as the radiation sickness sank deeper and deeper into him, yet he had never faltered in his resolve to bring it back to the dark man ... you could say that he had never flagged in his determination.
The blue ball of fire flung itself into the back of the cart, seeking what was there, drawn to it.
"Oh shit we're all fucked!" Lloyd Henreid cried. He put his hands over his head and fell to his knees.
Oh God, thank God, Larry thought. I will fear no evil, I will f
Silent white light filled the world.
And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.
CHAPTER 74
Stu woke up from a night of broken rest at dawn and lay shivering, even with Kojak curled up next to him. The morning sky was coldly blue, but in spite of the shivers he was hot. He was running a fever.
"Sick," he muttered, and Kojak looked up at him. He wagged his tail and then trotted into the gully. He brought back a piece of deadwood and laid it at Stu's feet.
"I said sick, not stick, but I guess it'll do," Stu told him. He sent Kojak out for a dozen more sticks. Soon he had a fire blazing. Even sitting close would not drive the shivers away, although sweat was rolling down his face. It was the final irony. He had the flu, or something very like it. He had come down with it two days after Glen, Larry, and Ralph left him. For another two days the flu had seemed to consider him-was he worth taking? Apparently he was. Little by little he was getting worse. And this morning he felt very bad indeed.
Among the odds and ends in his pockets, Stu found a stub of pencil, his notebook (all the Free Zone organizational stuff that had once seemed the vital stuff of life itself now seemed mildly foolish), and his key ring. He had puzzled over the key ring for a long time, coming back to it over the last few days again and again, constantly surprised by the strong ache of sadness and nostalgia. This one was to his apartment. This one was his locker key. This one was a spare for his car, a 1977 Dodge with a lot of rust--so far as he knew it was still parked behind the apartment building at 31 Thompson Street in Arnette.
Also attached to the key ring was a cardboard address card encased in Lucite. STU REDMAN--31 THOMPSON STREET--PH (713) 555-6283, it read. He took the keys off the ring, bounced them thoughtfully on the palm of his hand for a moment, and then threw them away. The last of the man he had been went into the dry-wash and clinked into a dry clump of sage, where it would stay, he supposed, until the end of time. He slipped the cardboard address card out of the Lucite, and then ripped a blank page from his notebook.
Dear Frannie, he wrote at the top.
He told her all that had happened up until he had broken his leg. He told her that he hoped to see her again, but that he doubted it was in the cards. The best he could hope for was that Kojak would find the Zone again. He wiped tears absently from his face with the heel of his hand and wrote that he loved her. I expect you to mourn me and then get on, he wrote. You and the baby have to get on. That's the most important thing now. He signed, folded it small, and slipped the note into the address slot in the Lucite square. Then he attached the key ring to Kojak's collar.
"Good dog," he said when that was done. "You want to go look around? Find a rabbit or something?"
Kojak bounded up the slope where Stu had broken his leg and was gone. Stu watched his progress with a mixture of bitterness and amusement, then picked up the 7-Up can Kojak had brought him on one trip yesterday in lieu of a stick. He had filled it with muddy water from the ditch. When the water stood, the mud silted down to the bottom. It made a gritty drink, but as his mother would have said, it was a whole lot grittier when there was none. He drank slowly, slaking his thirst bit by bit. It hurt to swallow.
"Life sure is a bitch," he muttered, and then had to laugh at himself. For a moment or two he let his fingers fret at the swellings high on his neck, just under his jaw. Then he lay back, splinted leg in front of him, and dozed.
He woke with a start about an hour later, clutching at the sandy earth in sleepy panic. Had he had a nightmare? If so, it seemed to still be going on. The ground was moving slowly under his hands.
Earthquake? We got an earthquake here?
For a moment he clung to the idea that it must be delirium, that his fever had come back while he dozed. But looking toward the gully, he saw that dirt was sliding down in small, muddy sheets. Bounding, bouncing pebbles flashed mica and quartz glints at his startled eyes. And then a faint, dull thudding noise came--it seemed to push its way into his ears. A moment later he was heaving for breath, as if most of the air had suddenly been pushed out of the gully the flash flood had cut.
There was a whining sound above him. Kojak stood silhouetted against the western edge of the cut, hunkered down with his tail between his legs. He was staring west, toward Nevada.
"Kojak!" Stu cried in panic. That thudding noise had terrified him-- it was as if God had suddenly stamped his foot down on the desert floor somewhere not too distant.
Kojak bounded down the slope and joined him, whining. As Stu passed a hand down the dog's back, he felt Kojak trembling. He had to see, he had to. A sudden feeling of surety came to him: what had been meant to happen was happening. Right now.
"I'm going up, boy," Stu muttered.
He crawled to the eastern edge of the gully. It was a little steeper, but it offered more handholds. He had thought for the last three days that he might be able to get up there, but he hadn't seen the point. He was sheltered from the worst of the wind at the bottom of the cut, and he had water. But now he had to get up there. He had to see. He dragged his splinted leg behind him like a club. He got up on his hands and craned his neck to see the top. It looked very high, very far away.
"Can't do it, boy," he muttered to Kojak, and started trying anyway.
A fresh pile of rubble had piled up at the bottom as a result of the ... the earthquake. Or whatever it was. Stu pulled himself over it and then began to inch his way up the slope, using his hands and his left knee. He made twelve yards and then lost six of them before he could grab a quartz outcropping and stop his slide.
"Nope, never make it," he panted, and rested.
Ten minutes later he started again and made another ten yards. He rested. Went again. Came to a place with no holds and had to inch to the left until he found one. Kojak walked beside him, no doubt wondering what this fool was up to, leaving his water and his nice warm fire.
Warm. Too warm.
The fever must be coming up again, but at least the shivering had subsided. Fresh sweat was running down his face and arms. His hair, dusty and oily, hung in his eyes.
Lord, I'm burning up! Must be a hundred and two, a hundred and three ...
He happened to glance at Kojak. It took almost a minute for what he was seeing to sink in. Kojak was panting. It wasn't fever, or not just fever, because Kojak was hot, too.
Overhead, a squadron of birds suddenly flocked, wheeling aimlessly and squawking.
They feel it, too. Whatever it is, the birds feel it, too.
He began to crawl again, fear lending him additional strength. An hour passed, two. He fought for every foot, every inch. By one o'clock that afternoon he was only six feet below the edge. He could see jags of paving jutting out above him. Only six feet, but the grade here was very steep and smooth. He tried once to just wriggle up like a garter snake, but loose gravel, the underbedding of the Interstate, had begun to rattle out from beneath him, and now he was afraid that if he tried to move at all he would go all the way to the bottom again, probably breaking his other damn leg in the process.
"Stuck," he muttered. "Good fucking show. Now what?"
Now what became obvious very quickly. Even without moving around, the earth was beginning to shift downward beneath him. He slipped an inch and clawed for purchase with his hands. His broken leg was thudding heavily, and he had not thought to pocket Glen's pills.
He slipped another two inches. Then five. His left foot was now dangling over space. Only his hands were holding him, and as he watched they began to slip, digging ten little furrows in the damp ground.
"Kojak!" he cried miserably, expecting nothing. But suddenly Kojak was there. Stu flung his arms around his neck blindly, not expecting to be saved but only grabbing what there was to be grabbed, like a drowning man. Kojak made no effort to throw him off. He dug in. For a moment they were frozen, a living sculpture. Then Kojak began to move, digging for inches, claws clicking against small stones and bits of gravel. Pebbles rattled into Stu's face and he shut his eyes. Kojak dragged him, panting like an air compressor in Stu's right ear.
He slitted his eyes open and saw they were nearly at the top. Kojak's head was down. His back legs were working furiously. He gained four more inches and it was enough. With a desperate cry, Stu let go of Kojak's neck and grabbed an outcrop of paving. It snapped off in his hands. He grabbed another one. Two fingernails peeled back like wet decals, and he cried out. The pain was exquisite, galvanizing. He scrambled up, pistoning with his good leg, and at last--somehow--lay panting on the surface of 1-70, his eyes shut.
Kojak was beside him then. He whined and licked Stu's face.
Slowly then, Stu sat up and looked west. He looked for a long time, oblivious of the heat that was still rushing against his face in warm, bloated waves.
"Oh, my God," he said at last in a weak, breaking voice. "Look at that, Kojak. Larry. Glen. They're gone. God, everything's gone. All gone."
The mushroom cloud stood out on the horizon like a clenched fist on the end of a long, dusty forearm. It was swirling, fuzzy at the edges, beginning to dissipate. It was backlighted in sullen orange-red, as if the sun had decided to go down in the early afternoon.
The firestorm, he thought.
They were all dead in Las Vegas. Someone had fiddled when he should have faddled, and a nuclear weapon had gone off ... and one hellish big one, from the look and the feel. Maybe a whole stockpile of them had gone. Glen, Larry, Ralph ... even if they hadn't reached Vegas yet, even if they were still walking, surely they were close enough to have been baked alive.
Close beside him, Kojak whimpered unhappily.
Fallout. Which way is the wind going to blow it?
Did it matter?
He remembered his note to Fran. It was important that he add what had happened. If the wind blew the fallout east, it might cause them problems ... but more than that, they had to know that if Las Vegas had been the dark man's staging area, it was gone now. The people had been vaporized along with all the deadly toys that had just been lying around, waiting for someone to pick them up. He ought to add all of that to the note.
But not now. He was too tired now. The climb had exhausted him, and the stupendous sight of that dissipating mushroom cloud had exhausted him even more. He felt no jubilation, only dull and grinding weariness. He lay down on the pavement and his last thought before drifting off to sleep was: How many megatons? He didn't think anyone would ever know, or want to know.
He awoke after six. The mushroom cloud was gone, but the western sky was an angry pinkish-red, like a bright weal of burnflesh. Stu hauled himself over into the breakdown lane and lay down, exhausted all over again. The shakes were back. And the fever. He touched his forehead with his wrist and tried to gauge the temperature there. He guessed it was well over a hundred degrees.
Kojak came out of the early evening with a rabbit in his jaws. He laid it at Stu's feet and wagged his tail, waiting to be complimented.
"Good dog," Stu said tiredly. "That's a good dog."
Kojak's tail wagged faster. Yes, I'm a pretty good dog, he seemed to agree. But he remained looking at Stu, seeming to wait for something. Part of the ritual was incomplete. Stu tried to think what it was. His brain was moving very slowly; while he was sleeping, someone seemed to have poured molasses all over his interior gears.
"Good dog," he repeated, and looked at the dead rabbit. Then he remembered, although he wasn't even sure he had his matches anymore. "Fetch, Kojak," he said, mostly to please the dog. Kojak bounced away and soon returned with a good chunk of dry wood.
He had his matches, but a good breeze had sprung up and his hands were shaking badly. It took a long time to get a fire going. He got the kindling he had stripped lighted on the tenth match, and then the breeze gusted rougishly, puffing out the flames. Stu rebuilt it carefully, shielding it with his body and his hands. He had eight remaining matches in a LaSalle Business School folder. He cooked the rabbit, gave Kojak his half, and could eat only a little of his share. He tossed Kojak what was left. Kojak didn't pick it up. He looked at it, then whined uneasily at Stu.
"Go, on, boy. I can't."
Kojak ate up. Stu looked at him and shivered. His two blankets were, of course, below.
The sun went down, and the western sky was grotesque with color. It was the most spectacular sunset Stu had ever seen in his life ... and it was poison. He could remember the narrator of a MovieTone newsreel saying enthusiastically back in the early sixties that there were beautiful sunsets for weeks after a nuclear test. And, of course, after earthquakes.
Kojak came up from the washout with something in his mouth--one of Stu's blankets. He dropped it in Stu's lap. "Hey," Stu said, hugging him unsteadily. "You're some kind of dog, you know it?"
Kojak wagged his tail to show that he knew it.
Stu wrapped the blanket around him and moved closer to the fire. Kojak lay next to him, and soon they both slept. But Stu's sleep was light and uneasy, skimming in and out of delirium. Sometime after midnight he roused Kojak, yelling in his sleep.
"Hap!" Stu cried. "You better turn off y'pumps! He's coming! Black man's coming for you! Better turn off y'pumps! He's in the old car yonder! "
Kojak whined uneasily. The Man was sick. He could smell the sickness and mingling with that smell was a new one. A black one. It was the smell the rabbits had on them when he pounced. The smell had been on the wolf he had disemboweled under Mother Abagail's house in Hemingford Home. The smell had been on the towns he had passed through on his way to Boulder and Glen Bateman. It was the smell of death. If he could have attacked it and driven it out of this Man, he would have. But it was inside this Man. The Man drew in good air and sent out that smell of coming death, and there was nothing to do but wait and see it through to the end. Kojak whined again, low, and then slept.
Stu woke up the next morning more feverish than ever. The glands under his jaw had swollen to the size of golfballs. His eyes were hot marbles.
I'm dying... yes, that's affirmative.
He called Kojak over and removed the keychain and his note from the Lucite address-holder. Printing carefully, he added what he had seen and replaced the note. He lay back down and slept. And then, somehow, it was nearly dark again. Another spectacular, horrible sunset burned and jittered in the West. And Kojak had brought a gopher for dinner.
"This the best y'could do?"
Kojak wagged his tail and grinned shamefacedly.
Stu cooked it, divided it, and managed to eat his entire half. It was tough, and it had a horrible wild taste, and when he was done he had a nasty bout of stomach cramps.
"When I die, I want you to go back to Boulder," he told the dog. "You go back and find Fran. Find Frannie. Okay, big old dumb dog?"
Kojak wagged his tail doubtfully.
An hour later, Stu's stomach rumbled once in warning. He had just time enough to roll over on one elbow to avoid fouling himself before his share of the gopher came up in a rush.
"Shit," he muttered miserably, and dozed off.
He awoke in the small hours and got up on his elbows, his head buzzing with fever. The fire had gone out, he saw. It didn't matter. He was pretty well done up.
Some sound in the darkness had awakened him. Pebbles and stones. Kojak coming up the embankment from the cut, that's all it was ...
Except that Kojak was beside him, sleeping.
Even as Stu glanced at him, the dog woke up. His head came off his paws and a moment later he was on his feet, facing the cut, growling deep in his throat.
Rattling pebbles and stones. Someone--something--coming up.
Stu struggled into a sitting position. It's him, he thought. He was there, but somehow he got away. Now he's here, and he means to do me before the flu can.
Kojak's growl became stronger. His hackles stood, his head was down. The rattling sound was closer now. Stu could hear a low panting sound. There was a pause then, long enough for Stu to arm sweat off his forehead. A moment later a dark shape humped against the edge of the cut, head and shoulders blotting out the stars.
Kojak advanced, stiff-legged, still growling.
"Hey!" a bewildered but familiar voice said. "Hey, is that Kojak? Is it?"
The growling stopped immediately. Kojak bounded forward joyfully, tail wagging.
"No!" Stu croaked. "It's a trick! Kojak ... !"
But Kojak was jumping up and down on the figure that had finally gained the pavement. And that shape ... something about the shape was also familiar. It advanced toward him with Kojak at his heel. Kojak was volleying joyful barks. Stu licked his lips and got ready to fight if he had to. He thought he could manage one good punch, maybe two.
"Who is it?" he called. "Who is that there?"
The dark figure paused, then spoke.
"Well, it's Tom Cullen, that's who, my laws, yes. M-O-O-N, that spells Tom Cullen. Who's that?"
"Stu," he said, and his voice seemed to come from far away. Everything was far away now. "Hello, Tom, it's good to see you." But he didn't see him, not that night. Stu fainted.
He came around at ten in the morning on October 2, although neither he nor Tom knew that was the date. Tom had built a huge bonfire and had wrapped Stu in his sleeping bag and his blankets. Tom himself was sitting by the fire and roasting a rabbit. Kojak lay contentedly on the ground between the two of them.
"Tom," Stu managed.
Tom came over. He had grown a beard, Stu saw; he hardly looked like the man who had left Boulder for the West five weeks ago. His blue eyes glinted happily. "Stu Redman! You're awake now, my laws, yes! I'm glad. Boy, it's good to see you. What did you do to your leg? Hurt it, I guess. I hurt mine once. Jumped off a haystack and broke it, I guess. Did my daddy whip me? My laws, yes! That