She peered up the road. “I’m wondering if we can get around on the right shoulder.” Was it worth it? Could they take that risk? “There’s a little ledge along there.” She turned to her kids. “What do you think?”
Hanna and Jake inspected the ledge.
“Are you insane, Mom?” asked Hanna.
Glenda stared at the huge, muddy impasse. Which was the greater risk? Trying to get by on the right
shoulder or going back and having to walk in the dead, dark countryside around Marblehill, the place where Buzz was most likely to ambush them? She thought the road was at least worth investigating.
“We should see how extensive the landslide is,” said Glenda. “If it’s a mile wide, we’ll turn back. If it’s just a little ways…because if we have to take 74 to Charlotte, we’re not going to make it all the way to Marblehill on this one charge. We’ll have to walk partway.”
“Maybe we’ll find some place to charge further along,” said Jake.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Everything’s closed in Wake County. I think it’s the same everywhere.”
She had a look at the ledge a second time. “You guys stay here.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Jake. She could tell he was trying to make up for leaving the note back at the house.
“Jake, don’t desert me,” said Hanna.
“I’m going with Mom,” said Jake. “You’ll be okay in the car.” Jake reached over the seat and patted his sister’s shoulder. “Just sit back and relax. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Mom, make him stay here.”
“Give her the gun, Jake. Just in case.”
“Mom, that’s my gun. She doesn’t know how to use it.”
“She says I get the gun, Jake. Hand it over.”
Jake reluctantly gave her the gun. “Just don’t point it at us. You’ve got to think safety first with a firearm.”
“We’ll be back in five or ten minutes,” said Glenda.
Glenda and Jake got out of the car. The rain soaked their clothes instantly.
As they got closer to the landslide, it reminded her of a sleeping monster. Dead and broken conifers stuck out of its muddy back like giant quills. Yet, by its own momentum, and by the constant erosion of the rain, debris had caved away from the leading edge of the landslide and left a narrow passage along the outside shoulder of the road—a ledge perhaps wide enough for her car?
She looked up the mountainside. God, there was really nothing holding it in place anymore. As they made their way into the narrow passageway along the right side of the road, she felt like the sleeping monster might suddenly open its maw and devour them. To the left, rain ran in rivulets over the broken-away part. She pointed her flashlight at the rivulets, holding her rifle in her other hand. The water was brown and muddy.
She shone her flashlight further afield. “I think it ends up here. We might make it.”
“Except it’s all caved in up here.”
“Just a bit. Maybe the car can get through.”
“Not without getting stuck in that mud.”
“Let’s have a look.”
She climbed the caved-in section, her feet sinking up to her ankles in mud.
As she got close to the other side of the caved-in section, she saw the headlights of a parked vehicle beyond the furthest extent of the landslide. She turned her flashlight off and got to her knees, because even though she couldn’t immediately confirm who it was, she knew it had to be Buzz—Buzz, maybe coming back down the mountain because he had reached a different impasse further up, and was now being thwarted again by this new obstacle. Jake got to his knees beside her.
For several seconds she couldn’t move, couldn’t even look. She was caught in the grip of her own survival instinct, keeping down in all the sopping mud where Buzz couldn’t see her. But then it dawned on her. She had an opportunity here. She had her rifle. And it wouldn’t be like killing that dog, because she could kill Buzz easily. All that hurt he had brought into their home. Always coming around with a twelve-pack or a fifth of Jack. Driving a wedge between Gerry and the rest of the family so that sometimes she would go to her bedroom while they were out on the front porch drinking and weep until she couldn’t weep any more.
She got up on one knee and readied her rifle. And to think, he had made a pass at Hanna while at Marblehill.
In a moment she saw a figure appear in the glow of the headlights. Through the blur of the rain, the figure resolved into Buzz Fulton. She took aim, exhaled, squeezed the trigger, and fired—but fired just as some mud shifted from under her knee. It wasn’t much, but still enough to make her miss.
Buzz ducked and circled back to his truck in a crouched position. She pumped another round into the chamber and fired at his windshield. If she couldn’t get the man, she would get his truck, damage it as much as she could so he would have a hard time following them. But before she could fire through the front grille, Buzz started firing back. A bullet rocketed through the air toward them and thudded into the mud not five yards away, making a small, lugubrious splash.
“You sons of bitches!” he called.
Then he pumped round after round in their general direction.
As much as she would have liked to shoot Buzz’s truck to pieces, Glenda knew her only option was to retreat, especially because she had her child with her, and also because she was starting to fear that all the gunfire might trigger the mountain into another mudslide.
“Jake, back to the car.”
Jake ran—fast but clumsy in the thick mud, and looking as if he were ready to hit the dirt at a second’s notice.
Glenda fired one more round at the truck, then ran as well. She slipped and fell, scraping her knee badly on a small part of road that was clear of mud, but got up and continued, blinking through the torrential rain, wondering when more of the mountain would topple into the valley. Jake ran ahead of her, finally
leaving the mud behind and dashing along the ledge until he came to the car. She, too, came to the ledge.
Great clumps of mud fell from her shoes.
Jake dove into the backseat.
Glenda reached the car, pushed the rifle over Hanna’s knees, got into the driver’s seat, put the car in gear, swung round, and headed down the highway, not caring if they ended up walking part of the way to Marblehill.
Anything was better than being shot at by Buzz on this mountain.
28
Two days after the virus launch, Neil stared up at the sky from the Homestead parade ground as if it were his own personal masterpiece. Light. Once again. He could have cried for joy. Not the big gaping holes of the first attempt. No. Just these big brown blotches that were like onionskin. Like looking through a thousand blurry skylights—translucent apertures that let the beautiful glow of the afternoon sun in.
Louise stood next to him, clutching his hand. Ashley and Melissa stood next to Louise.
Morgan… Morgan played out in the huge puddles dotting the parade ground.
The silence, after so many days of gunfire, was unreal. It was like Christmas Day on the Eastern Front.
But where the hell was Greg?
He thought he should ask Morgan to get out of the puddle, but she looked happy playing in all that mud.
Louise squeezed his hand and glanced toward the other end of the base. “Maybe they’ll stop.”
“Maybe they will.” He motioned at the sky. “The Moon is going to launch in the next couple of days.”
“I knew you could do it.”
He took a few steps out into the yard, where he got a wide view of the runways beyond the parade ground. All the grass was dead. A lot of it had been washed away in the rain. In the brown light coming from the sky, the
