The voice sent chill bumps shivering up her spine. It had been spoken from her left, and close to her ear. She turned her head. God was there, hunkered down beside her, his glacial face gaunt and his eyes dark with truth. He wore skin-tight black velvet and a gold chain with a crucifix on it. On his head was a floppy-brimmed black hat with a snake-skin band. It was the same outfit he'd worn when she'd seen him up close in Hollywood. Except for one thing: God wore a yellow Smiley Face button on his lapel. 'He knows,' the cruel mouth repeated in a whisper.
Mary Terror stared at the young hippie. He was looking at his fingernails again; he darted a glance at her, then shifted his position and studied the fire.
Or pretended to.
'Road's closed,' God said. 'Pigs at the roadblock. Your leg's busted open again. And that fucker knows. What'cha gonna do, Mary?'
She didn't answer. She couldn't.
She leaned her back against the wall and closed her eyes. She could feel him watching, but every time she opened her eyes she couldn't catch him at it. Rachel returned with a tattered but usable sleeping bag, and Mary spread it out like a mattress and laid on top of it instead of confining herself inside. She kept the shoulder bag's strap around her arm, its top zippered shut, and Drummer alternately drowsed and fretted beside her.
'He knows,' she heard God whisper in her ear as she drifted toward sleep. His voice pulled her away from rest. She felt swollen with damp, pulsing heat, her thigh and forearm wounds heavy with crusted blood under the bandages. A firm touch to her thigh made searing pain travel from her hip to her knee, and the blood spots were growing.
'What'cha gonna do, Mary?' God asked, and she thought he might have laughed a little.
'Damn you,' she rasped, and she pulled Drummer closer. It was the two of them against a hateful world.
The exhaustion won over pain and fear, at least for a while. Mary slept, Drummer sucked busily on his pacifier, and the young hippie scratched his chin and watched the woman and her infant.
2: Thunder Lizards
Two o'clock passed, and the Cutlass kept going into the white whirlwinds.
Didi was at the wheel, her face a bleached mask of tension. The Cutlass, traveling at thirty miles an hour, was alone on I-80. Laura had driven for several hours back in Nebraska, between Lincoln and North Platte, and she'd gotten good at guiding the car with one hand and an elbow. The snowstorm's intensity had strengthened near North Platte, the wind broadsiding the car like a bull's charge, and Laura had pulled over to let somebody with two hands drive. The last tractor-trailer truck they'd seen had been turning off at Laramie, ten miles behind them, and the snowswept highway was climbing steadily toward the Rocky Mountains.
'Should've stopped at Laramie,' Didi said. This had been her refrain ever since they'd left its lights. 'We can't keep going in this.' The wiper in front of her face shrieked with effort as it plowed the snow away, while the wiper on Laura's side had ground to a halt just east of Cheyenne. 'Should've stopped at Laramie, like I wanted to.'
'She didn't,' Laura said.
'How do you know? She might be back in Nebraska, sleeping in a warm Holiday Inn!'
'She'll go as far as she can. She'll go until she can't drive anymore. I would.'
'Mary might be crazy, but she's not a fool! She's not going to get herself and David killed out here! Look! Even the trucks can't make it in this!' Didi dared to unhinge the fingers of her right hand from the wheel and point to the tractor-trailer rig that was abandoned on the shoulder, its emergency lights flashing. Then she gripped the wheel hard again, because a gust of wind slapped the Cutlass and fishtailed it into the left lane. Didi let off on the accelerator and fought the car straight again, her heart pounding and a coil of fear deep in her belly. 'Jesus, what a mess!'
The snowfall, made up of flakes the size of half dollars, was spinning into their headlights on almost a horizontal plane. Laura was scared, too, and every time the tires slipped and slid she felt her heart rise to her throat and lodge there like a peach pit, but the violence of the wind was keeping the snow from piling up on the pavement. Patches of ice glistened on the highway like silver lakes, but the road itself was clear. She scanned the snowy darkness, her broken hand mercifully numb. Where are you? she thought. In front of us, or behind? Mary wouldn't have turned off I-80 for a secondary route because the road atlas they'd gotten at their last gas-and-food stop showed no other way west across the state but I-80's broad blue line. Somewhere on the highway, probably in Utah by now, Mary Terror was cleaving the night with David at her side. An overnight stop in Laramie would only increase the distance between Laura and Mary by at least four hours. No, Mary was on her way to find Jack. The storm might slow her down to a crawl, but she wasn't going to stop unless she was forced to, either by hunger or weariness.
Laura had her own cure for the latter. She swallowed another Black Cat tablet – 'the truck driver's friend,' the man behind the counter at the Shell station had said when they'd asked for something strong – and followed it with a sip of cold coffee. And then Didi shouted 'Christ!' and the Cutlass swerved to the right as its tires hit an ice patch, and the last of the coffee went all over Laura's lap.
The car skidded out of control as Didi tried to muscle the wheel back toward the center line. It slammed into the guardrail, the right-side headlight exploding. The Cutlass scraped along the rail, sparks flying back with the snow-flakes, and then the car shuddered as the tires gripped gravel and responded to Didi's hands. The Cutlass swerved away from the guardrail and onto the highway again, casting a single beam of light before it.
'Should've stopped at Laramie.' Didi's voice was as tight as her face, a pulse beating quickly at her temple. She had cut the speed to just under thirty. 'No way we can keep going in this!'
The highway was getting steeper, the Cutlass's engine rattling with the strain. They passed two more abandoned cars, almost completely shrouded in white, and after another minute Didi said, 'Something in front of us.'
Laura could see flashing yellow lights. Didi began to slow down. A blinking sign emerged from the blowing snow: STOP ROAD CLOSED. A highway patrol car was there, too, its blue lights going around. Didi eased the Cutlass to a halt, and a bundled-up state trooper holding a flashlight with a red lens cap walked around to the passenger side and motioned for Didi to lower her window.
Mary's eyes opened. She heard the shrilling of the wind outside and the crackle of burning wood in the fireplace. Beads of sweat shivered on her skin.
The young hippie was sitting cross-legged five feet from her, his chin supported by his palms and his elbows on his knees.
Mary sucked in her breath and sat up. She looked at Drummer, who was in baby dreamland, his eyes moving behind the thin pink lids and the pacifier gripped in his mouth. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, her coat over her thighs and hips to hide the bloodstains. 'What is it?' she asked, her brain still fogged with fever and her voice thick.
'Sorry,' the hippie said. 'Didn't mean to wake you.' He had a Yankee accent, a voice like a reedy flute.
'What is it?' she asked again, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her bones throbbed like bad teeth, and her thigh felt sticky-wet. She looked around. Most of the people in the lobby were asleep, but a few were still playing cards. Rachel Jiles was sleeping in a chair, and her cowboy husband was talking on the CB radio. Mary returned her attention to the young hippie, who was maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. 'You woke me up.'
'I went to the bathroom,' he said as if this were important news. 'When I came back, I couldn't sleep.' He stared at her, with his spooky, ashy eyes. 'I swear I know you from somewhere.'
Mary heard the ringing of alarm bells. She slipped the shoulder bag's strap off her arm. 'I don't think so.'
'When you came in with your baby… I thought I recognized you, but I couldn't figure it out. Real weird seeing somebody you think you know but you can't figure out from where. Know what I mean?'
'I've never seen you before.' She glanced at Sam Jiles. He was putting on his coat, then his gloves and hat.
'You ever been to Sioux Falls, South Dakota?'
'No.' She watched Sam Jiles awaken his wife with a gentle nudge, and he said something to her that got her on her feet. 'Never.'
