The wave slowed long before it could reach the intersection, but Allison didn’t pause. He spun the Mercedes around a stalled Volkswagen and accelerated. Others had the same idea and blocked him, until he turned on his headlights and leaned on the horn. Like sheep before a barking dog, the other cars drew aside and let him by.
Away from town, the broad highway to Carmel was crowded with cars moving slowly and steadily in both directions. Allison wondered whether Carmel had somehow escaped, until he glimpsed a sobbing woman sitting in the back of a northbound pickup truck. They’d got it, all right. He watched the oncoming cars, looking for Shauna’s Jaguar.
He came over the ridge and looked south. West of the highway, almost nothing was left of Carmel. Trees, houses, the tea shops and boutiques on Ocean Avenue — they were all just wreckage now. Men and women ran or walked up the road, many without protection against the driving rain; many didn’t even have sunglasses, and their eyes were vague and unfocussed with shock. One bearded man, barefoot and wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, slapped the hood of the Mercedes as he shambled past.
“Hey man, too bad, show’s over. You missed all the fun. Missed all the goddamn fun!” The man went on up the line of cars, shouting and laughing.
The wave had almost reached the highway before receding. No one was trying to keep traffic out of the ruined village; most of the drivers pulled off the road and abandoned their cars, running downhill through the wreckage to look for family or friends. Allison shook his head and muttered, “Morons.” It was obvious that anyone caught in the western, downhill part of Carmel was dead. All the little doll-house cottages, the stores and restaurants, were smashed flat and scattered up the hillside like driftwood. Muddy water ran in streams through the debris. Carmel Bay was a mass of heaving water that looked like boiling milk.
Uphill from the highway, the high school and the houses around it looked almost obscenely normal. Kids and teachers were crowded against the chain-link fence on the edge of a playing field, gaping down the hill. One of them had vaulted the fence and was standing on the hillside above the road, a portable videotape camera held to his face. Allison admired the kid’s presence of mind.
He was still about a mile from the Carmel Valley turnoff when the second wave came in. Allison saw it first as a geyser erupting around the rocks of Carmel Point — a geyser that rose higher and higher, then vanished as the crest of the wave rolled over the point and onto the wreckage-strewn beach.
Hidden behind its own spray, the wave rolled over the ruins like a fog bank. When it struck the wall of debris left by the first wave, it shot straight up, higher than the few trees still left standing; then it curved and fell roaring onto the steep slope below the road.
Allison turned into the empty northbound lanes and jammed the accelerator to the floor. Rain and spray mixed in a dense grey cloud too thick for the windshield wipers; he guided himself by the line of red taillights to his right. Just a few hundred yards now, and he’d be on the road up the valley.
The taillights, glowing blurrily, suddenly drifted closer. A little orange car materialized in front of the Mercedes, skidding slowly sideways —
He felt the wave hit: a foot deep, still powerful, thick with debris. It swept across his side of the highway with a grinding noise. Cars were all over the road now, crunching together and spinning apart. The Mercedes drifted left, almost to the concrete barrier at the side of the road, before its tires came back into solid contact with the pavement. Allison had automatically put the car in neutral; now he gently tested the brakes. They felt mushy, but they worked. The car stopped. He pressed a button to retract the top, another to lower the windows. Rain drenched the leather seats. He put his hat on and looked around.
The wave was retreating from the highway in a sheet of chocolate-brown water, leaving an uneven layer of branches, lumber, rocks and mud on the asphalt. Wedged against the right front wheel of his car was the body of a German shepherd, its teeth bared and its fur caked with mud.
A young woman in jeans got out of a stalled Audi nearby and ran screaming across the road towards the hillside below the school. She stepped on the corpse of a small child and ran on without stopping.
Allison stood up on his seat. A few cars were turning around, skidding in the mud, and heading back north. To the south, a van lay on its side. Water sounds assaulted him: the hiss of rain, the roar of the ebbing wave as it ran in torrents back through the smashed village. Not far from the road, someone was screaming for help.
He slid down behind the wheel and put the car in first. The tires spun, flinging mud and pebbles against the underside, and then found traction. Slowly, slipping through mud and bumping over rocks and shattered lumber, Allison drove south to the turnoff. — Don’t let me hit any nails, he prayed. God, please, no nails, no glass.
Other cars followed him, weaving around those deserted by their drivers. In his rear view mirror, Allison saw three or four men leave their cars and stumble downhill into the ruins.
They wouldn’t get far; neither would he, if he were fool enough to follow them. Better to get home, change, and come back with Hipolito. If Shauna was in Carmel she was almost certainly dead anyway. Tears stung his eyes.
Rain soaked into his Stetson, and the brim began to sag. The sheepskin collar of his jacket smelled of wet wool. He drove slowly, avoiding the bodies scattered among the wreckage; weeping, he turned onto Carmel Valley Road, into country that had seemed forlorn this morning but now looked like an untouched paradise.
A silver Jaguar came around a corner, headed west. Allison saw it from half a mile away, braked, and pulled off the road. He flashed his headlights, then leaned on the horn. Shauna cut smoothly across the road and halted just in front of the Mercedes. He saw her face in the spattered semicircle of clear windshield and giggled at her surprised expression. The giggles took a long time to stop.
Deliberately, savouring the moment, he got out and splashed over to her. She rolled her window down.
“What in God’s name are you doing, Bob? And what have you done to the car?”
Allison glanced back and noticed absently that the sides and front of the Mercedes were scratched and gouged. He turned to her, reaching out to touch her cheek, her perfect dark hair.
“Kid, y’know — you’re cute enough to be in the movies. Anybody ever tell you that?”
“Are you ripped? Driving the Mercedes with the goddamn top down, and it looks like you were in an accident, and all you — “
“Turn around. We’ve got to get home.”
“Hey, I’m getting all wet. — Oh shit, was there an accident? Are you okay?”
“Turn around, kid. I’ll follow you home. Tell you about it there.”
She nodded slowly, looking scared, and rolled her window up. The Jaguar boomed in reverse, off the shoulder and onto the rainswept pavement.
Allison followed close behind her, without bothering to put the top back up. His sodden clothes made him shiver. But he felt very clear-headed. Just an hour or two ago he’d been dithering, planning a movie one moment and worrying about social collapse the next. The time for doublethink was past; middle-class paranoia was a futile self-indulgence now.
He made his plans swiftly and easily. Every step fell into place, like the preproduction phase of making a film. By the time the two cars turned up into Escondido Canyon, most of the details of the plan were set, most of the contingencies were allowed for. One question remained, and it hung in his mind all the way back to the ranch: How do I get Sarah up here?