to wallow in your own filth and waste away. Remember our shower? No? I’ve seen it all before. You are going to stay with me, and your dignity as well. You are going to remain a man. Now hush.”