He stepped over something squirming in the mud and gained the higher, firmer ground. Once out of the direct sunlight he stripped off his goggles and dropped down, chest heaving, by his father's side. Chase tried to smile through his yellow mask. He was nearing sixty and Dan was afraid that his respiratory system would no longer be able to cope with the thin atmosphere. During the last six days people younger than he had collapsed, frothing, blue-lipped. He tore his mind away from the stark possibility.
"Couldn't you make out any markings?" Ruth asked.
"There weren't any. But it was armed. Rockets. Guns."
"Against whom?" Chase said angrily. His eyeballs were crazed with broken blood vessels. "Why kill when we're dying anyway?" He shook his head, dumbfounded.
"The mutes aren't dying, they're flourishing," Jo said. Her fine-spun hair spilled out from underneath her forage cap. "And those things back in the Tomb"--her throat muscles worked--"those white grubs or whatever they were. The conditions seem to suit them."
"No, they suit the conditions," Chase said. "Nature always fills a niche."
Large brown opaque bubbles formed in the swampy hollow, burst with an explosive farting sound, and belched yellowy-brown steam that drifted slowly through the hot turgid air. It smelled of sulfur and methane laced with various oxides and nitrites. Back to the Precambrian, Chase thought with a sense of almost macabre relish. Theo had seen it coming thirty years ago. Perhaps even then it had been too late to change anything: The balance was already upset. Factors beyond anyone's control had conspired to bring the earth to its knees and now the count had reached nine, the referee's hand was raised, and there wasn't going to be a bell to save it.
Or them. There was nowhere to go from here.
After evacuating the Tomb they had made for Interstate 15, intending to travel north, but the highway was impassable. From the experience of the reconnaissance parties they knew it was too dangerous to cross the border into Nevada, and all the evidence indicated that the tribal fighting among the prims, mutes, and other groups had spread across northern Utah, which meant the route was closed to them. So the raggle-taggle column had turned south, splintering into smaller groups and losing people on the way as they encountered the damp fingers of swampland reaching out from Lake Mead.
Other travelers on the road had told them of conditions elsewhere. Arizona was a jungle as dense and impenetrable as any in darkest Africa. In California huge concentration camps covered half the state. Most of the travelers were hoping to find a way north, prepared to risk the tribal wars in getting to Idaho and Oregon. The jungle, so it was said, was advancing at the rate of four miles every month, but surely, surely, it had to stop somewhere; it had to, hadn't it?
"Is it still painful?" Ruth asked, examining Jo's leg. The wound in her thigh was superficial, but she was afraid that with the humidity and insects it might turn gangrenous.
"Not anymore. It's kind of numb. Doesn't bother me."
Ruth tightened her lips. "Well, that's good," she said, taking a fresh dressing from the medical pack. "I'll give you a shot to stop the infection spreading. Not much point in telling you to rest it, I guess. Not until we find somewhere safe." She glanced at Chase, her eyes clouded.
Nick and two other men appeared through the greenish gloom cast by the tall rubbery plants and swaying ferns. On the far side of the clearing what at first sight was a sheer ro.ck face was in fact the wall of a ten-story motel. Thick green lichen had gained a purchase in the pitted concrete, partly obscuring a signboard that read in faded Day-Glow: video gambling in every room plus 9-channel 3-d porno1.
"Did you hear it?" Nick squatted down, the breath rasping in his throat. "I think it was a chopper."
"We saw it," Dan nodded. "It came in very low and flew straight down the river."
Nick's eyes brightened. "Did they see you? Any signal?"
"We kept out of sight."
"You . . ." Nick stared at Dan, then looked slowly around at the others. "What the hell for? Don't you know it means there's some kind of civilization around here--somewhere!" His shoulders sagged.
"That was a gunship with enough firepower to wipe out a city," Chase said. "I want to know who they are and what they're doing here. It's too late to ask questions when you've been napalmed--"
"You're talking as if we had a choice. Look around, Gav, open your eyes for Christ's sake!" Nick swept his arm out to indicate the thirty or so people in the clearing, weary, travel-stained, faces streaked with yellow, exuding hopelessness like a bad smell. "We're down to a few days rations, we've used up nearly all our medical supplies, we've nowhere to go, and you're fretting like a maiden aunt that someone's about to start World War Three." He shook his head in bewilderment. "Maybe it might be for the best if they did drop a nuke on top of us. At least it would be quick and painless."
Chase nodded grimly across the muddy water to the buildings choked with vines and foliage on the other side of the Strip. "If you're that anxious to die, Nick, that way's just as quick. I wouldn't give you fifteen minutes."
"I don't want to die, none of us do. But that's precisely what's going to happen unless we can get help. Any kind of help--and soon." Nick looked around despairingly. "Stay here and we starve, rot, and get eaten, and not necessarily in that order."
One of the others said, "I think Nick's right. Even if it was a gunship it must have been American, with our guys in it."
"Hell, for all we know it could have been a search-and-rescue mission!" said somebody else bitterly.
Ruth was staring hard at Chase, her eyes holding a message it took him a moment to decipher. Then he understood: It concerned Jo. Ruth said quietly, "We've got to find help, Gavin, and very soon."
During the day they had to contend with the airless oven heat, but after nightfall was worse. Insects came out in their millions. Centipedes a foot long undulated across the clearing and had to be beaten to a pulp before they got to the ration packs. Dan and some of the others went down to the brackish water to see if it was fit for drinking and disturbed a tribe of alligators snoozing in the mud.
They decided to seek shelter in one of the ruined buildings along the Strip.
Everything of any value, everything portable, had long since been looted. The jungle had crept indoors, transforming the public bars and restaurants, the gaming rooms, the lobbies and passages into dank sweltering caves. By flashlight they explored the labyrinth, hacking through festoons of creepers and climbing stairs where the carpets squelched underfoot like thick moss. They came upon a swimming pool half-filled with green slime, the crusty surface broken here and there by snouts and unblinking eyes reflected in the beams of light. In other rooms the silence was intimidating. Tapestries of foliage clung to the walls, the leaves a dark mottled brown giving off an acrid scent that bit at the throat like ammonia. This vegetation was feeding off the poisoned air and becoming itself poisoned in the process, adding to the toxic fumes that formed the new atmosphere. The spiral of decay was winding tighter and tighter--each malfunction in the biosphere contributing to the next perverted link in the crooked chain. It was evolution but in the wrong direction.
Dan, along with Art Hegler and two of the other younger men, went on ahead, leaving the main party in the corner of what had been an electronic amusements room on the third floor of the Stardust Hotel. The twin-seater booths , with their controls and curved video screens were more or less intact, resembling the top halves of large colored eggs stuck to the floor. A section of the side was hinged, which the players pulled shut, sealing themselves inside a flickering green womb. Now the doors hung open, the insides inky black.