cheering. This far away, it sounded almost benign, like people having a party.
She looked to the left and then to the right, making sure there was no one around. The coast was clear, and without looking back at Kevin, she ran across the parking lot to the street. She heard the door shut behind her.
She reached the sidewalk. Now she could see some of the damage that had not been visible from the classroom. Up the street, a pickup was overturned and still burning, two bodies discarded on the asphalt next to it like limp rag dolls. Beyond that she saw movement. A small group of obviously armed, obviously intoxicated people prowling the neighborhood. Half of them were naked. They moved on, heading down another street, but another group crossed an intersection farther up, and she knew she'd probably run into others. She glanced around. Under a tree on the easement was an unbroken wine bottle, still a third full, and she quickly ran over and dumped the contents on her head and shoulders, rubbing the wine into her hair and skin so she would smell as though she was drunk, as though she was one of them. She opened her blouse, exposing a breast.
She was ready.
But where would she go? Not the winery, certainly, and not to the police station.
The fire station. That's what she'd said to Kevin, and that's where she would go. Even if the firemen had been overpowered or converted, there would still be communications equipment there. Last night's destruction hadn't been purposeful, planned. It had been random and wanton, the ignorant rampage of inebriated ... what? Dionysian revelers?
Yes.
She shook her head, trying to clear it.
Maenads.
Why had she never heard that word before? Her mothers were maenads.
Hell, she was a maenad. You'd think they would have told her a little about it, hinted around something.
Maybe they had.
She remembered the stories they'd told her as a child, 1 the fairy tales of chaos and blood lust and rethroned kings. She recalled one favorite story involving a young princess who had to drink a magic elixir to become strong enough to kill a pack of wolves who had captured her father.
Maybe they'd been trying to prepare her.
She stared down at the empty bottle on the grass. The wine on her skin smelled good, and a part of her wished she'd saved a few swallows to drink.
No!
Blood.
She had to be strong, had to keep from being sucked in. She looked back toward the building, toward the classroom. The blinds were closed and she couldn't tell if Kevin was watching her, if he was even back up there yet, but she surreptitiously waved to him anyway.
She hoped he could see her breast. This was going to be harder than she thought.
She began walking down the sidewalk, away from the burning truck, working on her stagger, prepared to appear drunk if she ran across anyone. She wasn't sure where the closest fire station was, but she thought it was a few blocks over, toward the downtown area, and she figured she'd head in that direction.
The street was littered with debris. Torn scraps of clothing, newspaper pages, pieces of packages, smashed bottles, and crumpled cans were strewn about the road. On the lawn of one of the houses, a nude man was lying atop the bloody body of an old lady. Penelope wasn't sure if either or both of them were alive, so she hurried past, walking on the strip of grass next to the street rather than the sidewalk to avoid making noise, her hand on the screwdriver in her waistband, ready to pull it out and use it if either of them moved.
She continued down the street. The overpowering dread she'd felt last night was gone, replaced by a more subtle tension. The light of day had removed her fear of being jumped and ambushed in the shadows, but she was still uneasy, and it still felt to her as if something was waiting to happen. The street was calm, nearly empty, only traces remaining of last night's debauchery, but it was as if the city was holding its breath--and waiting to exhale.
This felt to her like the calm before a storm.
Or the eye of a hurricane.
She turned the corner, started walking toward the downtown area.
Where was Dion?
Dionysus.
That was the big question. Had he gone back to the winery, to the meadow? Was he crashed out somewhere in the city? Or was he still on the prowl, looking for her?
She shivered. The screams from the north had not stopped, had continued all along as a constant sub-noise that she'd already started to filter out, and she thought that he was probably there, at the winery. Or at one of the other wineries.
She smiled wryly. Maybe he was taking the tourist's tour of the wine country.
She looked to the right and to the left as she crossed a small street and saw, a block down, a stoplight. Hanging from the light was a red fire xing sign.
A fire station. She was in luck.
She hurried down the street, her right hand clamped against the screwdriver as she ran. She'd try the phone first. If that didn't work, she'd try to figure out how to work whatever other communication equipment they had.
She slowed as she neared the station. She was not alone. There were other people here as well.
Children.
She stopped on the sidewalk in front of the station. The big doors were open, and ten or twelve kids, all of them preteens, sat or stood atop the fire truck, smoking hand rolled cigarettes, drinking from bottles. A
kid of seven or eight lay passed out on the driveway in front of the truck. On the small lawn in front of the closed office, young boys and girls were loading and unloading guns.
She was not sure what was stronger, her rage or her fear. What the hell was wrong with these kids' parents? How could they allow this? Even if they had been converted to Dionysus worship, how could they abandon all responsibility for their children?
This was more than merely conversion to a different re-1 ligion, she knew. This was more than simple mass hystej ria. This was something totally different, totally new, ai sea change, a complete shift in the fabric of previously accepted reality. The Judeo-Christian assumptions upon which lives and society had been based were no longer true.
A young girl wearing a visible diaper under her ripped pink dress pointed a handgun at Penelope and grinned as she pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty cylinder. The other kids burst out laughing.
Maybe they'd killed their parents.
Penelope turned away hurrying back the way she'd come. Fuck trying to call for help. Fuck trying to contact the outside world. She wasn't going to sit here like a dummy and wait to be rescued. She'd find a goddamn car, go back for Kevin, and the two of them would get the hell out of the valley and not look back until it was all over.
There were cars in many of the driveways she'd passed on the way over, and though she didn't think any of them had keys in the ignition, keys were probably in the houses.
It hadn't looked like any of the owners were home.
She looked behind her. She wasn't being followed. None of the kids were coming after her. She scanned the driveways in front of her, saw a van at the next house over, saw a Lexus two houses up from that. Glancing across the street, she saw a Toyota of some kind in the driveway directly across from her.
The door to the house was wide open.
She hesitated. If the door was open, something was wrong. Maybe the owners of the house were all dead in there. Maybe they were alive--and waiting.
Fuck it. Something was wrong at the house? Something was wrong all over the goddamn city. She started across the street. She'd rush in, grab the keys, rush out. If someone was inside, she'd run if she could, or, if not, she'd fight.
She pulled the screwdriver from her waistband, adjusted the scissors so she could grab them more easily should the screwdriver be knocked from her hand.
She slowed as she reached the driveway, peering into the open doorway before her, looking for any sign of
