“I know I’m going to wake up. I know this is a nightmare,” Patty said.
“Yeah, I keep thinking that, too.” Bell said. He slapped her hard across the face with the back of his hand. She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “But you see it isn’t, is it?”
Patty touched her stinging check and nodded. “How?” she said. “How do we do it?”
“You had to go to the bathroom. I’ll tell him I cut your handcuffs off. I’ll hand him the pocketknife when I explain what I did. Go in there and close the door. Sit on the toilet like you’re peeing,” Bell said.
She did what he asked.
* * *
The freeway out of Nevada City, heading east into the Sierras, was mostly empty. Only a few cars had gotten through from Sacramento, and those that did were driving in the fast lane at over 100 miles an hour, hoping to get away from the chaos behind them.
Price had decided that he would rather travel in the slow lane and be able to turn off the highway, if necessary. A man, at a strangely normal-looking rest stop he’d pulled into, driving in a camper full of people from Southern California, had told him that tens of thousands of Howlers were roaming Highway 50 near Sacramento. He told Price very few cars were getting through.
“What about the authorities?” Price had asked the man. Howard had stopped to pee, not being able to hold it any longer, and pulled off the freeway just below Emigrant Gap.
The man, armed with a hunting rifle, was standing guard while his friends filled water bottles from the tap at the rest stop. The man had told Harold an incredible story about what had happened in Los Angeles: how they’d escaped the hordes of Howlers only because he was a gun dealer and was coming back from a gun show in San Diego with all his stock of weapons and ammo when it all started.
“There are no cops now. They’ve all gone home to look after their own families, I guess. The only authorities we saw were some Homeland Security guys and their wives looting a Wal-Mart for ammo and food,” the man said. “They were set up real good; they had one of those high-off-the-ground crowd-control vehicles the cops use. But they didn’t want to help us, that’s for sure. We’ve had no help at all.” The gun dealer was Price’s age, and the strain of the last two days showed on the man’s grizzled unshaven face.
“Do you know what’s happened to people?” the man asked him. He introduced himself as Jon Wein and said he was born in Douglas, Arizona. It was odd, Price thought, that the man had told him where he was born. It was as if the two had crossed paths in the Old West.
“My name is Howard ... Howard Price.”
“Please to meet you, Howard,” Jon said.
“Jon, I don’t know what’s happened for sure, but I think it could be radiation poisoning—from Fukushima.”
“What’s that? Fuka what?”
“It’s an atomic power station in Japan,” Howard said.
“Never heard of it,” Jon said.
“Most people haven’t. They had an accident there, at the plant, back when they had the typhoon and tsunami in 2011.”
“Well, something sure as shit happened all right,” Jon said. “You have any kind of weapon, Howard?”
“Letter opener I found at the office.”
The man smiled at him and rubbed his chin. “You got to shoot them in the head, Howard. That’s the best way to kill them fast.”
“I see,” Howard said.
“Do you know how to use a pistol?”
“A little. I was in the Army,” Price said. “But I don’t have one.”
“I’ll give you one. I got lots of them in the mobile home. I can’t just leave you out here with a fucking letter opener,” Jon said and spit. “Jesus, Howard, maybe you’d better come with us.”
“Thank you Jon, but I have a son—you know—up there in Timberline, and a wife. I think I better make sure they’re okay, but thank you.” It felt good to have the fantasy. It made him feel whole again. For a long time he’d felt so alone and sad about everything in the world. The fantasy about a family was something that made him feel better. He’d started telling complete strangers that “his family this, or his family that.” The fantasy was growing, taking on a life of its own, and he didn’t care; he liked it.
“Well, sure, I get that, but let me give you something. A gift, then,” Jon said.
Price looked at the huddled group of people at the water fountain; they were various ages and colors. The group were filling a motley collection of plastic containers from two water fountains in front of the rest stop’s bathrooms. Jon came out from the mobile home and handed him an old-school .38 Special revolver.
“All you have to do, Howard, is pull the trigger when they’re close: say six feet, or so.” He handed Howard the pistol and a box of ammo. “You want to practice? Maybe once, while I’m watching?” Jon turned around and pointed to a road sign that said Keep Off The Grass, maybe 50 feet away. “Can you hit that sign, Howard?”
“I’ll try,” Howard said. He lifted the pistol, aimed at the sign and pulled the trigger. The gun went off and he heard the bullet strike the sign, punching a hole in it.
“Well, there you go then, Howard. Good shooting!”
“Thanks, Jon.” They shook hands warmly as if they were old friends.
“You know what, Howard?” Jon said.
“No, what?”
“I always knew that atomic shit would blow back on us someday,” the old man said. “I was in the Navy back in the day, and saw one of the tests at Bikini Atoll.”
“‘It’s unreasonable to make such a big deal over the death of a fisherman.’ That’s what Edward Teller said,” Price said.
“The Jap fisherman that died?” Jon said.
“Yeah.” Howard said. “Funny the things you remember reading when you’re a kid. I’m over sixty and I remember things I read when I was ten,” Howard said.
The older man just looked at him and smiled, thinking that Howard was close to going around the bend, maybe from the stress of it all.
The old gun dealer and his new friends pulled out of the rest area ahead of Howard. The old man said they were going to try and go north to Oregon because they’d seen a rumor, on the internet that was still up, that it was okay up there. Howard wished them all luck. They’d all hugged as if they knew they might all be dead soon, and certainly would never met again.
Before he closed the door to his Prius, Howard looked around the eerie rest area. It was silent. The roof on the restrooms had snow on it that reflected the moonlight. He remembered a Kurosawa film; a bit of it ran in his head in perfect black and white, like these colors, a boy running down a snowy street in a small Japanese town.
“Akira Kurosawa,” Howard said out loud. “The Bad Sleep Well. Am I losing my mind? Who will look for us? We have no father or mother, and we are lost in the world.” He yelled, perhaps to break the silence. His voice echoed against the concrete and wood walls of the rest stop and died away in the shadows. The silence returned.
He walked across the parking lot. Miles had emailed him the directions to the cabin. He studied the email carefully. When he was sure he understood the directions, he got into his Prius. He put the revolver on the passenger seat next to him, locked the door and pulled out. The freeway was completely deserted as he gained speed and headed toward the turn off at Emigrant Gap. He tried to find a radio station to get any useful news, but all the government had hijacked all the local stations. All were playing the same loop, telling people “not to panic” and to “remain indoors, until further instructions.” Howard clicked off the radio, turned off the freeway and took the road toward Timberline.