“Yeah, I figured that was worth leaving a note about. He’ll just scrap it. Lots of expensive parts in there. Help me turn this.”
She placed his hands onto a metal wheel, and together they wrenched it around, opening the cylinder.
Ruppert’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he saw the room had changed since they’d arrived-there were wine crates, more machine parts, and generally a lot of scrap piled into the room, leaving only narrow footpaths. Turin and the others must have started on it just after Lucia and Ruppert arrived. The police hadn’t found the vehicle stashed here, probably because you didn’t intimidate people much by kicking around in their garbage.
“Over here,” Lucia whispered. They began stacking crates and moving aside machine pieces, including what appeared to be the entire flank of a tractor.
The work took thirty very long minutes, and then they stripped away a canvas tarp to reveal a sand-colored Chevrolet Brontosaur, a great hulk of a truck with a reinforced grill and a hardtop covering the payload. Two bumper stickers were plastered to the rear: an American flag captioned “Vote for the President,” and another that read “When the Rapture Comes, Watch Out for My Big Old Truck!”
Lucia started for the driver’s side door with the keycard. Ruppert, remembering a few of the sharp, high turns waiting out in the Sonoma Mountains-and how recklessly she’d taken them-offered to drive instead.
He steered the truck up and over heaps of scrap wood and steel mesh, grateful for the truck’s four-wheel drive. Within minutes, they were back on the road, the sky open and full of moonlight above. Ruppert felt dangerously exposed-he’d grown accustomed to life underground. He wondered if rabbits and voles felt the same way when they ventured out of the warren for a snack.
Still, he rolled down the window and breathed in the fresh night air, high above the pollution line. This, too, must be how burrowing creatures felt. More vulnerable to predators, maybe, but relieved to be out of the dank air and the reek of close, crowded bodies.
It would be a long drive back to Los Angeles, the city that was more dangerous for him than any other place on Earth. He looked over to Lucia. She had opened her window, too, and sat back with her eyes closed against her long black hair, which the wind lashed into her face.
Ruppert knew he’d made a mistake. Even if they did learn where to find Lucia’s son, the boy might be anywhere on the planet by now. Would he even recognize his mother? How long ago had Lucia lost him-five, six years? Meanwhile, Terror would see Ruppert’s interview, and they’d launch a nationwide manhunt to find him.
Still, he drove on, south towards the city.
TWENTY-FOUR
The return to L.A. was jarring. After his time in the desert and the mountains, he could really taste the bitter poison of the smog, and even feel airborne chemicals burning and staining his skin.
In Hollywood, hordes of people choked the sidewalks and the narrower streets, hawking stolen jewelry, drugs, purified water, quick-fried food, Catholic icons, booze, rugs, art, and pieces of computers and automobiles. A rivulet of car traffic crawled through the center of the marketplace.
They stopped at a narrow, clutter maze of a thrift store, the sort of place where they preferred bartering to money, but would still accept cash, if you had a large enough stack of it. Lucia bought clothes-all black, including sunglasses. The illusion wouldn’t hold up on inspection, but at first glance, she would resemble a Terror agent.
She picked out a particular accessory for him to wear, something intended for nightclubs or costume parties, a spiky chain collar festooned with blinking red lights. He also bought some cheap outfits for himself, and an extra pair of shoes. Then he stopped at a dumpster and threw out the three changes of clothes he’d been wearing for the past several weeks.
Liam O’Shea lived in a sealed neighborhood in Santa Monica similar to Ruppert’s. The exterior wall, running southeast along Lincoln Boulevard, resembled a fortress-a high concrete barrier, regularly sand-scrubbed by maintenance staff, topped with steel points and coils of shockwire, all to keep the barbarian hordes at bay.
Lucia's modified television remote convinced a neighborhood entrance gate to open for them. They proceeded into a suburban oasis of clean, unbroken sidewalks, manicured lawns thick with trees, and big pueblo-style homes.
“Which one?” Lucia asked. “They all look alike.”
“Keep driving. I think it’s further back.”
“You don’t know which house?”
“I’ve only been here once,” Ruppert said. “For a soda-punch social. I didn’t want to come here that time, either.” He followed the gentle curves of the main road towards the larger houses along the neighborhood’s back streets.
They parked in the driveway next to Liam’s Ford Cherub, a short bulging car with rounded doors. Lucia stepped out first, clad in her new black “Terror” outfit, then crossed to open the passenger door and haul Ruppert out of the truck.
She escorted him to the front door, her hand clamped on his bicep as if he were her prisoner. Loud shrieks and squeals echoed from Liam’s back yard.
“Let’s try around back,” Ruppert whispered. Lucia nodded and steered him toward the arched gate in the stucco wall surrounding Liam’s back yard. They entered quietly.
Liam’s eight-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter, along with six or seven other children, jumped and wrestled in a plastic wading pool, and as well as in the wide circle of mud that had formed around it.
Liam stood a few yards back, spraying them down a garden hose as they played. From the swampy condition of the yard, he must have used a citizen’s full monthly water ration just that morning, a massive violation of the Western Resource and Energy Committee's ration system. He held a can of beer in his other hand, and like the kids, he’d removed his shirt, exposing an engorged, pasty white belly dropping over the waistband of his Bermuda shorts.
'Get him, Peter!' Liam shouted. 'Rub some mud down his back!'
“Hi, Liam,” Ruppert said.
Liam jumped at his voice. When he saw Ruppert, his eyes seemed to double in size behind his thick glasses.
“You, you’re…” Liam sounded like he was choking. The beer can slipped from his fingers, and fell to the ground, chugging its foamy contents away into the grass. “There’s a Terror alert for you. Pastor John says.”
“They already found me,” Ruppert told him. “This one wants to ask you about-”
“Quiet!” Lucia jabbed an elbow into Ruppert’s gut, knocking the breath out of him, and he folded up and dropped to his knees. She hadn’t bothered pulling her punch.
“I apologize, citizen,” Lucia said to Liam. “This criminal will not speak to you again. If he does, I will decapitate him.” She jerked on the leash attached to the chain collar around his throat.
“Thank you,” Liam said. “I always knew he was dangerous. I tried to report him. You can check the records.”
“We know,” Lucia said. “That's why we need to question you about him.”
Liam just stared at Ruppert. The hose had drooped until he was only splattering his own sandals, and the children howled in protest.
“We must speak privately,” Lucia said. 'This is very confidential.'
“Of course, ah…There's my office, that’s soundproof.”
“Immediately,” Lucia said. She yanked Ruppert’s chain, and he rose to his feet. Liam led them in through the open patio door, from which cold, conditioned air billowed out into the yard. That would be a Western Resource and Energy Committee violation, too.
They passed through a cavernous kitchen, and Ruppert glanced through the open door to the dining room. From his previous visit, he did remember the mural there: a bearded, muscular, possibly oiled man in a loincloth, apparently the Second Coming, fire blazing from his eyes and mouth, riding the winged horse Pegasus, apparently, down from the night sky. Ruppert wondered how many meals the O’Shea children had eaten under the burning eyes of that angry god and his goofy steed.
They followed Liam to the office door at the end of the upstairs hall. Liam pressed his index finger to a
