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47

Progress was slow but steady. The surroundings became emptier of people, the vehicles fewer, all going the other way. A couple of hours after leaving San Antonio, Mitch voiced the question that perhaps had been forming in many of their minds. He had come back to allow Cavan a spell of riding up front in the cab.

"Look, I know she's important to you, Lan, and it has to be a big thing in your book, but in a situation like this we have to be realistic. . . . I mean, how likely is it, really, that anyone is still going to be at this place? If this shuttle that we're betting on is down over the border, wouldn't we be doing everyone here a favor by being honest and heading straight on there direct? I hate having to say this, but . . ." He gestured at the desolation around the roadway unrolling behind them, and left it at that.

"It isn't just Vicki and Robin," Keene replied. "We need a pilot too. I told Halloran to try and find one."

Mitch looked puzzled. "But I thought you could fly it," he said.

Keene shook his head. "What gave you that idea?"

"You were on that ship that all the news was about, the one that outflew the spaceplane, right?"

"Sure, as an observer-engineer. I helped design the propulsion unit, that's all."

Mitch stared at him for a few moments of revelation while the universe took on a new perspective suddenly. "Well, shit," he pronounced resignedly. The others exchanged ominous looks but said nothing. Colby took out a handkerchief to wipe his indestructible spectacles. "Isn't it funny how life always has one more thing in store that you hadn't thought of," he remarked to nobody in particular.

* * *

Interstate 37 continued all the way into Corpus Christi. The plan, however, was to exit at Highway 281, seventy miles before, which followed a direct route south to San Saucillo, where Keene had told Vicki to wait. Since they were now entering his home territory, he changed places with Cavan to ride up front in the cab.

If anything, the bleakness of the depopulated surroundings was even more unnerving than the scenes they had witnessed from California to San Antonio. The smoke and clouds had mingled into a heaving canopy of orange and brown from which hissing streamers of flame and bursting fireballs continued to lash down over the hapless landscape of deserted townships and abandoned farms. Buff and Luke were silent, staring out in awed, uncomprehending dread. Closer to the coast now, with two circulation systems in collision, the winds alternated between violent spasms and sudden calms. With the windows closed, the cab quickly became unbearable in the heavy, humid heat that had descended. Opening them brought in fumes that produced burning nostrils and smarting eyes. The air had a greasy stickiness that matted the hair, permeated clothing, and lodged in the throat, giving everything an oily taste.

As the miles rolled by from Orange Grove to Alice, recognition of familiar places and old landmarks triggered images of the world that Keene had known. The contrast between his recollections and the things he was seeing at last brought on the dispiritedness that he had been fighting. How far, and for how long, had he been fooling himself? Whatever chance there might once have been of finding anyone had faded long ago. He'd had the chance to escape to the stars. Instead, all he was coming back to was a graveyard. He pushed the thought from his mind, wiped the sticky film from his lips, and waved away the flies.

* * *

Things went well until twenty miles or so past Alice, when Buff slowed suddenly, craning forward in his seat to peer through the windshield. "What the hell have we got here?" he growled.

"Damn!" Luke groaned on Keene's other side.

Outlined ahead was what looked like a shadowy hump extending across the highway. Closer, it proved to be part of a ridge of impact ejecta and boulders thrown from a crater somewhere to the side, with tangled branches of trees protruded in places. Buff brought the truck to a halt, and they climbed out, pulling hoods over their heads and batting away flies. The others from the rear joined them.

Reynolds climbed to the top of the ridge to reconnoiter, reporting when he came back down that the blockage extended as far ahead as he could make out. Surveys to the right and left revealed no ready way around. A number of other vehicles that had tried finding one had been left bogged down in the sandy soil. A brief conference inside the shelter yielded no alternative to turning around and finding a way through to Highway 77, which ran parallel to 281 twenty-five miles farther east, about halfway to the coast. They would follow 77 southward to below Kingsville, and then cut west to get back onto 281.

They retraced their route accordingly, and turned off Highway 281 at the first opportunity. But the patchwork of minor roads and tracks was constantly blocked or obliterated, forcing them ever farther northward until well into the afternoon, when they finally made Highway 77 just short of Robstown—almost back where they would have been had they stayed on the Interstate from San Antonio. But at last, they could resume heading south again.

For the past few miles, Keene had noticed the landscape taking on a peculiarly flattened appearance, the vegetation lying in one direction as if it had been combed, houses leaning and coming apart. And there was wreckage that seemed not to belong—house contents and belongings; parts of structures; all kinds of trash and debris—not scattered in the patterns that had become familiar but lying in endless carpets. Some of the piles included human and animal bodies, grotesquely bleached and bloated. What it meant didn't hit Keene until he saw the mounds and ribs of sand on the highway, in places holding pools of trapped water, and realized that the dark masses and clumps draped across them were seaweed. "Stop the truck!" he told Buff sharply.

From the map, they were thirty miles inland. Yet already, they had ventured below what was now the level of high tide. From the condition of the sand it appeared to have receded only recently. It would return, Charlie said, in six hours at the most. The roadway they were standing on would then be under the Gulf.

They had two choices: either turn around yet again and go back to Alice, which would mean finding a way to San Saucillo via a long detour inland; or they could make a dash south now, while the highway was above water, and hope for a way inland before it was submerged again. Buff and Luke wanted to turn back. Even Mitch seemed subdued, and for once Alicia couldn't raise the spirit to dispute him. It was Cavan, amazingly still unflagging and indefatigable, who provided the spur.

"Six hours? We could make the Mexican border in half that time," he told them. "There have to be a dozen ways back across to 281 in that distance. You've seen what kind of a mess it is once you get into those back roads. We'd still be blundering around there when it gets dark, and then lose another night." Keene watched him, cutting an almost jaunty figure in Army fatigues and a combat smock, for some unknown reason still carrying his submachine gun slung across a shoulder. Cavan waved an arm to indicate the direction ahead. "Did we come this far from California to be stopped now? The people who are depending on us are that way, and so is our only way out. We don't have time for any more excursions around Texas. In any case, speaking personally, I've seen enough of this bloody state. The more we stand here talking, the more time we're giving the tide to turn. So let's shut up and get on with it."

"Leo is right," Alicia told the others. "I've seen enough of Texas too. We have to give it a try, yes?"

Buff and Luke shook their heads at each other but said nothing. Mitch nodded his assent to the troops. Charlie, Colby, and Cynthia turned away without commenting and went back around to the rear of the truck. They all climbed wearily back aboard. Soon, Keene found himself looking out once again at the stretch of road from Corpus Christi to Kingsville that he had driven so many times. But he had never seen it like this. The road was thick with flotsam and trash as well as fallen rubble, making progress slow. There were upturned cars, downed trees—even wrecked boats carried from the coast. Through the outskirts of Kingsville, the remnants of houses demolished by impacts had been broken up by the water and dispersed. The whole area looked like a shantytown in the wake of a hurricane, extending for miles.

They were ten miles or so past Kingsville, anxiously watching east for the first signs of the wave front, when Keene saw the figures ahead, standing across the roadway. They were holding automatic weapons trained on the cab of the truck. Two standing ahead were waving it down. Farther back in the haze was what looked like a barricade on the road. Keene took the radio from the shelf below the dash panel and buzzed Mitch in the trailer three times. At the same time, he felt for the automatic in the holster at his belt. "Forget all the stuff you've seen in movies," he muttered to Buff. "They could cut this tin box to ribbons in seconds with those things. You'd better pull over."

 

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Framed


Title: Cradle of Saturn
Author: James P. Hogan
ISBN: 0-671-57813-8 0-671-57866-9
Copyright: © 1999 by James P. Hogan
Publisher: Baen Books