do it. Several times cops, too, hollered at him through bullhorns, and once, Carter got so pissed off he purposely hit the klaxon again, a blast louder and more powerful than anything you’d hear from even a sixteen-wheeler. He also noticed that one of the LED screens read INTERCOM ENGAGED. He touched the screen and then said, “Testing.”
His voice boomed out over the jammed traffic lanes.
Oh man. What did this car not do?
“Official business,” he said. “Please clear the way.”
That must have given the cops a surprise, he thought — and at the next corner, they slowed down and fell back to attend to an accident. Carter didn’t doubt that they’d made note of his license plate, though, and that al- Kalli — if he’d lived — would have been hearing from them soon.
Al-Kalli. When Carter thought about what he’d seen not an hour ago — the man’s head rolling, and still sentient, if Carter’s guess was correct, across the dirt floor of the bestiary — he couldn’t believe it; it was as if Carter’s own mind could not process the information, could not accept everything that had happened, and everything he had witnessed, that day.
And though it wasn’t late even now, dusk had come early — the sun was shrouded behind an increasingly dense pall of smoke and cinders. Passengers sitting in the stalled cars that Carter passed looked stunned, terrified. Some had abandoned their cars altogether, and were running down the center lanes, carrying dogs in their arms, or car seats with squalling babies still in them. In the brown grass along one side of the road, he saw several people kneeling around a Hispanic man with a Bible who was leading them, heads down, in prayer; black ash swirled around their heads. Terrible shades, he couldn’t help but think, of 9/11.
He fumbled at the levers of the wheel until he found the windshield wipers and fluid; as the blades went back and forth, the window at first got sootier and more smeared, but then, with another jet of fluid, it began to clear.
The radio — he finally thought of trying the radio, but when he found it, and got it on, it was tuned to some Middle Eastern music station. Although he needed to keep both hands on the wheel, every chance he got he reached over and played with the controls until he found a news station. But even then the reception was terrible, and staticky. “Fires… Temescal Canyon ablaze, fanned by Santa Ana winds…” There was another burst of static, and then a fire official’s voice saying, “Please stay in your homes unless and until an evacuation order is given.” Carter continued to listen as the announcer read off an endless list of freeways that were impassable, roads that were closed, neighborhoods that were endangered. But nothing, thank God, was said about Summit View — at least so far.
The fire engine had turned off in another direction several blocks before, and Carter now was simply barreling along the shoulder, often with one or two tires off the macadam, and eliciting blasting horns and angry shouts and bullhorned police warnings. Over the car’s loudspeaker, he occasionally repeated his claim of official business, and once — at a particularly tricky juncture — announced that he was the mayor; the powerful black limousine with the fortunately tinted windows made a convincing case.
But when he got to Sepulveda and approached the entrance to Summit View, he found the long driveway blocked by a couple of fire trucks and several police cars. A stream of cars, some of them hastily loaded with stuff, was coming down off the hill and being shepherded toward the Valley. He had to stop short, and a young cop wearing a white paper face mask banged on his closed window with the butt of a flashlight. Carter rolled it down.
“You can’t go up there,” the cop barked, the mask billowing out, “we’re evacuating.”
“I have to,” Carter said, “I live there! My family’s up there!”
“Not anymore they’re not. Everybody’s coming down.” He waved to the left. “Now move it.”
He walked away, but instead of turning in to the file of cars slowly moving toward the Valley, Carter moved forward. The cop saw it and, pulling down the face mask, hollered, “What did I just tell you?”
Carter rolled the window up. The cop was running after him, and in his rearview mirror Carter could see that he was actually unsnapping his holster. Carter was fairly confident that this was a bulletproof car, but that still didn’t mean he wanted to test it.
“Stop!” the cop shouted, and two or three other policemen, dead ahead, got out of their cars to see what was happening. They had parked bumper to bumper, to blockade the right lanes of the drive. Carter would have to go around them. He steered the limousine over the curb, up onto the lawn, and then through the towering palm trees that lined both sides of the drive.
Carter heard a shot, glanced in the mirror, and saw the young cop, feet squarely planted, firing his pistol into the air.
And one of the patrol cars that had been blocking the drive started up after him, bumping over the curb with its lights flashing and siren blaring.
Was all of this for nothing? Carter thought. Was Beth in one of the cars that was already snaking its way down the hillside? He kept shooting glances over to his left, looking for her old white Volvo, but he didn’t see it.
Nor did he see, until it was almost too late, the big green SUV that was barreling down the hillside, trying to circumvent the traffic on the drive. The SUV blasted its horn, and Carter blasted the klaxon in reply, its piercing wail reverberating around the hillside with a frightening echo; the SUV, perhaps startled, veered to the side, so close that it grazed Carter’s side mirror. Carter saw a panicked woman on a cell phone in the driver’s seat, a couple of kids in the back, and then he saw her swerve to miss a tree behind him, and he heard the crash.
She’d run right into the front of the police car; the hoods of both cars were crumpled, and there was a cloud of steam escaping from them both. Two cops jumped out to assess the damage, and Carter drove his own car back onto the main drive. While the lane on the other side of the cement median strip had a dozen or so cars still backed up, the lane going up the hill was clear, and Carter took its turns as if he were on the autobahn. The Mercedes purred, like a pent-up animal delighted at last to run free.
But the air, as he ascended, was darker and dirtier all the time. Smoke from the east was drifting over, and it was as if night was falling by the minute. Carter passed only one or two other cars racing down, one of them an open Miata with a bronze statue of a naked nymph on the passenger seat. Far ahead, he saw a red fire captain’s car, and he could hear the speaker on the top telling people to evacuate now. He cut sharply into a side street, then shot back up through a service drive that led toward the top of the development. Via Vista, his own street, connected with it just a block or two up.
Ash was falling like snowflakes on the immaculate houses and parched lawns and empty streets.
Tires screeching, Carter wheeled the limo onto Via Vista, where only one row of houses stood along the crest-line, the dense canyon falling steeply away just behind them. All that could be seen of the massive power towers that rose up above the trees and thick brush were the red signal beacons flashing at their top; the Santa Monica Mountains, perfectly visible on most days, were now just an immense black shadow, far away. Carter raced up the hill, past the tennis courts, past the swimming pool, toward the lighted windows of his own house. Beth was home, he thought, Joey was home! He would gather them all up into the Mercedes, along with Champ — he couldn’t forget Champ! — and get the hell out of there, while there was still time!
The car lurched to a halt in the drive, right next to his Jeep, and he leapt out while the engine was still turning off. He ran across the front lawn — he could hear Champ barking inside — and threw open the door.
“Beth! Where are you?”
But there wasn’t any answer. Champ jumped up onto his pants.
“Down, boy!” He pushed the dog aside and raced up the stairs, shouting, “Beth! Beth!” The dog bounded up after him.
He ducked his head into the nursery — the crib was empty — then into the master bedroom — empty, too.
He stopped to catch his breath, then heard a voice — Beth’s, from downstairs — calling, “Champ! Champ!”
“We’re here!” Carter shouted, then ran back to the top of the stairs.
Beth, at the bottom, was holding a leash; her hair was slapped up under a baseball cap, and she was wearing a Getty sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. She looked shocked to see him.
“Where did you come from?” she blurted out. “I’ve been waiting—”
“No time — let’s go,” he said, leaping down the stairs again, three at a time.
