I waited for more commentary, but the image was silent until it cut to a studio in the Midwest, the network's fallback headquarters, and another reporter, too poorly groomed to be a regular anchor, who uttered more sourceless and futile cautions. I switched it off.
And took my med kit and suitcase to the car.
Fulton and Jody came out of the office to see me off. Suddenly they were old friends, sorry to see me go. Jody looked frightened now. "Jody's been talking to her mom," Fulton said. "I don't think her mom had heard about the stars."
I tried not to picture the early-morning wake-up call, Jody phoning from the desert to announce what her mother would have instantly understood as the approaching end of the world. Jody's mom saying what might be a final good-bye to her daughter while struggling not to scare her to death, shielding her from the onrushing truth.
Now Jody leaned into her father's ribs and Fulton put his arm around her, nothing but tenderness left between them.
"Do you have to go?" Jody asked.
I said I did.
"Because you can stay if you like. My dad said so."
"Mr. Dupree's a doctor," Fulton said gently. "He probably has a house call to make."
"That's right," I said. "I do."
* * * * *
Something near miraculous happened in the eastbound lanes of the highway that morning. Many people behaved badly in what they believed to be their final hours. It was as if the flickers had been merely a rehearsal for this less arguable doom. All of us had heard the predictions: forests ablaze, searing heat, the seas turned to scalding live steam. The only question was whether it would take a day, a week, a month.
And so we broke windows and took what appealed to us, any trinket life had denied us; men attempted to rape women, some discovering that the loss of inhibition worked both ways, the intended victim endowed by the same events with unexpected powers of eye-gouging and testicle-crushing; old scores were settled by gunshot and guns were fired on a whim. The suicides were legion. (I thought of Molly: if she hadn't died in the first flicker she was almost certainly dead now, might even have died pleased at the logical unfolding of her logical plan. Which made me want to cry for her for the first time in my life.)
But there were islands of civility and acts of heroic kindness, too. Interstate 10 at the Arizona border was one of them.
During the flicker there had been a National Guard detachment stationed at the bridge that crossed the Colorado River. The soldiers had disappeared shortly after the flicker ended, recalled, perhaps, or just AWOL, headed for home. Without them the bridge could have become a tangled, impassable bottleneck.
But it wasn't. Traffic flowed at a gentle pace in both directions. A dozen civilians, self-appointed volunteers with heavy-duty flashlights and flares out of their trunk emergency kits, had taken on the work of directing traffic. And even the terminally eager—the folks who wanted or needed to travel a long way before dawn, to reach New Mexico, Texas, maybe even Louisiana if their engines didn't melt first—seemed to understand that this was necessary, that no attempt to jump the line could possibly succeed and that patience was the only recourse. I don't know how long this mood lasted or what confluence of goodwill and circumstance created it Maybe it was human kindness or maybe it was the weather: in spite of the doom roaring toward us out of the east the night was perversely nice. Scattered stars in a clear, cool sky; a quickening breeze that carried off the stench of exhaust and came in the car window gentle as a mother's touch.
* * * * *
I thought about volunteering at one of the local hospitals— Palo Verde in Blythe, which I had once visited for a consultation, or maybe La Paz Regional in Parker. But what purpose would it serve? There was no cure for what was coming.
There was only palliation, morphine, heroin, Molly's route, assuming the pharmaceutical cupboards hadn't already been looted.
And what Fulton had told Jody was essentially true: I had a house call to make.
A quest. Quixotic now, of course. Whatever was wrong with Diane, I wouldn't be fixing that, either. So why finish the journey? It was something to do at the end of the world, busy hands don't tremble, busy minds don't panic; but that didn't explain the urgency, the visceral need to see her that had set me on the road during the flicker and seemed, if anything, stronger now.
Past Blythe, past the uneasy gauntlet of darkened shops and the fistfights brewing around besieged gas stations, the road opened up and the sky was darker, the stars sparkling. I was thinking about that when the phone trilled.
I almost drove off the road, fumbling in my pocket, braking, while a utility vehicle in back of me squealed past.
"Tyler," Simon said.
Before he went on I said, "Give me a call-back number before you hang up or we get cut off. So I can reach you."
"I'm not supposed to do that. I—"
"Are you calling from a private phone or the house phone?"
"Sort of private, a cell, we just use it locally. I've got it now but Aaron carries it sometimes so—"
"I won't call unless I have to."
"Well. I don't suppose it matters." He gave me the number. "But have you seen the sky, Tyler? I assume so, since you're awake. It's the last night of the world, isn't it?"
I thought: Why are you asking me? Simon had been living in the last days for three decades now. He ought to know. "Tell me about Diane," I said.
"I want to apologize for that call. Because of, you know, what's happening."
"How is she?"
"That's what I'm saying. It doesn't matter."
"Is she dead?"
Long pause. He came back sounding hurt. "No. No, she's not dead. That's not the point."
"Is she hovering in midair, waiting for the Rapture?"
"You don't have to insult my faith," Simon said. (And I couldn't resist interpreting the phrase: my faith, he had said, not our faith.)
"Because, if not, maybe she still needs medical attention. Is she still sick, Simon?"
"Yes. But—"
"Sick how? What are her symptoms?"
"Sunrise is only an hour away, Tyler. Surely you understand what that means."
"I'm not at all sure what it means. And I'm on the road, I can be at the ranch before dawn."
"Oh—no, that's not good—no, I—"
"Why not? If it's the end of the world, why shouldn't I be there?"
"You don't understand. What's going on isn't just the world ending. It's a new one being born."
"How sick is she, exactly? Can I talk to her?"
Simon's voice became tremorous. A man on the brink. We were all on the brink. "She can only whisper. She can't get her breath. She's weak. She's lost a lot of weight."
"How long has she been like that?"
"I don't know. I mean, it started gradually…"
"When was it obvious she was ill?"
"Weeks ago. Or maybe—looking back on it—well— months."
"Has she had any kind of medical attention?" Pause. "Simon?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"It didn't seem necessary."
"It didn't seem necessary?"
"Pastor Dan wouldn't allow it."
I thought: And did you tell Pastor Dan to go fuck himself? "I hope he's changed his mind."
"No—"
"Because, if not, I'll need your help getting to her."
"Don't do that, Tyler. It won't do anybody any good."
I was already looking for the exit, which I remembered only dimly but had marked on the map. Off the highway toward some bone-dry cienaga, a nameless desert road.
I said, "Has she asked for me?"
Silence.
"Simon? Has she asked for me?"
"Yes."